Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Discuss and distribute tools and methods for modding. Moderator - Grognak
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elijahdb
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby elijahdb » Thu Dec 22, 2016 3:02 am

It is possible for the flagship to have different art layouts, such as maybe a Slug flagship or Mantis flagship, if someone came up with the hull, cloak and gib art?

Great work in what you're doing, man. Can't wait to see the results. I'd test it but I don't play FTL enough anymore..
I've created Type C Hulls for the enemy Mantis, Slug, Rock, and Zoltan ships, and anyone can use these for a mod.
Check out the details here.
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mr_easy_money
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby mr_easy_money » Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:49 pm

Gidoza wrote:2. Look at the last few posts of the thread. Announce in the forum alphabetically what Flagship you're taking. If you're the first person here - say you're taking Flagship A; the next person should take B, and so on.

I'm kinda confused about this. are you saying we shouldn't use any of the flagships someone else has commented on? because that would be pretty inconvenient because say we all take A (since no one has said anything about it), and I start building commentary on it only to find that someone has already said something about it, that would feel like a big waste of time. also you'd probably want multiple comments on the same ship for perspective.

Gidoza wrote:My initial post is ugly as heck

EDIT: Tried a new format. It's better, I guess, but still not my forte. ;)

you can change the size of headings to make them stand out more or try alternating colors, maybe even screenshots? You'd probably not want to spoil any of it on purpose though as that's the whole challenge of it.

it looks interesting though and I'll try it out :) now if only I can get to the boss fight in the first place... :roll:
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mr_easy_money
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby mr_easy_money » Fri Dec 23, 2016 6:27 pm

okay so we should announce here which flagship version we're using if we want to provide feedback on it. got it. :)
meklozz
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby meklozz » Sat Dec 24, 2016 2:27 am

I played through A, it was similar to vanilla, so not much to comment on. Didn't notice the augments until I glanced at the files, but I had mantis B, flak II, flak I, halberd, and a pre-igniter. So you know. You wrote it was important to play Normal, but it's kinda boring (ftl in general) on it, is that necessary? Seems like all the difficulties should get some testing. In any case, didn't run into any problems. I would say that if by balance you meant that the flagship should be similar to vanilla, I'd say this was a straight difficulty increase, though. Not what I'd consider a problem at all, but I don't see any way in which it was weaker to compensate for any additions. Except maybe the weaker drone surge compared to vanilla Hard.
meklozz
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby meklozz » Sat Dec 24, 2016 2:30 pm

Firstly, I really don't think this is a problem, but yeah, I read that you meant it was to be like vanilla Hard flagship, as far as I can tell it could do anything that one could do, + augments, + drone control in phase 3, + CE sluggish beam weapon. Drones go like 4, 6, and 7 on each setting, if I remember right. The difficulty of it mostly depends more on which types you get, really, a bunch of combat drones to keep getting through the shield is bad even if there are fewer of them. You can jump away to re-roll that.

Playing below hard on vanilla makes it really easy to get a very strong ship by the end. I guess I'm just gonna try Hard, as long as it's mentioned which difficulty it was it should be fine. I kinda want to try how those weapon levels work anyway, vanilla actually behaves differently than in the files, with only phase 3 getting all 4 levels as the files specify. It could be due to less systems, maybe again something to do with the maxPower stat, I dunno.

RE: Not moving on X1, maybe something to do with the doors linking? Did you try boarding it?
meklozz
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby meklozz » Sat Dec 24, 2016 5:20 pm

Gidoza wrote:I didn't board it, but all the doors were most definitely there, and further to that, they worked perfectly in the second and third states of the same Flagship!

Aside from existing, doors need to link specific rooms, they don't necessarily work for whatever's closest. And flagship phases are separate entities, after all (the .txt files are what matters in this case), it's possible it somehow got broken, maybe due to a misclick at some point or some option.

@edit
Though just looking at said txt file it seems like it's generally fine. Maybe it's something else, maybe just an isolated incident, who knows. Maybe I'll play it next.
meklozz
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby meklozz » Mon Dec 26, 2016 7:03 pm

Well, I played through X.. The crew was indeed frozen in phase 1, and they didn't seem to be anymore in 2, they came to fight my boarders. Doors were fine, though, I could attack them. I have no idea what could be the problem, I'll try some things.

The flagship was also too much to the right, in both phase 1 and 2 (as far as I got).

Now for the balance: the cluster bombs are too strong. They're kinda insane, really. In phase one, it's somewhat manageable, because of the low damage output, but the ability to do something like 6 damage at once to a system is potential insta-death almost no matter what you're flying. The later phases add power surges, and it made it pretty much impossible to manage that with the ship I had, which wasn't half bad. One the other hand, if I had cloak, it would probably be almost laughable to dodge them.

I think part of it is that they seem to all go to level 4. In files I see you made them staggered at least, but as I mentioned before the arty don't entirely follow the files, and in phase 2 I thought to keep a backup save and hack each of them - all at 4. Even if they were staggered, I don't think even a crew of engi could keep the ship running at that point. 12-24 damage per ~20 seconds, even considering some of it isn't dangerous or might miss (if they haven't decimated the helm and engines yet, anyway).

I know they were supposed to be specialized, but I don't think my ship was anywhere near the worst possible opponent for it, and it was almost like flying one of those overpowered ships when it started shooting, only the other way around. Cloaking would also be too much of a singular counter to those weapons. If you want to keep them defeat-able with generally strong ships like vanilla or CE flagships are, I think this little guy fails.

@edit
About the not moving, I don't have a way to easily check since the yet lower amount of rooms makes my old save crash, but I think it has something to do with room numbers. Removing the left wing in superluminal and creating four other separated rooms (just so it'd launch, really) made it work, I guess because the deleted rooms (I think with IDs 0 and 1) made the numbers move over (changing where every system was, too), and the crew started moving. If you have a good save that works, I could try some other things, as it is I have to change room amount too much and I can't be sure what helped in the end even if I do something.

Oh, and a little more on balance, maybe it could be less crazy if the bombs were separated by effect or something, some could start fires but not do (as much) damage, some would do more crew damage, not all of this stuff at once. 2-3 bombs and fire to the shield room or something else essential right before a surge is just too impossible to stop (cloaking is pretty much the only good way) to be a reasonable worst case scenario.
meklozz
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby meklozz » Wed Dec 28, 2016 3:40 am

Gidoza wrote:When you fought X, were you on Hard, or not Hard? On Hard, all of those Artillery are going to be set at 4, but on Normal/Easy I had them set to different values. So yeah this is where knowing the difficulty level makes a difference.

It was normal, I've since tested a little more and it looks like all the artilleries may always default to the level of the last one on the list. This is probably why stages 1 and 2 of the vanilla flagship have all of them at 3 despite showing 4 in the files, and only go to 4 in phase 3 where there's no more beam or ion to mess things up.
This would mean you can only have all artilleries at one specific level at a time. If that's indeed the case, you could just make them all different weapons with different cooldowns (could also do different effects for each).

I'm not sure what about rooms it is, I don't really have a way to easily test now, either. I doubt it's anything about their position (and number is probably only relevant to my crashing game because of a save file), I think it may be about early room number IDs being separated from the main body.

And I'm not sure which version I played, but even at 3 bombs each I think it has too much ability to randomly screw you out of vital systems. There's a reason enemies don't get too much access to bombs in vanilla, and so many of them at once.. It takes a seriously specialized ship.
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Marinealver
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby Marinealver » Wed Mar 29, 2017 5:38 am

I would like to see different flagships for different races. Also have the pursuit fleet match the faction of the flagship. you could have a mantis flagship and a mantis fleet that drops mantis boarders when it catches you.
Warp Drive or Hyperspace?
Ferociousfeind
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Re: Flagship Diversity Beta - Need Testers!

Postby Ferociousfeind » Mon Jul 17, 2017 2:16 am

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I want to try Flagship E, please. :D