sM Polish Kit: Insurrection v1.6 [CE Support + Modules]

[slowriderxcorps]

CE patch has been updated for 1.264. In development news otherwise, I've experimented with hair colour on the Human crew members (to an inexplicably large amount of frustration since, for no logical reason, the dark-skinned humans were suddenly looking awful no matter what head of hair they were wearing). A limited number of hair colours has been added, with the intent to add more if I can get them to look good and natural enough.

Also an experiment with the Rebel Line aphid that I've put off for far too long. My goal with this is to try and add an accurate simulation line for one more jump, with additional lines that apply when the ship is in a nebula, and in a nebula in a nebula.. beacon. I'll test these out at the next opportunity, but as always, opinions would be very useful.

[R4V3-0N]

question of curiosity... what exactly is sM Polish Kit?

It confuses me a bit.

[slowriderxcorps]

Nothing like a question to start off the day, right? The original aim of the kit was that of what could be best described as a 'refinement patch', aiming to sort out graphical and gameplay-based nuances within the core FTL experience without significantly altering it. You could say in that regard, it's best compared to DarkTwinge's Balance Mod, but with added graphical fidelity.

Now I could end the spiel there, but for some reason I'm feeling the urge to go about writing an essay, so I'll keep going. The additional extras that come with the kit came about from wishing to make the experience much more customisable, allowing players to use as few or as many fancy new things as they wish without forcing them upon the player, as in CE which would take a ridiculous amount of effort from Sleeper to rewrite in such a way, so much that it simply wouldn't be worth trying.

The first extra was that of the compatibility patch for CE, with the aim of ensuring that both the core kit and CE can be run in tandem without either mod causing any sort of significant game issues. However the patch also looks into the balance of all the equipment added in CE and uses the power of moderately-educated mindwork to rebalance them. As of recent memory, I do believe that some of the balance issues were sorted out within CE itself, but many still remain. From the top of my head, these include:

Code: Select all

* A two power, four damage missile, I think it's called the Ares Missile in CE but is named the Apollo Missile in the patch. Given that the two-power player Hermes isn't a part of basic CE, the fact that there's a missile that costs less power yet deals more damage is ridiculous, especially when enemies can use it, and because of its lower power requirement they'll use it just as often as Artemis missiles. I understand that the charge time being identical to the Breach Missile is part of the reasoning why it's two power, but I personally don't agree with it. In addition to the whole Player Hermes thing, the CE patch makes this weapon a three-power weapon with a noticeably faster charge time, about 18 seconds.

* Fully-automatic lasers. These have been rebalanced in core CE numerous times, but ultimately in the wrong direction. They were initially designed as shield-suppression weapons, but their rate of fire is ultimately too slow for them to work acceptably in that role, so in the patch, their fire rate was increased, for 4 seconds on the two-power Mark 1 and 3 for the three-power Mark 2.

* Light Lasers. About the only weapon class that eventually got changed entirely in purpose in the patch, it's also been altered countless times in basic CE in order to increase their usefulness, mostly regarding their shield-piercing capacity. Initially, the only thing I could do, aside from increasing penetration, was to simply make the weapons of the highest rarity so they simply wouldn't get in the way of much more useful weapon drops, as they are essentially super-nerfy Anti-Bio Beam-like weapons, something so incredibly niche that it rarely gets used outside of the Man Of War. The weapon rarity changes were effected across the board to improve the loot pool, if I recall. Now though, I made a strange decision and completely rewired what they do. In exchange for the weakening of the shield piercing to the original levels, the weapons also deal system damage, turning them into laser-based Small Bombs essentially, able to shut down ships without damaging the hull. I don't think the Light Laser drones have been retired to do this though.. I'll need to check that.

* Micro-Missile Batteries. Okay, I guess these were altered significantly as well, and for the longest time these were by far the biggest criticism of CE balance, so much that they were completely changed in base CE.. to the point of being quite pointless. They were meant to be missiles that sacrificed a little of their ability to damage ship systems in order to be capable of slipping past Tier 1 Defense Drones without being shot at. Unfortunately, the result of this was that they resulted in being a total menace for practically every single player ship throughout their journey, as there was simply no reliable method of defending against them outside of Cloaking, since the more affordable Tier 2 Defense Drones had a charge time too slow to really be worth using in the first place, and their high damage-power ratio meant they racked up the hull points at an alarming rate. Even the mighty MantisB was considered to be one of the worst ships to face CE with simply because it couldn't do anything about them. The other massive problem they had was that they were classified as Lasers in the game code so that they could evade the drones. This was the only way it could be done before Advanced Edition came out, and the means to make Missile-class weapons invisible to simple drones is now available. But they're still classified as Lasers and because of the way FTL chooses weapons for enemies to spawn with, favouring lasers over missiles and never having missile-only builds unless the ship had only 1 level in Weapons.. they show up A LOT.

That's a long enough spiel as-is, but I'm not even finished yet. Before AE came out, I had taken to trying to rebalance these weapons by reducing their shield piercing capacity significantly down to 2, while making enemy variants more costly to run. The result of this is that they were still very threatening in the early game, but once you got a third shield layer running on your ship you now had a semi-reliable Defense against them, since they can still quite easily sneak in amidst a volley of laser or drone fire. It also gave the weapons a more unique feel and purpose as a hull-damaging weapon. However in basic CE now, they're simply normal missiles with lower power requirements, less system damage and a vulnerability to all Defense drones. To be honest, they've taken a massive grace-fall.

* Stealth Missiles. I'll bring them up while on the topic of missiles just to throw that they had a power requirement increase in order to balance the fact that they are unassailable missiles that deal their full damage to systems, unlike the micro missiles.

* Scattershot Weapons. Particularly the Heavy Laser ones. In core CE, they are quite simply nerfy Heavy Lasers with no real benefit to using them when the other is an option. In the patch, they take upon the role of an anti-hull weapon, dealing pretty severe damage to armour but dealing reduced damage to systems. In addition, adding to the 'feel' of some weapons, every weapon that fires in a scatter fashion including the micro missiles had their shot speed reduced slightly, making them more unique to fire.

I get the feeling I've said enough at this point, though there's still so much to go about. My closing note on the CE patch is that it initially did so much more with it, including several alterations to noticeably overpunishing events. However, after AE came out, I didn't really want to go about that anymore, since every singe time CE got updated, the patch instantly became unusable. The design of the current patch is such that even if CE gets updated, an older version of the patch will still work fine, albeit with no mention of the new changes and additions.

In addition to the CE patch, other elements started to gain momentum as a result of developments in-scene (such as the whole Weapon Variant investigation that eventually gave birth to Endless Loot) and suggestions by other forum members (that resulted in several miscellaneous submods). By far the biggest personal development was in the weapons scene, what eventually became the Augmented Weapons Module, an addition that gave weapons variants that altered their behaviour and aesthetics in simple but effective ways. The module was made by-hand, with extensive testing made in regards to how adding a whole bunch of weapons would affect the chances of normal weapons appearing (the answer is ridiculously much, even if the variants are all of the highest rarity). As a result of the testing, only certain weapon variants can spawn in each type of sector, dropping the appearance rate of them to around 20% on average, giving them an aura of exclusivity that I don't believe happens in Endless Loot simply because that adds far more variants. The mod was eventually altered so that enemies could also spawn with the new weapons too, making their appearance much more prominent without them blatantly overstaying their welcome.

I guess the last part I need to speak of is the (still unofficial) Insurrection expansion. My best description of this is the spiritual successor to something known as the darkMod, a personal testing board for mods that I personally compiled from all sorts of mods on the forum that acted as my own little sandbox. It helped me teach myself the ropes about how modding FTL worked, what could be done and not done, but it clearly couldn't be made public for very obvious reasons. However after so long of having no more progress to make on the core polish kit, I decided I wanted to make something else to further flex my modding fingers, and so the expansion started to take form. It currently consists of a few new events, a select compilation of new weapons and drones, several alterations to the layouts of the player ships (and all-new optional player ships using the new equipment), a new late-game sector, and a flagship fight designed to be much more threatening. I still want to avoid calling it 'ready' though, despite the fact that I'm actively struggling to find more things to add, outside of making sure nothing is broken out of the box.

Yep, that was an essay alright.

[R4V3-0N]

Nothing like a question to start off the day, right? The original aim of the kit was that of what could be best described as a 'refinement patch', aiming to sort out graphical and gameplay-based nuances within the core FTL experience without significantly altering it. You could say in that regard, it's best compared to DarkTwinge's Balance Mod, but with added graphical fidelity.

Now I could end the spiel there, but for some reason I'm feeling the urge to go about writing an essay, so I'll keep going. The additional extras that come with the kit came about from wishing to make the experience much more customisable, allowing players to use as few or as many fancy new things as they wish without forcing them upon the player, as in CE which would take a ridiculous amount of effort from Sleeper to rewrite in such a way, so much that it simply wouldn't be worth trying.

The first extra was that of the compatibility patch for CE, with the aim of ensuring that both the core kit and CE can be run in tandem without either mod causing any sort of significant game issues. However the patch also looks into the balance of all the equipment added in CE and uses the power of moderately-educated mindwork to rebalance them. As of recent memory, I do believe that some of the balance issues were sorted out within CE itself, but many still remain. From the top of my head, these include:

Code: Select all

* A two power, four damage missile, I think it's called the Ares Missile in CE but is named the Apollo Missile in the patch. Given that the two-power player Hermes isn't a part of basic CE, the fact that there's a missile that costs less power yet deals more damage is ridiculous, especially when enemies can use it, and because of its lower power requirement they'll use it just as often as Artemis missiles. I understand that the charge time being identical to the Breach Missile is part of the reasoning why it's two power, but I personally don't agree with it. In addition to the whole Player Hermes thing, the CE patch makes this weapon a three-power weapon with a noticeably faster charge time, about 18 seconds.

* Fully-automatic lasers. These have been rebalanced in core CE numerous times, but ultimately in the wrong direction. They were initially designed as shield-suppression weapons, but their rate of fire is ultimately too slow for them to work acceptably in that role, so in the patch, their fire rate was increased, for 4 seconds on the two-power Mark 1 and 3 for the three-power Mark 2.

* Light Lasers. About the only weapon class that eventually got changed entirely in purpose in the patch, it's also been altered countless times in basic CE in order to increase their usefulness, mostly regarding their shield-piercing capacity. Initially, the only thing I could do, aside from increasing penetration, was to simply make the weapons of the highest rarity so they simply wouldn't get in the way of much more useful weapon drops, as they are essentially super-nerfy Anti-Bio Beam-like weapons, something so incredibly niche that it rarely gets used outside of the Man Of War. The weapon rarity changes were effected across the board to improve the loot pool, if I recall. Now though, I made a strange decision and completely rewired what they do. In exchange for the weakening of the shield piercing to the original levels, the weapons also deal system damage, turning them into laser-based Small Bombs essentially, able to shut down ships without damaging the hull. I don't think the Light Laser drones have been retired to do this though.. I'll need to check that.

* Micro-Missile Batteries. Okay, I guess these were altered significantly as well, and for the longest time these were by far the biggest criticism of CE balance, so much that they were completely changed in base CE.. to the point of being quite pointless. They were meant to be missiles that sacrificed a little of their ability to damage ship systems in order to be capable of slipping past Tier 1 Defense Drones without being shot at. Unfortunately, the result of this was that they resulted in being a total menace for practically every single player ship throughout their journey, as there was simply no reliable method of defending against them outside of Cloaking, since the more affordable Tier 2 Defense Drones had a charge time too slow to really be worth using in the first place, and their high damage-power ratio meant they racked up the hull points at an alarming rate. Even the mighty MantisB was considered to be one of the worst ships to face CE with simply because it couldn't do anything about them. The other massive problem they had was that they were classified as Lasers in the game code so that they could evade the drones. This was the only way it could be done before Advanced Edition came out, and the means to make Missile-class weapons invisible to simple drones is now available. But they're still classified as Lasers and because of the way FTL chooses weapons for enemies to spawn with, favouring lasers over missiles and never having missile-only builds unless the ship had only 1 level in Weapons.. they show up A LOT.

That's a long enough spiel as-is, but I'm not even finished yet. Before AE came out, I had taken to trying to rebalance these weapons by reducing their shield piercing capacity significantly down to 2, while making enemy variants more costly to run. The result of this is that they were still very threatening in the early game, but once you got a third shield layer running on your ship you now had a semi-reliable Defense against them, since they can still quite easily sneak in amidst a volley of laser or drone fire. It also gave the weapons a more unique feel and purpose as a hull-damaging weapon. However in basic CE now, they're simply normal missiles with lower power requirements, less system damage and a vulnerability to all Defense drones. To be honest, they've taken a massive grace-fall.

* Stealth Missiles. I'll bring them up while on the topic of missiles just to throw that they had a power requirement increase in order to balance the fact that they are unassailable missiles that deal their full damage to systems, unlike the micro missiles.

* Scattershot Weapons. Particularly the Heavy Laser ones. In core CE, they are quite simply nerfy Heavy Lasers with no real benefit to using them when the other is an option. In the patch, they take upon the role of an anti-hull weapon, dealing pretty severe damage to armour but dealing reduced damage to systems. In addition, adding to the 'feel' of some weapons, every weapon that fires in a scatter fashion including the micro missiles had their shot speed reduced slightly, making them more unique to fire.

I get the feeling I've said enough at this point, though there's still so much to go about. My closing note on the CE patch is that it initially did so much more with it, including several alterations to noticeably overpunishing events. However, after AE came out, I didn't really want to go about that anymore, since every singe time CE got updated, the patch instantly became unusable. The design of the current patch is such that even if CE gets updated, an older version of the patch will still work fine, albeit with no mention of the new changes and additions.

In addition to the CE patch, other elements started to gain momentum as a result of developments in-scene (such as the whole Weapon Variant investigation that eventually gave birth to Endless Loot) and suggestions by other forum members (that resulted in several miscellaneous submods). By far the biggest personal development was in the weapons scene, what eventually became the Augmented Weapons Module, an addition that gave weapons variants that altered their behaviour and aesthetics in simple but effective ways. The module was made by-hand, with extensive testing made in regards to how adding a whole bunch of weapons would affect the chances of normal weapons appearing (the answer is ridiculously much, even if the variants are all of the highest rarity). As a result of the testing, only certain weapon variants can spawn in each type of sector, dropping the appearance rate of them to around 20% on average, giving them an aura of exclusivity that I don't believe happens in Endless Loot simply because that adds far more variants. The mod was eventually altered so that enemies could also spawn with the new weapons too, making their appearance much more prominent without them blatantly overstaying their welcome.

I guess the last part I need to speak of is the (still unofficial) Insurrection expansion. My best description of this is the spiritual successor to something known as the darkMod, a personal testing board for mods that I personally compiled from all sorts of mods on the forum that acted as my own little sandbox. It helped me teach myself the ropes about how modding FTL worked, what could be done and not done, but it clearly couldn't be made public for very obvious reasons. However after so long of having no more progress to make on the core polish kit, I decided I wanted to make something else to further flex my modding fingers, and so the expansion started to take form. It currently consists of a few new events, a select compilation of new weapons and drones, several alterations to the layouts of the player ships (and all-new optional player ships using the new equipment), a new late-game sector, and a flagship fight designed to be much more threatening. I still want to avoid calling it 'ready' though, despite the fact that I'm actively struggling to find more things to add, outside of making sure nothing is broken out of the box.

Yep, that was an essay alright.

That sounds quite great.

If only I know a thing about mod order I would totally run this with CE and all those extra bits in between.

You seem to have quite a more advance knowledge in game balance then I do.
I'm just sitting here scratching my head thinking if literally all my weapons I made thus far for my overhaul mod
"FTL: Engi Brigade" is balanced, over powered, or underpowered meanwhile you are getting something what I thought was okay to even more balance and raising issues I never thought off.

I actually have not a single clue yet how an event looks like, none the less how to make my own.
Which is a problem seeing as my mod involves and is centered on events, changing and adding sectors, as well as the weapons and such.

[R4V3-0N]

The more I think about it the more I get scared of developing my whole overhaul mod alone with no experience in anything outside of player ships and weapons.

[slowriderxcorps]

I'm moderately sure that the Mod Order suggestions are listed either on the original post or inside the main file itself, which is just a zip holding a bunch of FTL mod files. The main things to note is that the main Polish Kit file goes first before everything else, any patches come after the item they are patching, and ship mods of all forms go dead last. I think there's hints on Mod Order and usage in the descriptions when viewed in Slipstream, too.

Event modification is by far the hardest thing to do in terms of mods though.. well, outside of creating graphics from scratch. There's a boatload of things that can go wrong with it, and I've had to patch out several errors I've made in additions I've made because I'm not exactly that good with them either.

[R4V3-0N]

Alright, thanks for the help.

I actually did create something from scratch earlier... keep in mind the only form of digital art I have ever done besides basic photo editing (contrast, bloom, etc) is FTL splicing however over time I did work tiny tiny bits to make the spliced parts flow smoothly...

My first weapon done by scratch.




What do you think?

[slowriderxcorps]

That actually looks pretty impressive for a custom-ship weapon. Some kind of shield-piercing beam? I would say that I'm not convinced that it fits entirely with the aesthetic of FTL, but on the right custom ship it would look pretty badass.

EDIT: Also had to put out an emergency fix onto the CE patch as this whole new wave of crew customisation was making the patch crash the game on startup. Bah.

[R4V3-0N]

That actually looks pretty impressive for a custom-ship weapon. Some kind of shield-piercing beam? I would say that I'm not convinced that it fits entirely with the aesthetic of FTL, but on the right custom ship it would look pretty badass.

planning to make it a special weapon for a special event in my overhaul mod but plans to be seen in a completely different mod that's a stand alone ship mod. However I will need to sacrifice systems quite a bit if I want it to be identical to the other one because it is a 4 energy weapon that does pen a shield (1 layer most likely) and does 2 damage.

I am thinking of something that is a mix of Mantis and a Lanius ship with a sharp design and some inspiration from multiple areas.

Is there a tutorial or any tools for events editing?

[slowriderxcorps]

Hmm.. I'm not entirely sure where the tutorials are on the forums, but they are definitely there. Honestly though, my best advice for learning how to do events would be to analyse them directly, learning exactly how each element comes together, since there's also a couple of new tricks added in AE that I don't think the tutorial covers. If all else fails, you can probably ask for a proofread on the Dev side of the mod forum.

As for what I'm doing now, I'm taking a 'hopeful at best' crack at seeing if I can improve the graphical fidelity of StealthC, since to be honest, the shadows on that ship look absolutely dreadful. This might predictably be a pain in the arse to work out, but I reckon it could work well, if I get it right.