Subset Games Forum

Whale Cancer wrote:
2 and 4 cannot be done in the XML as it stands. You could rig a surrender event to be like a second bribe attempt in order to do something like 2. 5 is possible but would require oodles of work.

Sad to hear. Just thoughts I had. Can't wait till this mod is finished. Really sounds like what I wish the game actually played like.

Whale Cancer wrote:I was thinking about this on the bus.

Have you considered using linked quests to increase ship difficulty? For instance, you could have an encounter with a very easy ship. When it is beaten, it triggers two quests that each lead to an easy ship battle. Defeating one of those ships triggers two quests that each lead to a medium difficulty encounter, etc., This is one way to 'fake' scaling difficulty. The amount of quests beacons that will spawn will be large, of course, but that could be part of the challenge (as it would be hard to avoid the quests as well as hard to keep track of which quests are the harder encounters).

Just a thought.

Let talk about this idea more. I'm curious though, how would it be different than just having weak ship events, medium ship events, and hard ship events? I was originally planning on removing or editing the quest events because they can trigger in a different sector, which you would never get to. That is an assumption though, I haven't been able to test getting a quest in the "next" sector, and than loading up the hidden worlds.

Loki421 wrote:Just a thought I had about a bribe system.

My plan was, once I felt the base mod was working, I would add new events that would trigger the "very hard ship" combats, and those would have an option of not fighting via a text choice. the downside of this is that a player could simply select those options every time and never have to fight the very hard ship.

DrkTemplar wrote:

Whale Cancer wrote:I was thinking about this on the bus.

Have you considered using linked quests to increase ship difficulty? For instance, you could have an encounter with a very easy ship. When it is beaten, it triggers two quests that each lead to an easy ship battle. Defeating one of those ships triggers two quests that each lead to a medium difficulty encounter, etc., This is one way to 'fake' scaling difficulty. The amount of quests beacons that will spawn will be large, of course, but that could be part of the challenge (as it would be hard to avoid the quests as well as hard to keep track of which quests are the harder encounters).

Just a thought.

Let talk about this idea more. I'm curious though, how would it be different than just having weak ship events, medium ship events, and hard ship events? I was originally planning on removing or editing the quest events because they can trigger in a different sector, which you would never get to. That is an assumption though, I haven't been able to test getting a quest in the "next" sector, and than loading up the hidden worlds.

Let's say the player's ship is capable of defeating only easy ships, and only some of the time. If they encounter a very easy ship, they defeat it. This triggers as many quests are you want that are battles against easy ships. Now, how this works with quest markers that show up in the next sector is an interesting question. This would have to be tested. Of course, if a couple of the quests do end up being 'lost', it isn't really a big deal (although ideally it would trigger in the crystal sector and all you to chain all the way to 'very hard' ships). Now, the player can either go to these quest markers on purpose or because there are enough of them they make navigating around problematic. They now have to fight an easy ship. They may or may not win, if they do then medium ships start popping up at quest markers triggered by the destruction of the ship.

Additionally, the secret sector start beacon could be programmed to trigger the creation of these ship battle quest beacons. You could creatively use bluetext options to trigger initial appropriate ship battle events. I would do this by having an <eventList> that checks any number of subsystems or weapons. For instance, one of these events might check the shields subsytem; if you have 4 shields than it spawns easy battles. Another <eventList> item could be checking weapons system power. If you have only 2 weapons it might spawn only very easy quest beacons (or if you had 8 power in weapons it might spawn only hard quest battle beacons). To be clear, since this is an <eventList> each time you get to a new sector it would check something else randomly; that way, the player can't game their system upgrades, weapons, etc., to keep building up their ship against easier opponents.

The alternative seems like it would be too random. Ships capable of challenging a well built ship (let's call such a ship hard or very hard under my schema) would just annihilate a beginning ship. Turns the game into Russian roulette.

As a super bonus trick, you can replace the Quest graphic with a blank png so that the player doesn't know where these ship encounters are.

I think this solves the scaling problem, it just means a fair amount of work to implement.

EDIT: I am going to be releasing part of my FotF mod which adds cruisers (i.e. the player ships) as enemy ships soon. You could re-jig this a bit and use them as 'very hard' ships.

Ok, someone, anyone please help me get this working. I want to play this so bad. I completely uninstalled and reinstalled FTL. I'm on windows vista 64 bit. I went to C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Faster Than Light\resources
and completely deleted the data.dat file and then place the one from the first post in this thread in there.

And yet nothing Woe is me. Much love to anyone willing to help tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Loki421 wrote:Ok, someone, anyone please help me get this working. I want to play this so bad. I completely uninstalled and reinstalled FTL. I'm on windows vista 64 bit. I went to C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Faster Than Light\resources
and completely deleted the data.dat file and then place the one from the first post in this thread in there.

And yet nothing Woe is me. Much love to anyone willing to help tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Interesting, sounds like you're setting this up correctly. Let me ask you this, how do you know the mod isn't working?

This is the right location...
C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Faster Than Light\resources\data.dat

DrkTemplar wrote:
Interesting, sounds like you're setting this up correctly. Let me ask you this, how do you know the mod isn't working?

This is the right location...
C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Faster Than Light\resources\data.dat

Rebel fleet is still chasing. Game doesn't say anything in the welcome message other than the normal stuff. And now just played a game all the way to the boss fight again.

EDIT: OMG I GOT IT WORKING FINALLY. THANKS!

DrkTemplar wrote:

epeli wrote:However, there is a problem with this mod... the static ships make the beginning rather hard and late game (maxed ship with good crew/equipment) trivial. Really hope you find a workaround for that, this mod could be incredible if you can find a way to keep gameplay challenging and interesting even when the player already has an ideal ship.

This is the factor that will make or break the mod, imo. I will continue to try and balance the ships as people provide feedback. Let me know which ships were too easy, or too hard, and why.

I think you've done a pretty good job regarding overall balance. It's just that since you have infinite time and enemies to build your ship, it will end up being insanely strong. For example, my favorite equipment setup for 4 weapon ships is 4x Burst Laser II + Automated Re-Loader + Stealth Weapons + Weapon Pre-Igniter. Getting the stuff takes a while, but it destroys every single enemy ship in the current game without any risk.

If you want to add harder things - consider hacking events (especially against weapons/multiple systems) and enemy ships with higher survivability. Would it be possible to create a quest where you encounter a lone rebel flagship? At least a simple phase 1 fight?

The crew-based new sector extras are a very nice touch, even if the event gets a bit repetitive when you just check shops and blitz through sectors. But I guess there is no way to implement multiple different new sector events in this mod.
And oh, is there a difference between the rockman/crystal hull repair options?

testing atm very impressed so far will be watching this mod.

as prev posted has stated very hard at start and does start to get trivial 8 or 9 sectors in would be good to add some custom builds for set events like the mantis pirate with custom ship builds designed to be tough fights ie 4 x rock man tele ship with a full set of fire bombs to really test later ships. i know this is still a wip thanks for letting us see what great progress youve made so far.

keep up the good work

edit also notice the zoltan ships dont have the super sheild after first sector

Whale Cancer wrote:Let's say the player's ship is capable of defeating only easy ships, and only some of the time. If they encounter a very easy ship, they defeat it. This triggers as many quests are you want that are battles against easy ships. Now, how this works with quest markers that show up in the next sector is an interesting question. This would have to be tested. Of course, if a couple of the quests do end up being 'lost', it isn't really a big deal (although ideally it would trigger in the crystal sector and all you to chain all the way to 'very hard' ships). Now, the player can either go to these quest markers on purpose or because there are enough of them they make navigating around problematic. They now have to fight an easy ship. They may or may not win, if they do then medium ships start popping up at quest markers triggered by the destruction of the ship.

I think I understand what you mean. I'm picturing tons of quest beacons, which would limit the other events quite a bit. Also wouldn't it be possible to have easy and medium quest beacons on the same sector map, meaning the player couldn't tell which was which. I will try this idea out, if anything, just using the requirement for higher end systems could result in a dynamic event that might work out perfectly.