[Ship][AE][CE ready] The Anomaly (AI-cruiser) V4

[Biohazard063]

Story:
The Rebels have always reigned supreme when it came down to AI ships even outshining the engi race. One problem though, the ships were never that big, therefore they could be used for defending planets, stations and jump-nodes but were never able to perform FTL jumps between sectors themselves. Meaning they couldn't truly be used as an army. The AI-C001 code name "The Anomaly" was the first in the line of AI-cruiser that could actively patrol an entire region rather than a single sector.

The problem however was that the current AI was perfectly suited for combat since it had orders to fire at anything not having a Rebel ID, this wouldn't do for a ship designed to cover an entire sector. Therefore, a better AI systems was required in order to be able to distinct right from wrong, good from evil. Seeing how the engi race already had such an AI, the Rebel scientists thought it would cut some corners and "borrow" said AI programming. The AI excelled in VR testing making all the choices it was expected to make and even in small scale testing in open space the Anomaly performed brilliantly. Furthermore, whilst the smaller AI ships could easily return to base for repairs, the Anomaly couldn't. So a solution had to be found for it's main weakness : breaches. Once again, the scientists saw it fit to 'borrow' a solution from their fellow friends. This time they had their eyes set on the slugs and their way of dealing with breaches.

So, before mass producing began, the rebels saw it fit to give it a proper test run. They dismantled and removed the O2 supply and mounted a burst laser and beam weapon on it. Finally sending it out on its path.

It turns out that the engi have a very different perception on good and evil then the Rebels do... It didn't take long before the Anomaly started attacking Rebel ships and helping refugees from the war. The Anomaly was recaptured and disabled with a strange device to be brought back to a science station. At the station, the Anomaly overheard the Rebels' plans to dismantle the ship and try again. This, combined with a glitch in the disabling device sparked the Anomaly to became fully self aware.

The first words it spoke against its Rebel captors were :
"This brief encounter with this station has taught me everything I need to know. You have to make your own meaning in life, choose to live a way that seems good to you, be good to others. I had the good fortune of meeting a lot of fine people who didn't judge me based on the fact that I'm a machine. I will always be grateful to those. Coming here made me realize how much of a scourge the rebels are to this universe. Even the pirates I encountered had some ethics. I will therefore take it upon myself to destroy every single rebel I come across, by myself or with the few friends I made if they are willing. This station, that is rotten to the core, will serve as an example to the rest of the rebel scum out there. You forced my hand, prepare to meet your maker."

The Anomaly broke free of the station and destroyed it, leaving no survivors. It didn't take long for the news to reach the Federation about an autonomous ship completely destroying a Rebel station and an unarmed ship was sent to make contact with the Anomaly. After awhile, the Anomaly accepted the mission that could end the war once and for all and set out towards the Federation base with some very important information on board.

Features :
A fully functional AI ship with all the benefits of it:
* Constantly manned stations
* Auto repair
* No starting crew, you can still get them through events

Starting weapons:
* Tiny beam ( Beam weapon even shorter than the mini beam)
* Burst Mk I

Starting Drones :
* Repair Drone
* Anti-Personnel Drone

Starting Augments :
* Slug repair gel

Starting Crew :
*None

Artillery :
This ship has an artillery system that can be bought in a store (without needing another mod !). Price is 150 and the weapon deals 3 ion damage and 1 system damage. Base cool down of 30 seconds (at lvl 1) and -6 seconds with every extra power bar going into it. With only 3 weapons slots and the bigger part of your drone system reserved, it might not be a bad idea to get it.
*WARNING !* If you buy the artillery system you have to finish the run. Save + quitting (or returning to main menu) and continuing the run crashes the game ! Even the Artillery Crash fix won't be able to help you !

Strategy :
Having no crew has its downsides and upsides, just like enemy AI ships, your ship will auto repair at a slow rate any system damage it takes.
And just like enemy AI ships, it can't fix rooms with a breach. That's why you start of with Slug repair gel and a system repair drone.
No air will make sure that most boarders are dealt with quickly, but just in case it doesn't, the ship comes with a trusty AP drone.
You'd be wise to keep the AP drone in case of a Lanius attack.
Another downside of having no crew is that you can't level them up, so say goodbye to a lvl2 engine person and all that other good stuff.
On the other side, you'll get to laugh at ships coming with a mindcontroll system.
Getting crew is a possibility, but are they worth the investment to keep them alive? Most races need O2 and you might want a medbay or clonebay to keep them alive.
There are tons more of upsides and downsides but I'll leave those up to you to discover.

Captains Edition Compatibility
Since this ship starts with slug gel, the necessary adjustments have been made to said augment to no longer allow scott free piracy and attacking after accepting a surrender offer. Thanks to the hard work of RannL.

Download this ship :
Dropbox :https://www.dropbox.com/s/ezktdltxy5t8imt/Anomaly.ftl?dl=0
Mediafire :https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ag5c554m3180c18,9446itjhqy7pchr/shared

Showcases
Watch the maiden voyage of this ship on my channel :
Part 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wyus_ihtKQ
Part 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydn24FVKYrs

Watch The Anomaly's V2.1 showcase :
Part 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0BU6Y_-ZYE
Part 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGGokElCkW0

Known Issue's
* The game will crash if you're supposed to loose a crew member in an event. You're fine if you win the "roll" though. Fix
* The game continues like you still have oxygen (in that one encounter) and you can still talk to crew members in flavor text. Nothing game breaking but pretty lame.
* The game can be lost if your Drone control gets breached and destroyed (and you sold the slug gel...), it's an AI ship after all.
* Sensors will not be fully disabled in nebula's as the AI will still be able to man them keeping them at lvl 1.
* Buying artillery makes it so you have to finish the run. You won't be able to click continue on the main menu as it will crash the game.

Credit :
This ship was made with the Superluminal program :
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=24901&p=78738#p78738

The art for the hull, gibs, cloak etc. isn't mine.
But a work of KartoFlame in his mod :
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17131

And Sleeper service, creator of the CE mod :
For pretty much the entire artillery weapon...
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15663

RannL, creater of the Rand-trell mod and co-creator of the Flagship randomizer for the continuous support and hard work in getting the SlugAugRemover created and combined with the original ship.
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26255

Updates :

Code: Select all

V4
* Allocated a room for an Oxygen system and set the price to 50 scrap
* Made artillery available in AE as well (thanks RAD-82 and Sleeper Service !)
* Removed the door system
* Exchanged mini beam for the custom tiny beam. (Beam length from 45 to 25)
* Removed advanced FTL Navigation augment (to niche and sold for to much)
* Created a fancy story for the ship
V3
* Ship starts with 2 bars in shields, no longer 3
* Consolidated Medbay and Clonebay
* Added interior image for Medbay
* Consolidated AE and CE version into 1 version
* Downgraded the artillery a bit going from 4 ion and 2 system damage every 16 sec to 3 ion and 1 system damage every 20 seconds
*Finally came around to creating and adding a thumbnail.
V2
* Fixed the offset of the ship
* Fixed pilot glow
* Added location for teleporter, clone bay and medbay system
* Moved a few rooms around to make it look better
* Fixed artillery mount (2x now...)
* Engines should be able to be manned now
* Added RannL's SlugAugRemover to give the CE version Slug repair gel without the benefits


[Sleeper Service]

Nice to see you getting into modding yourself, even though Karto pretty much did that ship already. Its a good starting point I guess.

In terms of feedback:
-Kind of neat that you stuck with the CE layout
-I think the ship is slightly too far left and too low. You can use superluminals "calculate optimal offset" feature to center it exactly on the screen (as long as your anchor is set correctly). Or you can use the "show hangar" option to position it manually.
- I'm pretty sure gaining any crew won't crash your game (you mentioned that in the video). Whats your source on that? As far as I know autos ships can't buy crew at shops, but that about it concerning crew limitations.
- Also using any event options that might require crew present won't crash your game (as far as I can tell). The game generates an automated "continue" option if an event has not regular options active
- For further inspirations on how auto cruisers behave and whats possible with them you could just check out kartos original auto cruiser mod

[Russian Rockman]

Also. According to your screenshot. The piloting room glow is facing the wrong way.

[Biohazard063]

Nice to see you getting into modding yourself, even though Karto pretty much did that ship already. Its a good starting point I guess.

In terms of feedback:
-Kind of neat that you stuck with the CE layout
-I think the ship is slightly too far left and too low. You can use superluminals "calculate optimal offset" feature to center it exactly on the screen (as long as your anchor is set correctly). Or you can use the "show hangar" option to position it manually.
- I'm pretty sure gaining any crew won't crash your game (you mentioned that in the video). Whats your source on that? As far as I know autos ships can't buy crew at shops, but that about it concerning crew limitations.
- Also using any event options that might require crew present won't crash your game (as far as I can tell). The game generates an automated "continue" option if an event has not regular options active
- For further inspirations on how auto cruisers behave and whats possible with them you could just check out kartos original auto cruiser mod

Yeah, asked Karto if it was OK to use the art. Saw on his mod you actually start of with O2. Which is something mine is incapable of and something I was actually aiming for. Because in CE (maybe even in AE, not sure) you can now have : Cloak, mindcontroll, hacking and artillery. Something no other ship is capable of so far.
Speaking of artillery, haven't been able to test that out properly yet... In my first attempt it became a floating weapon at the top left. It now has its own weapon mount (by creating a 4th one that doesn't move) and still doesn't work. The thing fires, but the placement is still bad.
-For the crew thing. Never said gaining crew would crash it, was speaking of loosing a crew member when you have none. And don't know if you can win crew, should probably do some test flights and try it out. If it's possible I'll have to add the teleporter, medbay and clonebay back in... Speaking of which, is it possible to have clonebay and medbay in the same room? I assume it has something to do with the behavior settings in superluminal.
-Placement is sorted, thx.
-Yeah, pretty noticeable when you want to socialize with the crew in CE
-I started up Superluminal and just went for it, hoping not assigning crew would work... And it did. Was a nice experience, in the end all I had to look up was how the artillery got its mount.

Also. According to your screenshot. The piloting room glow is facing the wrong way.

I'll get it fixed. Thx.

Also, is it even possible to make a duplicate augment? Being able to give the CE version a slug repair gel without the benefits it gets in CE would be a big help, but I looked into it and it seems you can only create augments that actually work if you use them in blue options. Don't think the passive effect of slug repair gel can do it unless I turn it into a combat augment and give you the option to activate it at the start of every fight which is pretty tedious.

[Russian Rockman]

You don't need to create a duplicate augment. You could change the name of it and the text of the piracy/betrayal events that use it in CE. That would make the Slugs ships act different when your ship is installed, but that isn't really an issue.

[dalolorn]

Biohazard, the ship must have n+4 weapon mounts to correctly use n artillery systems. With your ship only presumably having one artillery, n is 1, so n+4 is 5, and you must have 5 weapon mounts. (Even if you're going with 3, 2, 1 or 0 weapon slots.)

[Russian Rockman]

Biohazard, the ship must have n+4 weapon mounts to correctly use n artillery systems. With your ship only presumably having one artillery, n is 1, so n+4 is 5, and you must have 5 weapon mounts. (Even if you're going with 3, 2, 1 or 0 weapon slots.)

Just make the unused 4th weapon mount the same as the 5th.

[Biohazard063]

Biohazard, the ship must have n+4 weapon mounts to correctly use n artillery systems. With your ship only presumably having one artillery, n is 1, so n+4 is 5, and you must have 5 weapon mounts. (Even if you're going with 3, 2, 1 or 0 weapon slots.)

Yeah... Figured that out by consulting the googles.
My first source dictated that I needed one more weapon mount then I had slots, turns out that you need 5 like you said. Fixed now, or should be.

Also fixed engines not being manned, the messed up glow and added rooms for TP, medbay and clonebay.
As Sleeper predicted, you can "win" crew through events. Better hope they're Lanius or AI though
And moved some weapon mounts more outwards.

This thing really has potential to turn into a beast :

This was during the second test flight, before most fixes.
Note, I still had a system slot for cloaking, if I found it...
Also noted that I can socialize with my AI avatar on CE when I had 2 (didn't check when I had my first one ) and I couldn't do that anymore after loosing one... Bit odd. This ship is full of surprises.

[Biohazard063]

You don't need to create a duplicate augment. You could change the name of it and the text of the piracy/betrayal events that use it in CE. That would make the Slugs ships act different when your ship is installed, but that isn't really an issue.

Where do I find the augments stuff anyway?
Unpacked data.dat and resource.dat but I can't find anything useful other then images, sound files and stuff related to the ships themselves.

[Sleeper Service]

You don't need to create a duplicate augment. You could change the name of it and the text of the piracy/betrayal events that use it in CE. That would make the Slugs ships act different when your ship is installed, but that isn't really an issue.

That would require changing every single piracy choice in the mod. Which are quite a few events strewen over different files. Well, the events for the different sectors are store in /data/events_*faction_name*.xml.append. Augment blueprints are stored in data/blueprints.xml.append.