[SHIP] [AE] Ancient Lanius Battleship, The Suvius

[Northern_Warrior]

This ancient Lanius Battleship harbours hidden and mysterious technology. It is the absolute pinnacle of Lanius ship design.








First of all, I'd like to say this is my first ship, so there may be bugs or things I missed. With that out of the way, what is this ship?

Here are the pros:
- no oxygen
- all rooms except med-bay and oxygen ( can't install those either )
- dual custom ion flak artillery on the sides that is powered automatically ( it does only ion damage, so it won't destroy any ships )
- main custom extra-dimensional warp beam artillery designed to be a ship killer ( has a long cooldown, but pierces all shields, does 3 ion and normal damage per room, has high chance of causing fires and breaches, it moves across entire ships ( with some luck, you could hit every room in an enemy ship, doing massive damage ))
- a 3 Lanius crew
- 12 potential power to both drones and weapons
- 6 drone slots ( I recommend using the shield drones, as you will see in my next pro )...
- unique supershield system ( no normal shields ever, can only use the supershields and the supershield drones, which is why I don't recommend replacing them if you value your ship )
- advanced drone system A.K.A. drone recovery allows you to use your all 6 shield drones from the beginning without fear ( they also only cost 1 power )
- extra-dimensional energy provides complete immunity to ion attacks, they can't hurt your supershields either
- 50 hull, making the ship very durable

And the cons:
- no oxygen means crew will be hard to find ( can't ever get it either )
- only 3 crew
- 11 starting power means you will need to be very good at managing power
- no starting normal weapons ( this isn't a problem as you can board and the 2 ion flaks fire automatically )
- drones are all used for shields
- you start with 1 power in almost every system ( also means they can be broken easier )
- not having a normal shield system provides a unique challenge, in asteroid fields or later on, when you will have to carefully manage your supershields
- both weapons and drones cost more to upgrade ( not really that bad )


The ship has custom cloaking ( I might replace it, I personally think it isn't the best ), shields and gibs.

Mod should also be compatible with anything that doesn't mess with the Kestrel A and augments. So, overhauls should work ( Note: I haven't tested this ).

And one last thing, the Battleship replaces the Kestrel A. So, that's it, without further ado, here's the download link, and I hope you enjoy the ship :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m1tzgkbem7wuo ... l.rar?dl=0

NOTE : I suggest loading Suvius Weapons.ftl before Suvius.ftl

[stylesrj]

Ouch. That ship looks dangerous.
Although I'm a bit wary about those Artillery weapons as they tend to absorb power or not power up correctly if damaged and you lack power to put a bar back in, etc. Not to mention that you can't buy any more systems without the use of a mod like Limited Time Offer and if you don't return to the Hangar instead of resetting, you lose two of the Artillery.

As for shields, you say that the ship can't get shields but its got a shield system installed (presumably so it would stop popping up in stores). Did you up the price for upgrades or something?

Overall I'm uncertain whether or not the ship will be a cakewalk to fly despite the "nerfs" or if it is severely underpowered and an exercise in frustration to fly. I guess I'll have to figure it out when I can.
It looks good though.

[Northern_Warrior]

For the shields, I simply removed the upgrades and made it so level 1 shields are the only level available ( you also require at least level 1 shields to have the supershield augment work ).

I've actually only recently started doing some more testing and I've found that the ship can get quite over-powered once you level up cloak and get good offensive weaponry. If you get unlucky, and lose your drone bay and cloak, I imagine you're pretty much done later on or if you get really unlucky in an asteroid field. Still, I haven't had the time to go all the way to the end, so I don't really know how over-powered or under-powered it is.

As for artillery, I don't really know, it seemed to work fine even if broken and then repaired ( all 3 ), although, like I said, I haven't tested it out that much so I can't say if anything is bugged or broken.
Artillery is also, I'd say, the thing that really makes this ship over-powered at the beginning as the ion flaks disable entire ships, pretty much. Later on, because they do only 1 ion damage per hit, it seems to get more balanced. The main artillery gun in the middle is exactly what it say it is, it takes a very long time to charge up, but it pretty much destroys everything once it does.

[stylesrj]

For the shields, I simply removed the upgrades and made it so level 1 shields are the only level available ( you also require at least level 1 shields to have the supershield augment work ).

You don't need level 1 shields to get the Supershield, you just need the ship to have a spot for shields in the design. Just ask the Simo-H. No shields, but the Supershield Drones work fine.
If your ship cannot fit a shield system, then supershields will not work even if you set an ellipse for them. Of course, if you don't have a shield system installed on the ship, whenever you go shopping for new systems, Shields will always be there.

I've found that the ship can get quite over-powered once you level up cloak and get good offensive weaponry

Perhaps the same could be said of all ships!

As for artillery, I don't really know, it seemed to work fine even if broken and then repaired ( all 3 ), although, like I said, I haven't tested it out that much so I can't say if anything is bugged or broken.

I've seen other ships use multiple artillery systems. If you hit "restart" instead of "hangar" then you end up losing the excess guns.
other than that, the excess Artillery also counts as a system slot so you can't purchase anything else despite the fact that it shows like you could fit more.

Artillery is also, I'd say, the thing that really makes this ship over-powered at the beginning as the ion flaks disable entire ships, pretty much. Later on, because they do only 1 ion damage per hit, it seems to get more balanced. The main artillery gun in the middle is exactly what it say it is, it takes a very long time to charge up, but it pretty much destroys everything once it does.

It feels like a lot of the challenge at the start is gone then. Disable enemy ship, board them, get their stuff... they can't hit you because you have a bazillion drones on the off-chance that they get a shot off at you that your cloak cannot handle... throw money into Reactor (thus sparing the dilemma of picking systems to focus on since there seems to be enough power in Drones or Artillery at the very start), etc.

[Northern_Warrior]

You don't need level 1 shields to get the Supershield, you just need the ship to have a spot for shields in the design. Just ask the Simo-H. No shields, but the Supershield Drones work fine.
If your ship cannot fit a shield system, then supershields will not work even if you set an ellipse for them. Of course, if you don't have a shield system installed on the ship, whenever you go shopping for new systems, Shields will always be there.

I guess I never thought of that. But as for the shopping thing, if you set rarity to 0 you will never find that system. I did it for oxygen and med-bay because it was annoying to see them all the time and now nobody sells them. Eventually I decided to just give the ship every system possible to make it more imposing, so it was a design choice to keep the shield system as well.

I've seen other ships use multiple artillery systems. If you hit "restart" instead of "hangar" then you end up losing the excess guns.
other than that, the excess Artillery also counts as a system slot so you can't purchase anything else despite the fact that it shows like you could fit more.

I'm aware of the second problem, my idea was to give the ship all possible systems at the start anyway, so it didn't really hurt the design of the ship.
The first one, well... I'm aware of it now.

It feels like a lot of the challenge at the start is gone then. Disable enemy ship, board them, get their stuff... they can't hit you because you have a bazillion drones on the off-chance that they get a shot off at you that your cloak cannot handle... throw money into Reactor (thus sparing the dilemma of picking systems to focus on since there seems to be enough power in Drones or Artillery at the very start), etc.

Yes, the start is a bit too easy right now. The second problem is that it's also sometimes luck based, because if somehow somebody breaches your shields and destroys your drones and artillery, you have nothing to fight back with ( other than crew ). Or asteroid fields... Also, like you said, if you just throw money into the Reactor, you can easily power everything and you can kill everything up until enemy ships get tons of power so your ion flaks aren't as devastating. I've been thinking of how to balance it just right since I started making the ship, and I thought I might as well release it now so I can get an opinion from another perspective.

[stylesrj]

I guess I never thought of that. But as for the shopping thing, if you set rarity to 0 you will never find that system. I did it for oxygen and med-bay because it was annoying to see them all the time and now nobody sells them. Eventually I decided to just give the ship every system possible to make it more imposing, so it was a design choice to keep the shield system as well.

Shields are one of those things that just keep popping up even if you put the rarity to 0.

Yes, the start is a bit too easy right now. The second problem is that it's also sometimes luck based, because if somehow somebody breaches your shields and destroys your drones and artillery, you have nothing to fight back with ( other than crew )

Which looks like it'd be hard to do considering you have Shield Drones, a Supershield and a cloaking device to make it really hard to break Artillery and/or Drones, especially at the same time.

Also, like you said, if you just throw money into the Reactor, you can easily power everything and you can kill everything up until enemy ships get tons of power so your ion flaks aren't as devastating

Which takes away most of the early-game dilemma which adds to the challenge. "Do I go for a second layer of shields but lack the energy to power them up without sacrificing evasion? Or do I put more power into Engines? When do I save up for Cloaking? Should I delay the purchase of Shields so I can get Hacking? Hey is that a Burst Laser II? What do I sell for it?"
Those sorts of game-changing/breaking decisions that turn a struggling ship into a powerhouse or a pile of wreckage.
This looks like "Eh, throw more power bars in and wear the enemy out with the Lanius boarders until the big gun fires."

But I guess I'll have to test it out in a game to be certain as I'm only pointing out the theoretical problems.

[Northern_Warrior]

I just applied a quick patch to the mod based on what you suggested. I don't really have time to test it out right now, but here's what I did:
- I changed the drones to require 2 power each, so now you need all 12 drone power for 6 drones.
- The Ion Flak now fires four times slower
- Cloak cost significantly increased
- Initial weapon system cost significantly increased to simulate weak system
- Initial engine system cost significantly increased to simulate weak system

This should in theory make the ship weaker ( not too weak I hope ) at the beginning and with the big costs you are definitely going to have to make some hard decisions ( I think ).

[stylesrj]

Sooo I just made my video run. Got to the Flagship and lo and behold, it had no shields!
So the Last Stand was a bit of a joke in the end. Might want to look into that.

Here's Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqZF66i0AjU

[Northern_Warrior]

Sooo I just made my video run. Got to the Flagship and lo and behold, it had no shields!
So the Last Stand was a bit of a joke in the end. Might want to look into that.

Here's Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqZF66i0AjU

Fixed the flagship ( or it should be fixed, the shields are now 8 levels again, I increased the cost to 10000 so they won't be upgraded ).
The main artillery beam now has half the cooldown it previously had, so it should be more bearable. Weapons are also more expensive to encourage using the artillery beam if you want to destroy the enemy ship.
I've reduced starting drone power to 1 as well as increasing the initial upgrade cost.
Engines are more expensive to upgrade as well.

That's it, looking forward to seeing the rest of your run with the Suvius.

[Northern_Warrior]

Rebalanced the ship a bit:
- Drones have 1 starting power, initially costs more to upgrade
- Weapons cost a lot more to upgrade
- Main artillery gun cooldown halved
- Engines cost more to upgrade
- Shields should be fixed on the flagship, gave it 10000 upgrade cost instead of removing the upgrades themselves