Beta Release Discussion

[dnblumberg]

I managed to beat the boss with the stealth ship on easy mode.... It was still a tough fight.

I'd like to suggest the following:
1) Normal mode seems way way difficult to me unless you get absolutely the right system mods in the right sequence and really early.
2) If I pay 65 scrap for a random weapon and I'm cheated and given nothing and I beat the crap out of the merchant... I should get at least my 65 scrap back + said superweapon
3) Perhaps the Stealth ship ( or some other ship should have a worm hole tech that lets them show up at a random jump point within 3 spaces of where they were at? )
4) Concerning AI powered drone ships.... When I blow up a room on board an AI drone ship and I'm watching it with scanners, how is it auto repairing when I don't see any repair drones on board.... if that ship can do it then I want my ship to have a chance to auto repair itself too.
5) Boss fight. I lost an away crew when it 'Jumped' before I'd taken it's health away to zero. Have it give some warning and a second or two for teleporting a crew back ( or have them show up when you fight it next time ).
6) I really want to know about the launched attack droids. I've numerous times had attack droids breach my ships hull that I have to dispatch.... How are they doing that? I've yet to see a tech that would let me do so.
Concerning ship unlocks. I think giving each unlocked ship a totally unique unsellable enhancement would make it worth it. Example the stealth ship the random jump idea from above. The Engi ship perhaps has an anti drone ray ( it disables drones directly attacking it. The base scout ship can detect jump location weather b4 jumping into a point.
Daniel

[Nieracon]

I'm having difficulty launching the beta...I got an email with my beta key, and entered it into steam, and steam said it recognized the key. However, the game does not show up on my owned games list now, and when i look in my account, it has an entry for "FTL: Faster Than Light Retail" in there, but nothing about beta? Was i given a retail key instead of beta? Am I missing some step here?

Thanks in advance.

[dnblumberg]

A race suggestion.

Have a race that for each crewmember you get a 5% trade bonus ( both for selling and for buying ).

Daniel

[Gomisan]

I'd just like to mention that today a real issue occured with the whole 'no save' thing. The game crashed. Sure , it's a beta, that happens, but I cant try and repeat the problem as the game is unique each time.

If here was an 'autosave', not accesible unless the game hadnt been exited properly, that would be nice. A popup liek Word does.. "Your game didnt close properly, would you like to resume from where you left off?"

Yes, it could, maybe, be exploited just a litrtle, but that only hurts the gamer who does so.

While the game is in beta this sort of thing is even more useful. Imagine, I could send that pre-crash game state to the developers for them to test out.

[ThePsuedoMonkey]

I know it's probably really early to consider, but pleaseohpleaseohplease can you let us know when/if you are planning on going into open beta?

[Sardonic]

Having beaten the game once and unlocked all the ships but the latest one, I have to say I've enjoyed this game quite a lot. It was absolutely worth the extra money to kickstart hard enough to get into the beta.

That said I'd like to give a little feedback, nothing major, more content requests than anything:

1. Scrolling space backgrounds when ship engine is active.
I think this would be a nice touch and make the combat feel more lively. It would give the illusion of motion better than just seeing the engine animation active. I can't speak to how hard this would be to code in this late of the game, but I still think it would be a nice touch.

2. Rare encounters
I think there should be some classes of encounters that only have a 1% chance or less even of occurring. One event like this could even be finding a new ship, this could encourage players to keep playing so they can find the rare ship. I know it would work on me anyway. With potentially 100 jumps or so in an hour's gameplay, it shouldn't be too bad.

3. Greyed out options where the blue options would be, if you don't have the proper equipment.
While I do like the surprise of being able to utilize an augmentation or the teleporters in certain encounters, it felt kind of like a gotcha moment in the process of unlocking a certain ship, where you would have to have a level 2 medbay. This might cause players to be despondent at seeing they missed an opportunity because they weren't properly equipped though, so I'm not really sure what would be best from a gameplay perspective.

4. Save upon quit.
This is probably kind of hard to code this late in the game as well, but it would be nice, and not break the game if it was an ironman class save system with only one "slot".

Anyway keep up the good work, the game feels pretty much done, though it could use a bit more variety content in the encounters.

EDIT:
Oh and please add an option to have autofire enabled by default at the beginning of each game.

[Rhynri]

I second the "one-slot save" system. It is ridiculous that I am expected to play the game all the way through every time... or else. If you die, save gets erased. That ensures death is "fun". However, an autosave that caches my last action is required. No one writes perfect code, and I have now had three really good ships vanish into the ether when the game crashed loading 'The Last Stand'. I should not have to leave FTL running if I don't want to lose all my progress. I have a son, and a wife, and a job! As awesome as FTL is....

[Captain Kal]

Having played the game a couple of times (I am waiting for the 1.0 release ), I like it. And I do not play roguelikes. I will second the "save on quit" request. It is not possible for me to play the game uninterrupted from start to finish . (And make the sequel, with an adventure - exploration mode, like Space rangers II ).

[mefipulate]

An AP drone crashed through my hull during a fight a couple of sectors ago and began attacking my oxygen subsystem. I destroyed the ship before I could move crew in to kill the drone, noticed the drone wasn't attacking anymore, and decided to leave it. Since then I've been boarded 3 times. I didn't notice the first crew that boarded, since they landed in an empty room during an ion storm. Then some landed in my shield room and i came out of the nebula and noticed the first crew. They had been on board a few turns and hadn't done anything. My next jump landed me against some mantis who took over my med bay, destroyed my crew and wrecked the medbay, and are now apparently congratulating themselves on a job well done.

tldr; when a disabled drone is on board, subsequent boarding parties won't move from the room they teleport in to. I'm assuming its a bug, but it opens up ideas, ie enemy crew beaming over stealthily while the sensors are down and hiding during the turn, then attacking next turn. Or maybe something good.

Also with the intruders on board I can't upgrade my ship and even in safe jumps i have to wait for the FTL to charge. My last crew member is doomed to roam the universe avoiding fights and looking for a crew to take his ship back

[evil713]

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Oh God... it happened.

Necro-Spammer.