What features would you like to see in a sequel to FTL

[AdamStarks]

I would love to see away missions in a sequel. Like if you come across a planet emitting a distress beacon, pick the away team from your crew, and they get sent to a base or something on the surface (similar to when you beam them to an enemy ship). Then little missions or events (like being ambushed and having to flee back to the teleporter room, or exploring and finding a terminal that you can repair to get a drone schematic).

[Scrotimus Prime]

They have looked into that. The devs tried it out and simply found it to not be fun enough to motivate it. I think it boiled down to 2 points.
1) there would essentially be an optimal design and then everyone would use that. everything else would just be handicapping yourself.
2) It was too easy to make ships that it were impossible to complete the game with. (maybe you forgot to make airlocks or connect your O2 room to the rest of the ship or perhaps something more subtle that you wouldn't spot over several runs.)

I was thinking for the hypothetical sequel though. Hopefully a sequel will include new systems/subsystems so that one ship can't do everything, so that designing one to your specifications would actually change gameplay significantly. As is, the different ship layouts only really effect you in the first couple sectors, by the Last Stand my ships always become "all-trick ponies" (is that a term? hmmm TM). That's my biggest complaint about FTL, no Tech/Skill Tree.

Which is also why I don't currently see the point to so many people wanting an "endless mode." I would think an average of 1-2 sectors after the Last Stand you would have enough scrap to max out every system, what then? Do your best to cherry-pick your weapons/crew/drones, I guess?

[Starlight]

I'd love to see a sequel to this myself, it's a great game and a novel new experience that I feel could be expanded on.

I've enjoyed quite a few playthroughs of this by now and my only major gripe is the singular scenario and constant frantic pace. I think this game was a great starting point, but if there were a sequel, I think I'd personally like to see it open out a bit. Large sandboxy games are the type I tend to like best and I think the gameplay of FTL is quite compatible with a few developments.

All of the ships in FTL are excellent vessels, far superior to the vessels you tend to encounter (for the most part) which works for the game's scenario, as does the choice of sticking with just one ship and upgrading it. Yet I find myself looking at the NPC ships and wishing I could give them a go, despite their inflexibility.

If you wanted to improve FTL's lastability by making it a sandbox game, you'd start by making ships a tradeable, trade-uppable resource. The player starts out with something relatively low tier, which restricts their movements and access to the more valuable resources, perhaps different vessels have different (initially very poor) upper limits on their upgradeability.

That would make it take a lot longer to get to the kind of ship performance you get at the end of FTL, but what then? Well, the ability to own and use multiple ships would be nice. Hire crews, fit them out, set them to do commodity trading / resource gathering for you or accompany you into combat (or require rescuing.) Then you have a little fleet to tinker with (and having lots of varied tinkering to do tends to make FTL fun.)

The ability to handle multiple ships would add a lot to FTL. As an elite single mercenary vessel, tearing through multiple weaker pirate ships or with a squadron of well-synchronised ships, taking on some single mighty opponent, as well as general starship furballs aplenty.

It would be excellent.

[SushaBrancaleone]

i think you/we might have a good chance at this.

considering that revenue in indie games is much more concentrated than it is for major videogame developpers it is well possible that just and matthew may invest part of their income to create a more "wide-audience possible" version of the game.

As much as I can understand the motivations of the developpers of Fez and Braid, I find it would be a waste to not "ride the wave" and grab a spot in what promises to be a bigger part of the entertainment industry of the future.

Im not advocating the transformation of a "2 man band" here, all im saying is that having earned their space int he industry they deserve to speak up and to deliver their vision of video game entertainment to a wider audience. and yes also have larger profits"

According to Rousseau every generation should be able to "elect" their own constitution. He said this because hebelieved that old states/republics lost vision of their objectives and thus enthusiasm and this was a his way of making people care more.

The same goes for great ideas and merchandizing. Look at lucas. He made a film that reflected his times the 70's. The movie was about young people overthrowing the corrupt old system ruled by... the old. pretty much the struggle of the 60's of changing society. Lucas later became a slave of his own ideas and of the lawyers and burocrats who chained him to his own ideas.

iTs a cycle. Yet when a young man with new ideas is given the opportunity to incide on society great things happen. Eventually the bureaucrats, lawyers and marketers (the contemporary king midas with the only difference that everything they touch turns into shit instead of gold) and start squeezing all the money they can out of that idea and the dream is over.

Sure star wars is crap now, but it sure as hell rocked in the 80's when it was about spaceships, guns, and hyperjumps. was it worth the ride? sure it got boring at the end but it was worth it.

Diablo 1 and 2 were great games. diablo 3 is the epitomy of the marketers dream and the gamers nightmere. Activision came along and ruined everything.

so be carefull what you ask for.

The alternative for jutsin and matthiew would be to create another game with just them as staff. tbh after having watched indie game the movie i dont think anyone who is is full possession of their mental sanity would do this 2 times. in a lifetime but who knows.

[Azewaldo]

I was thinking there should be a prequel covering the mission that the Federation sent out to collect the information we're carrying.

[splette]

My hope is that the devs take the momentum that the release of the game brought to build a strong community of followers. That means getting involved with us, keep us in the loop about what's going on and so on. (I do understand that we don't hear much from them right now because it's only been a few weeks since release and they are obviously very busy going from conference to conference to advertise the game).
But if they don't get involved more in the near future I am afraid the activity in these forums and the hype might die off quickly as we turn our attention towards other games.

So, I hope they realize how important follower power is. Other indie developers have quite a following. Again, Introversion ('the last bedroom programmers') comes to mind first. I bought every single of their games. For their current game project they just released a paid alpha version. It costs 30$. The price includes a key to the final version which will most likely be cheaper than 30$. Wait a sec, you'll say. Why would someone pay extra money for doing alpha testing? Well, people do. If you have a strong enough following you can pull such a stunt.

So, I don't care which game they'll create next. I just hop they will keep us fans (and modders) in mind and create another great game for the same audience.

[Magnianhk]

Gear for crew members. Shields, guns light sabers, armor etc.

I would love to see away missions in a sequel. Like if you come across a planet emitting a distress beacon, pick the away team from your crew, and they get sent to a base or something on the surface (similar to when you beam them to an enemy ship). Then little missions or events (like being ambushed and having to flee back to the teleporter room, or exploring and finding a terminal that you can repair to get a drone schematic).

I agree with these suggestions. Currently the game is limited to exploring via ONLY SHIP. It's very frustrating to "send members of your crew" to help out in a situation, only to find out the only crew member who died is your Crystal man, whom you never would have sent in the first place! I sincerely detest having the game choose my away team for me...

Creating away-team missions detracts nothing from the game, and could add countless possibilities. For instance, you arrive upon an outpost that is slowly filling with a toxic gas due to a breach in their atmospheric layer. You have a time limit. Do you:
1. Try to find the breach and fix it to create more time. Maybe guaranteeing you a crew member, and some "invisible rewards" like scrap, fuel, etc.
2. Salvage scrap at the expense of the station.
3. Try to find a useful weapon or drone schematic.

The current screen interface would hardly have to change, either. Your ship could still be on the left so as you could access teleport, med-bay, etc. The station, outpost, or planet terrain would appear on the right and you could send your men down how you saw fit. You may even be able to call on your ship to bombard the station at key areas, like blast open doors, but risk creating another breach.

Outfitting members of the crew, or increasing their stats, would be nice. Give that Mantis armor, I say!

[Magnianhk]

Another addition I would like to see is incremental boss fights. As is the game is basically a quest to find what you need for the last fight. The "challenge" is having to make choices based on what you should upgrade, purchase, or if you should repair, etc. But every choice you make is dictated by having a certain weapon layout for the end fight. Thus, it's really quite easy to win once you reach a certain balance between defense and offense.

Encountering mini-bosses would spice things up a bit. Perhaps these bosses would be randomly encountered, or a chosen encounter, but what matters is that they would add challenges throughout the game, rather than the current "mobs" whom you farm scrap from.

[Macil2018]

I'd like to see a few different things in a sequel to FTL:

Different classes of ships: Ranging from small 1 man fighters, cruisers and capital ships. Each with various strengths, weaknesses and even mission types.

Coop Play: Although it may require a bit of reworking in the game, I truly believe FTL's play style could be really fun in a cooperative sense, not so much versus though - I'm tired of playing through games simply to try to be better than my friends. It's much more fun to work together with my friends for a mutual advantage.

Station Tasks/Planetary Exploration: The tile based movement is great and has worked for older games in the past really well (I grew up playing games like Ultima V, VI and VII). Exploring vastly different worlds, or even docking with stations and walking around completing fun little mini quests could be really fun in FTL - similar to what you see currently when you're in the Hanger View. You see people walking all over the place doing various tasks, I want to be doing that! =)

Character Equipment/Gear: Various blaster types or armor upgrades. Think about it, set your lasers to stun or kill! Armor for repelling energy weapons, or geared towards anti-melee (good for Mantis protection). Possibilities are endless

More stations to man: I'd love to see either more stations to man, or the ability to man all systems in the game to give all systems a bonus. More times than I can count, I find myself having too many idle crew members standing around just waiting for something to break for them to fix. I wish I could be putting them to work in the medbay to improve heal times, or on scanners to boost scan ability, especially in nebula! Bonuses to cloaking, teleport cool down, etc, possibilities on this are out there.

Those are just a few things I've thought of while playing FTL, I think FTL serves as a launch platform for a REALLY exciting genre of games that is still relatively untapped. I'm very grateful FTL is what it is as it stands but the possibilities are very exciting. Computers have gotten to the point where all people care about now is how good the graphics are, FTL explored just how good a game with mediocre graphics but good GAMEPLAY can be.

[sid]

You know, most of the things mentioned in this thread, like personal inventories or head-to-head combat, are generally easy to put in and not worth an additional game. I was under the impression that a game such as FTL would be updated regularly with additions to both the plot and the mechanics. All of the issues lifted in this thread seem like nothing a little </duct-tape> can't handle, patching is all you need.