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

[zabing12]

Dude, you can get the incomplete flagship in vanilla.
I was wondering, though, how does one make prefixes for weapon? I would love to do that kind of stuff, but My game crashes whenever I mess with that kind of stuff.

Packing and unpcking is hard, too.

[Estel]

Dude, you can get the incomplete flagship in vanilla.

Don't say
As you might have noticed, the thing on screens is actually on rebel-controlled beacons (aka taken by the fleet). I'm pretty sure that it's CE addition, not vanilla thing. It's completely different thing than Fed Cruiser quest.

BTW, idea for CE achievement - flag breaker - destroy flagship at least 3 times during one run (behind enemy lines, during Fed quest, and at the endgame).

/Estel

[zabing12]

No, rebel controlled beacons were a thing in vanilla, I just checked.

[Estel]

They were, but you wouldn't meet cruisers and battleships there (for sure), or flagship constructions (AFAIK) - which was the point of that mention. Definitely, you wouldn't delay rebel fleet by fighting with them, too. Also, you wouldn't, certainly, have chances to scavenge them.

Are you trying to prove something?

[Estel]

Small supplement to bug report:

1. The trade union quest (given by lady with platinum needle of trade union, while we're consuming synth-burger) doesn't spawn second pirate, after killing 1st one Pity, as I was curious, too, what is the most valuable trade good in galaxy. BTW, I'm absolutely sure, that someone reported it already, ages ago... Either it slipped past, or it's a re-curring bug (Testrel? someone said Testrel?) (Severity: Medium)

2. There is no option to break truce with many Lanius ships - for one example, there is this even in asteroid field, when Laniuses are disassembling mining colony, and their escort moves in to scare us off. If you accept surrender, then it is it, everything is over.

While no Zoltan surrender makes some sense, lack of truce breaking doesn't, so I guess it's valid bug. (Severity: Medium)

3. Stealth B can't use it's Glaive beam to cut-off pirates stuck between asteroids (Severity: Minor). I also have it written that I was unable to use it in some event that required a "large beam weapon", but I can't remember for a life of mine what it was, so I guess it's not that useful info...

4. This type of enemy also ignores ice field ban on cloaks:
http://s30.postimg.org/ubpibikdt/ice3.jpg
(Severity: Medium)

5. I've also noticed small typo, when encountering engi pirates in the ice field - they want to give us scrap to make us "keep quite" about their location. Should be "keep quiet". (Severity: Cosmetic)

Cheers,
/Estel

// Edit

Sleeper, I'm re-doing menu image for CE, and I finally managed to make sensible looking "fleet icons" of auto-stations and rebel stations. Now, do you happen to have that Ce contributors and music contributors text as a layer/different file? Overall, everything you may have, could help me a lot. I'm really not fluent with those graphic tools and I'm openly opposed to Adobe products (so no photoshop here - GIMP FTW), so every pixel-by-pixel cutting less is a huge gain Thanks in advance.

[Sleeper Service]

The mobile flagship construction fleet events is indeed a CE thing, although I can see that it can easily be confused with the vanilla flagship construction event.

Thanks for your detailed report Estel, I for myself enjoy reading how your run went. Alway interesting to hear what people pull of in the game/mod. I'll go through the list for the next updates. Some quick comments:

4. After accepting enemy's surrender Zoltan way, enemy boarders are still hostile (and require killing them). (Severity: Minor)

I'm pretty sure that can happen in vanilla as well. I think boarders will remain hostile if the surrendering ships teleporter is down (or on cooldown?), as the ship can not retrieve them. Otherwise you might be stuck with neutral stowaways. In any case I can't really effect how the game handles this in the particular situation, the "make enemy neutral" event tag is always the same.

Upon loading game, the hyperspace jump sound is played. Ignore if unfixable, as this sound during hyperspace jump is cool, and the issue is: (Severity: Cosmetic)

Yeah, the game will always start the sector playlist from zero when a save is loaded. Unfortunate, but I decided to go with it. The whole hyperspace effects are one big workaround.

Many, many trade goods are unsellable in Civilian sectors (option to sell them doesn't appear in list, if the shop offer to sell 3 different trade goods). For example, the problem apply to Space Rations. New "Generic" trade goods doesn't seem to be affected. If this is intentional, consider allowing to sell them for low amount of money (like generic goods, maybe? 30 scrap), as it is strange that you can sell various "generic" goods there, but can't get rid of good'old trade goods (especially irritating, if you're pirating a lot, augment slots get filled up pretty quickly). (Severity: Medium)

Can you specify which other goods where unsellable? I can look into it, but Space Rations are supposed to be unsellable there (can be bought there.)

After using the 2nd option of hull-repair kit (20 scrap, 10 damage repaired) it doesn't show any icon about fleet delay getting increased. Haven't had opportunity to check if fleet delay is applied in reality (but have feeling that it might not). (Severity: Medium)

When we're at it, I would suggest the 3th (2x fleet delay) option repair 20 damage for those 30 scrap - making it economically most feasible, at the high cost of 2x fleet delay. Currently, it repairs at the same cost as 2nd option (1 fleet delay) at rate of 2 scrapper hull point, and 15 hull repaired vs 10 hull repaired.

It equals to 5 more hull repaired (at additional cost, not free) for 1 visited beacon loss. Quite poor ratio, and practically, makes using 3th option a bad decision no matter of circumstances (better to repair 10 hull, or do it twice for the same fleet delay cost).

Yeah, sounds reasonable. I also like the possibility of over-repairing that comes with this and the considerations attached to that.

14. This poor engi ended up in "sealed for life" position. I could swear, that I have already reported it for this exact type of enemy?...
http://s16.postimg.org/mxjh4zfk5/engi_for_life.jpg
(Severity: Minor)

Not sure what happens there. The game does not seem to do this with the vanilla ship. I'm also uncertain if this is fixable.

I don't get what those 2 options are about:
http://s16.postimg.org/4kivuf539/subspace.jpg
http://s16.postimg.org/fo2yje7b9/subspace1.jpg

Is this bug, or first option is about getting warning re approaching ion storm, and the second one disables cloaking? If the latter is true, then text could be more specific (I thought that 'scanning your environment" result in detecting cloaked ships too, lore-wise)
(Severity: Minor or it's a feature and just needs better description)

I agree that the descriptions could be more clear. Option one will enable sensors, option two will disable enemy cloak. Result of combining these two functions in the subspace scanner.

This really nice event with rebel cadets:
http://s16.postimg.org/itiichjlx/cadets.jpg

...ends up with fighting rebel ship in "neutral" zone (if we decide to follow general system law - I don't know if it's only possible result, but it's the one that I always got), and... nothing. We're not given any info of what happened with those captive cadets, they just "disappear" in thin air after winning with rebels that "don't care about their own".

I suggest few possible additional, lore-friendly outcomes. Let me write my ideas in event-tree fashion (for best reading, copy it and paste in some text editor - it will be much easier to read thanks to whitespace branching, as forum mess up with formatting

Sounds good, I'll consider some of this.

4. There is this vanilla event with station and faint life signatures aboard. Bad outcome may be finding no one and one of our crew members coughing and dying. Cloning doesn't work there, and I think it is wrong - after all, loss of skills is explained as DNA samples being done on routine from time to time, so his clone should be perfectly healthy. The "he would carry disease into new life" doesn't seem coherent here.

Also, there is no conflict with quarantine sector and illness of our crewmember, as we don't have idea when he got contracted (so we must destroy samples anyway, to avoid risk for whole crew). So, proper medical system is only way to go. Hoever, in the "faint life signatures" station's case, we perfectly know when and where (aka: just now, 5 minutes earlier) he got contracted and was left to die on station. Cloning should work.

I don't know, there might be some Federation regulation that prevent cloning under such unclear circumstances. Good enough reason in other clone-blocked outcomes. I think this was a balance related decision by the defs and I'd probably stick with it.

http://s16.postimg.org/fjzhsa64l/harbor.jpg
...seems a little too harsh for sector 1 (and, frankly, for sector 2 too). Notice the ADVANCED combat drone (shooting fast enough to do damage even when 1 shield bubble is present, and, occasionally, even when 2 shield bubbles are present) + normal combat drone + weapons... He rips through ships in like 30 seconds, there is no way on earth to run from this thing on time, so early. Meet him few times already with similar configuration, it's a death sentence no matter ehat we're flying, on sectors 1 and 2 (rarely, you may get alive on sector 2 if you were very lucky and got strong ship so early... But only barely get away.)

Hm, which version was this on? Cause auto-harbors have been nerfed quite a bit some time ago and should not be able to appear in sector one anymore.

The trade union quest (given by lady with platinum needle of trade union, while we're consuming synth-burger) doesn't spawn second pirate, after killing 1st one Pity, as I was curious, too, what is the most valuable trade good in galaxy. BTW, I'm absolutely sure, that someone reported it already, ages ago... Either it slipped past, or it's a re-curring bug (Testrel? someone said Testrel?) (Severity: Medium)

I'm pretty sure that this is working. Quest beacon might have been overwritten by additionally generated nebula beacons? Rare scenario, but it seems to happen occasionally.

I was wondering, though, how does one make prefixes for weapon? I would love to do that kind of stuff, but My game crashes whenever I mess with that kind of stuff.

If you mean that you have problems with installing the Endless Loot addon then I recommend you read through the troubleshooting section in the first post.

[Estel]

Thanks for your detailed report Estel, I for myself enjoy reading how your run went. Alway interesting to hear what people pull of in the game/mod.

Nice to hear - then I'll keep "polluting" thread with my reports when I win on CE/Hard. Which is going to be really rarely, I guess

Can you specify which other goods where unsellable? I can look into it, but Space Rations are supposed to be unsellable there (can be bought there.)

I'll write down a list during few next playthroughs (noted only space rations, as after encountering problem few times, I dully assumed, that all 'legacy' trade goods are unsellable there, after noticing that new 'generic' ones are sellable.). The reasoning about it being unsellable because you can buy it there (for quite low price) is good - it would look strange, if they would buy for more than they sell (and would certainly demand giving them some trade union medal ). In lore, we can always assume that the price they're willing to buy it at is very low (the one that we get by selling trade goods directly at store via vanilla mechanic), and that it goes fast, as they don't even care to bargain about it.

Not sure what happens there. The game does not seem to do this with the vanilla ship. I'm also uncertain if this is fixable.

No problem then - lets assume that slugs are buying those ships from corrupt Mantis clan lords, with engis included in price (labeled as "self-repairing sealed-for-life system - mixes reliability with maintenance free comfort!)

I agree that the descriptions could be more clear. Option one will enable sensors, option two will disable enemy cloak. Result of combining these two functions in the subspace scanner.

Right, sounds sensible after I know what it is for

I don't know, there might be some Federation regulation that prevent cloning under such unclear circumstances. Good enough reason in other clone-blocked outcomes. I think this was a balance related decision by the defs and I'd probably stick with it.

You're right - there is this vanilla event with quarantined mining colony and possibility to lose crew member there, due to him contracting disease (so we're forced to leave him with other ill ones). Lore text says, that Federation rules doesn't allow to clone someone that is still alive or even *might* be alive, so it could as well apply to crew member that is left2die on station (without officially seeing his passing). Ironically, I lost my first crew member due to riot control, while having clonebay, for the first time just after writing that report I agree that they did it for balance, and I like how CE expands upon concept of medbay being NOT obsolete in favor of cloning in quarantine sectors (even though quarantine sectors were a thing before cloning bay... What a nice coincidence).

Hm, which version was this on? Cause auto-harbors have been nerfed quite a bit some time ago and should not be able to appear in sector one anymore.

Latest one, sadly. BTW, while I don't have anything against Drone harbors per se, isn't there a way to lock them from getting certain drones before sector x OR drone + weapons combination before sector x? As the layout I've screened is exactly the same death sentence in sector 2 too, practically no matter which ship's we're using (well, ships that starts with hacking and invest all in engines could get extremely lucky and destroy all drones during hacking pulse, then run before/just after drones rebuild... But it's a real exception and one in thousand chance). OTOH, there are only 2 or 3 drones capable of such OP carriage (Advanced combat drone shooting every 0.75 second or so is one of them).

If no such possibilities of fine tuning, then no big deal. This kind of enemy can spawn with super-weak layout (only Ion weapons or only crew damaging things + ion, or...), so we can live with fact that, from time to time, it spawn as a total killer. Just call it bad luck when it happens *shrug*.

I'm pretty sure that this is working. Quest beacon might have been overwritten by additionally generated nebula beacons? Rare scenario, but it seems to happen occasionally.

Hm, maybe, although I could swear there was 0 (literally, zero) nebula in my next sector, and that after defeating 1st pirate, I got no message about getting quest marked for next sector (killed 1st pirate on the very end of sector 2 or something like that). Less sure about the part about "no info about quest marked", though. I'll try to get this mission again...
---

OTOH, as said, I'm cooking new menu screen for CE - I decided that - to make it completely "fair" - I'll use only hubble (or other readily and legally available) components and only those parts of BPAB that are already used in CE (some planets and moons for artillery...). I've separated station and drone images from Sleepy's menu screen, then edited them - pixel by pixel, by hand - in order to get rid of scaling/sharpening artifacts. For now, I have everything except CE's contributors/music contributors things, so if you have it saved as separate thing somewhere, it would help a lot. Otherwise, I'll have to sloooowly cut it out from current jpg, then remove compressions/cutting artifacts while preserving glow, etc...

This is snapshot of my work-in-progress version: (ignore non-calibrated placement of logo and stations being placed randomly, I was just testing how it mixes up when put together. Of course, fleet will get added later, including more reb/auto stations)
http://s30.postimg.org/dnnkodyf5/main_base2_preview.jpg

As you may see, I decided to give it (background) feel and style of current CE's menu image (big planet from left through center, FTL/CE logo at space background), just prettier, less pixelized, etc. Background galaxy is hubble (I've noticed that current CE's menu background stars are also from hubble), planets are took from CE Resource pack.

If - after I finish it - you will want to use it for CE, then do so by any means, and I'll be honored. Otherwise, I'll be the happy user of it, as I'm quite proud of result anyway, already...

/Estel

// Edit

While doing the above, I noticed something - both CE's Resource pack and music pack have menu image, but the music pack's one have one that is older and lack latest contributors. As CE's music is loaded after resource pack, menu file get overwritten.

Considering that CE's music pack require main CE - so it require CE's music pack - I don't think that there is any real need for cloning that file in music pack.

/Estel

[RAD-82]

14. This poor engi ended up in "sealed for life" position. I could swear, that I have already reported it for this exact type of enemy?...
http://s16.postimg.org/mxjh4zfk5/engi_for_life.jpg
(Severity: Minor)

Not sure what happens there. The game does not seem to do this with the vanilla ship. I'm also uncertain if this is fixable.

That's not a bug. That is the enemy AI on Hard mode. They man the engines instead of shields when they don't have enough crew for both. The Engi being trapped is just part of the ship's layout lacking doors to those rooms.

[Sleeper Service]

That's not a bug. That is the enemy AI on Hard mode. They man the engines instead of shields when they don't have enough crew for both. The Engi being trapped is just part of the ship's layout lacking doors to those rooms.

Hm makes sense. This will happen on vanilla as well then? Do you know if that ship gets a different layout on hard?

I'll write down a list during few next playthroughs (noted only space rations, as after encountering problem few times, I dully assumed, that all 'legacy' trade goods are unsellable there, after noticing that new 'generic' ones are sellable.). The reasoning about it being unsellable because you can buy it there (for quite low price) is good - it would look strange, if they would buy for more than they sell (and would certainly demand giving them some trade union medal ). In lore, we can always assume that the price they're willing to buy it at is very low (the one that we get by selling trade goods directly at store via vanilla mechanic), and that it goes fast, as they don't even care to bargain about it.

Hm just to clarify: Goods that are in supply in a sector (aka good that are being sold there) will never be in demand and therefore can never be sold in that respective sector. Luxury goods can't be sold in civilian sectors, Shield Components can't be sold in Zoltan sectors and so on. Essentially that mens that in-sector trading is usually not possible (the exception being infinite where on rare occasions two different stores can spawn in one deep space sector.) So you'll generally have to travel to a different sector type to sell goods you just bought. Generic goods are niche things that are not excessively produced anywhere, which is why they sell in all sectors.

As you may see, I decided to give it (background) feel and style of current CE's menu image (big planet from left through center, FTL/CE logo at space background), just prettier, less pixelized, etc. Background galaxy is hubble (I've noticed that current CE's menu background stars are also from hubble), planets are took from CE Resource pack.

If - after I finish it - you will want to use it for CE, then do so by any means, and I'll be honored. Otherwise, I'll be the happy user of it, as I'm quite proud of result anyway, already...

Looking good so far, I'd be happy to use that. I can share you my titles screen wip file, but you don't have to bother with the contributors and music texts. I'd actually prefer to just get a pure background file, cause I'd like to keep the names as a separate text layer that I can change whenever new people have to be added. I'd also prefer to add the title myself so that I can give it an amount of glow coherent with the other texts I'd add. Some more detailed feedback:
- Very thoughtful of you to check all that sources and make sure that only images are used that CE uses anyway.
- Stations already look way better. Shrink and sharpen has its limits, the pixel by pixel approach definitely improved the look. If you rotate the stations other than 90degree they might get blurry again. Looking forward to see the final ships/station distribution.
- Background composition is quite nice. I imagine this being some main Rebel planet that the Federation stole the secret data from. Small nitpick: The smalles moon touches the text but does not really overlap. In my book of image composition that turns out a little odd. I'd say it should either be overlapped by about a third or not be overlap at all. Maybe consider moving it to the lover left for about a planet length?
- As you might have realized I kept the upper left and the lower right part of the image free from ships to avoid odd overlaps with the texts that are generated there. Might be something to consider in your ship distribution.
- Overall I think this will be a well worthy title screen for CE. Thanks for you help.

R&D
In case you are wondering where CE is going from now: I'm wondering myself. Rann also keeps asking, here is a little def talk we had in case you are interested in the possible future additions we are contemplating:

>What about adding the weapon blueprint augments ? The ones that enable building weapons at shop beacons ?
>Also, what are your thoughts on maybe adding a new type of secret sector, maybe with a custom made new race >(based on the existing positive/negative traits, of course).

Sorry, I was a little busy here.

While I like the idea of weapon crafting I'd prefer not to give the player more control over what weapons he/she gets and how good they are. That just makes things easier and the player is less forced to adopt. The system would also result in way more opportunities to get weapons. It is also quite tedious to integrate this with the way EL is generated and it can't really be done covering all the thousands of weapons variants, so the system would inevitable offset weapon rarity and make the weapons that can be crafted more common.

There are some possibilities to get around this problems but its a lot of coding. It would probably result in a system where you can get very general weapon specs (Tier III Laser Blueprints and so on) but especial the rarity problem is hard to get around. Ultimately the whole system is a more complex, less controlled way to buy weapons at shops. The player can already do this anyway so I'm not convinced if this is necessary.

What can be done with races is pretty limited. The existing races could be used to create some more factions and such, but I generally tried to make sectors that really have a distinct feel to them and for that I'm kind of running out of good ideas. IMO a sector should have a 1st) distinct style and 2nd) a gameplay gimmick. There are limits what can be done with factions and these two things can't always be covered.

I briefly got attached to the concept of a space whale factions that would get their own sector. But I'll never match FTLs style with the "ship" design to pull this of properly and the factions as I imagined it would also not work out combat wise very well. I wanted to do some cyborg whales that defend their kind, but as FTL needs a lot of combat to work the faction would probably have been displayed way more violent than I would have intended. I did try to draw up some designs though:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=11539&start=80#p81927
The distinct style for the spacewhale sector would have been that it is true deep space without active stars and settled planets, a sector where literally ever beacons just has the DARK background to really convey to the player the he/she is traveling through a totally empty region of space. Also: Occasional Icefields.
The gameplay gimmick for the sector was kind of lacking. Space whales would pretty much just have been auto ships. They could become a little more via augments and events, but I haven’t found a clear game play profile for them. Always giving the cloak and mind control as some kind of inert mystical ability was considered. For that purpose I also wanted to look into encased systems again.

I also briefly thought about an automated sector now. Basically a unique hostile zone where the Rebels produce all their automated scouts. The style would be about machine dominance, with no sentient machines involved as apposed to the AI sector. The game play gimmick would be that the player fights auto ships and stations exclusively, probably with a separate kind of automated production ships as a secondary faction. This faction could have separate lists with ships classes that focus on repair and defence and also could get some custom ship hulls that would make them look more like construction bots than infiltrators.

The pirate homeworlds is also still on the table. But overall I'm just not doing much with CE right now. It starts to feel like it is done. *shrug*

As mentioned the space whale is inhabiting the scrapyard now:

[slowriderxcorps]

Alright, time to chip-in with some input of my own, courtesy of a single pass-through with the Error checker.

In the autoBlueprints file, the Slug Artillery weapon seems to be intended for use with blue events relating to Neural Stunners. However, only a generic version of the weapon is listed, instead of what appears to be unique variants for each layout of the Slug Cruiser, rendering them unusable for the blue options.

In the blueprints file, in the standard list of all the trade goods TE_AUGMENTS_TRADEGOODS, what appears to be the Zoltan Legal Codex is misnamed.

And in dlcBlueprintsOverwrite, there's a colossal mess of list errors involving weapons named with identities that have _ENEMY in them multiple times, linking to nonexistent weaponry as a result. In addition, a list of Engi ships OVERWRITE_SHIPS_CIRCLE has a misidentified Engi gunboat ship. Finally, the blueprint for The Swallow (KestrelC) has no information whatsoever for the Medbay.