[Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

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Gencool
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [New: Adventures!]

Postby Gencool » Fri Jan 01, 2016 5:31 pm

I'm wasn't here, but if I was, I may have updated the pack a little.
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sul
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby sul » Sat Jan 30, 2016 5:14 pm

Amazing ftl mod if not the best ! I really enjoyed it so here is some feedback.
I really find the mod a refreshing take on the original. Being an experienced ftl player i love that there are some new elements of game mechanics, but not too much, only a few ones that are easy to understand and make the action more fast paced. Then the visual and audio changes really give you the feel of the star fox games, which rocks ! Maybe the only thing I regret is the characters not having their own sprites, but that is a detail.
So I did two runs. In the first one, I took Fox Mc Cloud on easy (he started with mind control). So Fox cannot obtain shields (like Falco or slippy) which is a huge challenge, especially latter in the game. I got really lucky obtaining a drone recovery arm augment in the first sector, so I was always using the other ships in support, which made up for the lack of shields. I ended up facing the flagship fully maxed up. But then, I miserably lost on second flagship battle. The thing is, because I had no shields one drone surge was enough to destroy most of my systems, then the automatic repair was too slow to recover and I eventually got crushed. It is a little my fault maybe a better timing of cloaking could have avoided it, but still it was kind of unavoidable.
On the second run, I took Peppy (the slug) on normal. Because he had shields it was a smooth ride until the end. Well Peppy died on first flagship battle when the medic bay he was standing in (which is also the driver seat) got hacked, but even without him it was easy to finish the game.
So again this is a really great mod, good fast-paced action, good star fox feel ! I see there are some recent updates and I would love to see the mod evolve some more. The absence of shields on some ships is sometimes unfair. So my two-cent opinion is this could be avoided by tweaking some game mechanics (making the ships unmanned to free a shield slot, start with drone recovery arm..., tweak the flagship power surges...), but it is also fine that way as a challenge. I will now try to have my revenge with Fox !
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Gencool
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby Gencool » Sat Jan 30, 2016 5:58 pm

Thankyou so much!

There's a load of things I'd change if I could... FTL moddings annoyingly limited though.

Drone recovery actually makes sense on Fox. Not sure why I didn't use it in the first place...
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- Gencool (aka Puppetsquid) -- I make weird stuff
sul
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby sul » Sun Jan 31, 2016 4:48 am

I made some tweaks in the initial ship configuration (in the events.xml.append of the Arwing...ftl file), here there are:

Fox:
- Fox is a very hard character because he has no shields, so I tried to make it up with some changes. Even with that it should be very hard to defeat the flagship (due to the power surges).
- put drone recovery arm, so Fox can rely heavily on his team.
- added sensors (useful for mind control)
- is now zoltan (just for my taste I find rocks too fat lol)
- still has cloaking and other augments (I removed cloaking in the blueprint.xml.append file, now it is attributed to Fox at the start, but not other characters).

Others:
- for Peppy there is no change (except he is now rock, just for my taste), with shields and cloaking this is an easy character.
- For Falco and Slippy I removed cloaking, added fields, so they should be of medium difficulty. Boarding/Hacking takes time so without shields they would just take too much damage. Fox is the only character without shields, which makes him a real challenge as compared to the other ones. I added a mantis crew to Falco for easier boarding.

So Gencool I do not provide a link to the modified .ftl. Thing is, I dont know what is the policy on mods, and I dont want to give the impression that I am ripping off your mod. This is your work and it's great. I made the little tweaks for me, to have more chance at victory with Fox, and learned some ftl coding on the way which is fun. It would be cool to have your opinion on why you chose Fox having no shields, that makes him very interesting but at the same time its hard to make it fair. I will try a run with him and see how it goes.
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stylesrj
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby stylesrj » Sun Jan 31, 2016 6:17 pm

You do know that by making Fox a Zoltan, you can power up multiple systems at once.
Might be very useful or a deathtrap if he dies in the line of duty and you don't have the reactor power to spare...
sul
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby sul » Sun Jan 31, 2016 6:38 pm

Yes I realized that when trying him, he powers both oxygen and medic bay while in the cockpit due to the systems being layered over by Gencool. That was pretty cool !
sul
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby sul » Sun Jan 31, 2016 6:46 pm

Random idea: for Fox (that has no shields) maybe a tweak for helping him deal with the flaship surges would be to give him an incredible titanium system casing, avoiding 100% incoming damage. I realized that can be done by setting the value of the augment blueprint to 1.

The idea is, without shields it is extremely hard (if not unavoidable) for fox's ship to avoid heavy damage from the flagships power surges (especially the drone ones that have laser beams). With the augment, fox would still take heavy damage, but all least he would avoid all systems being shut down during the flagship battles, which should balance the difficulty.

Of course giving him this augment from the start would make his ship too easy. Maybe he could receive it at the beginning of the last sector during an event.
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stylesrj
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby stylesrj » Sun Jan 31, 2016 7:04 pm

sul wrote:Random idea: for Fox (that has no shields) maybe a tweak for helping him deal with the flaship surges would be to give him an incredible titanium system casing, avoiding 100% incoming damage. I realized that can be done by setting the value of the augment blueprint to 1.

The idea is, without shields it is extremely hard (if not unavoidable) for fox's ship to avoid heavy damage from the flagships power surges (especially the drone ones that have laser beams). With the augment, fox would still take heavy damage, but all least he would avoid all systems being shut down during the flagship battles, which should balance the difficulty.

Of course giving him this augment from the start would make his ship too easy. Maybe he could receive it at the beginning of the last sector during an event.


And CE would be broken as Rock ships can't suffer system damage and AI ships become more annoying... flagship becomes essentially invulnerable...
sul
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby sul » Sun Jan 31, 2016 7:32 pm

Yeah like you mention when tweaking an augment it affects all ships that use it, not only Fox in our case. That could be a problem indeed so I checked quickly and apparently it is not !
I am referring to titanium system casing (preventing system damage), no the rock plating augment (preventing hull damage) that is on most rock ships. I checked which ships uses the Titanium System Casing (checking all instances of SYSTEM_CASING in the FTL data.dat file), it looks like no ship except stealth cruiser is using it. This is in FTL Vanilla an FTL AE only, maybe in mods like FTL CE more ships could be using that augment.
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Gencool
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Re: [Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

Postby Gencool » Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:34 am

With modding, there isn't anything stating that you cant just edit and re-export other people's stuff, but it's not really the done thing.
Patches tend to be fine, though; only include the bits you've edited, and have people load it after the main mod.

That way, you're not re-packaging a tonne of work, and if the OC makes further updates your patch can (usually) still be used if people want to.


So, with that, I'm gonna go over some of the suggested changes and give my opinions.

(I'm gonna ramble about my theories a lot so please don't take any of this personally)


The shields thing; Arwings don't have shields, but they do dodge a lot and gain cover from teammates. Yes, it sucks not having shields, but all non-peppy ships have a shield drone.
(If you follow the right upgrade tree, you can actually have a really powerful shield drone variant, too.)

All Arwings already have an upgraded system casing augment to help cover the lack of shields. I didn't realise no other ships used it, so it could probably stand to go a little higher, but again there's a certain upgrade tree that lets you buy additional ones in any shop you visit.
I think I currently have it set at 0.33% effectiveness? So 1 out of every 3 hits doesn't damage the systems it hits. That's quite a big buff.


Zoltan Fox makes a bit of sense, although Rock Fox can deal with fires far more efficiently which is verrrrry important when dealing with stacked systems.

I avoided giving Fox Sensors at the start for two reasons; 1) each ship only starts with one extra subsystem (Fox gets Battery, Slip has the sensors, because this fits their characters) and 2) it makes M/C almost useless when you start out.

Why would I want M/C to be almost useless when you start? Because it gives the ship more of a progression. When you get sensors half way through a run, your ship will suddenly gain an extra level of power.
(Thing is it isn't actually useless without sensors, because it makes boarders far less of a threat.)

This is also why Slippy and Falco are the way they are. You're not meant to be relying on boarding/hacking from the start; they're there for a situational boost, and should come into their own more in the later game.
(Surprisingly I put Teleportation in a lot of my ships but I very rarely make boarding ships. Unfortunately most people still play them as boarding ships and it doesn't go well for them)



Like I said before, drone recovery arm makes sense, but I think I have a solution I prefer and might add in; Every time you visit the Great Fox you gain an additional 3/6 droneparts for free.
This means you don't have to worry quite so much about your droneparts, but also retains the need to be somewhat frugal with them.


I might re-work the augments a little in general; Maybe the titanium system casing on all ships need to be upped to 75-90%, but without the chance to buy a second one...
I mean, it would make all the ships a hell of a lot easier than i intended, but I'm not known for easy mods...




Again, if you want to put a patch out, that's absolutley fine and you're welcome to do so. This is just explaining the thought process behind my version of the mod
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- Gencool (aka Puppetsquid) -- I make weird stuff