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

[Sleeper Service]

Uh, really odd, but I doubt this is directly related to the mod. In any case, I'd have no idea how to fix it. Some people also reported this happening in vanilla. It also happened to me once when I saved and exited the game on an exit beacon and then patched the game from infinite to normal CE.

Unrelated, from the OP:

The rest of this post should give you an overview of what is include in the mod. This post has been edited countless times over the last two years, and it hasn't aged that well cause it is basically pieced together from stuff I wrote for certain semi-separate components of CE after they where finished respectively. I will leave the post as it is for old times sake, but for a more comprehensive list of CEs features I recommend you read this wiki entry.

EL Texture Pack 1.261b
- Added missing _purple variants for reworked effectors

[Va1iD]

I've found a glitch related to this mod which I find quite hilarious personally.
A Zoltan Checkpoint tried to escape battle by powering up it's engines..
Quite difficult, since the ship didn't have an engine.

[Sleeper Service]

That will usually happen if you jump to a station fight with your last unit of fuel. The enemy then fleeing is a hardcoded stalemate prevention thing, there is no way to remove that.

[Russian Rockman]

New update for Slipstream. rawappend works now, so you should probably change misc.xml.append to misc.xml.rawappend in the next update.

[Sleeper Service]

Ah sweet, thanks for the hint.


Download FTL Captain's Edition 1.262 (MediaFire)
Wow, whats happening? Since 1.262 CE requires the new Slipstream Mod Manager 1.5 to work! Make sure you unpatch any mods before updating your mod manager. Should you still have problems after updating your mod manager then read the SMM opening post and the CE troubleshooting section.

CE Update 1.262
- Plasma Thrower Mark I and II fire chance increased
- Plasma Thrower Mark II radius slightly increased
- Plasma Thrower Mark II projectile count increased
- Heavy Defense Drone I and II and Drone Destroyer are overall better now
- Neural Stunner Mark II and Bliss Stun Artillery projectile count increased
- Artillery Laser Mark II damage increased
- Hull Crusher Laser power cost decreased
- Change misc.xml.append to misc.xml.rawappend, which should fix missing spaces in tooltips and game texts
- Requires SMM 1.5 to work now (?)

[Russian Rockman]

Wow, thank for the really fast update Sleepy!

Thanks for making some small changes to weapon and drone balance as well. I am still slowly trying to finish a "weapon comparison" spreadsheet. Its got a lot of info, but it's still not complete. It also doesn't include a lot of the changes that have been made over the last several updates, or any info about drones... I'll have to make a separate drone spreadsheet eventually too.

Anyway... Thanks for working on weapon balance still, I noticed a few weird things when making the weapons spreadsheet. Although they don't break the mod or anything, a few things seemed to be out of balance. Like the artillery laser MkII being more expensive than the Burst Laser IV, but doing the same damage. (Which you just fixed ) I'll probably start keeping track of any inconsistencies I notice in case you find that info useful.

Also, I don't want this to come off the wrong way, but you could also check out some of slowriderxcorp's weapon balance changes. I do not agree with all of the changes sMPK make to weapons, like some of the name changes and the huge changes that completely re-purpose weapon types like Scatter Missiles. But I did read the entire list of changes sMPK makes to the CE weapons and some of the changes do seem to be justified, slowy obviously did put a good deal of time into those changes.

[Va1iD]

Speaking of balancing, I think the beacon access kit augment could do with some nerfing. It's an augment that can be spammed, especially in the nebula sector, where I can fully explore a sector thanks to the augment. Even if I jump from a relay with emergency fuel, I can quickly negate the disadvantage by using the beacon access kit. Civilian sectors are now scrap farming sectors due to the frequency of empty beacons. A cooldown for it may be most appropriate, or just something to punish players who abuse it.

[Sleeper Service]

Sounds reasonable. Cooldowns or reactive events are not possible. But it could gain a 25% fail chance for example... maybe tied to sector type. On the other hand its meant to be an economic aug that eventually pays off. Would you say you profit more from it than a scrap recovery arm?

[Va1iD]

Definitely. I came across the beacon access kit much more frequently than a scrap recovery arm, and yielded more benefits in the long run. I managed to farm almost 400 scrap from a nebula thanks to the augment, and if it was stacked with the scrap recovery arm, it could have been considerably more.
The margin of error sounds good. It could be more risky to cover your tracks in rebel sectors, and easier to cover them in federation sectors (or something like that).

[Russian Rockman]

I agree with Va1id's proposed nerf. I personally have never been able to actually obtain a Beacon Access Kit, I have never even seen one in a shop, so I never noticed any balance problems. Though I can see how it would get spammed and how you could collect tons of scrap using it. It could potentially turn a regular game into Infinite Space if you hit enough empty beacons. Plus all of the other fleet delaying choices have penalties, minus drone parts/fuel/mines/etc...

Tying the chance of success to sector type sounds like a great idea. However, although it would make sense for the Access Kit to work better in civilian sectors and less in hostile sectors, the problem with spamming the augment mostly happens in civilian sectors due to the more frequent empty beacons. So perhaps it should just have a standard %25 chance of failure? With maybe a %50 of failure in nebula sectors since there are way more empty beacons there. It could have something to do with the fact that the beacons are maintained by a separate network, or that the Rebels have set up a firewall for all the beacons in this matrix already, or that the beacons are using a new frequency since they have only been built recently.


EDIT: Here's a couple more augment related things I noticed when I looked at the files again. It seems like there are no possibilities for enemies to use the new AE combat augs in the CE_ENEMY_COMBATAUG_RANDOM event. There are no Firewall Plating, or Mind Shield, or even Subspace Scanner possibilities. A rare possibility of an enemy using two combat augments at once, with an Internal Generator, would not be bad either.

Also, for the "Your enemy is using dirty weapons!" event where the enemy uses a radiation projector against you, there is not choice for Adaptive Gel Suits. I thought you changed the name from Artificial Respirators to Adaptive Gel Suits so that they could be used to protect your crew in a wider variety of environmental hazards. This seems like one of those hazards.

Lastly, you could add some flavor text for the weapons and drone jammer failure events that say the enemy appear to be equipped with an "Advanced Targeting Computer" or "Improved Drone AI" respectively.


EDIT 2: One more thing, I don't really understand the need for the ASB Augment to use up 1 power. The missile cost is already a good enough penalty I think.

And is there any way to prevent the background from changing when using the ASB augment? If not that's fine... I've learned to deal with broken stuff.