Rebel Flagship Design

[Gidoza]

OK so I uploaded all the Flagships into a new thread and wrote out stuff about the testing and balancing process. But I think I will re-write it because as soon as I looked at it after I wrote it it seemed too complicated.


Anyways - I noticed last night that one of the ships I tested had a shield bubble that was slightly off and a centring that was slightly off. But they don't all seem to be off in the same way. I find this puzzling. The image for the Flagship is exactly the same in every single case. Why would the centring be any different from one Flagship design to another?

[RAD-82]

Anyways - I noticed last night that one of the ships I tested had a shield bubble that was slightly off and a centring that was slightly off. But they don't all seem to be off in the same way. I find this puzzling. The image for the Flagship is exactly the same in every single case. Why would the centring be any different from one Flagship design to another?

Shield bubble position is based on the room layout, not the ship image.

[Gidoza]

Shield bubble position is based on the room layout, not the ship image.

Oh poop. Well this could be interesting to fix haha. Thanks.

[Gidoza]

So hey, Meklozz - I had a few things come up in testing that I think are worth bouncing off you for ideas.


1. Your HP graphic - it works beautifully for connectivity, but the squarishness of the first bar doesn't blend well with the "hull" symbol just above it. Maybe if the graphic did the same as it does now, except that the very first bar looks like it usually does, and the very last bar would slide down to "match" the next set with a first bar?

2. To fix Ellipses that are out of place - there are four values. How do I know which one affects what? I'm assuming that there's two x values and two y values, but there's nothing in the text file itself to suggest which is which.

3. Any idea if a Flagship can handle more than 8 power in a system? I had a Flagship that should have been launching 4 Drones at 9 power, but I only saw 8 powers' worth of Drones at a time despite the fact that it had enough power and the system had enough power assigned to it. But no way to "see" exactly since Sensors are disabled in-game.

4. Is there a way to place crew in particular places on the Flagship? External weapons arrays (the ones that are separated from the ship in the beginning for many of them) I've found don't have a crewman manning it - and thus it's easy to take down the weapon with nobody to repair it.


Anyways that's some of the technical stuff I've noticed so far. I think all fixable, but I don't have enough knowledge off the hop to solve it all right away.



Also P.S. I'll be gone for a week during Christmas break. I'll still be talking on the forums, I just won't be testing/modding again until after New Year's. Should give some time to get some feedbacks for various Flagships and other data so I know what to do when I get back!

P.P.S. Merry Christmas!

[meklozz]

1. I was worried about it, you mean to make it more like vanilla only change the very end (at 22 hull points) go down to the floor? That could work, will see. Some other options could be changing the other graphic (around the start of the hull points) slighty, maybe to make it all a little smoother. Will have to experiment sometime soon.

2. Maybe this can help? http://ftlwiki.com/wiki/Modding_ships That wiki is usually not good, but it has some information in the more technical areas.

3. Normal ships can, I don't know what the issue would be. One thing is that you can see the power when you hack them. If the drone has no actual power in it (as in, there are system bars, but empty), it's possible playing with the maxpower or whatever it's called setting could help. You could also cheat with unique drone versions that take less power.

4. I don't believe it's possible to put crew anywhere there isn't a console for them to spawn at.. That should happen by itself, though? Like it does in vanilla? Is there no console for them to go to in the artillery room, for some reason? If so, which flagship is it on?

[Gidoza]

2. Maybe this can help? http://ftlwiki.com/wiki/Modding_ships That wiki is usually not good, but it has some information in the more technical areas.

Will check it out. At the very worst, I just do trial-and-error and figure it out the long way.

3. Normal ships can, I don't know what the issue would be. One thing is that you can see the power when you hack them. If the drone has no actual power in it (as in, there are system bars, but empty), it's possible playing with the maxpower or whatever it's called setting could help. You could also cheat with unique drone versions that take less power.

Good call on hacking. I removed the "max" stuff because all the other Flagship designs I've seen from Vanilla and other sources never had it, and the Vanilla Flagship actually has a power of 9 for round 2, so I don't know.

However - every single one of the Drones for my custom flagships are unique anyways, so there should be no problem for me to just re-edit some of the power values for that.

4. I don't believe it's possible to put crew anywhere there isn't a console for them to spawn at.. That should happen by itself, though? Like it does in vanilla? Is there no console for them to go to in the artillery room, for some reason? If so, which flagship is it on?

The Artillery rooms all have consoles. And depending on the Flagship type, I've seen a bunch of dudes spawn in empty rooms, only for them all to then move around and go into appropriate spots. I feel like I'm missing something.

[meklozz]

The Artillery rooms all have consoles. And depending on the Flagship type, I've seen a bunch of dudes spawn in empty rooms, only for them all to then move around and go into appropriate spots. I feel like I'm missing something.

Maybe it has something to do with what the room number IDs are? Any specific flagship this is an issue on?

[Gidoza]

The Artillery rooms all have consoles. And depending on the Flagship type, I've seen a bunch of dudes spawn in empty rooms, only for them all to then move around and go into appropriate spots. I feel like I'm missing something.

Maybe it has something to do with what the room number IDs are? Any specific flagship this is an issue on?

Yeah that's a possibility - maybe the order in which rooms are assigned affects where crewmen are placed? I found this issue first with Flag T, but I'm sure there must be others.

[meklozz]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18243056/customflagship/big%20drop%20hull.ftl


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18243056/customflagship/steep%20drop%20hull.ftl

I think the first one is good.

[Gidoza]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18243056/customflagship/big%20drop%20hull.ftl


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18243056/customflagship/steep%20drop%20hull.ftl

I think the first one is good.

Hmmmmm...it still looks like a pretty severe jump to me. I was imagining it as a different version of the first one you made. Imagine on the 22-HP range you do what you did before by making the HP start small, go big, then go small again, and the very "last" HP is like the reverse of the first HP bar. Does that make sense?

E.G. If it were something like this awful graphic made by keystrokes...

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