[Ship/Conversion] Faster Than Christmas!

[Gencool]

Contains:

• New Crew sprites
• New Blue options (Engis have been rebuilt into a new, unpredictable, 'Elf' race)
• Custom ship (The Sleigher; Santa's personal mode of transport)
• New weapons (Including artillery on the Sleigher)
• New Sounds (lots of new sounds!)
• Gameplay tweaks (the mod is meant to be a little light-hearted, in the christmas spirit)
• Additional content for Captain's Edition / Crew'D users
• Probably a few bugs! (time limits, sorry...)

Please load with Slipstream.
Load after gameplay/visual mods (CE, C'D, etc) but before the Low Oxygen patch if you're using it.

The ice cracks under the Snowcruiser's giant runners as the ship slides to the edge of the runway.
The Elves work as fast as they can to load the last of the fuel into the engines; nearby a small team is fitting the new weapon system.

"Final checks!" Calls one;
"Dashers?" "On."
"Dancers?" "On."
"Prancers?" "On."
"Vixens?"

Through the commotion strides a giant. An ancient being - an ancestor the Elven kind - recently awoken from a deep, deep freeze.
The world is unfamiliar to him, even the stars have shifted their places in the night sky. Yet the cold that bites is not from the snow, but from the conflict raging through a once peaceful strech of universe.
He knows where this destruction will lead. He's fought his battles, but maybe it's time to fight one more.

He turns to face his new ship - not a war machine by any stretch, but hopefully sturdy enough to bring back the peace he remembers so fondly.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33495735/FTXmass/FasterThanXmas_v006.ftl
V006! - (Updated 9/Dec/2014) - (fixed some events not loading when they should, hopefully fixed some text being loaded wrong)
-(dropbox) -


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33495735/FTXmass/FasterThanXmas_v005.ftl
V005 - (Updated 8/Dec/2014) - patch note (mild alterations to text and events, made certain items much more useful)
-(dropbox) -



https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33495735/FTXmass/FasterThanXmas_v004.ftl
V004 - (Updated 7/Dec/2014) - patch note (fixed a few bugs and spelling errors, altered Artillery slightly)
-(dropbox) -

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33495735/FTXmass/FasterThanXmas_v003.ftl
V003 - (Updated 27/Nov/2014)
-(dropbox) -






https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33495735/FTXmass/FastThanXmas-CrewD_CE_Patch.ftl
(Updated 27/Nov/2014)
-(dropbox) -

------ Load this over the main mod if you wish to use the latest Captain's Edition, or if you use my Crew'D mod.
Doing so unlocks some additional content that wouldn't work without at least one of those mods being installed.




Crew Diversity (my own visual mod)
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26546

The Tinstrel (a recent christmas ship which is designed with Santa and the Elves in mind)
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26588

Cake's Xmas Ship pack (As above, ships built with this mod in mind =D)
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26682

Low O2 (the original mod - this ship dosn't play well without it but I didn't want to package someone elses work in the file. Please load this one up if you prefer the style of it)
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14243




BrenTenkage;
Using the mod alongside Cake's Cany-Cane-Strel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs-i-Dw ... e=youtu.be

Using the vanilla mod. Several of the issues pointed out have since been fixed!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUwivswuRCQ


Other;
If anyone does a let's play with this mod (using the Sleigher or otherise), I'd absolutely love to see it, and will feature it here if you ask me to.




With thanks to BrenTenkage, stylesrj, SleeperService, RAD-82, TaxiService, 5thHorseman and many more for both help and inspiration. (Please let me know if I missed anyone)
Also extra credit to TaxiService as I used their template as a starting point for this post (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=26530)
Full credits in the mod file.

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays!


http://puppetsquid.tumblr.com/post/103822079969/faster-than-christmas-a-seasonal-mod-for-ftl

[Gencool]

-space saved-
Please note; I've only had one other beta tester on this, but I can't spend any more time on modding until mid December. There may be a few things that don't work quite how I expect them too, so please let me know if you find something odd (that dosn't feel like it should be there) and i'l look at it as soon as I can!

[stylesrj]

Dammit, I was planning on spending the evening playing some other game (and possibly testing out R4V3-0N's Federation Defenders in Captain's Edition) but now I've got to try this ship out!

On another note, it's Styles-rj
I knew I should have went with a cooler username...

[stylesrj]

Well I've given the mod a try. Easy difficulty, no mods.

Sector 1 was a bit rocky. Everyone seemed to have high evasion and I had no missiles to party with.

Lost a few Elves to well... the events of course. But it was hilarious to see things like a store popping up when the enemy ship fled from combat, beams turn into petunias and scrap (which I then picked up while the enemy kept trying to flee) or during Phase 2 of the Boss Fight to steal his ion cannon (and not use it).

Then I almost died when my Elf wanted to depower the Flagship's shields for the last phase. Hull breaches popped up everywhere, everything was on fire and Santa was mind controlled on the breached and damaged teleporter.

But I pulled through, vented most of the ship (I call it Emergency Vent Protocol 23. Dunno why. I just do) and won.

The ship making sleigh bell sounds every jump were good and the Party Bomb was funny to use (although in a world of Flak cannons, not needed)

A few minor issues though. I was given a Christmas gift from some Federation sympathisers. Apparently it's worthless and meant to be filled with scrap and given to others. Problem was I got it before the Last Stand and when I went to sell it, it said it would cost me 25 scrap.
Elves don't get revived during events related to them if they happen to die. Explanations would be nice considering the ship has a Clone Bay and a Backup DNA bank. A saving throw would be nice even if Elves are cheap.
If there were any Santa events, I didn't see any. I'm assuming none were made for him.

The ship needs to start with missiles. You're given a party bomb but no opportunity to fire it unless someone is lucky enough to fork them over when you blow them up. The artillery is fun, but by the time Sector 3 came around and I had my FlakKruiser loadout created (thanks to those stores popping up during combat), I diverted all power away from it and let the system gather space dust.

Overall I give the whole thing an 7 out of 10. Would fly again if the problems outlined are looked into and resolved

[Gencool]

Thankyou for the feedback =D I'l happily take a 7 ^^

Ha! I hadn't thought about what would happen if you were given a gift in an event...
The gifts have minus values because, if you find them in a store, you actually get given scrap for 'buying' them. I think their usefulness in that situation outweighs the chance that you'll get an 'empty' one. Plus you don't have to sell them, you can just wait till your inventory's full and replace it.


Also, I updated the events quickly; Elves now have a 50% chance of being cloned if they die by their own hand (with exceptions in the final stand and certain unique events), and raised the starting missile count to 6. Unfortunately I can't test it right now, so I've left both links up (the code should be sound, I think).

The Elves are sort of penned so that they have random effects that can be 'practically useless', but can swing wildly from 'insanely useful' to 'holy shit that was bad' - as such, Elf death is quite a big component of balancing. The Last Stand events have 3 outcomes each (one choice having a higher rate of success, and the other being less likely to work but far more powerful when it does).


There's no Santa events simply because of time issues. I may add some closer to Christmas. Any suggestions welcome!

Also pretty much everything in the mod should be compatible with other Christmas ships, and I'd like to think there's a lot of content considering how little time I had to work with ^^

[stylesrj]

Ha! I hadn't thought about what would happen if you were given a gift in an event...
The gifts have minus values because, if you find them in a store, you actually get given scrap for 'buying' them. I think their usefulness in that situation outweighs the chance that you'll get an 'empty' one. Plus you don't have to sell them, you can just wait till your inventory's full and replace it.

Yeah I couldn't get rid of it though as it was the Last Stand. Or I could have left it there but... stuff, I guess.

There's no Santa events simply because of time issues. I may add some closer to Christmas. Any suggestions welcome!

Well I was thinking that Santa could use his reputation to gain more scrap from events... or he uses his skills to climb down a chimney to disable engines of fleeing ships (with a 100% chance of being revived if he dies doing so)

Also pretty much everything in the mod should be compatible with other Christmas ships, and I'd like to think there's a lot of content considering how little time I had to work with ^^

Well it's not compatible with the Tinstrel. The Tinstrel takes up Kestrel A as well.

[Gencool]

*shrug* The Sleigher is just the default ship - there's no flavor text or events in the game that reference it. So long as the Tinstrel has a crystal and some Engis then you can just load it over the top of this mod and see what events/outcomes you missed (hopefully there's at least one with the pirates and one with the Zoltans).

Also, Santa wouldn't ever die from one of his own options, but I do like the extra scarp.

[stylesrj]

Also, Santa wouldn't ever die from one of his own options, but I do like the extra scarp.

That's why he would escape (the Clone Bay dialogue could be that he just teleports back there after a failed raid). Unless you decided to swap the Clone Bay with a medbay.
But who would do that when you have Crystals onboard the ship? Giant alien spiders are no joke!

Another idea is that he could bring Christmas joy to Rebel or Pirate ships (perhaps even Slavers) and there's a chance that someone onboard learns the true spirit of Christmas and defects to your cause (essentially you gain a new crew member).

So here's some ideas on Santa events:

"Surrender one of your crew and we'll let the rest go unharmed"
(Santa: Ho ho ho! Seasons Greetings! How about we share in the Christmas spirit my friends!)

It was said the Slavers hearts grew three sizes that day. They immediately renounced their evil ways and released all their slaves. You drop them off at the nearest station except for one alien who "requests to ride in Santa's sleigh tonight!" You accept and show them to their station.

+ Human, Zoltan or Mantis (Santa's Slay? I'm all for it!)

There's also the one where you intervene to defend an outpost:

"I don't know who you are but no one defies the Rebel fleet!"
(Santa: Ho ho ho! You've made the naughty list!)

"What? Santa Claus is that you? Nooo! We'll be good boys and girls from now on! We don't want to be on the naughty list!"
The Rebels immediately stop their assault on the Federation base and instead start singing Christmas carols. They also work on repairing the damage to the base, your ship and overall become good people. (Scrap, repairs)

Then you get a reward from the base for saving it.

The alternative is this:

"Santa Claus! You didn't give me that sled I wanted, so why should I care if I get hot coals tonight for Christmas! Prepare to die!"
Intruders on board
+2 Humans attack.

Perhaps when the ship explodes the Rebels last words are "Rosebud..."

Also, I was thinking about the one where the Rebels and Zoltan are fighting over a primitive planet.

Make Contact
Attack Rebels
(Santa: Give Christmas joy)

As you deliver your presents to the world below, the Rebels and Zoltan are left with tears in their eyes at seeing all the happy lizard boys and girls. The Rebel agrees to delay the fleets as best he can so Santa can continue his deliveries unimpeded while the Zoltans share the gift of giving by giving you a weapon to help you on your journey.

-2 Rebel fleet
Standard rewards
+1 random weapon

Alternatively:

The alien lizards don't understand the concept of Christmas. They see Santa as an intruder and as an evil, cruel god and try to kill him. The Rebels, unimpressed begin their attack on you while the Zoltan immediately retreats to get reinforcements.

Santa is gone
Clone Bay: Santa returns back to his ship. "I guess there is no Christmas spirit out here" he said sadly.

Standard rewards would be given for destroying the Rebel ship. No gun from the Zoltan ship though.

-----------------

How's that?

[Sleeper Service]

Wow, this mod has become incredible professional, events included and all. Have you considered doing more mods that are usable all year round? I also find stylesrj event suggestions absolutely hilarious, especially the uncanny outcomes like "The alien lizards don't understand the concept of Christmas."

Other things I like about this mod:
- N64 Controller being a possible present
- Name of the Sleighter artillery
- The Elves crew description

[stylesrj]

Wow, this mod has become incredible professional, events included and all. Have you considered doing more mods that are usable all year round?

Halloween? Orangestrel!

Headless Horseman replaces Crystal
Pumpkins replace Engies

Events include Trick or Treating Rebel bases (like Space Pirates and Zombies)

Easter? Eastrel!

Easter Bunny replaces Crystal.
Easter Chicks replace Engies

Events include Easter Egg hunts (gain scrap or encounters at empty beacons)

St. Patricks Day? Greenstrel?

Valentine's Day? Pinkstrel!
Cupid replaces Engies

Events include giving valentines to Rebels (awww...)