Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

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Levgre
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Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby Levgre » Fri Mar 07, 2014 1:34 pm

So I think FTL can sort of devolve into a farm fest and a rat race for the right items for your ship. While fun for awhile, I think this is inferior gameplay for more experienced/advanced players. So the mod I have in mind would start the player off with a LOT more, and hike the challenge of fights appropriately. So basically -

All ships start with missiles, boarding, laser weapons, drones. No more single choice strategy for all fights for a long time. The player can't necessarily power them all at the same time, though.

All ships start with around 6 crew members.

Fights now are harder (MUCH harder, at the start) and less common. No longer the primary method of improving your ship, and more of them will be quest-related.

Balance wise, there'd be at least a few changes. Drones are fundamentally OP imo, so either they wouldn't last as long (thus being more of a consumable, like one drone would stop 2-3 missiles), and/or they would be more expensive.

I'm working hard on programming a full blown flash game right now, so I won't be able to learn how or have the time to mod FTL for the time being. However if a group of people wanted to undertake a project such as this, I could be involved with testing/design.
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Ora_unit_SR388
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby Ora_unit_SR388 » Fri Mar 07, 2014 4:01 pm

Levgre wrote:All ships start with missiles, boarding, laser weapons, drones. No more single choice strategy for all fights for a long time. The player can't necessarily power them all at the same time, though.


Though this is easily done, it does make a ship very OP from the start. All a person must do is find a way to power it all.

Levgre wrote:All ships start with around 6 crew members.


A vanilla ship usually starts with 3 crew, and normally 5 is enough for me. But six, over kill.

Levgre wrote:Fights now are harder (MUCH harder, at the start) and less common. No longer the primary method of improving your ship, and more of them will be quest-related.


Though I do agree there should be more quests, but less combat. :( I wouldn't like that much.

Levgre wrote:Balance wise, there'd be at least a few changes. Drones are fundamentally OP imo, so either they wouldn't last as long (thus being more of a consumable, like one drone would stop 2-3 missiles), and/or they would be more expensive.


How drones work are hard coded, so we couldn't do that, but that is an interesting idea.
Levgre
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby Levgre » Fri Mar 07, 2014 4:32 pm

Well, if needed for balance, you could up the power requirements for some systems to make it logistically impossible to to power them all at the same time (unless you shut down shields + engines, maybe).

OR you could just balance scrap output and power costs so it is not so easy to max your power. But I think it would help interaction if you had to pick and choose which systems to power each battle.

My reasoning behind 6 crew, is it allows you to man 4 systems and still have 2 people available for boarders. I don't think that is overkill. Harder battles could make it more likely you'd lose crew, due to the enemy having stronger anti-crew weapons. Also if you participate in random events it seems you have a net crew decline in the earlier game. So it is unlikely you'll stay at 6. I think you can always tweak crew gaining rate to make 6 balanced. I just want the early game to not be crew strangled, since early fights would be like late game now... more fires, more hull breaches, more enemy boarders, so on.

I'm not saying combat would be 'rare', just less common. I want it to feel exciting and special, not as routine. Like, 5 combats per sector instead of 8... or just a 33-50% decrease overall. To compensate for less battles, the battles would be longer and more involved. Like close to a stage of the rebel flagship, as you advance in the game.

If drones can't be given a time/shot limit, perhaps their rate of fire could be decreased. Or in the case of anti-missile drones, they could have a significantly higher miss %. I haven't tried to count it, but anti-ship drones seem to have a dps of about 5 shots per 10 seconds. That is insane compared to most weapons. Plus there's no way to counter them other than disabling the system, but weapons are even more vulnerable than drones to system disable that since their long charge timers are reset.
NonPlayableYoshi
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby NonPlayableYoshi » Sat Mar 08, 2014 3:41 pm

Levgre wrote:All ships start with around 6 crew members.

You can only name 4 of them so have fun with your crew members billy bob and *name you don't know how to say*. and as much as i want to use every system at the same time. 3 crew is fine
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agigabyte
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby agigabyte » Sat Mar 08, 2014 5:54 pm

NonPlayableYoshi wrote:
Levgre wrote:All ships start with around 6 crew members.

You can only name 4 of them so have fun with your crew members billy bob and *name you don't know how to say*. and as much as i want to use every system at the same time. 3 crew is fine



We can rename mid game in AE.
Levgre
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby Levgre » Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:28 am

Started brainstorming for the mod, while looking through the mod tools.

Since the players will be given an access to an array of weapons/drones from the start, weapon strategy will have to be inherently different . Right now weapon strategy is basically do hull/system damage however you can, hoping you get the proper weapon combos to do so.

The plan is to make the player have to use 3-4 weapons in a typical fight, instead of 2 types being fine for the majority of situations.

Lasers will no longer be good for system damage, but they will be boosted as a general purpose weapon.. better chance to set fire, all will have at least minor shield piercing, faster charge rate.

Missiles will now have low-ish damage output due to low fire speed (same as now I guess?), but will have low power requirement to compensate for using missiles, retain some ability to deal with systems, and have strengths of good fire + breach + shield pierce

Note that higher fire + breach chance makes lasers/missiles better at removing a crew member from operating a system, so that's a slight boost to anti-system. An increase to crew bonuses for systems may be implemented in the mod.

Ion weapons and Beam Weapons will now have high energy requirements, requiring a trade off in other systems, such as shields + engines. However they will excel offensively, Ion weapons will now be the king of disabling systems, and beam weapons will retain high hull damage + system damage + fire/breach chance.

more detailed explanations

Lasers -

Energy req. - average
damage - average
recharge speed - fast
pro - no ammunition, bypass weak shielding, scaling chance of fire, small chance of breach for larger lasers, fastest recharge
con - no system damage for smaller lasers, weak system damage for larger lasers

Missiles -
Energy req. - low
damage - high
recharge speed - slow

pro - bypasses most shields, low power req., good chance of fire + breach, small system damage
con - consumes missiles, slow recharge, vulnerable to defense drones

Ion weapons -

Energy req. - high
damage - medium
recharge speed - medium

pro - strong system damage, hands down best weapon for disabling systems
con - high energy requirement, can't do hull damage

Beam weapons
Energy req. - high
Damage - high
recharge speed - medium

pro - good hull damage, can set fires, breach, and does moderate systems damage
con - high energy req, low shield piercing

Other balance changes

Coding Challenge: Increase in dodge rate to no longer to have instant effect, to eliminate reactive stealthing + engine powering. Having the hit check be at time of fire wouldn't work, since then the player could learn to time when weapons will fire, and momentarily power up engines. But hit check at time of firing would still be better than the current check of when the shot reaches the ship.
Last edited by Levgre on Sun Mar 09, 2014 11:36 am, edited 5 times in total.
English Narwhal
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby English Narwhal » Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:56 am

Levgre wrote:Coding Challenge: Increase in dodge rate no longer to have instant effect, to eliminate reactive stealthing + engine powering. Having the hit check be at time of fire wouldn't work, since then the player could learn to time when weapons will fire, and momentarily power up engines. But hit check at time of firing would still be better than the current check of when the shot reaches the ship.

Okay, I'll give you a rundown of what you cannot change in FTL:
Dodging Mechanics. They simply cannot be altered in any way.
The Rebel Flagship. You can alter it, but because of how the final boss works, you can't do much more than make cosmetic changes to it, for all intents and purposes.
Oxygen.
Racial Abilities. Just flat out impossible to change.
# of Beacons per Sector: I've tried. Doing so has resulted in things such as two different crystal sectors (different ships, everything), the game crashing, and the game doing generally stupid things.
The first of those things is incredibly useful, but the only time I got it to work was with a very early beta of Infinite Space 2, and I am still attempting to replicate the circumstances.
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Ora_unit_SR388
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby Ora_unit_SR388 » Sun Mar 09, 2014 4:52 pm

Actually you can edit the flagship dramatically. I figured out how to do it in the past. You can't change the weapons, but you can change other things.
xlandar
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby xlandar » Sun Mar 09, 2014 10:45 pm

although this would be a very cool mod idea, you should really look at some of the other mods out there. a lot of what you are suggesting is either impossible or very hard to code, and some of the possible stuff would take a very long time if you want to make a complete game overhaul. also. for a massive mod proposal like this, you will have to be willing to do quite a bit of modding yourself, people don't really like it if you ask them to do something if you are not willing to contribute much to the effort.
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Levgre
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Re: Mod I'd like to see: Maximizing player interactivity

Postby Levgre » Mon Mar 10, 2014 1:49 pm

I don't care if some people don't like it. I explained my situation, I'm working hard on developing a flash game atm (unfortunately modding doesn't pay or advance you in the game industry really), and I should have time to mod after that.

It's completely voluntary whether anyone wants to work on this or not, and it doesn't bother me if no one does. Either way I like getting the design ideas out there for myself, instead of trying to holding them in memory. Also as I said earlier I'd at least be helping with design/testing/balance, which can amount to a lot.