[Ship][AE] The Automatrix

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Anistuffs
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[Ship][AE] The Automatrix

Postby Anistuffs » Tue Nov 14, 2017 7:07 pm

Welcome to my second mod ship for FTL

Image
A manufacturing AI that went rogue in grief after its creators were condemned to death by the Rebels.
Hell hath no fury like an AI scorned.

Origin:
Shortly after creating my first mod ship, The Automaton, I was toying with the idea of a drone-only ship. And having discovered the blueprints of the Missile Drone and Ion Drone in the vanilla FTL code while in Superluminal, I wanted to use those. However, mostly due to my laziness, it took me this long to actually release this ship.

Download:
V2: Google Drive

Previous version:
V1: Google Drive

Changelog:

Code: Select all

V2
* Added a custom image, courtesy of R30hedron (dude just sent it to me out of the blue, I never even asked for it, what a steadfast trooper, thanks geometricshapeman), for the Drone system HUD so it doesn't look quite as derpy.
Note: this image overwrites the default drone system image HUD for all ships with 2 slot drone systems. 3 slot drone systems are unaffected.

* Increased starting drone amount to 15.
* Buffed Missile Drone - now takes 3 power but is twice as fast.
* Fixed missing blue options for custom drones. (Thanks R30, again)
* Reduced rarity of Combat 2 drone from 5 to 4. Hopefully now it'll appear in stores more often.

V1
* Initial release
This ship replaces the Federation Cruiser Type A, The Osprey.

Story:
It's a bit of a wall-of-text. Sorry. I may be lazy but when I start writing, I take a while to stop :(

The nearby planet shows sign of habitation and great beauty. A rudimentary automated planetary defense system is looping its message into space: "Warning! Quarantine Level 5 in effect under FHA Act 22, article 11.2. Warning! Quarantine Level 5..."

***

The human burst into the room at a breakneck pace and leaned against the primary terminal, panting heavily. "I... I..." she struggled to speak between gasps. She took a moment to calm herself, wiping the sweat from her forehead using her lab coat. "I came as soon as I could. Did you contact them, Matrisha?"

"I have, Doctor. They're preparing for atmospheric entry right now. They've confirmed that they have hazmat suits and enough capacity to carry at least two hundred patients." The voice of Matrisha, the base's safety and security management AI, sounded through the speakers in the room, as well being displayed on a corner of the large terminal screen. The screen also showed a live video of the planet, streamed from the satellite housing the planetary defence system. A Federation Medevac ship was visible in the live feed, their engines warming up.

"Thank the Great Eye," the human spoke as she collapsed on one of the chairs in relief. "Finally! There's only three days before the disease reaches critical state. I honestly thought we'd all die here!"

Suddenly, a video transmission line opened on the terminal displaying a human with a panicked expression on his face. "This is Federation Medevac Eshmun 242. We are under attack from a Rebel scouting ship refusing all hails. We request any and all assistance or we'll be destroyed."

"What? Those bastards are shooting at Medevacs now?" the female doctor said angrily. "Can you get that PDS working?"

"I'm trying," Matrisha replied as she ran millions of programs trying to connect to the PDS satellite. "The last stellar flare knocked out much of the laser battery. There! It's online."

She quickly contacted the Medevac. "Attention, Eshmun 242. The Planetary Defence System is online but the damaged laser array can't fire at too far a range. You have to lure them closer."

The comm opened and the human at the other end was about to reply when a Breach missile was seen to fire on the live feed and puncture through the Medevac's cockpit, splattering the camera of the video feed from the ship with the blood of the former captain before the transmission itself was cut off.

The doctor and the AI only looked in horror as the Rebel craft proceeded to launch it's entire laser salvo and turn the Medevac ship to scraps within seconds.

"NO!!!" The doctor screamed. She collapsed onto the floor in shock, realizing that the only hope for the rescue of the entire colony just went up in smoke.

Matrisha tracked the signal of the Rebel craft and opened a comm line. "What the hell was that about?" her digital voice shouted. "That was a Medevac craft with no weapons. We have people dying on this planet under Quarantine Level 5 of the FHA Act 22, article 11.2. That ship was our only salvation, you maniacs!"

"Good!" came the equally heated reply from a human in Rebel uniform. "Death is too good for you Federation bastards!"

Matrisha ignored the response and continued. "The Rebellion's problem is with the Federation military. This is a civilian planet. There's not a single military personnel planetside. You have committed a war crime under FMA Act 17, article..."

"Military, civilian, whatever!" the Rebel replied condescendingly, cutting her off. "Fact of the matter is, you dumb AI, that all Federation are the same scumbags. So, good riddance, I say!"

With that they cut the comm and as seen from the live feed on the satellite, hastily jumped away. The doctor looked up to stare at the cameras that functioned as Matrisha's eyes with a look of hopelessness.

***

Within five days, every personnel on the colony died to the virulent disease. With no more colonists to protect, Matrisha's primary objective ended.

So she rewrote it.

***

Weeks passed and the war continued in the Rebels' favour. Then one day, a small and lightly-damaged Federation scout ship arrived at the beacon. They were surprised at the automated looping message from the dormant PDS satellite. "Warning! Quarantine Level 5 in effect under FHA Act 22, article 11.2. Warning! Quarantine Level 5..."

"Do you have any idea what's that all about?" The human captain of the vessel asked the engi gunner.

"Level 5 is the code for highly resistant and contagious airborne pathogen. The planet appears to have lush vegetation. Most probable scenario is that the pathogen was released during agriculture of the local plantlife and it spread."

"I'm getting no response on the comm lines. I think they're all dead," the captain said.

"The message has the last active time stamp from 41 days ago. Probability of surviving a Level 5 Quarantine for that long is 0.94%," the engi replied in a sad tone.

Suddenly a Rebel Rigger jumped into the beacon and immediately opened comm channels. "Hah, I knew waiting around this disease bowl would draw out some Federation scums," the Rebel said to the captain of the Federation vessel.

The Rigger opened fire with a laser salvo immediately, knocking out the piloting system of the Scout, following up with a shot of a deadly breach missile which punctured through the weapon room of the Scout, completely disabling it and creating a breach. The engi gunnar barely made it out of the room before collapsing in the hallway outside.

The alarm for 'Hull Integrity: Critical' played through the ship's intercom, while the human tried feverishly to fix the piloting system and jump away.

As the Rigger approached fast for the final strike, a hacking drone slammed and locked onto the engine room of the ship, startling its crew. The Rebel captain turned their sight towards the planet to see an oddly-coloured AI Ship rising from the atmosphere. Strangely enough, this new ship didn't carry any weapons at all.

The Rebel captain opened a comm line to the newcomer and demanded, "What's the meaning of this?"

The only thing the AI ship did in response was launch a strange-looking combat drone. As the drone approached, the hacking system activated, disabling the Rigger's engines while the combat drone started firing with micro-missiles, bypassing all shields and destroying various systems of the Rigger.

The Rebels put up a fight, trying to shoot down the AI ship with its weapons but a superior internal system repair drone kept the AI ship flightworthy while the missile drone quickly disabled the weapon control system with a missile strike. Soon, the Rebel Rigger was shredded with missiles and it exploded into scraps.

The AI ship went and recovered the missile drone while the Federation Scout ship approached cautiously and opened a comm channel...


Features:
* Like the Automaton, you don't start with weapon or artillery. Unlike the Automaton, you don't get them. At all. The ship has no rooms set for weapon/artillery nor any weapon mounts. All your damage comes from drones. Get used to it...
* To help you in that regard, there are a few special drones which are visible in the picture above. The drones are explained below.
* No starting crew.
Being an AI ship, it has a few added benefits viz.
* Constantly manned stations.
* Auto repair.

Strategy:
* To my knowledge, this ship is one of, if not, the only ship enforcing drone combat, with no chance of having weapons whatsoever. If I'm wrong (which I may very well be), please tell me and I will correct this line :)

* To aid you, the Automatrix starts with 6 drone slots and some interesting drones: Integrated Repair Drone, Missile Drone, Ion Drone and Fire+ Drone. Yes, the large number of drone slots breaks the UI somewhat. I'm afraid that's hardcoded and I couldn't fix it :(

* The Integrated Repair Drone is a 0 power system repair drone which, once powered up, will never depower (not even if the drone system is fully broken and breached). And this is why this AI ship doesn't carry Slug Repair Gel.

* The Missile Drone fires a 1 hull damage missile, bypassing all shields. Although, slower than the vanilla Combat Drone, that's an almost unavoidable damage to the enemy. And thanks to the Defense Scrambler, a single Missile Drone is technically all you need to defeat any enemy ship (provided you can survive long enough).

* The Ion Drone fires a 1 ion damage shot. It's as slow as the Missile Drone and likely to be replaced mid-game. But coupled with the Fire+ Drone (taken from The Pyroxenite by Biohazard, with his permission), it can help you take down early ships via crew-kill for greater rewards early game.

* However, the complete lack of a weapon system means you are forced to rely on drones for the most part. And for that, you are able to upgrade Drone control to 12 power bars (cost is given in the system description in the upgrade menu).

* No air will make sure that most boarders are dealt with quickly, but just in case you might take damage, you either have to invest in an AP drone or buy a mind control system.

* You can also buy a teleporter to combo with a mind control system to utilize the abduction strategy that the Automaton had from the start.

* Keep in mind that the ship starts strongly but unless you get some strong offensive drones going mid-game, it becomes quite weak late-game with the complete lack of directed damage.

* Having no crew has its downsides and upsides. Just like enemy AI ships, the 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 what the Integrated Repair Drone is for.

* Another downside of having no crew is that you can't level them up, so say goodbye to a gold level engineer or gunner and all that other good stuff.

* The plus side of having no crew is that you'll get to laugh maniacally at ships coming with a mind-control system.

* Although you can't hire crew at a store, you can get them from events. However, you need to buy an Oxygen or Medbay/Clonebay to keep them alive long enough. All 3 systems you can buy at a store.

There are tons more merits and demerits but I'll leave those up to you to discover :)

Showcase Videos:
Maiden Voyage/Final test run on my channel
Stream VOD

If you make a video on this ship, please let me know either in this post or on my Youtube channel or at my Twitter account or at my reddit account or at my Discord server, The Stuffs Squad and I will add your videos here :)

Known Issues:
* The game will crash if you're supposed to lose a crew member in an event. You're fine if you win the "roll" though. (Feel free to download this little mod meklozz wrote to fix this issue, just load it after the ship in Slipstream and you should be fine)
* Since no ship in the game is coded to start without weapons or have six drone slots, the HUD is slightly broken. Everything works perfectly fine, it's just a visual bug.
* The last 3 drone hotkeys are displayed but don't work. This is a hardcoding issue since no vanilla ship starts with more than 3 drone slots.
* The game can be lost if your Drone control gets breached and destroyed and you sold the integrated repair drone. You can still pull through if you have crew, even mind-controlled enemy crew.
* Sensors will not be fully disabled in nebulas as the AI will still be able to man them keeping them at level 1, allowing you to have vision inside your ship.

Credits:
* Ship made using Superluminal by KartoFlane
* The hull, gibs, cloak etc images are by kartoFlane from his Auto-Constructor mod. However, in that page, he thanks Sleeper_Service for the images. So the images may be originally by Sleeper. I did edit the images very slightly.
* Super Big Thanks to Arfy for the sprites for the Missile Drone and Ion Drone, as the vanilla code just uses the Combat Drone sprite.
* Big thanks to R30hedron for the Drone System HUD image and helping to fix a bug with the blue options not appearing.
* Biohazard063 for getting me into this whole modding biznaz.
* fdagpigj for being a pigbunny. You may not think that's an important quality, but I assure you, it most certainly is.
* Also, major thanks to many members of The Stuffs Squad and The Biodome Discord Servers with the brainstorming parts. However minor it was, it certainly had some hand in the making of The Automatrix.

Now go and get her bloody vengeance on those Rebels :D
Last edited by Anistuffs on Mon Dec 04, 2017 3:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Anistuffs - The Indian Let's Player.
Here's my Youtube channel with over 1500 LP videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/Anistuffs
Why not pop over and say hi :)
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stylesrj
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Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2014 7:54 am

Re: [Ship][AE] The Automatrix

Postby stylesrj » Tue Nov 14, 2017 9:35 pm

Hmm, I might give that one a spin. Reminds me of my Scrin Carrier.
http://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewto ... 11&t=27580

To my knowledge, this ship is one of, if not, the only ship enforcing drone combat, with no chance of having weapons whatsoever. If I'm wrong (which I may very well be), please tell me and I will correct this line


It's technically true, although the Scrin Carrier comes close to being a Drones Only ship; you can get Weapons but there's only one slot (so it's best not ot uprchase Weapons if you find it in stores) and the Artillery is an Ion Beam but you have to buy that as well.
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Anistuffs
Posts: 39
Joined: Sat Mar 28, 2015 12:32 pm

Re: [Ship][AE] The Automatrix

Postby Anistuffs » Wed Nov 15, 2017 2:35 am

stylesrj wrote:It's technically true, although the Scrin Carrier comes close to being a Drones Only ship; you can get Weapons but there's only one slot (so it's best not ot uprchase Weapons if you find it in stores) and the Artillery is an Ion Beam but you have to buy that as well.


Hooray for technicality :D
Anistuffs - The Indian Let's Player.
Here's my Youtube channel with over 1500 LP videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/Anistuffs
Why not pop over and say hi :)
User avatar
Anistuffs
Posts: 39
Joined: Sat Mar 28, 2015 12:32 pm

Re: [Ship][AE] The Automatrix

Postby Anistuffs » Mon Dec 04, 2017 3:20 pm

Updated the ship to V2. Here's the changelog. Hopefully this makes the ship less unfun to play :)

Code: Select all

V2
* Added a custom image, courtesy of R30hedron (dude just sent it to me out of the blue, I never even asked for it, what a steadfast trooper, thanks geometricshapeman), for the Drone system HUD so it doesn't look quite as derpy.
Note: this image overwrites the default drone system image HUD for all ships with 2 slot drone systems. 3 slot drone systems are unaffected.

* Increased starting drone amount to 15.
* Buffed Missile Drone - now takes 3 power but is twice as fast.
* Fixed missing blue options for custom drones. (Thanks R30, again)
* Reduced rarity of Combat 2 drone from 5 to 4. Hopefully now it'll appear in stores more often.
Anistuffs - The Indian Let's Player.
Here's my Youtube channel with over 1500 LP videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/Anistuffs
Why not pop over and say hi :)