Consolidated Thoughts Since AE Release

[OnyxShadow]

Advanced Edition adds an enormous amount of new content, and its all the more awesome since its absolutely free. Seriously, this much content is what you'd expect for a 5-10 dollar DLC. Very appreciated!

The new weapons are for the most part very nice additions to the existing set. Some are a little underwhelming, and others like the new flak weapons are a bit too strong. I actually feel its worth emphasizing. Flak is broken overpowered. It does more damage for less power than it should, and there is really no counter to it. Its fairly horrifying to see them on enemy ships especially when they have multiple.

I love the fake-troll blue options. The first time I saw one I was pretty salty about it, and then I found out eventually that I actually ended better than I started when all was said and done. Well played, sir.

I notice there are new "You've been boarded events". At least one or two of them actually has compensation, and that is a very solid change. There is nothing more sad than a jump with no rewards that just wastes your time. Usually there's not even a good lore explanation. Its just a small crew of dudes that appear out of nowhere on your ship to suicide for the sake of being pesky.

The new music is excellent just like the original soundtrack.

I was kinda hoping that the flagship would perhaps be scaled to the difficult setting by this point. Its really just a monstrous jump in difficulty on easy, but on hard its a breeze compared to many of the ships you've already faced. I realize that this is somewhat balanced by the amount of scrap you find along the way, but it just feels a bit counter-intuitive.

Its really feeling like missile weapons having a consumable requirement is unnecessary at this point. In general, missile weapons aren't any better than other options, and they are hard countered through multiple methods. Really the only missile-using weapon I ever consider is the ion bomb, and that is just because it does more ion damage than it should for one power and has no counter.

The new race adds a very interesting twist to many different scenarios. I don't personally like using them, but I can understand why some players might really love a crew of those guys.

I'm not sure if its been an awful string of bad luck, but there certainly seem to be a lot more troll sectors with nasty dead ends and paths that force you to miss a lot of jumps. This sort of thing makes the game interesting if it occurs sparingly, but the amount that I've come across has significantly reduced the fun factor. Its just a bad feeling to lose a run to something lame like having a jump be 1cm too far away.

Its a great relief that most shops have 2 pages of items. Especially with the influx of new stuff its really almost essential to smoothing out the RNG.

I might have more later, but this seems like a good start.

[itg]

The flak weapons are definitely good, but not clearly stronger than the burst II. The fast charge time is balanced by slow projectile speed, so unless you have all flak I's, for example, you won't get full use of that fast firing rate. Plus, the flak weapons miss a lot. I'd say the burst II is generally better than the flak I, and the flak II is more situational, being best as support for other slow weapons. Of course, any weapon which is slightly worse than a burst II is still one of the best weapons in the game.

[OnyxShadow]

I think Flak 1 is at least equivalent to burst 2. I know that it says that Flak 1 fires 3 projectiles, but I paused it just as a shot went off, and there were 3 hits and a miss (and often seems to do more than 3 shots would). But you do have a point. Stacking Burst 2 (or Flak 1 now) is pretty much the holy grail of weapon setups. I remember actually seeing a legit 4x BL2 enemy ship at one point, and I would have just reset the run instantly if I didn't have cloaking.

I suppose this is just an issue in game design that comes from whole numbers. BL2 ideally would be something like 2.4 power and BL3 about 3.6 power. However, that gets awkward because engines are set to whole numbers. Its the same in Hearthstone where cards are just a little too good (or bad) because mana costs are whole numbers.

[Elhazzared]

The flak weapons are definitely good, but not clearly stronger than the burst II. The fast charge time is balanced by slow projectile speed, so unless you have all flak I's, for example, you won't get full use of that fast firing rate. Plus, the flak weapons miss a lot. I'd say the burst II is generally better than the flak I, and the flak II is more situational, being best as support for other slow weapons. Of course, any weapon which is slightly worse than a burst II is still one of the best weapons in the game.

The problem is not the Flak2 being too good just by itself but the fact that it is too good none the less. I had a monster run once where my mantis ship got to the end with a flak 2 and a couple BL2. Needless to say that the flak 2 charged up, shot, blew all the shields away and 6 lasers came down on my enemies. I even had weapon pre igniter so yeah, completly overpowered due to the fact that flak 2 makes shields absolutly useless. They might miss the ship a lot, but not the shields, it is an incredibly overpowered way to destroy shields.

[5thHorseman]

I think Flak 1 is at least equivalent to burst 2. I know that it says that Flak 1 fires 3 projectiles, but I paused it just as a shot went off, and there were 3 hits and a miss (and often seems to do more than 3 shots would).

The Flak has extra hits/misses that are only visual and do no damage. I know before I've fired a Flak 1, took down 3 shields of a 3-shielded enemy, and then saw flak pieces hitting the room and doing no damage.

And regarding the holy grail of Flakness, I think it's 2 simple words: Red Tail. Every time you get a Flak 1, you replace a Basic Laser with it. One Flak and your ship is great. 2 and it's awesome. 3 or 4 and you are a God among Ships and never havd to worry about if your shots would volley. The only problem is re-aiming quickly enough without pausing

[Twinge]

I actually feel its worth emphasizing. Flak is broken overpowered.

As itg said, people are definitely overrating it. Both Flak weapons are strong, but I find it amusing how rarely I ever heard anyone say Burst II or Ion Bomb was OP in vanilla FTL yet now everyone talks about Flak. Flak I is virtually the same as Burst II; in most situations it's slightly worse, in a few it's slightly better. It's a great weapon, but not that crazy.

Flake II has a very high cooldown and targets a massive area (71% larger area than the Flak I) - this means a good chunk of projectiles that make it past the shields will miss. Also, its raw damage output is significantly worse than a Halberd Beam - you're expecting an average of ~5 versus 8 (on a lower cooldown). Obviously, Flak has the advantage of decimating shields, but it really has a lot of drawbacks.

I was kinda hoping that the flagship would perhaps be scaled to the difficult setting by this point. Its really just a monstrous jump in difficulty on easy, but on hard its a breeze compared to many of the ships you've already faced. I realize that this is somewhat balanced by the amount of scrap you find along the way, but it just feels a bit counter-intuitive.

It is a bit. On Easy, the drone swarm in phase 2 has been nerfed significantly on Easy. It also only has 3 Shields in non-AE mode. And on Hard, it of course has the connected weapon bays now, and with the low scrap income and everything else going on, Phase 3 is actually terrifying on Hard Mode.

Really the only missile-using weapon I ever consider is the ion bomb, and that is just because it does more ion damage than it should for one power and has no counter.

Small Bomb and Breach II are also great, but proper missiles are definitely in an awkward spot. They don't want to buff them too much because then it's also buffing the AI using them against you. It's possible to make them different for player and AI (like the Artemis), but I think they try to do as little of that as possible, so they end up in a weird spot where they aren't very useful (besides the Artemis).

[Ghaleon]

I think missles can be mkre useful without buffing them for the ai by giving them a free independent weapon slot on every ship. This way you can hold onto a missle weapon without neutering your traditional weapon setup, and choose to use it or not whenever you feel the situation permits. Naturally they still require weapon system power so you have to disable/enable other weapons for it if you dont have it powered already.

[OnyxShadow]

@Twinge: I think Flak 1 is the stronger of the two Flak weapons because of the insane fire rate. But I continue to think that both are crazy-strong. If you weren't hearing people say Burst 2 was OP in vanilla, I don't know how you missed that. Flak 1 is basically Burst 2 with much faster fire rate and minor miss chance (IF shooting at a room on the perimeter of ship). It is the highest DPS weapon except maybe the beam drone (or situationally perhaps another beam weapon). Most importantly, it has no counter and fits into nearly any weapon setup. Flak 2 can miss a significant amount of the ship on some ships (and on others every shot will hit). However, Flak 2 will pretty much always remove all shields and land at least a couple times extra. That's disgusting. Burst laser 3 is somewhat comparable but hits fewer times and costs more power. To be even remotely balanced Flak 2 needs to be 4 power, and it should probably be dropped to 6 pieces of shrapnel. Balancing Flak 1 is trickier since 3 power would be unreasonable. Probably the best option is to make the charge time about 14-17 seconds. At that point its still good but not patently unfair. As for your Halbard comparison, remember that Halbard does nothing with more than 1 shield up and only does good damage with shields completely disabled.

I forgot about Breach 2. Its solid, but its usefulness varies considerably depending on what type of setup your ship has. Also, 3 power is a lot for something that doesn't necessarily do any hull damage, has a long charge time, and costs missiles.

@ Ghaleon: That is a nice idea. Make it like drones perhaps? That would be a great fix for the sad state of missile weapons currently. Maybe also make it so that a missile weapon only cost 1 consumable per fight per missile weapon used like a combat/beam drone?