Subset Games Forum

Here are several ideas I have, and of course, some of these may require % or time tweaks for balance, but I think that I have at least a reasonable starting point for these to work reasonably well and balanced.

- Type C ships with racial weapons that function similarly as the Osprey's Artillery Beam as far as power and charge time go, but with a racial flair.
Examples: Zoltan Overshield Recharger: Re-establishes the Zoltan's 5pt ablative shield during combat.
Engi Ion Beam: Similar to the Artillery Beam, but does Ion damage instead of physical. OR Engi Nano Repair Bots: Repairs 1 system damage to every system on the ship (provided they have sustained damage)
Rock Massive Missile Launcher: Effectively the same launcher as the Rebel Flagship, does not use missile ammo
Mantis Combat Psych Pulse: For 10 seconds, all of your crew gains +50% damage in personal combat
Slug Telepathic Stun Pulse: 5 or 10 second psychic stun of all crewmembers on the enemy ship (including your own crewmembers if you have boarded the enemy ship!), effectively makes all enemy ship systems unmanned for 5 or 10 seconds. On-board drones (board, anti-pers, repair) still function normally, though.

- Type C Ships (Scout Class) that have an inherent evade modifier at the trade off in hull points. If the engine or bridge are disabled for any reason, the evade still drops to 0%.
Example: +10% evade ship that only has 25 hull points, and/or +20% evade ship that only has 15 hull points. This does mean that a ship can have a 73% evade, but its only going to have 15 hull points max for the entire game!

- Double-crewed specific systems on particular ships at the expense of no crew in another, bonuses stack for crewmembers manning the doubled stations.
For instance: A double-crewed Weapons Room (max 38% bonus to weapon charge times) but no crew bonuses or training effects in either the Shield Room, Bridge (still needs to be crewed or to level 2 to allow any evasion bonuses), or Engineering.
I would not suggest having this kind of bridge or engineering modifications on scout ships, unless it's opposite number is the unmanned system, due to evasion then being a possible 78% evade!!!

- System Overload Augmentation: Either a system can be made to work for 20 seconds in combat like it has up 2 points of power more than you have system points (or reactor) purchased normally (up to its max level) or negates all ion damage, but that system takes 1 point of damage immediately with a chance of starting a fire in that room after that 20 seconds are up depending on how you use the system. System Overload has a 30-40 second cooldown afterwards. (when you really need that 3rd shield point for those 20 critical seconds, or if you really need that medbay or teleporter to function at level 3 right now!,) Also, you cannot adjust power levels on the affected system while it is currently overloaded (prevents cheesing the fire chances). Here are examples of how it would work.
Example 1: You have 4 fully powered shield bars normally (2 shield points). You then overload the shield system. For the next 20 seconds you have 6 shield bars fully powered (3 shield points). Once that 20 seconds are up, you lose those 2 bonus shield bars and your shield system suffers a point of damage, disabling the 4th shield bar and dropping you to 1 shield point until its repaired. There is also a 50% (25% chance for every energy point that exceeds the capacity of the system) chance of starting a fire in the shield room when the damage occurs! This also means that a 3rd, 5th, or 7th purchased shield system bar can become potentially (albeit temporarily, and possibly catastrophically temporarily) useful!
Example 2: Again you have 4 shield bars purchased, but in this scenario, you have diverted more power to the engines and only have 2 bars powered. You then overload the shield system. For the next 20 seconds, you have 2 additional power points in the shield system (4 fully powered bars for 2 shield points active). Once the 20 seconds are up, you still damage the shield system by 1 bar, but there is no chance of starting a fire (the system is designed to accommodate the energy being put through it, but the overload causes some critical system malfunctions)
Example 3: You have a level 2 door system with one point of damage (effectively a level 1 door system), and you overload it. for the next 20 seconds, all doors on your ship function at level 3 overriding the current damage. After the overload expires, the door sustains an additional point of damage, completely shutting down the system and damaging the hull for one point.
Example 4: Same level 2 door system with no damage, and you overload it. For the next 20 seconds all doors function at level 3 (extra point is wasted and overpowering the system), but after the 20 seconds are over, the door system is knocked down to level 1 with a 25% chance of starting a fire in the door control room.
Example 5: The enemy ship has reduced your 8 bar shield down to 2 bars with a 5 cycle cooldown. You overload the shields, completely negating all ion damage, but also damages the shield system by 1 point. leaving you with an effective 7 bars (3 shield points).

tl;dr several ideas including ideas for type-c ships and a new augmentation

Oh, another: Occasional One-Way jump paths! Sometimes due to the way the universe works, your jump system just can't take you back to the system you just came from, so retreat may not be an option. Of course the game has to check to ensure that a one-way jump path isn't in a cul-de-sac system or system string, so implementing it may be harder than it sounds. Of course the Advanced FTL navigation augment will still allow you to jump to any system already visited, so the one-way paths will not affect a ship that has that augment.

Another thing that seems to be more of a conceptual fix rather than an update per se:
If you want to purchase a crewmember in a store, the cost to aquire him or her ranges from 40-70 scrap, which in my mind is fine, because every crewmember has to at least have basic skills in 6 shipboard disciplines, most of them highly technical. Where I feel the fix is needed is in regards to freed slaves during encounters. It shouldn't be so much a question of "wanting to get all of the slaves to help your crew out, but feeling that would be unfair". It should be more of "There are several freed slaves here, but only one has the skills to be a crewmember. You ask if he would join your crew and he agrees (or doesn't!). You drop the remainder(or them all) off at a nearby station." OR "Although you freed the slaves aboard the ship, none of those freed have the skills required to operate shipboard systems, so unfortunately there isn't any opportunity here to add any new crewmembers. You drop them all off on a nearby civilized planet." For those encounters where you free slaves via boarding and get to choose from 3: "There were dozens of slaves held in pens like caged animals. After freeing them you found out that 3 of them have the skills necessary to be crewmembers, but each of these three have genuinely come to hate the other 2, so you only want to select 1 to keep them from killing each other aboard your vessel."

I wish there was some kind of online, where 2 players will choose weapons, a ship, systems, and crew, and then fight each other, but that won't happen.
What I am looking forward is the new ships, the new race, the awesome music, AND THOSE AMAZING NEW WEAPONS! Did you see the death and damage they can do?! Amazing!

I just really want a spesific release date

yomer123123 wrote:I wish there was some kind of online, where 2 players will choose weapons, a ship, systems, and crew, and then fight each other, but that won't happen.
What I am looking forward is the new ships, the new race, the awesome music, AND THOSE AMAZING NEW WEAPONS! Did you see the death and damage they can do?! Amazing!

I just really want a spesific release date

There are a lot of multiplayer suggestions. Personally, I don't hate the idea much. But there are too many of the same thing. Resurrect a dead multiplayer topic, my view is CO-OP. Or is it? I dunno.

And I want a specific-ish release date too.

Personally, I want multi-ship battles. For instance, in events when groups of ships are discussing when you arrive, they should both try attacking you, forcing you to divide your concentration between both of them. It adds to the intensity and the difficulty. It is possible that the two ships attack each other as well!

After you upgrade your ship, if you haven't jumped to a new beacon or hit "wait," you can still go back to the Upgrades tab and undo them, because you changed your mind or you just saw a store at the next beacon.

I had an idea that players could request mercy while in battle, the same way that enemies sometimes ask you to leave them alone, giving you a reward as you smash their hull. The idea would be to add a new button to surrender. After pressing the surrender option the AI makes a choice on what they want. If it was a slaver ship they would request one of your crew members and some supplies. Pirates would ask for high amounts of supplies and maybe even the highest tier would want you to give away an augmentation or a weapon/drone they see equipped/in the cargo. Rebels would of course never accept surrender and continue the battle. Mantis and Rock would probably want you dead anyway or want some resources off you. Interactions with Engi, Zoltan, Slug or even the Crystal ships could be very interesting. Maybe surrendering would be the best option sometimes and would yield more success than continuing the fight/jumping straight away.

I wish the ending could be fixed. Nowadays, I often don't bother with the Last Stand, or only play the first encounter. I just don't find it fun, unlike the rest of the game, and I don't seem to be alone in that, judging by other posts about it.

There are already ideas in these forums about how it could be improved, but I'll offer my own idea - a Federation flagship. The two flagships would move across the sector for a final battle, so you could go on ahead to destroy the Rebel flagship on your own, or assault it before retreating to let your own flagship finish it off, or protect your flagship by clearing out Rebel areas that would damage your flagship, or defend friendly bases. So if you had an unlucky game, and arrived at the end without any decent weapons, you can still do something even if you couldn't defeat the Rebel flagship on your own.

Im not sure if it is planned or not already but id like some way to "capture" unmanned ships. Maybe if you destroy/disable the bridge you can then order your invading crew to hack the ship AI or something? I dunno.

Capturing enemy ships is a long standing wish, but it's implementation would be difficult or even impossible.

Most enemy ships are inferior to yours, so it would be futile to take them. They have fewer rooms, less upgrade potential etc etc. Even with your weapons and crew you would swap a good ship for a crap one. In the case of Heavy Bombers which are usually powerfull, the problem of somehow transferring control from one vessel to another would still remain, but it may be possible. It would require extensive reworking of the game and would lead to bugs and generally make it a little more difficult to keep FTL updated and bug free. Remember that the dev team is only two person strong if we disregard the musician and writers.

As an idea i think it does have some potential but it would only be viable if there were one or two rare ships that you could capture. You might not even see them in most runs, but if you came across one and had the means to steal it, then it would be an awesome addition.