Suggestion: Ship loadout in hangar

[Lucid]

I've played quite a few games by now (thanks, FTL team!), and I have two ships unlocked: the Kestrel and the Torus. They play very, very differently, which is cool.

However, for a single ship type, the first couple of sectors always play about the same, until I have enough scrap to buy different weapons and augmentations. I would like some ability to choose my starting equipment, so I don't always have the same two weapons in sectors 1 and 2.

If game balance is a concern, this could mean selecting from a short list of possible loadouts. Otherwise, this could be purchasing weapons a la carte with scrap.

You probably still want to restrict the possible purchases by ship type to keep the 'flavor' of each ship choice. Maybe the Engi ship can't buy powerful lasers, while the Kestrel can't buy ion weapons or bombs.

[AGTMADCAT]

Agreed! I actually was looking for the buttons to do this in the hanger, since it intuitively seemed to me that that was what the hanger was for. I'd prefer an a la carte scrap option, however perhaps it could be restricted to only have things available that you've purchased in previous playthroughs? Or something like that. Or maybe you have to have scored above a certain amount to unlock things like heavy lasers? Something to make it so that everything isn't available right off the bat. I think you'd get ~150 scrap to spend, based on the current loadouts.

-AGT

[ezryder]

+1

I think you'd get ~150 scrap to spend, based on the current loadouts.

Depending on what ships are unlocked, the scrap value could be higher. The Engi ship comes with the nano-bot healing augment which is... I don't know how much, but probably around the 60-70 scrap range.

Having the a la carte amount be based on the scrap value of the components of the biggest ship that's been unlocked would be a solution. If they only have the Kestrel, whey would get ~150 scrap to play with. I don't feel (imho) that limiting the choice of components matters, as scrap cost will limit how powerful someone could configure a ship.

[Paul]

How about some sort of randomised item from a selection for each ship? Some ideas;
+1 crewmember
+50 starting scrap
+random augmentation
+random weapon
+drone/teleporting/cloaking system (this may be a bit overpowered)