FTL Captain's Edition 1.308/Inf 1.301b/EL 1.308

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ledtim
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby ledtim » Sun Nov 01, 2015 1:09 pm

Captain Trek wrote:I find the CE Kestral C is actually pretty strong. If it weren't for the fact that dying of old age is a very real possibility while you're flying it, it'd be a straight up 7/10 ship for me (as it is I rate it at 6/10). I wouldn't recommend upping the system damage, because in my experience from A Strange New Galaxy, 2 system damage, 0 hull damage beams are the single most overpowered thing in the world...


Personally, out of the suggestions on kestral C I made in my big post, I like the idea of giving Kestrel C the oxygen system reducing augment the most. It wouldn't change the way the ship plays too much, but it would put a cap on the amount of the time a battle takes, and enemy ships with medbays would take less than a year to kill.
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Sleeper Service
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby Sleeper Service » Sun Nov 01, 2015 4:08 pm

stylesrj wrote:Hey if we're going to be ripping on certain ships here, what's the story with the Stealth B?
I think its fine.

ledtim wrote:Personally, out of the suggestions on kestral C I made in my big post, I like the idea of giving Kestrel C the oxygen system reducing augment the most. It wouldn't change the way the ship plays too much, but it would put a cap on the amount of the time a battle takes, and enemy ships with medbays would take less than a year to kill.
I don't know, I find that kind of takes the challenge out of it altogether, all you really have to do with that build is suppressing enemy offense and healing and then its smooth sailing. I also like that the ship has lots of aug space for pirating right now.

Estel wrote:As for the CE ships layout thing, I have no idea, as I always play with vanilla loadouts (as it was recommended way to play, anyway). I *do* think that vanilla loadouts should be - then - default state after installing mod, and separate sub-mod required to turn ON CE's loadouts - exactly opposite to what we have now. Otherwise, 90% f players treat it as core element of the mod and complain about balance.
Yeah, its really just part of main CE cause that makes mod maintenance a whole lot easier.

ledtim wrote:I don't understand, is Hadur a particularly common weapon in enemy ship loadouts? Genuinely asking, I'm not familiar with how ships are generated in the game.

I mean, I would rather face an enemy with a hadur mine then a hull missile or a titan missile (both 2 power missile weapons strictly superior to hadur mine), but I don't want hull missile or titan missile to be nerfed to be as bad as hadur mine, so I don't understand why hadur mine has to stay bad as it is because the enemy uses it.
From what I understand the games gives enemies systems first, assigns them levels, then populates the weapon system with guns that fit the level. One power weapons are more likely to be used as "filler" if the game did choose weapons that leave one weapon power unassigned. Just a feeling though, but I'm pretty sure that might be part of the reason why enemy Artemis uses two power instead of one: To make sure it doesn't appear even more often and also make it less likely to appear in early sectors. But I'm mostly speculating. However weapon rarity does not seem to affect likeliness of a weapon to be in enemy hands altogether. I'm also fairly sure that weapon of the same rarity are actually "competing" with another. I think the game first rolls a rarity level and then rolls any weapon from that rarity to populate stores for example. So giving light lasers a rarity of 5 would actually make things like the Glaive beam less likely to appear. Again, this is mostly speculating, but from what I've seen from playing around with EL it seems to work like that.

Your suggestion for the light laser family are under considerations. I'd love to hear some more opinions on the matter though, please all feel free to share your thoughts.
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slowriderxcorps
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby slowriderxcorps » Sun Nov 01, 2015 5:21 pm

My understanding of how the Loot Pool works strays quite far from that. After testing that stretched as far back as the initial development of Endless Loot, each individual item with a rarity of not-zero has a number of entries into the pool. I believe that weapons which have Rarity 5 get a single entry, and it linearly scales to where Rarity 1 gets five entries. When I did the initial experiments with this.. I can't even remember how long ago that was, two years ago?.. I had a vast volume of weapon variants forced into the base game (somewhere over 100), and all of them were Rarity 5. And they.. they were showing up genuinely about 50+% of the time, completely drowning out even the base weapons. I revisited this last week when investigating just how often the Flak I appears in basic Advanced Edition, and as far as the finds go this doesn't appear to have changed any.
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stylesrj
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby stylesrj » Sun Nov 01, 2015 6:19 pm

I think its fine.


Provided you have Endless Loot installed and get some better guns. At least at the end the Naginata survives because it's the only useful thing.
But when it takes about 3-4 hits to destroy a Zoltan ship...

Also, once 2-layer ships started appearing, I had to skip a lot of combat until I got a secondary, 1-power weapon. Which just happened to be an Artemis Missile.

Basically, the Stealth B is risky enough. You wait 25 seconds and the enemy is dead.
The CE Stealth B is just suicidal and relies way too much on the RNG to survive.
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby Captain Trek » Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:48 am

stylesrj wrote:
I think its fine.


Provided you have Endless Loot installed and get some better guns. At least at the end the Naginata survives because it's the only useful thing.
But when it takes about 3-4 hits to destroy a Zoltan ship...

Also, once 2-layer ships started appearing, I had to skip a lot of combat until I got a secondary, 1-power weapon. Which just happened to be an Artemis Missile.

Basically, the Stealth B is risky enough. You wait 25 seconds and the enemy is dead.
The CE Stealth B is just suicidal and relies way too much on the RNG to survive.


Pretty much this. The ability to one-shot sector 1 and 2 enemies was supposed to be the Stealth B's specific gimmick, and the change in weapon suite effectively took away the one thing that made the Stealth B special. Just because it's possible to win a CE Hard no shields run with it doesn't mean it's well-balanced or fun to play. Sure, you could argue that there is usually a really weak character in every roguelike roster for challenge, but the difference between FTL and something like Binding of Isaac (the Lost) or Crypt of the Necrodancer (Aria) is that In the latter games, skill mitigates the difficulty much more than it does in FTL, which is significantly more RNG reliant. This renders ships like the CE Stealth B frustrating and luck-based rather than a skilful challenge.

Sleeper Service wrote:As mentioned, the load-outs are to some extend designed as a showcase, so suggestions in changes should include CE weapons exclusively. I also tried to remain close to the original loadouts whenever possible.


To be fair, the balance of most of the CE ships really isn't that bad. There's only a few I think need serious attention:

Kestral A: As with the Stealth B, you took away the one thing that was special about the ship... the fact that it started off with a 3-shot laser... This makes the ship both less interesting and more difficult to fly, representing a completely unnecessary nerf.
Stealth B: See above.
Zoltan B: It needs a buff. Just straight up needs a buff. Its utterly anaemic starting weapons suite that takes forever to take out enemy ships (meaning tons of damage received every fight) and the exorbitant cost of getting its shields working combine to produce a ship that's always facing a frankly unreasonable uphill struggle. It is one of only three ships I cannot beat CE on Normal with alongside the Rock A and Engi B.

The Engi B, Rock A, and Zoltan C suck also, but that's not your fault. Rather, those ships' specific gimmicks (i.e. drones instead of crew, missiles only, and an irritating Zoltan-based micro-management black hole instead of a reactor, respectively) already weren't viable from a game design standpoint from the outset, and there really isn't much you can do about that. Maybe you could make it so the Zoltan C takes a less retardedly long time to bring down shields with its ions (something that does not synergise at all with the reliance on that backup battery), but that's about it.

I also dislike that the Stealth A had its laser swapped out for a weapon that doesn't damage systems (an unnecessary nerf) and the Mantis A had its ability to destroy autoships revoked (also an unnecessary nerf), but those don't render those ships excruciatingly bad like the Stealth B and Zoltan B, just more garden-variety vanilla flavoured bad, which I can put up with.


Beyond that, all the other ships are fine. Some are better than others, with some OP and some rather mediocre, but all are quite playable. Even including all the ships I've mentioned above, 20/28 ain't bad. So yeah, the balance in CE really isn't that poor, actually.
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Sleeper Service
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby Sleeper Service » Mon Nov 02, 2015 11:28 am

If people can pull off no shields run on hard with that ship then my first assumption wouldn't be that they just have been lucky. In my opinion there is a lot of skill involved with this ship, its defiantly harder than vanilla stealth C, but luck isn't the defining factor. CE Stealth B indeed trades away the early game advantage that vanilla stealth b had, instead it gives you a build that can compete with the boss right from the start. No other ship does that. It has access to a decent artillery. It starts with the best missile weapon in the mod and a straight upgrade to its scanner aug. (or tons of bonus scrap if you want to see it that way) I'm aware that it is harder than vanilla Stealth B, but I'm ok with that. Think of all the other ships that received significant buffs.

Captain Trek wrote:Kestral A: As with the Stealth B, you took away the one thing that was special about the ship... the fact that it started off with a 3-shot laser... This makes the ship both less interesting and more difficult to fly, representing a completely unnecessary nerf.
Kestrel A got a significant economic buff in CE. It's fuel independence is what makes it special in CE. Plus its weapons are more agile altogether, which gives it a stronger advantage early on. It's missiles is also better than in vanilla.

Captain Trek wrote:Zoltan B: It needs a buff. Just straight up needs a buff. Its utterly anaemic starting weapons suite that takes forever to take out enemy ships (meaning tons of damage received every fight) and the exorbitant cost of getting its shields working combine to produce a ship that's always facing a frankly unreasonable uphill struggle. It is one of only three ships I cannot beat CE on Normal with alongside the Rock A and Engi B.

All the loadout really does is trading a lot of killing power for stronger suppression. Plus it has a more versatile crew than vanilla Zoltan B and it has access to one of the strongest artilleries in the mod.

Captain Trek wrote: those ships' specific gimmicks (i.e. drones instead of crew, missiles only, and an irritating Zoltan-based micro-management black hole instead of a reactor, respectively) already weren't viable from a game design standpoint from the outset,
And yet people have inlcuded them in their vanilla hard wining streaks. If that is possible they are obviously viable and not that luck dependant.

Captain Trek wrote:I also dislike that the Stealth A had its laser swapped out for a weapon that doesn't damage systems (an unnecessary nerf)
Well it got a way better beam instead. It's meta goal shifted from quick suppressing to quick destroying enemies.

But yeah, overall you can always play with vanilla load outs of course. In my opinion the ships your criticized are quite viable, especially for stealth B there is no point in arguing that its luck dependent if people can pull of obvious skill wins. Some of this sounds like you feel entitled to win, like the ship is betraying you even though you should be successful with it. Do you think your play could still improve? Are you playing perfect already? Its the always looming question whether the mod should adjust to you or you should adjust to the mod. Then again the mod can already adjust to you quite easily, by using the vanilla loadout addon.

stylesrj wrote:Basically, the Stealth B is risky enough. You wait 25 seconds and the enemy is dead.
Twinge has some good vid about how to play successful with Stealth B and its definitely not about waiting. Half of that is applicable to CE Stealth b.
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby meklozz » Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:51 pm

Sleeper Service wrote:If people can pull off no shields run on hard with that ship then my first assumption wouldn't be that they just have been lucky.


Pretty much all no-shield (or challenge in general) runs tend to involve a large amount of luck. Large amount of skill as well, obviously, but it often ends up being try after try until you get the right equipment to survive.
I don't think it's a very good way to rate a ship, kind of like saying 'you can win with', when it comes to the generally weakest ships.

I'm not sure how I feel about stealth B yet, though. Only failed miserably a couple of times so far, I should probably give it a serious try.
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby Captain Trek » Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:10 pm

Considering the Stealth B isn't among the ships I haven't won CE with (again, those are the Zoltan B, Engie, B, and Rock A), I think accusing me of being entitled is rather churlish. I made it very clear that my reasons for feeling the ship needs to be changed have nothing to do with an inability of the ship to score wins, so I really don't think the "you're just a baddie!" argument is applicable here. I also have to question your argument about its initial loadout being a flagship killer as the very no-shields run you've been pointing to as proof the ship is fine, whilst it does use the initial Naginata beam, does not even use the initial Ifrit missiles. And indeed in my experience, when playing the Stealth B, either one of its starting weapons or the other more-or-less might as well not be there. They synergise extremely poorly. It is slightly possible to use the Ifrits to open the way for the Naginata by blasting the shields, but it's generally unlikely to work as repair rates will outstrip your charge time on all but Mantis ships and autoships. Meanwhile the DA-SR itself is being pasted coming and going and will see its entire house of cards fall immediately down from one stray shot into the weapon system. That last part, in fairness, was also the case on the vanilla Stealth B, but it was much less pressing of an issue there due to the one-shot, one-kill factor that, unlike the CE version, does not necessitate each combat lasting upwards of a full minute of incoming fire with no shields and minimal capacity to take out the enemy weapons room.

Now, I didn't claim that skill has no effect here in FTL compared to other roguelikes. I said it has less effect. However good you might be, claiming that the CE Stealth B isn't significantly more luck based than its contemporaries is just wildly and demonstrably wrong. And in any case, there's always going to be someone who can make even the lousiest of setups work, even if only through sheer persistence (are you really going to look me in the eye and tell me that guy's hard no shields win didn't take place after a great many failed attempts?). Indeed, speaking as a long time player of World of Tanks, I can't claim the VK 3001P isn't underpowered and in need of a buff just because I myself happen to have a 63% win rate in it (this even though it is the worst tier 6 medium tank second only to the Type 4 Chi-To) where the general win rate is 47%, because I know that however well I may be managing to do, in overall terms its performance is simply inferior to almost every other tier 6 medium in the game. Just as the Stealth B is inferior to its brethren here (and again, in a way that comes down to luck rather than player judgement). This same goes for the three ships I picked on as suffering from poor underlying game design that are just as bad in vanilla, if not worse. (and again, leaving all that aside, the Zoltan C just is and always was incredibly unfun to play due to the sheer level of crew micro involved)

As for the Kestral A, I guess that's more of a personal taste thing if you're satisfied with it having only those kinds of less directly tangible advantages. I personally find the ship to be incredibly lacklustre in CE, but it isn't nearly as painful as the CE Stealth B. It just doesn't feel right to me for the ship to have absolutely nothing unique about it beyond a bit of extra fuel, especially as the Kestral A is the flagship of FTL. But I can (somewhat reluctantly) agree to disagree on that one. Same with the Stealth A, really. I consider both of these ships to be just about on the level of playable, but overall pointlessly nerfed all the same. Not gonna burn down the whole town over them, though.

Of course the Verdict is fantastic on the Zoltan B. I won't dispute that. But getting it only compounds the already exorbitant scrap expenditure this ship demands. Having a resource intensive ship that also gets damaged a lot because its fights are slow and is unlikely to develop de-crewing capability is a bad combination, and claiming this thing is little different from its vanilla counterpart is nothing short of laughable due to its pitiful damage output. And its "suppression" is lacklustre at best simply due to its weapon's low DPM. It just does not perform and whilst I'll agree the Zoltan B arguably needed a nerf from its vanilla form, this was way, way too much.

Overall though, the only ships I'd revert to vanilla if I could pick-and-choose from both sets would be the Kestral A, Zoltan B, Stealth B, and possibly the Rock A as the vanilla Rock A has better DPM for less incoming damage per fight (something that really adds up when combined with ammo expenses, but then on the flipside the vanilla Rock A is lacking Ammo Manufacturer). Really there's no saving the Rock A either way, though. It is what it is, as a wise man once said...

-------------------------------------------

I would also like to say, since I know I must be coming across as incredibly negative this whole time, is that I absolutely love what you've done with the Stealth C and Slug B in CE. Both of these ships are interesting and fun to fly while remaining uniquely challenging now, as opposed to the utter disaster areas they both were in vanilla. These two ships, whilst they are by no means the strongest, might actually be two of my favourite ships in the mod. I also like how the Fed A and Fed B both start with their own different problems relating to their starting loadout of weapons (the slow charge time for more incoming damage on the Fed A, and the inability to deal with two bubbles without firing missiles on the Fed B), but compensate for this with the always-badass artillery laser and its funky new blue events. In a weird way it was kind of genius to, in effect, nerf the Fed A's early game a little by giving it what is actually a stronger weapon than it used to have. I approve.

The real standout of the whole lineup for me though is the Rock B. Hol-lee-shit, I love the CE Rock B. It's easily my favourite ship in the mod, sporting my favourite weapon in the mod. Artillery laser is love. Artillery laser is life. I'm sure I don't need to explain why...

Other ships I like include the Kestral B and C, the Engi C (I consider it underrated in both vanilla and CE), the Zoltan A, the Slug A, and the Crystal A. If some ships seem conspicuous in their absence from this list, it's because these are the ships I have a particular fondness, for, rather than the ships that are strictly speaking the strongest or the weakest. I will still post my full breakdown of ratings and reasoning for the former (along with tier lists for all the CE ships) if you want.

The whole rest of the mod is badass from top to bottom too. Fighting cruisers, plundering autosectors, flying into acid clouds for the extreme risk-reward while Overpass plays and you can just picture the acid seeping inexorably into the seams of your ship... The dedication to your craft and the dedication of everyone who worked on all the different parts that have gone into this mod is nothing short of astounding. Possible minor balancing tweaks involving shops aside (personally I didn't find the proliferation of light lasers as vexing as that other poster did, but I can see why it could be an issue), I actually have little or nothing to complain about on the gameplay side of things except to say that completely unavoidable crew deaths (thankfully extremely rare though they are) simply should not exist.
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Sleeper Service
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby Sleeper Service » Mon Nov 02, 2015 2:51 pm

All right, I didn't mean to trash-talk you play here if that is how it came across here. The fact that the no shield run didn't use the start loadout doesn't contradict that the starting loadout is boss-killing material. You'll need shields to make it work and I probably stress it so much because I had this neat run once that was a pure Stealth B slog, but I stuck to the starting guns and eventually pulled off a win with basically the gear I started with. I still think this is a pretty unique thing this ship has going.

Also overall my judgement on ships in generally wouldn't be that harsh. I think all vanilla ships have a clear identity and are viable, but have be seen as hand crafted challenges that the player has to deal with. But hey, time to be constructive: How could Stealth B'S load out actually improve assuming that it is indeed that bad that it really needs to be changed. My self-imposed loadout rules are:
a) Loadouts can only use CE gear, no vanilla stuff mixed in
b) Ships should be as close to their original loadout and playstyle as possible
c) Only AE ships can use gear that uses AE mechanics or weapon types
d) Loadouts should showcase the range of gear and play styles that CE adds, therefore its best if each loadouts uses different types of gear

I know, this really narrows down the possibilities. Part of the problem is that CE doesn't add that many high tier beam weapons and none really compares to the Glaive. I guess Maul instead of Naginata would improve the ship, cause you can cripple enemies more effectively. But then Zoltan B should get a different beam weapon as well, cause we don't need two ships showcasing foucus beams. Also Ifrit could be dropped from the loadout, but that is basically just an economic downgrade for the ship and the mod no longer showcases stealth missiles. Another way to change it might be giving it Bardiche and Oni as well as more ammo to start with, which would make the ship way more agile, but would compromise its original glass cannon play-style. Oh and Zoltan A already uses Bardiche, so thats not really an option anyway...

Captain Trek wrote:And its "suppression" is lacklustre at best simply due to its weapon's low DPM. It just does not perform and whilst I'll agree the Zoltan B arguably needed a nerf from its vanilla form, this was way, way too much.
Ok to clarify, when speaking about suppression I mean its ability to damage individual systems and keeping them damage. Pike deals more overall damage to ships, but less damage to individual systems. From my experience that allows Pernach to better suppress enemy offence. It also needs less ion support to deal damage through shields. I admit the loadout isn't as a good as vanilla, but its ion damage is actually slightly better than vanilla and it can deal it with less weapon slots used. But again, I'm open to suggestions taking the above rule-set into account. Back in the days that ship started with two Ion Bursts I and two Hasta. As you can imagine that was fun for the moment, but way to strong. It also had this weird meta to it where you tended to feel really comfortable with the ship as it is, till you suddenly realize that you can't reliably kill things anymore in Sector 6 or 7. And then its to late and you go against the boss with two Ion Burst I and realize that doesn't really cut it against its shields. :D

If we switch Stealth B to Maul then Zoltan B could go back to a Hasta combo I guess. One Ion Burst I and two Hasta for example, or Ion Burst II and one Hasta. Or two Ion Burst I and one Hasta, giving it way more ionization and decent damage. I still think this is pretty strong considering that 150-250 scrap allows you to reliably acquire boss killer artillery. You are of course right that the ship isn't economically strong, but those expenses aren't out of the question and you have Zoltan ships to start with on top of all that.

Oh and on the topic of unavoidable crew deaths: I do agree that those are questionable from a design perspective. Although part of the deal there is that they are to some extend avoidable by choosing to not go to the sector types where they are present and treat them as part of the risk associated with their respective sector type. But yeah, I understand that they might seem unfair at times, so a while ago I made the No Traitor Patch for some guy on redit, feel free to use that. To some extent they are there to keep players on their toes even when everything plays out fine, this comes into play in CE Infinite especially.

Anyway, let me know what you think.
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.28d/Inf 1.28/EL 1.28

Postby Sleeper Service » Mon Nov 02, 2015 3:03 pm

Ok I guess Stealth B could also have a radically different loadout that still has that high power glass cannon approach. Like three Heavy Scatter I or two Hull Crusher (that's an twelve damage kill salvo :o ) or something like that, but that would be less elegant. I'd prefer it to have a strong beam weapon. Actually two Hull Crusher would be pretty awesome, then again Rock B already showcases artillery lasers...

Captain Trek wrote:So I'm confused. In the OP of this thread it says you guys are done with CE and the last update made to that OP was a year ago (almost exactly a year ago, in fact), but going by the discussion you seem like you're still updating and improving this mod. What gives?
Actually the forum does not seem to acknowledge me editing the thread since I became moderator a year ago. I did edit the OP quite few times since then, might just be a forum bug.