[Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.4

Distribute and discuss mods that are functional. Moderator - Grognak
Jonfon
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 2:35 pm

[Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.4

Postby Jonfon » Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:51 am

This is pretty much a mod of my messing around with the various editors and FTL files out there. Many of the weapons are probably unbalanced as I was just trying interesting combos out and messing around with the XML structure (although I've tried to behave myself balance wise things are probably still all over the place).

I've updated the graphics (by splicing up the some Jelly and some Auto ships and learning lots from other peoples mods) so the ship has it's own graphics now. I'll keep updating as I go.

Links to screenshots
Image
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3xwjoqecc8zfkbi/Shot1.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oeppyhw495rsdoh/2013-01-22_00007.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9q3k4dar5cufp9q/2013-01-22_00010.jpg

Using the Cryonic Pulse weapon :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eiozqtn2d6ve6iw/2013-01-22_00013.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/34yj5n63jmo4ui2/2013-01-22_00015.jpg

Introduction
The Nexus Robotic Salvage Cruiser is a Engi ship designed to work without a crew. It is a originally a repair, refitting and salvage vessel which has been sent on a desperate mission by its creators. It replaces the B Engi ship. In fact in many ways it's just a refit of that in an attempt to make it more interesting.

Download
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qygftzo2jznwean/The%20Nexus.ftl

Features
  • The Nexus is controlled by an AI. This means it works like the other enemy AI vessels in the game, all count as manned, Oxygen is not needed and it cannot be 'killed' by losing any crew members which join (or are generated. See below).
  • The Nexus is unshielded initially. It is slighter tougher than other ships and comes with a Repair Arm to counter this. In some scenarios you will be in serious trouble however; unmanned enemy ships + beam weapons + drones + an asteroid field isn't nice for example.
  • You start without a Medical Bay. Since you are crewed by an AI augmented with holographic crew a medical bay wasn't deemed necessary by the designers of the ship. You can of course purchase one in a Store.
  • The Nexus is armed with Radiation based weapons, a system disabling cutting beam and a "wrecking" drone designed to disable systems and cause hull breaches. It has no initial direct damaging systems, relying on disabling ships and killing the crew via its Radiation weapons and suffocation.
  • The version included uses a Thoron Radiation weapon (see details below) used to disable, purge and cleanse enemy ships. It also uses a cutting beam to dissect enemy ships and a Nanite Repair bomb to repair hull damage.
  • The Nexus has a unique feature : Holographic Crew (a la Red Dwarf). At the start of the game you gain 3-5 Holographic 'Ghost' Crew. At the end of every sector you can choose to bring another holographic crewmember online. These crew can repair, man stations to gain experience or go on boarding attacks. They do not need Oxygen, however they are quite puny in a fight (Rimmers don't make great fighters). The teleporter was added to give an option for dealing with unmanned ships early on, at the cost of one of your holo-crew.
  • The ship will function quite happily without its holo-crew. It will even slowly repair damaged systems without them or the System Repair Drone if it is taken offline. However you won't gain Station Experience if you are unmanned.

Slug Bomber
*New* I've changed the Slug B ship to a bomber which uses an array of new bombs and a small Disruptor.

Other bits and bobs
I've also added the following new weapons and drones. In most cases I've simply copy and pasted the FTL entries and reused the FTL graphics. I hope to add unique graphics (eventually, I've had a look and the radiation weapons use recoloured ion blasts for their 'bullets' ) :
  • Gamma Radiation and Thoron Radiation weapons. Gamma Radiation does Personal Damage but nothing else. It's pretty much a anti-bio laser burst. It can pierce 1 layer of shields. Thoron Radiation Weapons do Ion and Personal Damage.
  • Disruptor Weapons do Ion and Hull damage. The beam version of this was borked so it's been disabled. The Disruptor Drone may still be OP (he's very, very slooooow).
  • Plasma Beams do Hull Damage and start Fires. There is one ship plasma weapon and one Plasma Beam Drone which is slower than normal beam combat drones (but a pyromaniac).
  • Plasma Bombs combine all the fun of a Fire Bomb and a Crystal Lockdown Bomb in one. They do no direct damage.
  • Cutting Beams do System Damage only. They also have a high breach chance, but that doesn't work with beams. The 'Cutter' Drone uses a Cutting laser instead which does breach.
  • Nanite Hull Repair bombs do exactly as you'd expect, expending a missile and repairing your ship.
  • Cluster Breach Bombs fire off 3 times, doing personal damage and having a good chance of causing a breach. These are evil in 2x2 rooms.
  • The Cryonic Pulse Weapon fires a freeze beam which can severly damage crew, lock down a room and cause light system damage. This weapon is not yet balanced.

I've finished the game on Easy with this ship but as noted above the lack of a shield can make it frustrating early on. Disable them before they disable you is the motto, if you start losing systems things can go bad very quickly. With regards to balance not having to worry about oxygen gives you a big advantage against boarders and fires, so I don't know if the ship removes too many of the frantic, interesting times which FTL can put you through :)

All feedback welcome. As I said a lot of this was just me messing around but hopefully I've avoided making things too overpowered and haven't made the game uninteresting when playing this ship :)

Thanks to thashepard, Kieve and alextfish for feedback (and your own great mods which I've been playing and dissecting to see how things work and why mine was broken so much) and BrenTankage for the play throughs and bug reports.
Last edited by Jonfon on Tue Jan 22, 2013 1:22 am, edited 8 times in total.
thashepherd
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Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby thashepherd » Fri Jan 18, 2013 4:58 am

BEAM_CUTTING has a breach chance of 150 :)

Overall, I like it. Creative weapons, great to see someone else getting his feet wet!
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"Wow, that Kieve guy is one angsty nerd eh."
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Kieve
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Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby Kieve » Fri Jan 18, 2013 5:43 am

thashepherd wrote:BEAM_CUTTING has a breach chance of 150 :)


I have to know, in testing this did that beam ever once breach the hull? Because I've tried making beams with breaching and no matter what I do the damn thing just doesn't want to work. Ever.
Jonfon
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 2:35 pm

Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby Jonfon » Fri Jan 18, 2013 8:22 am

Kieve wrote:
thashepherd wrote:BEAM_CUTTING has a breach chance of 150 :)


I have to know, in testing this did that beam ever once breach the hull? Because I've tried making beams with breaching and no matter what I do the damn thing just doesn't want to work. Ever.


Nope, the 150 was initially 10, then 15, now 150. Still nothing :)

I watched this beam in action against an AI ship with its weapons disabled for around 10 minutes at Breach 10, 15 and 150 and never once saw a breach happen.

The cutter drone also had a smaller version of the same weapon and again it never triggered. So I think we can say that beam breaches are bugged / not working (in fact once I observed this I went to check here and saw same thing reported in a few posts).
Grumpy
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Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2012 8:07 pm

Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby Grumpy » Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:28 pm

There is a bug with your mod :shock:
When i was fighting with a automatic ship i shot it with beams stuff like that and i didn't destroy it.
but any ways the game is great and everything.
Jonfon
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 2:35 pm

Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby Jonfon » Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:51 pm

Grumpy wrote:There is a bug with your mod :shock:
When i was fighting with a automatic ship i shot it with beams stuff like that and i didn't destroy it.
but any ways the game is great and everything.


That's not a bug, it's a feature :)

You *can* beat an auto ship with the ship starting off, but it's mighty dull. Beam ghosties across and beat up his systems, wait for them to be repaired and repeat. I usually just wait for the Jump and leg it instead.
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BrenTenkage
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Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby BrenTenkage » Sat Jan 19, 2013 6:13 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dxXZY7S ... e=youtu.be

a fun ship...however I might have stumbled on a glitch, I had a full crew, then selected, add more crew at the beacon...it crashed my game LOL

So yeah, other then that, awesome mod, I really liked it
I make a lot of lets plays of FTL, I also use mods I find on this site http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... 06hca_PXuX
I am also a modder as well, here is my mod hub viewtopic.php?f=11&t=32269
Jonfon
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 2:35 pm

Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby Jonfon » Sat Jan 19, 2013 8:21 am

BrenTenkage wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dxXZY7SUI0&feature=youtu.be

a fun ship...however I might have stumbled on a glitch, I had a full crew, then selected, add more crew at the beacon...it crashed my game LOL

So yeah, other then that, awesome mod, I really liked it


Thanks.

I was hoping that the game would deal with the 8-man limit itself, it's using the standard "crewMember" tag in events to add them but it is a random amount between 1-3. I think I read that adding more than 1 when you already have a full complement causes issues.

Maybe I'll change it so End of Sector events only ever add one crewmember but the ghosties are so puny that being able to add 1-3 makes more sense...

Edit : I've made those changes now. You get 3-5 Rimmers at the start of the game and only 1 on the end zones now. Only known issue is that if you enter another Civilian Sector you'll get the 3-5 dialogue again.

I've also changed the Thoron Bomb to the Nanite Repair Bomb on the Nexus and re-enabled my Bomber variant of the Slugs B ship which is outfitted with some new bombs and a small Disruptor.
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BrenTenkage
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Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby BrenTenkage » Sat Jan 19, 2013 5:12 pm

Alright, glad you adressed some of the issues, so enjoy the lets play, because I certainl had fun playing with, "The ship of the damned" so how did you get it to repair itself?
I make a lot of lets plays of FTL, I also use mods I find on this site http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... 06hca_PXuX
I am also a modder as well, here is my mod hub viewtopic.php?f=11&t=32269
Jonfon
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 2:35 pm

Re: [Mod][Wip] Robotic Cruiser v0.2

Postby Jonfon » Sun Jan 20, 2013 12:28 am

BrenTenkage wrote:Alright, glad you addressed some of the issues, so enjoy the lets play, because I certainl had fun playing with, "The ship of the damned" so how did you get it to repair itself?


I fudged it by starting with both the Repair arm and giving it the Nanite Repair bomb instead of the Thoron (ion & personal damage) bomb.

I do love watching the Cutter Drone in action on your playthrough, there's something very satisfying about watching him punch holes in their hull.

I noticed you lamented the lack of a Med Bay on the ship. The initial concept was that the Rimmers are basically red shirts which die a lot. Holograms wouldn't need a medbay, you just make more at the end of each sector but the bug you noticed kinda scuppers that. Mind you the holo generator isn't as needed after sector 1 so it could be considered a fair swap selling it to get medbay instead.

In an ideal world I'd have simply made the Holographic Generator act as a repair arm but because the name of an Augment determines how it works it was impossible to roll the two into one (I'd kill for a Type element in augments so you could create custom augments more easily).

The mod now features a new Beam weapon, the Cryonic Beam which inflicts minor system and major Personal damage. This was actually a test of a Lockdown beam concept, but it appears that the lockdown attribute is like the Breach one and won't work with Beam weapons. :cry: Because of this no ship starts with it but it should be in the shops. I've a few ideas there, involving a 3 shot laser burst weapon which does the same sort of thing.

Latest version is available from the link on the initial post (https://www.dropbox.com/s/qygftzo2jznwean/The%20Nexus.ftl).