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

Distribute and discuss mods that are functional. Moderator - Grognak
New Guy
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby New Guy » Wed Apr 30, 2014 12:32 pm

I suppose now is the time to rip apart the XML and see how they work, individually :P
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Russian Rockman
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby Russian Rockman » Wed Apr 30, 2014 12:37 pm

New Guy wrote:I suppose now is the time to rip apart the XML and see how they work, individually :P


You going to do that? Because your findings on all the new attributes would be much appreciated. I haven't had time to do much of anything lately...

The drone_targetable tag only seems to work one way. E.g. it can make a laser weapon into a missile for drone targeting purposes, but not vice-versa. At least I know it can't make a laser completely untargetable. Apparently though since the swarm missiles now use this tag I assume it works on non-burst weapons? Other attributes might work the same way on other weapons.

All BURST weapons have the drone_targetable tag though so I am actually interested if removing this tag could make some completely untargetable projectiles finally...
New Guy
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby New Guy » Wed Apr 30, 2014 12:40 pm

I'll eventually get to that, seeing as I (as of yet) know 0% FTL XML code apart from weapons, and that modding is fun. :D

E: Food for thought: Has anybody tried giving drones a chain damage increase with their weapons? I wonder if it works...
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keptick
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby keptick » Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:06 pm

I haven't tried it yet but already from the visuals I can tell that this is a quality mod. Looks absolutely fantastic!
Kaerius
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby Kaerius » Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:10 pm

New Guy wrote:But we need more time-based Chain weapons (vulcan types).

I'd like to see more non-cooldown chain weapons... like chain fire chance, shield pierce, etc.

Heck a projectile chain weapon would be cool. Like chain +1 projectile(with a cap around 4 or 5). Say 1 damage, 13 sec cooldown, starts with 1 projectile, gains one every time it shoots to a max of 5.

... sidenote: I'm working on a mod with this... a procedurally generated weapon mod that will be absolutely huge...
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Sleeper Service
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby Sleeper Service » Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:30 pm

Russian Rockman wrote:The drone_targetable tag only seems to work one way. E.g. it can make a laser weapon into a missile for drone targeting purposes, but not vice-versa. At least I know it can't make a laser completely untargetable. Apparently though since the swarm missiles now use this tag I assume it works on non-burst weapons? Other attributes might work the same way on other weapons.


I think setting it to <droneTargetable>2</droneTargetable> allows the projectiles to be targeted by lvl 2 and lvl 1 defense drones. At last thats what some short testing has shown.

Russian Rockman wrote:At least I know it can't make a laser completely untargetable. Apparently though since the swarm missiles now use this tag I assume it works on non-burst weapons?


Yeah, it seems to work there as well. Having some weapons be completely untargetable could indeed be interesting. Maybe light lasers should be untargetable as they move to fast to be intercepted anyway...

Russian Rockman wrote:Every enemy i face in vanilla up to sector 3 always seems to have a Leto missile. Consistently... Is there like some sort of algorithm you using Sleeper? :lol: Seriously, I don't have a good enough grasp on weapon rarities and such to know how stores enemies generate their weapons. Is there a good tutorial on that somewhere?


Nope, only speculation. But to me it feels like the stores first roles the rarity lvl (1-5) for each weapon slot and then picks a weapon from that rarity for this slot. But I have no real idea how it works exactly. Enemies don't take rarity into account I think, demonstrated by the fact that they also draw rarity=0 weapons. I think the different weapon categories affect what enemies draw. For example it seems less likely for enemies to have two missiles. CE Swarms are considered LASER and the game seem to draw them more often than regular missile.

Russian Rockman wrote:I honestly have no idea how Sleeper keeps Captain's Edition even remotely balanced. Like it doesn't seem any "less" balanced than the original game.


OK here is the secret: Most of CEs gear matches vanilla weapons in DPS/powercost and other values. The Peryton is basically a Artemis, High tier Light Lasers match the damage potential of the Anti-Bio Beam, the Plasma Throwers are basically Fire Beams in disguise and so on. Does not always work out perfectly, especially with weapons that do new things, but it is a good starting point.

Ion Flak and some of the other stuff are something to consider. I actually already started to do a weapon graphic for that one a while ago. ;) I also like the idea of the stun cryo weapon, but as the crystal lockdown graphic can not be changed for specific weapons Id rather make this some kind of Mark II lockdown weapon. I guess it is also time to revisit the ion beams again, I test on how exactly one pixel variant behave against multiple shield layers.
New Guy
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby New Guy » Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:48 pm

Kaerius wrote:
New Guy wrote:But we need more time-based Chain weapons (vulcan types).

I'd like to see more non-cooldown chain weapons... like chain fire chance, shield pierce, etc.

Heck a projectile chain weapon would be cool. Like chain +1 projectile(with a cap around 4 or 5). Say 1 damage, 13 sec cooldown, starts with 1 projectile, gains one every time it shoots to a max of 5.

... sidenote: I'm working on a mod with this... a procedurally generated weapon mod that will be absolutely huge...


Wait. It's possible to chain those other attributes?
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Kaerius
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby Kaerius » Wed Apr 30, 2014 2:11 pm

New Guy wrote:
Kaerius wrote:
New Guy wrote:But we need more time-based Chain weapons (vulcan types).

I'd like to see more non-cooldown chain weapons... like chain fire chance, shield pierce, etc.

Heck a projectile chain weapon would be cool. Like chain +1 projectile(with a cap around 4 or 5). Say 1 damage, 13 sec cooldown, starts with 1 projectile, gains one every time it shoots to a max of 5.

... sidenote: I'm working on a mod with this... a procedurally generated weapon mod that will be absolutely huge...


Wait. It's possible to chain those other attributes?

I sure hope so, haven't reached a testing phase yet, mostly because I've been swamped with real life work.

We already know damage and cooldown are possible to chain.
Russian Rockman
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby Russian Rockman » Wed Apr 30, 2014 2:43 pm

Sleeper Service wrote:OK here is the secret: Most of CEs gear matches vanilla weapons in DPS/powercost and other values. The Peryton is basically a Artemis, High tier Light Lasers match the damage potential of the Anti-Bio Beam, the Plasma Throwers are basically Fire Beams in disguise and so on. Does not always work out perfectly, especially with weapons that do new things, but it is a good starting point.



The hard part about keeping the balance then it seems is keeping the proportions the same between the different weapon types. For example, it seems like we are getting a little high on the number of beam weapons we have now and a little low on the number of ions.

Another thing I want to do when I have time is make a chart of every CE and vanilla weapons and its rarity for reference.

Kaerius wrote:
Wait. It's possible to chain those other attributes?

I sure hope so, haven't reached a testing phase yet, mostly because I've been swamped with real life work.

We already know damage and cooldown are possible to chain.


It would be worth testing. Sleeper says it didn't seem to work with Shield Piercing though. A way to test this would be to give a weapon with 0 breach or fire chance some increasing "chain" fire/breach chance. Thèn if you managed to start a fire or breach at all you would know it works. If this were the case you could give every weapon I. The game a slight "chaining" ability in some arbitrary stat.
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Sleeper Service
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Re: FTL Captain's Edition 1.207b/Inf 1.207/EL 0.97c

Postby Sleeper Service » Wed Apr 30, 2014 3:05 pm

Kaerius wrote:I sure hope so, haven't reached a testing phase yet, mostly because I've been swamped with real life work.

We already know damage and cooldown are possible to chain.

That and shots is pretty much all thats possible as far as I know, but I haven't done much testing. Shield piercing did not work for example.

Russian Rockman wrote:The hard part about keeping the balance then it seems is keeping the proportions the same between the different weapon types. For example, it seems like we are getting a little high on the number of beam weapons we have now and a little low on the number of ions.

Yeah, that effects what the player can get, but not what enemies can have. Their lists are filled with roughly the same proportions of weapons from each category like in vanilla.