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FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Sun May 03, 2015 2:49 am
by stylesrj
Before reading further, I recommend you play this song. Or anything really so long as it's associated with cop shows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXTn2gSG7es

FTP: Faster Than Police (also stands for something else... File Transfer Protocol) is a quickly-made overhaul of FTL. You're not some Federation Captain trying to save the galaxy, no you're a police officer working for the Zoltan Resource Protection Committee with an important mission.

Here is your ride:

Image
http://www.mediafire.com/download/cg07nxv9xq5ucq1/Policeescort.ftl
(Replaces Zoltan A)

You are to take a dossier with important intel to Admiral Tully's office on the other end of the galaxy. But watch out for there's this gang calling themselves the "Rebels" who want to kill you. And that's pretty much it.

There isn't much story in between the start and the endgame but I do recommend you read those bits. I also changed a few names of systems around. Have a read of them for a laugh or two.

Anyway, info on the ship...

The Police Cruiser is escorted closely by your partner's cruiser. This might remind you of DryEagle's Escort Duty, but it's not much of an escort as wingmen assisting each other. Each ship has two weapon mounts.

The guns are a "shotgun laser" which works pretty much like the Advanced Flak except faster and more likely to start fires and a "RIOT Beam" which damages crew and stuns them (much like the Captain's Edition Baton Beam).
Artillery isn't buyable in the mod but if you have a mod which enables Artillery, the ship can be equipped with a Pacification Beam which can bust shields, stun and damage crew and damage systems but doesn't harm the hull. So good for boarding.

The lower ship is the main vessel with piloting, engines, shields and the guns while your partner's vessel (the upper ship) is more of a "utilities" vessel with the Drones, Sensors and the Battery.
Only the basic systems are installed (except for the battery and only because I wanted to make the ships look like they have both piloting and engines, so freebie system for those one or two people who use it) because the budget doesn't account for things like "Teleporters" and "Drone Control".
I mean the money's being spent on new military hardware such as SWAT Drones and really big trucks with battering rams. Not actually being spent outfitting the regular cops. Your tax dollars at its finest!

Because of the story, the ships are "automated" and can fly themselves without crew. It also means every system is manned so you can put that Zoltan elsewhere.
The service umbilical between the two ships is there because of gameplay limitations - without it the game would crash. Assume it's only deployed once the ship arrives at the beacon and when jumping, the umbilical is retracted

Bugs:
If you keep the badge and end up in another civilian sector, the opening event will play again so you have two Detectives and two Engies.
Automated ship means no new crew can be bought. Only "deputised" from events.
The lower ship's doors may unexpectedly open when selecting a weapon directly. The ship is quite low.
If you find spelling errors, grammatical errors or a game-breaking bug caused by the ships, let me know.

Credits:
Sleeper Service for helping me figure out what the problem was when the mod kept crashing.
Subset Games for making FTL.
And frak it, let's thank everyone in the whole world because why not?

Videos:
Deep Space Confidential (Stylesrj):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeOG6c-CF38
(Captain's Edition run)

Have fun playing the ship and remember, we're all counting on you! Now how's my retirement plan looking...

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Sun May 03, 2015 11:54 pm
by mattknulty
That looks fun i like the police cruiser idea.

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 11:15 am
by stargateprovider
I think you can fix the civilian sector bug by leaving the START_BEACON event untouched and modifing the START_GAME event instead.

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 11:49 am
by stylesrj
stargateprovider wrote:I think you can fix the civilian sector bug by leaving the START_BEACON event untouched and modifing the START_GAME event instead.


Now why doesn't the Universal Starting Beacon do that eh? Unless messing with START_GAME messes up other mods that modify the intro.

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 4:58 pm
by RAD-82
START_GAME is only text. It doesn't do anything else. I see from the video that it has already been modified for the FTP story.

Universal Starting Beacon wrote:The problem with the START_GAME and START_BEACON is that the START_GAME event does nothing but replace the first beacon's <text> tag with its own. Its <choices> or <events> have no effect whatsoever.

START_BEACON, on the other hand, is triggered at the start of the game like you'd expect, but is also triggered every time the player enters a civillian sector. Initially, it just has its <text> replaced by the one in START_GAME.


There are options for fixing this if you don't want to use the Universal Starting Beacon. My Asylum ship used a technique which makes it both compatible with or without the USB. It replaces the start beacon of civilian sectors so that START_BEACON is only used at the start of the game.

It only requires a few lines of code, and I'll ignore the USB compatibility here, because that is just extra.

At the top of events.xml.append, before any other code, you place these lines:

Code: Select all

<mod:findName type="event" name="START_BEACON">
   <mod:setAttributes name="FTP_START_BEACON_CIVILIAN" />
</mod:findName>

This will rename the START_BEACON. Then your own START_BEACON will be added on after SMM does this. This is why this code has to be at the top of the file.

The next thing you need is a sector_data.xml.append file. Add this code to set the start beacon of civilian sectors to the new name we gave the old START_BEACON event.

Code: Select all

<mod:findName type="sectorDescription" name="CIVILIAN_SECTOR">
   <mod-overwrite:startEvent>FTP_START_BEACON_CIVILIAN</mod-overwrite:startEvent>
</mod:findName>

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 6:16 pm
by stargateprovider
I usually make the START_GAME event load another event. That works as well.

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 7:15 pm
by stylesrj
Wouldn't messing with the Start Beacon though mess up other mods like Captain's Edition or something?
Because in my video, I used Captain's Edition and it seemed to work fine being side-by-side with the starting events.

So let's go with the honour system. You don't exploit Civilian Sectors, and you sell those trade goods as soon as you use them at a store and you don't steal daddy's cars!

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 9:21 pm
by RAD-82
stylesrj wrote:Wouldn't messing with the Start Beacon though mess up other mods like Captain's Edition or something?

Umm... you already messed with the start beacon. Do you mean the start beacon for civilian sectors? Captain's Edition uses its own custom-made civilian sectors, so you already can't exploit the starting event with CE if you come across a civilian sector, because it is already using a different event. The code I provided won't interfere with CE, but will prevent exploit from vanilla FTL users.

Of course, doing nothing like you suggest is also a choice you can make. :P

Perhaps I should look at your file to see what is actually happening before making suggestions. Hehe...

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 10:30 pm
by stylesrj
Umm... you already messed with the start beacon. Do you mean the start beacon for civilian sectors?


I took the code from Universal Starting Beacon and worked with that. The code seems to mess with Civilian Sector start beacons as well but that's how USB rolls.

I'm afraid to mess with that code in case making Universal Start Game ruins everyone else's mods.

Re: FTP - Faster Than Police - [New ship and Events changed]

Posted: Wed May 06, 2015 7:13 am
by RAD-82
stylesrj wrote:I took the code from Universal Starting Beacon and worked with that.
RAD-82 wrote:Perhaps I should look at your file to see what is actually happening before making suggestions.

Okay, my first suggestion doesn't quite work because you didn't actually add a START_BEACON event for the starting story; you just appended the story to it. If you tried what I said, then there wouldn't have been a START_BEACON anymore and the story wouldn't have anywhere to append. :o I suppose the game might also have crashed from the missing event. Simple enough to make one after renaming the old one, but I guess I'll just stop trying to help now.

Although, I do have one more piece of advice. You shouldn't make a misc.xml.append because this causes spaces to go missing in the game. It should be misc.xml.rawappend, so that SMM doesn't remove those spaces.