[SHIPS] The Flexstrels

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porcu93
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[SHIPS] The Flexstrels

Postby porcu93 » Sun Sep 13, 2020 8:18 pm

WARNING: THIS SHIP PACK REQUIRES HYPERSPACE TO FUNCTION.
I'm also 90% sure this mod is not compatible with Multiverse, so don't blame me if stuff broke on your save or something.

Greetings everyone, and welcome to my very first (somewhat successful) attempt on making a mod for this game. This idea came out when a user posted this image on the FTL Discord server, so you know that the starting point is a meme, but the ships may be fun to play.

During the first days of the Rebellion, many refitted Kestrel Cruisers got destroyed. One day an Engi with some crazy ideas decided to use the rest of those ships to rebuild them, refit them and experiment, using a lot of Flex Tape (not sponsored BTW) to keep the wreckages from falling apart and can automatically dispense some Flex Seal to take care of the breaches.
NEW: starting from V 5.0 the pack comes with 2 vanilla bugfixes, a new expanded store that will replace the vanilla one and 3 new ships, credits for the original Kestrel recolours goes to slowriderxcorps, the creator of the well known mod Insurrection+ (of which the Kestrels recolours colour schemes came from). Also, all ships in this pack can install the Temporal Manipulator system, have a higher reactor cap with lowered scrap prices, a system cap of 10 and have both my Artillery Enabler mod and my Clonebay Gas Remover mod incorporated. It will also revert the Hyperspace hacking fix, so now in this ship pack you can power down hacking while it's mid-space without making it explode.


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Starting with 5 missiles, 5 drone parts, 2 drone slots if you decide to install the Drone Control system and 7 reactor power, this ship is kind of the obvious "recolour" of the Kestrel A. This version has been built with low power requirement at the beginning of the game, so you get some decent 1-power weapons for damage dealing: the Adv. Flak Gun and a Heavy Pierce Laser Mark I that uses one less power. The power for the Medbay needs to be juggled from other stations, like in the normal Kestrel A. The ship has the standard 30 HP. The Engi is there because he's technically the guy that made the ship. The ship's Artillery is basically a Flak II, but each shot is extremely accurate.


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This version has 5 missiles and 25 drone parts for starting resources, but it also comes with 2 Artillery weapons. But those aren't the weapons from the Federation Cruisers A/B and C, otherwise that would have been excessive. I've opted for a modified Dual Shot Laser that pierces 2 shields a modified Pike Beam that also pierces 2 shields and swipes with a 150 pixels long beam instead of the normal 170. The Zoltan there used to be the "tool" the Artillery system you couldn't manually power up, but now it's just extra power usable elsewhere.
As this is basically a ship made by someone ready for any situation (hopefully), the ship has every single system installed at level 1, with Drone Control, Engines, Shields and Weapon Control at level 2. The ship also comes with an extra large reactor, with a cap of 45 power total and starting with 35 of that.
All of this power comes at a cost though: the ship has 25 HP and you only have 2 weapon slots and 2 drone slots with no starting weapon or drone, so choose wisely on how to arm yourself and what you should upgrade. The Clone Bay system is also installable, as usual. And yes, it's the same Engi from the previous ship.


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This version, this time with 5 missiles and 20 drone parts for your initial resources, is your obvious auto-ship, with 3 weapon slots and 4 drone slots to balance the missing crew and the used drone slot for an improved Anti-Personnel drone and an improved System Repair drone, with both being controllable, faster and more powerful.
As your starting setup you have a Mini Beam to use in conjunction with your Burst Laser I and Combat I, with a Defense I to deal with missiles and stuff. You still have your 30 HP, but with 11 reactor power and a level 4 Drone Control, you'll have to juggle between attacking the enemy and protecting yourself.
To compensate the necessity of drone use you get a Drone Recovery Arm augment that doesn't use an augment slot, and those 20 drones are there just in case they get blown up. You also get a hidden Scrap Recovery Arm that gives you 20% more scrap, but you can't use it for blue options, and an Automated Re-loader plus a Shield Charge Booster to simulate the crew manning those systems. In this ship you won't be able to install any Oxygen or Medbay/Clone Bay, but because of some events giving you crew and having the crew limit set to 0 you get a crash, I've set the crew limit to 1, so you might get lucky and obtain a Lanius to help. The Engi here has been replaced by the System Repair drone for obvious reasons.
And because Engis do love drones, the Artillery system will power a stationary Combat Drone II, simulating said drone attacking the enemy ship without the worries of losing it to the enemy defenses.


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This rushed project of a ship starts with a mediocre weapon loadout of 2 Letos and a Dual Laser, 30 missiles and 5 drone parts with 2 drone slots if the system gets installed. The worst part is that it doesn't have enough power to have everything excluding the Clone Bay online, and whenever it takes damage pieces of its hull will fly off. Uh, it is indeed a good thing, because said pieces will go towards the enemy and deal up to 5 damage! Basically a Flak weapon that fires whenever you take damage, but thankfully the hull is still up to standards.
The ship can also install a Laser Machine-gun as an Artillery, which fires up to 15 shots, but it does self-regulate to only fire a number of shots equal to the number of rooms in the enemy ship if it has less than 15 rooms.


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This ship is filled with people that really enjoys 2 things: espresso and speed. The ship has the standard 5 missiles and 5 drone parts with 2 drone slots, but it comes with many upgrades: it starts with level 5 Engines (even though it doesn't have enough power for everything, but still), the FTL Drive charges 5 times faster and the crew's movement speed is increased: it's doubled while on your ship and it's increased by 25% on enemy ships. The ship also starts with a grand total of 32 fuel and the Temporal Manipulator, which can be useful as I've added some special blue option.
The ship's Artillery, when installed, is a support weapon: an ion weapon that fires 3 shots of 1 ion and 1 system damage each AND it will charge faster the more it fires.
Unfortunately some Rebel spies managed to install a bomb inside the ship, and the only way to deactivate it is to get to Sector 8 before the timer runs out.


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The ship that held back this update the most, with its quirk being an upgradable power surge. The ship starts with 5 missiles, 20 drones and a 3 weapons and 3 drone slots and, as you can see it can't install any artillery, which has been replaced by an upgradable Surge Barrage, more info in-game (I don't want to spoil this). Because you'll need quite a bit of scrap, I've given this ship a hidden Scrap Recovery Arm that gives you 10% more scrap, but you can't use it for blue options, and trust me when I say that you need that extra scrap.
A scrapped version of the surge mechanic would also have had drones being part of the surges, but I couldn't make it work because of HS not working with custom drone surges at that time... Oh well.


People who played the ships:
Rand118
- 2.0 Flexstrel A Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSXT5TLPiRQ
- 2.0 Flexstrel B Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUjZNE8me6g
- 3.0 Flexstrel C Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pggNdd_FPhA
- 5.0.1 Flexstrel D Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWLdp_4rIfI
- 5.0.1 Flexstrel E Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88Z44SRk_zo
- 5.0.1 Flexstrel F Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWeL6UbY1U8

And here's the download link, using google drive because I don't have to worry about the link going down, enjoy ^_^
v 5.1.2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y3gMgAPohIu9gV7d5_gZrPKm5kPpVGy2/view?usp=sharing

Code: Select all

Changelog:
v 5.1.2: changed the sprites of the ships and their gibs to use flat images instead of reusing images from vanilla and INS+, but I'm too lazy to redo the ship preview images. Strangely enough this update made the mod 461KB lighter.

v 5.1.1: added a missing blue option for the Temporal Manipulator on the Stasis Pod event if you use the Rock Plating blue option.

v 5.1: lots of changes to the pack:
- removed shield image duplicates;
- removed parts of code no longer needed;
- removed the custom thruster animation, using the vanilla image in place of it;
- reordered and commented the XML code to be more readable for others;
- renamed events and certain weapon's IDs;
- minor grammar fixes and text changes;
- changed the ship cloaking images a little bit to be more "glow-y";
- the Flexstrel C will now have its own special store with no crew on sale and will have different option regarding events with crew;
- the Flexstrel D now has 25 hull points to reflect the fact that it is an actual rushed ship;
- the Flexstrel E weapon system room now uses the actual custom image I made for the ship, but I'm too lazy to update the image on the post;
- the Flexstrel E now has 2 levels of difficulty for the countdown: 60 and 45 minutes, both with an extra 10 seconds of time buffer for some pre-jump checks.

v 5.0.5: Minor text fixes.

v 5.0.4:
- removed redundant images;
- fixed the Flexstrel E drone room to have the tape in it like the other ships.

v 5.0.3: Code clean-up and grammar fixes.

v 5.0.2: Fixed a Temporal Manipulator blue option.

v 5.0.1: Fixed a bug regarding an event not working as intended.

v 5.0: MASSIVE EXPANSION UPDATE:
- added 3 new ships, each one with its own quirk;
- update the old 3 ships with a lot of things that I didn't keep track of (sorry);
- the reactor cap has been increased to 35 (the Flexstrel B has a cap of 45), the scrap cost has been reduced;
- the system cap has been increased to 10 (the Flexstrel F has a cap of 9);
- all six ships have the engine animation like the vanilla Kestrel's animation;
- added the Temporal Manipulator as an installable system;
- incorporated both the Artillery Enabler mod and the Clonebay Gas Remover standalone mods;
- hacking will not explode when deactivated while it is travelling;
- updated lots of room images and added new room layers to follow the thick lines that connect the different pieces of the ships;
- added a new store, which replaces the vanilla one;
- Hull Missile is now usable for missiles related blue options (vanilla bug fix);
- Combat Beam II now uses the correct images when on and when firing (vanilla bug fix);
- included a much needed level 2 Clonebay blue option for Slug sectors (vanilla bug fix, probably).

v 4.0.1:
- removed the custom Artillery charge bar indicator in preparation for the upcoming Hyperspace release;
- fixed some typos plus some minor rewording in some places;
- set the limit of systems on the Flexstrel B to 12, just in case it is needed to have the second page of systems (it will matter when Hyperspace updates);
- removed the letters from the artillery system of the Flexstrel A and C.

v 4.0: MASSIVE MAJOR UPDATE:
General changes:
- I finally took the time to change every hull and gib to also have the Tape visible, which will be part of the now updated cloaking glow;
- lots of room images have been changed;
- new addition: if you also download the "Artillery Enabler" mini-mod, "The Flexstrel" and "The Auto Flexstrel" will have an optional installable artillery system;
- the tooltips and the charging indicator for the Artillery system have been adapted to be generic (with or without the mod mentioned above), with some color coded lines related to the letter in the Artillery room;
- the mod will now show a short description on Slipstream Mod Manager.
The Flexstrel:
- the ship's special Heavy Laser's cooldown has been reduced to 10 second;
- new Artillery weapon: a Flak II with the projectile's radius reduced to 30 and with level 3 Artillery's cooldown being the same as powering a Flak II from the Weapons system (21 seconds).
The "OP" Flexstrel:
- small buff to the starting setup, with the Weapons system gaining a level and the hull starting with an extra 5 HP;
- the placement of the Artillery systems have been switched with the Medbay/Clone Bay and Teleport system rooms;
- the Artillery systems will now have 100% system damage resist from enemy weapons and a letter to differentiate which one is which;
- added 2 venting points on the Piloting room.
The Auto Flexstrel:
- the ship's layout has been changed so that the on-board drones can get to the systems earlier for their business;
- added a Shield Charge Booster and an Automated Re-loader as hidden augments to somewhat counter the lack of crew;
- because System Repair drones ignore fires on vacuum, I've also added a Fire Suppression as a hidden augment;
- new Artillery weapon: a Combat Drone II with firing speed depending on how much power you put into it, 4 power means it shoots a bit slower than a fully charged Chain Vulcan.

v 3.1.1: Fixed the hidden augment in the Auto-Flexstrel to (hopefully) kill friendly crew faster.

v 3.1: Buffed the Auto-Flexstrel to be more powerful for hard mode by adding another starting weapon and having the ship gain 20% more scrap from rewards with another hidden augment.

v 3.0: MAJOR UPDATE, now requires Hyperspace to function, as it uses hidden augments and new augments.

v 2.2.1: Small update, changed the artillery tooltip to show both cooldown of the weapons instead of the standard "50 Seconds Cooldown" and changed the artillery charge bar to be shorter than the level 4 version.

v 2.2: Because setting the max level of the artillery to 1 also lowers the Flagship's artillery systems to level 1, I've restored the max level to 4, but the player won't be able to upgrade past level 1, like for the 5 shields obtainable by enemies but not by the player.

v 2.1: Big changes to the Flexstrel B:
- now the 2 artillery systems have only 1 level in artillery but they'll act as if they were level 4;
- removed the battery system spawn because if it gets hacked the game will crash (I discovered it recently).
All ion storm beacons now have the ion storm effect removed, their events are unchanged.
I forgot to mention it in the v 2.0 patch, even though it's also written in the description: the Flexstrel B has 40 reactor power.

v 2.0: Major changes:
- made the ship border totally black;
- added 3 custom (edited) made weapons, you can't find them on shops;
- rearranged and changed the layout of all 3 ships.

v 1.2: Because I didn't do basic math when adding the power, The OP Flexstrel ship now has 15 extra reactor power, for a total of 45.
EDIT: also fixed a mount to be attached to the correct gib, still in the same ship mentioned.

v 1.1: Finally added a proper cloaking image for each ship, also added the icon for each ship.

v 1.0.1: Minor naming changes for consistency (my bad), now the name is "Flexstrel" instead of "Flextrel".

v 1.0: Initial release.
Last edited by porcu93 on Thu Jun 22, 2023 9:04 pm, edited 50 times in total.
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porcu93
Posts: 103
Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2020 5:32 pm

Re: [SHIPS] The Flex Tape Kestrel (Flexstrel)

Postby porcu93 » Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:31 am

v 2.0: Major changes:
- made the ship border totally black;
- added 3 custom (edited) made weapons, you can't find them on shops;
- rearranged and changed the layout of all 3 ships.
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porcu93
Posts: 103
Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2020 5:32 pm

Re: [SHIPS] The Flex Tape Kestrel (Flexstrel)

Postby porcu93 » Tue Nov 10, 2020 2:49 pm

V 2.1:
Because I forgot that ion storm beacons + more than 30 power reactor = game crash and there are problems with multiple artillery systems, the Flexster B has been changed to have its artillery act as fully powered even though they have only 1 level each, you can't install a backup battery and all ion storm events have been modified to have just the nebula, their chain of events haven't been changed (so those level 2 pilot events simply won't have the ion storm, for example).
sergey1987
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Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:44 pm

Re: [SHIPS] The Flex Tape Kestrel (Flexstrel)

Postby sergey1987 » Tue Nov 10, 2020 9:08 pm

I really appreciate for you bringing back old ships, and I really like this new one.
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porcu93
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Re: [SHIPS] The Flex Tape Kestrel (Flexstrel)

Postby porcu93 » Thu Jan 28, 2021 8:21 pm

V 3.1.1: minor fix to an augment on the Flexstrel C
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porcu93
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Re: [SHIPS] The Flexstrels (Flex Tape Kestrels)

Postby porcu93 » Sat Apr 24, 2021 12:01 am

V 4.0: Major update regarding a LOT of things such as ship layouts and loadouts, hull image updates, interior improvements and, if enabled, buyable artillery for the two ships that had none before this update.
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porcu93
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Re: [SHIPS] The Flexstrels

Postby porcu93 » Sun Jul 03, 2022 1:16 am

After almost 22 months, here I am with an update to this ship pack, with three new ships and updates to the three old ones. Enjoy.
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porcu93
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Re: [SHIPS] The Flexstrels

Postby porcu93 » Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:38 pm

5.0.1 update, containing a quick fix for an event not working as intended, just noticed while playtesting another mod.
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porcu93
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Re: [SHIPS] The Flexstrels

Postby porcu93 » Thu Oct 27, 2022 10:04 pm

It seems that I screwed up some text related stuff, so v 5.0.5 is up.
And yeah, maybe I should do a post every time I do updates...