Question to the guys that know this game

[VintageCake]

I've been trying to get the ??? Ship for quite a while now, and if you just stumbled onto this thread wishing not to witness any spoilers, leave.

Anyway, so after 30 or so tries to get the damn thing, i really thought it would be helpful to know which sectors i actually go to!
If i already know which type of sector it is, hostile, nebula or perhaps friendly, why not include the actual descriptions of ALL the sectors in the starmap? That's not why i was here, but anyway.

I know the locations of sectors are preset, meaning if i start a game the sectors are there and they don't change at random. I know there is a file or complex hex code that says which sector actually is there, but i have no idea how to actually find it out myself. That's why i'm asking the community, how can i find out which sectors are in a starmap without having to rely on random luck and countless frustrating moments trying to find that silly rock homeworld.

There must be some file that handles the starmap generation, and would it be possible to modify that so you could get a "synthetic" star system?
I know this is a little bit of overdoing it, but i still wan't the feel of doing it atleast partially legit other than just unlocking it using an editor.

[headhunter99]

Maskedgamer has a ship unluck guide for all ships and a guide for the crystal cruiser it helped me

[stinglock]

It's a shame the masked gamer doesn't have a website or you dont have a link for that guide.
Here's the link to the wiki tho.

That being said, the problem here seems to be not knowing how to unlock, but getting the correct quest path options presented based on sector hopping.

If editing the sectors seems fine to you I'm not sure why modding to make the quest easier is out of the picture. There's actually one specifically for making this unlock less of an effort, which seems to be the question you are asking to the guys that know this game.

[MOD] Crystal Quest Tweak

This simple mod tweaks the secret ship unlock quest line to make it slightly less frustrating.

EDIT: Wait, why are you going for the rock homeworld? I guess I have no idea what this ??? ship you are going for is as I thought only the rock ship was granted on that homeworld.

[Sovereighn2280]

EDIT: Wait, why are you going for the rock homeworld? I guess I have no idea what this ??? ship you are going for is as I thought only the rock ship was granted on that homeworld.

He's going for the Crystalline Ship. You get it by getting a stasis pod, getting it unlocked by the Zoltans, and finding the Crystal Teleporter Beacon. Then you have to battle through extremely difficult enemies and, supposedly, a 5 shield Auto-Ship

[Agent_L]

He's going for the Crystalline Ship. You get it by getting a stasis pod, getting it unlocked by the Zoltans, and finding the Crystal Teleporter Beacon.

That's correct.

Then you have to battle through extremely difficult enemies and, supposedly, a 5 shield Auto-Ship

That's not.

The OP should not start yet another thread, there are plenty about the subject already, viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588

If you think than 30 runs is too much, you can cheat with save&restore. This way you can play the starmap to the end to verify if the right sectors are there, and then keep reloading until proper event appears.

Also, if you feel like cheating, you can simply go to Rock HW and edit your savegame to change one of crewmembers to Crystaline. The crystal unlock is not a quest, you just have to have a Crystaline Being when you arrive at ancient stargate beacon in Rock HW.

[VintageCake]

He's going for the Crystalline Ship. You get it by getting a stasis pod, getting it unlocked by the Zoltans, and finding the Crystal Teleporter Beacon.

That's correct.

Then you have to battle through extremely difficult enemies and, supposedly, a 5 shield Auto-Ship

That's not.

The OP should not start yet another thread, there are plenty about the subject already, viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2588

If you think than 30 runs is too much, you can cheat with save&restore. This way you can play the starmap to the end to verify if the right sectors are there, and then keep reloading until proper event appears.

Also, if you feel like cheating, you can simply go to Rock HW and edit your savegame to change one of crewmembers to Crystaline. The crystal unlock is not a quest, you just have to have a Crystaline Being when you arrive at ancient stargate beacon in Rock HW.

Thanks for the reply, but how do i edit the files so it actually gives me one of those cute things?
I have no experience with modding.

[Agent_L]

how do i edit the files so it actually gives me one of those cute things?
I have no experience with modding.

Well, it's not that easy to begin, but it's quite rewarding and you'll learn skills that are useful not only in FTL (or games at all).

First step is to learn where the game keeps your saves:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=721
With this knowledge you can play a while, save the game AND make a copy of that file. Then load the game again and if things go wrong, you can restore the file you've saved and try again. Or scout forward to check if the sectors are right. This way you can reload, and reload, and reload until you finally get the pod event. Then save, and keep reloading until you get the Zoltan researchers event. Then save, and keep reloading until you get the ancient gate event.
I used this technique, but it still took me many days. Mostly because the galaxy (the map of sectors) is rolled once, and I spent many days grinding for pod only to find out there is no rock homeworld : D
When I started scouting the galaxy map to the end, I rolled a proper galaxy at about 5th try.

To edit the savegame, you'll need a hex editor (like the one at http://www.hexedit.com/) and understand bytes and their positions. In most hex editors you get two panes, one shows byte values in hex (like '4E'), and the other shows plain text letters that those values represent ('N'). http://www.asciitable.com/. Learn to modify them. First create some .txt file with the Notepad, and play with it in hexedit. Save, close in one program, open in the other one and see how your changes are affecting the contents. Learn to make changes to the content without touching the length of the file.

The save game file itself is a mix of text data ("strings"), which makes most sense read from the right pane, and binary data, which you have to interpret from the left pane. When editing save game, you must not change it's length. Substitute the letters, but don't add new nor remove existing ones. Of course make a clean, unedited copy, because many times you'll damage the file and game will stop loading it.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2218&start=70#p16313
Look at http://ftlwiki.com/wiki/Weapons#Laser_Types - in the XML column there is a code how the game names stuff internally.
For the first try, start a game with Red Tail (Kestrel layout B), save it and change all four LASER_BURST_1 to LASER_BURST_2. Now that's how one letter makes a difference! You can edit them to LASER_BURST_3, but Red Tail doesn't have that much power to run them all from the beginning.

crew races are following:

Code: Select all

engi
mantis
energy
slug
rock
human
crystal

Now you can see it won't be that easy, because "crystal" is the longest name of them all. You will have to learn more about file structure: there is a four-byte counter in front of every string value (including like crew race name). This counter must say exactly how many characters are in the string. Now when you add 2 bytes (letters) to change from "human" to "crystal", you'll have to change that counter from 05 00 00 00 to 07 00 00 00.
To sum it up: from "05 00 00 00 68 75 6D 61 6E" (....human) to "07 00 00 00 63 72 79 73 74 61 6C" (....crystal)
(it's a weird computer thing, numbers are saved backwards. Instead of 1234ABCF it goes like CF AB 34 12. But as long as we're dealing with changing 05 to 07 it's easy).

Or you can use profile editor, just click to unlock a ship. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2877
But where's fun in that?

[VintageCake]

omg what.

I'll just keep trying the old way, Using the silly save system i already knew about. Thanks again, it's a shame all that effort had to go to waste. Really nice and well written post.

[Agent_L]

I thought so.
It's hard only if you try to do everything at once. Giving 4x Burst Laser 3 to the the Red Tail is really easy. And fun.

But if you want go with save and restore here's how maximize your chances:

You need an universe with following pattern:
A) Pirate controlled , Engi controlled or Rock controlled sector (not 100% chance of pod beacon.)
B) Zoltan controlled sector OR Zoltan Homeworlds (engi sectors are not 100%, but zoltan sectors have 100% chance of researchers beacon)
C) Rock Homeworld (100% chance of ancient gate beacon)

To streamline the process as far as possible:
- Start new game with rock ship, play sector 1 until one jump before the exit. Save, make a copy.
- play all the way to the end and make sure the sectors are present and in correct order. If not, start again

Save BEFORE sector A. This way, you'll get brand new sector every time you load and jump, with new chances of derelict ship beacon. (it took me many tries to get it, in order of 20 or more)
Save before B and C, but that's not really necessary. Just a precaution.
Save inside sector B and C (at the first beacon). This way you can scout half of the sector first time, and the other half the second time.

The hardest part is to get right universe...

[SushaBrancaleone]

This is horribly reminiscent of groundhog day...

lets stop making thousand of threads for the same arguments?

there are 3 threads about your argument in this thread of useful guides

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3605