Suggestions to improve gameplay and interface

[UberFubarius]

I was thinking up new ideas for weapons and I discovered that it's actually quite hard... FTL has the bases covered. Beams slash across rooms but don't pierce shields. Missiles pierce shields but require ammo. Laser pew pew into shields and hull. Ions disable systems. That about cover it?

I think that the dev also covered all the basic pretty well.
You missed Bombs, which in total equal the following.
1. Laser: Can be blocked by shield. May be intercepted by drone. Can damage shield. Single target per shot. Can miss.
2. Beam: Can be blocked by shield. Cannot be intercepted by drone. Cannot damage shield. Multiple target per shot. Cannot miss.
3. Missile: Bypass shield. Intercepted by drone. Cannot damage shield (can't hit it). Single target per shot. Can miss.
4. Bomb: Bypass shield. Bypass drone. Cannot damage shield. Single target per shot. Can miss. Cannot damage hull.

I did think of one unique idea though. Mass Driver weapons have been mentioned on the boards a couple times already. But in order to make them distinct from lasers they need a new mechanic.

- Mass Drivers are rapid fire projectile weapons that pierce shields. They have a high chance of causing minor hull breaches but do not start fires. Minor hull breaches are the same as regular hull breaches, but can be repaired much faster and leak less air.

I would suggest that instead of a new type of hull breach, it's possible to use the existing hull breach mechanic and tweak probability.

- Instead of charging to full before you can fire the weapon, mass drivers have a magazine. One round is loaded every cycle until the magazine is full. Loading cycles are greater per-shot compared to laser weapons.

Like the magazine idea.

- If you activate the weapon it will fire all remaining rounds in its magazine in a burst. If left activated it will then load and shoot single rounds as fast as it can. Weapons can be toggled between burst/auto/off.

I would suggest that the mass driver don't fire in bursts. Instead just have its rate of fire somewhat faster than the reload rate (say, 2 seconds/shot and 4 seconds/reload). Mass driver also need electric charge to fire, so having it non-rapid fire make some sense. In short, with magazine loaded, you get some fast initial damage dealer early in battle followed by slow damage dealing. And to keep control simple, have mass driver behaves just like any weapon, except with its weapon have effectively varying rate of fire due to reload.

- Mass Drivers can be fired, but not loaded while unpowered. Weapons will instantly load to full if the ship is in no danger. When you jump the magazine retains all loaded rounds. A Weapon Pre-Igniter doesn't work on mass drivers.

I would suggest the reverse regarding power. Since mass driver will need power to launch the projectile in the first place. By doing so, you can have some interesting tactic where you power the mass driver to unleash its magazine, and power it down so it can reload to full before you fire it again.

Also, regarding the fact that the mass drive is effectively a weapon that's always "pre-ignited", I would suggest a fairly "short" spool up time each time you cycle the power on the weapon (and after jump) of, say 3~4 shots (6 ~ 8 seconds spool up time).

So, combined with my previous block of suggestions. The mass driver's combat behavior would be that after a 6~8 second of spool up (indicating by the charge bar filling), each time it fires drains just 2 second worth of the charge bar. If the magazine is empty, the charge bar doesn't charge (and only resume charging when there's at least one round in the mag). The idea here is that it keep the UI element simple (you just need an additional element to track the magazine count).

- Unguided projectile weapons are inherently inaccurate. To target the weapon your cursor changes into a grid which you place over the enemy ship. Shots fired will land randomly onto this grid. Grid size varies between weapons and may be 2x2, 3x3 or a 3x3 cross shape. Shots that do not land on a room have landed at an angle and deflected off the enemy ship.

I would suggest to keep it simple, your mass driver would simply have an accuracy penalty (whatever evasion your opponent have, the game will increase that by say 10~20% when calculating against your mass driver. So if your enemy has 50% evasion, you mass driver's miss rate will be around 60~70%).

[Tamren]

I don't think its different enough from Slug Repair Gel (repair hull breach automatically) to warrant a separate augment.

It's designed to be weaker because this is an augment you would find in a store or through random events. You still have to fix the breaches with crew, but the simple fact that they stop leaking air is a huge boon.

Seems a bit... like Zoltan shield actually, except instead of it stopping 5 damage guaranteed, it's damage mitigation falls off as battle went on.

One key difference between the point defense drone and the Zoltan shield is that the Zoltan shield ignores hits that miss. This drone will attack everything, so it doesn't have as much endurance. It's designed to complement ships with slow firing weapons because it buys you time to charge them up before it oveheats.

That seems a bit over-powered, 1 missile stopping all missiles for 10 seconds?

That's not as powerful as it sounds. None of the missile launchers in the game have a charge speed under 10 seconds, so the number of missiles any ship could possibly throw at you during that time is 4.

It's basically allowing you to activate an antimissle defence drone, but in this case it costs missile ammo instead of drone parts and it only lasts for 10 seconds. It's more of a panic button than a safety net, that make sense?

Quite interesting, although perhaps of a random failure chance, have a fixed cost?

For the recombiner a fixed costs could work too. Maybe it could be used to change fuel/missiles/drones into each other at a fixed exchange rate instead of just fuel. Though I still think it should have some sort of failure rate.

This is kinda like the Rock armor, which mitigate hull damage 10% of the time (in short, effectively the two augments perform the same function as extending the hull's life. For Rock Armor, 10% damage reduction means you get 4 extra hull health).

Yeah. Like the hull sealing membrane it's designed to replicate the effect of rock armour in a way that doesn't replace it. It amounts to the same thing statistically but it has it's own advantages and drawbacks in that you can't get screwed by bad percent dice, but repairing the extra hitpoints is expensive.

Not sure how well this will work, considering that you might require a functioning sensor lvl 2 to even use it.

In retrospect the teleporter idea is a little awkward. How about this ideas instead?

Teleporter Pattern Buffer: Allows you to teleport crew to and from any room of your ship at a reduced cooldown.

[Tamren]

Glad to see the devs are back at work! It's been a rather long time without any news.

Lots of bugs and other issues that still need fixing so I figured I should bump this again.