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

[Sleeper Service]

As said before, attack drones can target the room, but the shots seem to connect with the rooms around it first, preventing the system from getting damaged.

Further you can't teleport your crew into that room as it is not physically selectable, there is virtually no space you can click on to target weapons or beam crew.

Also:

Uuuh exiting question! From what I can tell the game can handle no physical space to put the crew/drones into pretty well. It usually just moves them to room with the lowest ID (like it does when boarding the flagship weapons rooms with more than two individuals). Attack drones indeed can't hit the systems, their shots connect with the rooms around it and deal their damage there. The drone targeting bug was caused by something somehow different.

/Edit

I tried to fixed this indeed quite annoying visual problems. The Auto Drone Habor also should be targeted correctly by your drones now.

1.033 changelog
-Custom enemy version of the Effectors with lower cooldown added, should make them more of a threat now
-Several offsets and shield bubbles fixed
-Auto Drone Habor redone
-Two typ c graphics for zoltan ships added
-Fleet delay reward for destroying cruisers on exit beacons restored, happy now?

It appears the ships with roomless systems cause quite some instability. While I got them to work ingame on some point, the game later started to crash on load. KartoFlane mentioned he had similar experience with 0x0 rooms. Not sure if this is going to work out in the end. I really want it to...
Sometimes the error checker implies that the rooms cause syntax errors, but at first it didn't... No idea what is going on with that.

[UltraMantis]

My question was about boarding drones too. They target rooms randomly, so it's possible that a Boarding drone tries to enter this room.

Could you not place a 1x1 room beneath an existing larger room? If that is possible, then it would still be safe from anything except a random Boarding Drone attack. That only presents a problem of explaining to the player what exactly happened there.

[Estel]

AIUI, Boarding drone can't choose full room (i.e., occupied fully by your boarders, living crew), so it chooses other room. Room without place is considered full, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Either that, or it's like with fighting drones, which should inflict damage to one of room around it, as per SleeperService. Frankly, I don't understand technical side behind it (why, if they choose *that* room as target, damage is inflicted to one of rooms around? And which one, of four available? What mechanics control it?), but I trust his word on it.

Either way, I'm going to test fighting with this new ship class, by every means available - as soon as it itself become available. If anything ends up wrong, expect a detailed bug report - such experimental things could use some extensive testing.

/Estel

[dalolorn]

Me, I hope it works out. The automated ships are a bit tiny, and I'm having trouble placing all the required systems into them without exiting the confines of the model, plus having integrated systems would be pretty neat.

[Sleeper Service]

Me, I hope it works out.

I'm not so sure any more... it seems really unpredictable, I don't know how to make this a stable feature right now. Went back to working at Sector Extension for now.



I would also like to hear your opinion on two possible features:

Sector Specific rarityLists
Sector specific rarity list's would let you exclusively find the weapons/drones(/augs?) that are common in the sector you are currently at. That basically means you only get the the equipment that the local faction uses. Civilian, Pirate and Uncharted Nebula sectors would still have all weapons available. This would give you more control over what you can find and make weapons that are more common also more available, while making exotic weapons more scarce. The game already does this with crew. Do you want this?

Custom Sector Names
Apparently the developers planed to randomize sector names, with name pools that would more or less clearly indicate what sector type you are going to. I guess the idea was later scrapped in favour of having more clear and descriptive, unified sector designations. I didn't do testing, but I think the infrastructure for this feature is still there (sector discription nameLists). Some of the cut sector names are still in the xmls. This is an example how the sector names could look:

Code: Select all

<!-- Old name lists


		<name>Federation Sector B53</name>
		<name>Federation Sector C21</name>
		<name>Former Republic of Gilead</name>
		
		<name>New Colonies of Qarth</name>
		<name>Varlian DMZ</name>
		<name>The United Talrasi Planets</name>
		<name>Planets of Lodor</name>
		<name>Colonies of Marlith</name>
		<name>The Remskar Colonies</name>
		<name>Tasador 8</name>
		<name>Local Trade Sector 51-A2</name>
		<name>Local Trade Sector 21-F3</name>
		<name>Local Trade Sector 125-S1</name>
		<name>Local Trade Sector 42-MX</name>

		<name>Quarantine Zone 13C</name>
		<name>Quarantine Zone 45A</name>
		<name>Hergarth Protectorate - Pirate Warning!</name>
		<name>The Lawless Zone - Pirate Warning!</name>
		<name>Freedom's End - Pirate Warning!</name>
		<name>Parth Mining Colonies - Pirate Warning!</name>
		
		<name>Rebel Forward Base Omega</name>
		<name>Rebel Forward Base Sigma</name>
		<name>The Liberated Front - Rebel Controlled!</name>
		<name>Or'Arst Protectorate - Rebel Controlled!</name>
		<name>Yarin IV - Rebel Controlled!</name>
		
		<name>Kirrakthas - Mantis Prime</name>
		
		<name>Perasian Nebula</name>
		<name>Erkarth Nebula</name>
		<name>Nebula of Teras</name>
		<name>Yis'ver Nebula</name>
		<name>Ceris Nebula</name>
		<name>Persey Nebula</name>	
		<name>Uncharted Nebula 3.45</name>
		<name>Uncharted Nebula 6.567</name>
		<name>Uncharted Nebula 52.4.2</name>

		<name>Uncharted Sector 42.53</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector 12.425.2</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector 51.26</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector 2.XM.42</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector Omega 42</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector 21.56</name>

		<name>Vector 253.1 - Engi Home Sector</name>-->

The aim here would be to keep the additional names lore friendly and as descriptive as possible, so that the player never is unsure what sector type he/she is actually going to. Suggestions will be welcome. Would be great to have a hundred possible names for each sector type in the end, so each journey you embark on would feel more unique.
Would you like to see unique sector names in CE 1.05?

[dalolorn]

Me, I hope it works out.

I'm not so sure any more... it seems really unpredictable, I don't know how to make this a stable feature right now. Went back to working at Sector Extension for now.



I would also like to hear your opinion on two possible features:

Sector Specific rarityLists
Sector specific rarity list's would let you exclusively find the weapons/drones(/augs?) that are common in the sector you are currently at. That basically means you only get the the equipment that the local faction uses. Civilian, Pirate and Uncharted Nebula sectors would still have all weapons available. This would give you more control over what you can find and make weapons that are more common also more available, while making exotic weapons more scarce. The game already does this with crew. Do you want this?

Custom Sector Names
Apparently the developers planed to randomize sector names, with name pools that would more or less clearly indicate what sector type you are going to. I guess the idea was later scrapped in favour of having more clear and descriptive, unified sector designations. I didn't do testing, but I think the infrastructure for this feature is still there (sector discription nameLists). Some of the cut sector names are still in the xmls. This is an example how the sector names could look:

Code: Select all

<!-- Old name lists


		<name>Federation Sector B53</name>
		<name>Federation Sector C21</name>
		<name>Former Republic of Gilead</name>
		
		<name>New Colonies of Qarth</name>
		<name>Varlian DMZ</name>
		<name>The United Talrasi Planets</name>
		<name>Planets of Lodor</name>
		<name>Colonies of Marlith</name>
		<name>The Remskar Colonies</name>
		<name>Tasador 8</name>
		<name>Local Trade Sector 51-A2</name>
		<name>Local Trade Sector 21-F3</name>
		<name>Local Trade Sector 125-S1</name>
		<name>Local Trade Sector 42-MX</name>

		<name>Quarantine Zone 13C</name>
		<name>Quarantine Zone 45A</name>
		<name>Hergarth Protectorate - Pirate Warning!</name>
		<name>The Lawless Zone - Pirate Warning!</name>
		<name>Freedom's End - Pirate Warning!</name>
		<name>Parth Mining Colonies - Pirate Warning!</name>
		
		<name>Rebel Forward Base Omega</name>
		<name>Rebel Forward Base Sigma</name>
		<name>The Liberated Front - Rebel Controlled!</name>
		<name>Or'Arst Protectorate - Rebel Controlled!</name>
		<name>Yarin IV - Rebel Controlled!</name>
		
		<name>Kirrakthas - Mantis Prime</name>
		
		<name>Perasian Nebula</name>
		<name>Erkarth Nebula</name>
		<name>Nebula of Teras</name>
		<name>Yis'ver Nebula</name>
		<name>Ceris Nebula</name>
		<name>Persey Nebula</name>	
		<name>Uncharted Nebula 3.45</name>
		<name>Uncharted Nebula 6.567</name>
		<name>Uncharted Nebula 52.4.2</name>

		<name>Uncharted Sector 42.53</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector 12.425.2</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector 51.26</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector 2.XM.42</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector Omega 42</name>
		<name>Uncharted Sector 21.56</name>

		<name>Vector 253.1 - Engi Home Sector</name>-->

The aim here would be to keep the additional names lore friendly and as descriptive as possible, so that the player never is unsure what sector type he/she is actually going to. Suggestions will be welcome. Would be great to have a hundred possible names for each sector type in the end, so each journey you embark on would feel more unique.
Would you like to see unique sector names in CE 1.05?

I like both ideas, though I feel as if though the "unique" aspect shouldn't be restricted to just names, and that minor differences, if viable, would be equally interesting.

[Estel]

Sector Specific rarityLists
(...)

Sounds OK. I guess there is only way to check how it will work out in practice.

Custom Sector Names

That's definitely great - I just wonder how you can name sector the way you will know that it's pirate-controlled one I guess official names would stay the same as they were before fall of governments there (like, you know, we still call Syria and Afghanistan their old names, despite having there, in fact, two or more separate groups struggling for power. In the latter case, it's not even about gaining control over whole country, so it's more resembling pirate sector in FTL, if we consider anything else than capital.)

I'm not entirely sure if Federation ships would accept new names given to sector by rebels. Even some rebel space station message something like "in regard to general blabla, we should authorise itself as <name of federation station here>, under control of rebels for bla bla". Some of them use new names, instead - especially if controlled by humans - but, I guess names of sectors are a) harder to change for everyone b) we're using federation map inside our ship's core, too.

Names + colors could help a little (civil name + green = civil, civil name + red = pirate OR rebel), but this, in turn, arise problems with distinguishing rebel sectors from pirate ones.
---

I guess the above might have been why they abandoned idea - but, it doesn't mean, that we can't tweak it actually nicely working state, and put into good use

/Estel

[Sleeper Service]

I'm not entirely sure if Federation ships would accept new names given to sector by rebels. Even some rebel space station message something like "in regard to general blabla, we should authorise itself as <name of federation station here>, under control of rebels for bla bla". Some of them use new names, instead - especially if controlled by humans - but, I guess names of sectors are a) harder to change for everyone b) we're using federation map inside our ship's core, too.

Yeah, that's a point. Although this depends largely on how long the conflict is going on. FTL is pretty vague on everything in general and on that part as well. Name changes could be generally accepted after some "years" (or what ever is the larger time unit in FTL), as fed command officially declares a sector lost to the Rebels for example. Also, not all Rebel sectors must have been under total Federation control before.

Just did a quick test, it technically works:



First sector is always named "Civilian Sector", apparently hard coded.

[CrashSanders]

Would you like to see unique sector names in CE 1.05?

YARR-HARR, captain!

[Estel]

FTL's vague lore allow us to put many ideas into good use. For example, Quarantine zone would be a pirate sector, yep? Quite strange to set a quarantine - I would expect some mutants there But it's still better than boring "pirate, rebel" etc.

Now, what would be example of Rebel controlled sector? And how we would name faction's homeworlds?