[SHIP] The Zodiac and The Moebius - Updated

[R4V3-0N]

Well that was my main thing I wanted to stand, I wanted the ship to be yet fun and different

I still see the ship to be 'overpowered'
This ship also heavily leans against the skill level of a player, on Normal you do get even less scrap and the 250 scrap to buy shields (If I remember correctly you would need to buy it then upgrade to level 2)

The original crew was 'template' with the values in game of rarity and bp, as you know, part of the value that lead to the cut 'ship creator' of FTL, It isn't accurate and had flaws but I did it by that and the weapons and crew fit the values (until I switch the mantis with a zoltan, the zoltan is double of that of the mantis).

This ship is a "Flagship" class ship in technical sci fi terms, and it wouldn't make sense for it to start with less power then the Federation Cruiser so to say.

For now I will leave it like this, A fun ship that isn't so over powered that you just click a few buttons then go make some hot chocolate while you easily kill the Rebel flagship.



I will be planning on making a "hard" version which will be a half in crew, weapons, and starting drones.

Bren Tenkage's video made me realise that this ship is fun, and that's the point of the game, it's a bit challenging but it's fun and different. And my other friend (who is not on forums) told me that people would have issues on normal mode with the ship and people with lower experience and skills.
Welcome to the FTL forums by the way!

And I would love to see your vid good sir.

(sorry for my possible bad English and typos, It is my 3rd language.)

[DiscordDraconequus]

(sorry for my possible bad English and typos, It is my 3rd language.)

Hmm, I never would have guessed.

Here is your video.

It seems like it would be fun to play this ship on a Hard mode of the game where enemies are tougher, or to have the *option* of a Hard mode variant with a more vanilla style layout, as in a smaller weapon/drone bay and other stuff.

Taking out the Drone Recovery Arm would also instantly make this a very tough ship to play. If you can't depend on an infinite supply of drones, you have to play much more tactically with them. I would very often use 4 or 5 parts per battle. If you did that though, you'd probably also want to reduce the number of starting drones to 2, since without the drone recovery arm you'd never use all four drones at once. It would definitely change the tone of your ship a lot, and I'm not sure if that's what you want.

A minor thing, but shields cost 150 even on Normal, and that gets you the first bubble right there. So it's not 250, i.e. 150 for the first point and 100 for the second point, but simply 150 for the first two. All that Normal does is cut the starting scrap from 30 to 10, reduce scrap rewards by a percent, set you against slightly harder enemies (i.e. Normal mode you see Zoltan Shields in sector 1, while on Easy you do not) and make the enemies aim slightly smarter towards rooms with systems in them.

I haven't played the B layout, but from my experience with the A layout, those 2-damage beam drones are very strong. So I'm leaning towards saying that the ship will be incredibly powerful if paired with ions.

Regarding skill and the intended audience: I'm not aiming to toot my own horn, but I am very good at this game, and might not be your intended audience. When I play to win, I have a ~90% win ratio with most ships, and do things like Shieldless Stealth A+B and No-Pause Engi B runs for fun. So my success with the ship might not be completely representative of a balance problem at all, and just me being good at that sort of thing. Honestly, if you took all of my suggestions, what you'd probably end up with is the Engi B ship with zero starting shields, 4 starting drone power, a ion+ion+heavy laser weapon setup, and a defense II+system repair+anti-personnel drone layout. Which would be super hard to play.

[R4V3-0N]

I will decrease the speed of the Engi Beam Drones.
And I will make a "(HARD)" version of both ships to start with 50% of starting crew, 50% of Weapons, 50% of Drones, and 50% (between 30 hull to 50 (A), 40 (B), translation, 40 for the A, 35 for the B)

I am trying to find a balance as I said before and aiming to make a ship that is large, but not over powered, I tried to make the B with regular Beam drones, 1 weapon slot, and an Artillery but It seems you need 4 weapon slots to make it work. (yes I know how to place the artillery, look at my Federation Light Artillery mod to see a no weapon artillery platform and a weapon heavy one).

I can not change the starting scrap or prices without changing to much other things in this mod that will render it combatable with other mods because of the changes. I want this mod to still be combatable with other mods.
The easy way would be giving it a dummy augment that will just decrease your scrap for no reason, but people would sell it on the first store.

The Medbots will have to stay because that is a Engi ship augment that is usually always present, only exeption is engi enemies that got no medbay (augment still on, just not working) and on the Engi A.

etc. No medbots will be just like having no rock armour on a rock ship, or no slug repair gel on a slug ship, etc. as I may have said before

As I also said before, I would plan on reducing starting drone prices, but I want it available in shop, as you said to reduce to 2 (4, sell value is halved), then you will go take the type B for eg and then you can buy the defence drones for 4 dollars each, the drone itself will be cheaper then a drone part.

I do very like the video, it gives me a helpful insight on the ship and it's current status and also how it operates.
I am planning on making the harder version as said.

And also a more OP version, before you ask why? this is why: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14101&hilit=insane
The mod that can make enemies start at level 4 shields and where only the usual 'op' weapons would be considered not enough to sustain yourself for long.

If the ship is to nerfed to fit it's general visualisation if it requires more and more tweaking, then I will have to go the other direction then.

Anyway I do like your video and I think you should do more FTL videos and perhaps get a recording software. But I got no issue with it at the moment. You got a new sub.

Anyway for when I release the 'FTL-Engi Brigade' I will keep thinking about what version I should put there, but following the game classifications this will have 50 hull sadly. Your input is valuable.

The updated version of the standard ships with 250 scrap shields will replace the current links.
The (HARD) versions will be uploaded shortly.

Thanks again. (\

[R4V3-0N]

Updated, Update changes on the first thread near the top.

This is likely the last update for this mod.
I will be making more engi ships.

ALSO this, and the other engi ships, will be included in the "FTL: Engi Brigade" mod.

EB will be similar to 'Foundation of the Federation'

Replaces all 18 ships with Engi ships, possible change of music, and more.
It may not be an overhaul mod, it will be just a 'ship' pack and also may change the music and menu screen.

The reason why I won't put the 'overhaul' version as top priority is due to the fact that I want it reasonably compatible with other mods.

The mod will also come with a weapons pack, that will have all the weapons in the mod + and more, available in store. I will try to make a store version of some weapons will be nerfed, eg the Engi Defense Drone.
Or increased Energy to 4-5 (it's better then the Defense Drone II in game, and it's more reliable (besides what I did to lower the reaction time) etc.

AND I want it to work on Captains Edition; A must have mod.

[BrenTenkage]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv8uJ-pb ... e=youtu.be

Another vidoe, lots of fun

[DiscordDraconequus]

So I played the Hard Mode Zodiac.

When you took *all* of my suggestions into account, you made that thing HARD. If it was originally overpowered, now it is a legitimate challenge ship. I gave it three shots last night, and failed three times.

This is not a problem. Frankly, I like where it's at. Personally, I think both the 'Normal' and 'Hard' modes are in good spots. Normal Zodiac is a good ship, probably mid/high tier due to the high amount of disposable augments/drones and strong weapon setup. Hard Zodiac is, like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, reminiscent of Engi B with a unique stealth-ship-esque flair.

I'm currently doing a play with the Normal Moebius. It's been pretty fun thus far. I've focused on boarding, which has been a little frustrating due to the very long walk between medbay and teleporting, and the 1-man medbay. That's hurt the pacing a lot. The weapon layout reminds me a bit of Zoltan A, with the beam drones taking the place of the Halberd. It falls apart a bit when you can't reduce shield levels, but if you can, then it is quite good. And since the drones fire relatively fast, and you have four of them, it's very easy to rip ships to shreds in a few seconds if you can get through the shields.

[UltraMantis]

One of the top airlocks on the A type is broken. I'll report more errors when i play it a bit more.

[R4V3-0N]

The Airlocks on both the A and B (surprisingly in the same spot, the upper left of the ship, the right door is broken) has issues,

But I will not update for 1 bug that I'll need to fix via superluminal (superluminal hates me and the only way for me to make a ship that works there is I have to make it in 1 sitting, if I save then get back to it later it has issues exporting)

For when my project FTL: Engi Brigade is out, this ship would be somewhere halfway between the normal and hard versions.

Thank you two for the responses, if anything else pops up I will get to it in the next update.
OR if nothing much happens then I will have it fixed on FTL:EB initial release.

[R4V3-0N]

As the rest of my ships are on hold besides the interceptor and I am going to aim for more practice, a person named Luna helped me a bit with the weapons I think I should mention but it didn't come across my mind because s/he isn't on this forum.

So anywho, that means I can go try and refine my weapons, fix up grammar issues, add a proper layout image to my ship (layout/ rooms ,what ever it's called) and tons more other stuff.

Btw = Luna only helped in 'balancing' and doing the details of my weapon, I only did a description and values I think that have to be the boundry for the specific weapon because I didn't want to make something that would be OP as hell like a beam with ion damage or an ion with shield piercing. etc.

Sorry for any typos, miscommunication, spelling / grammar, and issues.
Ginger Dragon video is the best if you want an idea of the ship, He has point out it's flaws in some times like it's size which I intentionally wanted to be a flaw (because someone thought the 5-10% smaller one was to OP....)

This ship isn't dead and neither is the engi brigade. But all I am doing is making other ships so I can do a more vide variety of weapons to get an idea and also a grasp on balance.

To answer some problems and then ask some questions at the end.

The Door on both ships seem off on the upper top left, the right door of that room.
Yes the door's are borked, not sure why I didn't do anything fancy with the ships in the codding nor in Superluminal, and I doubt I made the same mistake twice somehow, could be due to the size of the ship. Will fix when layout image is updated (well technically added)

The ship is UP/OP
Not really, it has elements of both to keep it balanced, I want a 'flagship class ship' that won't be Op, similar how to they made the player cruisers in this game have less firepower to start with them a federation scout on normal in sector one.

Will you add more weapons?
Yes, recent testing has proved that I can do weapons now with less bugs appearing each time. I am going to make a mini pack of playable enemy ships in game with a type B as well, pretty much Foundation of the Federation but with more ships and no new main menu image (FotF current state).

Why did you delay everything?
1) Get more experienced with modding.
2) After AE is added, the fact it will have mannable sensors and doors means that I assume they may have glows so I'll need time to add all 18 of my ships to have a new sensor and door room with possible glows and also add the new systems and sub systems, Mind Control seems like a good weapon the engi will use to keep mantis Obey
3) To get more feed back from you guys and potential more help. If your interested to help please PM me, PM title saying "FTL:EB Help", the help I am looking for can be anything, I would appreciate quests, I want to add some new ones and rewrite others, If anything changes on the Rebel Flagship when AE comes I would like to change it, at leasts it's crew and hull image and texts in the events before hand to make it a different enemy.
4) Need to have a firm foundation and direction the mod will be built on.

If we do help, are we inclined to finish or stay all the way till the mod is finished?
Not at all, I would like it if you finished your work to a point someone else can continue or finish it completely, If everyone else is done besides you then you may need to get to a good place to work to then hand it over to someone else depending how long you take. You can just make 1 ship image, or do only all the mantis enemies, or do events that has easter eggs like having a Liam Sunwalker board your ship or what ever. I kinda want more events that give you crew with specific names, eg Snocklog (slg) or Kazaaakajdsisadba Mantis Cruiser dude.

When will FTL: EB be finished?
2014 summer (Southern Hemisphere, 2014 winter for you folks up North)

this is if everything goes well and such.

How compatible is this mod?
The way I will make the ships is it only has the ship A and B blueprints and all the weapons and extras on a master blueprint. meaning that if you want to take your obsidian cruiser or Sunstrike rock cruiser or just play vanilla ships then you can, just all the weapons and quests will still be in game.

There will be after the first proper version is finished to have a Captains Edition compatible version, but due to how big both mods are, I will hold that off for some time, I don't think I can update my mod every 3 days to CE's update pace just to change 2 blueprint words or even letters.

The ship won't work with any mods adding new quests or replaces old ones, may conflict to much.

You suck at modding, this mod will suck
Well good day to you to sir.

Can I make a request for this mod or something?...
yes! I won't say it will have a 100% chance coming in, but it may be in a different form in the mod, eg instead of a engi boarding ship for a player, it could be an enemy boarding ship or a quest where 8 engi's board you (8 engi = 2 mantis in terms of damage, 6 rockman in terms of health, still can be taken down reasonably easy if you know how to deal with boarders)

You will be credited if you made something to go in, and I will try to keep the players happy.

You suck at English you know?...
And you suck at Afrikaner, Serbian, Maori, NZ Sign Language, French, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese. but we can't all be shoved down 20 languages down your throat win your little

(expanded: I am a Serbian (1 language) who was born in South Africa, they got tons of official languages there (5 estimate for what I learned), then I moved to NZ with my family and there we learned through my time here French, Japanese, Spanish (<for no reason, 3), more English, Sign, Maori, etc (3).

So that is 11 languages I had to learn, I often get confused between grammar systems and letter sounds and pronunciations but I am trying to recover from my language confused head and ditched everything besides my home language and English).

"Princesas Luna" ?
Once apone a time the person earlier I said that helped a bit also logged on my PC to recover some files she emailed herself to help me out and compare what kind of shite happened with some weapons and how to fix it and teach me what went wrong, once apone a time Google + and Youtube got... what ever, Youtube occupied communist Google +? you get the picture... instead of R4V3-0N on some videos, it is a type name that was ditched in like 2007. Thank's google +, you keep amazing me with your stupid decisions.

Bren Tenkage can go give you a more detailed statement on how great the new youtube is.

Edit: forgot Russian from the list, 12 languages)

[Ginger Dragon]

Hey, I did a let's play on your ship. Both Part A and B! I gotta say, they were alot of fun to play!

Here's Episode 1 of the Zodiac: http://youtu.be/a98mX8EKpCw
...and the Moebius: http://youtu.be/cWbXpfZ8rvA