When Out of Fuel - Are distress beacons worth it?

[Twinge]

NEVER fight giant alien spiders???? 50/50 proposition from my experiences. [...] but the rewards for success are frequently exellent, enough to be worth the risk if you have enough crew IMHO.

It is indeed a coinflip, but the rewards are poor. Internally it's defined as a medium amount of Stuff - this means you'll get a little extra fuel/missiles/parts but significantly less scrap. I don't have hard data here but I'd estimate you get about 50-60% the scrap reward you would from a standard medium result.

Oh I'm not saying there's no room for balance tweaks in the game. I'd add "Never surrender to slavers" and "Never buy the 65 scrap weapon" to that list.

The former doesn't really have any middle ground so I haven't adjusted it currently. I did lower the price of buying slaves (while also reducing the chance of them giving you one for a surrender) to make that potentially worth choosing if you're low on crew, though.

For the latter, I dropped the price to 55 scrap and made it a 1/4 chance he takes your money without giving you a weapon, instead of the 1/2 chance it is in the base game.

Have you done any work on the Spiders? I had some interesting ideas but don't know the extent to what you can do in a mod.

I tweaked this pretty heavily; it's about a 26% chance you end up with fewer crewman, down from 50%. (The odd percentage is because I have some multiple-result sub-events; it's possible you lose a crew and then one of the station owners joins you to replace them.) Additionally, the reward is changed to a high level of Stuff from Medium, so you get a bit more for it - and there's a chance you get the reward and lose a crew, instead of only losing crew. (I'll also note the average amount of free crew you get over the course of a game has been reduced a little bit as well, so risking a crew is a slightly bigger risk.)

[5thHorseman]

[Losing crew to spiders] is indeed a coinflip...

I'm frankly shocked at this. I won't doubt your word because as a modder you probably looked at the code, but damn if I don't lose the crew WAY more often than I get stuff.

I dropped the price to 55 scrap and made it a 1/4 chance he takes your money without giving you a weapon, instead of the 1/2 chance it is in the base game.

Another surprise, though now that I NEVER give the guy 65 scrap, I've not seen enough results to perform a statistical analysis. I was sure though that there was no chance of getting a weapon and you just always lost the scrap for nothing.

[super dude]

The chance may be 50/50 but if you think about sods law it will always seem like you lose. An example could be your watching a you tuber do a play thorough and he takes loads of stupid risks then you do a play through and take less risks it will always almost seem to you that you have had a worse luck though this may not actually be true.

[Twinge]

From my personal experience, it feels like:

Giant Alien Spiders kill about 75%.

Nebula Traders only steal your money about 25% of the time.

There's only about a 25% chance of getting crew from a slaver ship if you kill their crew.

^^None of these are true, but that's what it seems like in my plays. It's very hard to get a relevant sample size just playing the game normally for most events like these - and as super dude mentioned it's generally more memorable when things go badly, further shifting how things appear.

[Myoia]

Is it really bad that we know that certain events are not worth doing? I learned the hard way, and most of us did too. I think that made FTL pretty fun, at least at first.

That being said, I believe that turning the distress beacon on opens up your ship to an extra set of events. It doesn't seem to be too risky to turn it on. A slug cruiser tried to rip me off with fuel once. 95 scrap for 10 fuel (best deal!!)

[Twinge]

95 scrap for 10 fuel (best deal!!)

Fun fact - that event is bugged and only costs 50 scrap.

[Myoia]

Hey, even better!

[Ora_unit_SR388]

[Losing crew to spiders] is indeed a coinflip...

I'm frankly shocked at this. I won't doubt your word because as a modder you probably looked at the code, but damn if I don't lose the crew WAY more often than I get stuff.

I dropped the price to 55 scrap and made it a 1/4 chance he takes your money without giving you a weapon, instead of the 1/2 chance it is in the base game.

Another surprise, though now that I NEVER give the guy 65 scrap, I've not seen enough results to perform a statistical analysis. I was sure though that there was no chance of getting a weapon and you just always lost the scrap for nothing.

It is possible to get the weapon. I get it often.

[MantisGeneral7]

Aug Plan From The Developers

Code: Select all

AUGNAME = Encoded Distress Signal Desc: Makes your Distress Call Be more picked by friends Likely

Why The Did Not Add It?

[Twinge]

Code: Select all

AUGNAME = Encoded Distress Signal Desc: Makes your Distress Call Be more picked by friends Likely

Why The Did Not Add It?

It just has too little use. Several of the augments that did make it into the game are already virtually useless; this would be in the same category because of just how rarely it comes up.