[SHIPS] Aggressive Mantis Cruisers

[porcu93]

WARNING: THIS SHIP PACK REQUIRES HYPERSPACE TO FUNCTION, AS IT USES HIDDEN AUGMENTS (also edited copies of them). IT IS ALSO NOT INTENDED TO BE PLAYED WITH MULTIVERSE, BUT YOU DO YOU, I WON'T STOP YOU.

Yes, I do have more stuff I want to make and share, and this is one of them. Meet the Aggressive Mantis Cruisers: 3 ships that have been built to look at least 90% more aggressive than the average Mantis ship.
More details about these ships: each one have the upgrades costs for the Teleporter, Medbay and Clonebay systems cheaper, with their max level increased to 4 and with a 25% chance to negate system damage. They also come with an incorporated Mantis Pheromones augment with its effect being three times more potent plus a Reconstructive Teleport for your 4-crew Teleporter system. I also wanted to add an Artillery weapon for the ships, but I recently discovered that you either put a very strong weapon in it or you simply don't put the system, and I chose the latter.
And speaking of weaponry, here's what I've made for this ship pack:


Small Bomb+
Power required: 1
Cost: 60
Rarity: 1
Attack: 1 bomb, dealing 3 system damage, 3 crew damage, 10% fire chance.
Cooldown: 10 seconds
Requires 1 missile.


Improved Boarding Drone
Power required: 3
Cost: 85
Rarity: 4
Details: upgraded version of the Boarding Drone you can manually move, deals extra damage to enemies, moves faster, takes less damage from enemies and has a higher HP.


Improved Repair Drone
Power required: 1
Cost: 50
Rarity: 2
Details: upgraded version of the Repair Drone, moves and repairs faster, takes less damage from enemies and, if it's only one enemy attacking it, it can repair while tanking the damage with its higher HP and seems to be basically immortal while inside the Drone Control room.


Anti-system Healing Burst

Power required: 2
Cost: 50
Rarity: 3
Attack: 1 bomb, dealing 2 system damage and healing for 90 HP.
Cooldown: 10 seconds.
Requires 1 missile.


Knife Beam

Power required: 2
Cost: 40
Rarity: 2
Attack: 30 pixel long beam, which deals 2 system damage with a 10% chance to start a fire and ignores 2 shield layers. In game it will show 3 shield piercing, but that's a problem with beams that deal no hull damage and have shield piercing.
Cooldown: 8 seconds.


And now onto the ships.




This ship is your somewhat basic Mantis ship with various improvements with the starting weapon setup and systems installed. If you're wondering why that name, well, just look how the front of the ship looks and you'll understand; and the reason this ship isn't red is because the next one already is, so I used other colors for this one.




Yup, this is basically "The Vortex: Mantis edition", with the name being a circular shaped weapon (if you know the tv show "Xena: Warrior Princess", well, the weapon Xena uses is called "Chakram"), as Engi ships are have a circular layout. And speaking of layouts, the ship's also is circular, more or less. And yes, the drones are there to help with the ship's management. You also start with Medbay instead of Clone Bay, and to balance this in your favour the Teleporter is already at level 3, so you'll need just a bit of scrap for removing the cooldown from the Teleporter. At least the weapon system is usable, unlike the Mantis B.




Even though this is the third ship in the pack, this is actually the first ship I did when I was thinking of what to do with this ship pack. The ship is clearly a reference for the videogame series "Starcraft", with the pattern having a Zerg-ish purple with the Zerg creep all over the ship. And yes, I even put the Zerg symbol in it because I can. This is also probably the most balanced ship of the pack, with a decent fire-power and boarding team.


Now: onto the system changes:
- the Medbay and Clonebay systems are 10 scrap cheaper to buy and their upgrade cost for level 2 and 3 are 25/35 instead of 35/45, with level 4 costing 50;
- the Teleporter system upgrade cost for level 2 and 3 are 20/40 instead of 30/60, with level 4 priced at 60.


People who played the ships:
Rand118
- 1.0 Aggressive Mantis A Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPaFhdBgIAI
- 1.0 Aggressive Mantis B Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMNbFHacTOU
- 1.0 Aggressive Mantis C Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVxRi534Sd4

And with the explaining done, here's the download link, GLHF ^_^
v 1.0: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZqHTUvvrSlmQrf7sCtesvRnp6QmZfaO1/view?usp=sharing

Code: Select all

Changelog:
v 1.0: initial release.


[P0rtalGunn3r]

I get that the Aggressive Mantis Cruisers are supposed to be powerful, but the Reconstructive Teleport feels excessive in combination with the other aspects of the ships. Since you let all the ships get to a teleport level that instantly replenishes, the boarding crew can fully heal on demand (using no real power cost).
This overwhelming synergy makes the different ships feel more homogenous, since it overshadows any other unique elements you included. The one element that shows this the most is the Anti-System Healing Burst, which is just an overengineered Small Bomb past the early game.
Given the ridiculous healing that is available from upgrading the medical facilities, healing by teleporting is certainly not needed for the ships to be imposing.

[porcu93]

I get that the Aggressive Mantis Cruisers are supposed to be powerful, but the Reconstructive Teleport feels excessive in combination with the other aspects of the ships. Since you let all the ships get to a teleport level that instantly replenishes, the boarding crew can fully heal on demand (using no real power cost).
This overwhelming synergy makes the different ships feel more homogenous, since it overshadows any other unique elements you included. The one element that shows this the most is the Anti-System Healing Burst, which is just an overengineered Small Bomb past the early game.
Given the ridiculous healing that is available from upgrading the medical facilities, healing by teleporting is certainly not needed for the ships to be imposing.

It is meant to be this way so that the player can decide how to develop the ship. I did a few runs with all 3 of them on Hard, and even then I had problems myself between not getting weapons, the sector being a stupid layout or other stuff. You also need to keep in mind that if you invest too much on Clone Bay and TP you'll be out of money for the important stuff. If you are playing on Easy then yes, these ship will be stupidly OP as you get so much scrap to upgrade everything to the level cap, but on Hard you'll start to snowball only like after sector 5, before that you need to mind how you spend the scrap.

[P0rtalGunn3r]

It is meant to be this way so that the player can decide how to develop the ship. I did a few runs with all 3 of them on Hard, and even then I had problems myself between not getting weapons, the sector being a stupid layout or other stuff. You also need to keep in mind that if you invest too much on Clone Bay and TP you'll be out of money for the important stuff. If you are playing on Easy then yes, these ship will be stupidly OP as you get so much scrap to upgrade everything to the level cap, but on Hard you'll start to snowball only like after sector 5, before that you need to mind how you spend the scrap.

For context I was playing on Hard, while using the Scrap Rewards Decreased mod (https://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewt ... 11&t=38017) to try to balance the game a bit. Even so, I found the ships a breeze. (Of course one may argue this incentivizes optimal play over variety, which would make the ships feel even more homogenous. But, killing crew gives excessive rewards in the first place and the alternative isn't great.) I'd like to comment that I don't find this a very useful angle. If I was a player that consistently played on Normal or Easy, then my reference of ship power level would be in that context. Sure, there's some small distinctions that might be relevant depending on the focus of discussion, but it's not like someone is comparing modded ships on Easy to vanilla ships on Hard.

There are certainly issues with complaining about certain tactics, such as boarding or hacking, being optimal when there's simply the option to avoid them at times. And I am aware that one has certain freedom over choosing how to build one's loadout throughout the run. However, the Reconstructive Teleport is literally an aspect of the ship that the player has no control of when building a loadout, given they start with it and can't remove it. (In any case, removing an advantage that one already has is much odder than avoiding acquiring one in the first place.) This means that no matter how one builds their loadout, it will still feel very similar to the other ships in this pack due to a combination of aspects, my primary focus being the Reconstructive Teleport.

Now, these ships are not on the extent of some of the modded ships, which throw balance of any kind out the window, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be further improved. Since you made the upgrades cheaper, it's not a huge amount of investment in the end to upgrade the main boarding systems. Also, upgrading the Crew Teleporter to max can be seen as giving you some scrap back, if you account for the scrap needed to buy power bars. Not that you necessarily need to focus on maxing them all out. Since the Reconstructive Teleport already does such a good job at healing, upgrading the medical facilities on these ships is pretty pointless. Forcing choices of where you want to put your scrap is something I am fully in support for and something the Reconstructive Teleport, as currently implemented on these ships, is against.

You're the only one who can know for sure how you want the ships to feel. I don't want to try to convince you to remove something you feel integral to these ships. Nerfing the teleporter to how the system works for vanilla FTL for cost and number of upgrades could be a good alternative, in case you agree with some of my points. And there are more involved solutions. I intentionally didn't directly say that removing the Reconstructive Teleport was the solution. (I condensed my first comment to the main points rather than including a lot of what I wrote here, since it bloated the point I was trying to make with what I felt was unnecessary information.)

[porcu93]

For context I was playing on Hard, while using the Scrap Rewards Decreased mod (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=38017) to try to balance the game a bit. Even so, I found the ships a breeze. (Of course one may argue this incentivizes optimal play over variety, which would make the ships feel even more homogenous. But, killing crew gives excessive rewards in the first place and the alternative isn't great.) I'd like to comment that I don't find this a very useful angle. If I was a player that consistently played on Normal or Easy, then my reference of ship power level would be in that context. Sure, there's some small distinctions that might be relevant depending on the focus of discussion, but it's not like someone is comparing modded ships on Easy to vanilla ships on Hard.

There are certainly issues with complaining about certain tactics, such as boarding or hacking, being optimal when there's simply the option to avoid them at times. And I am aware that one has certain freedom over choosing how to build one's loadout throughout the run. However, the Reconstructive Teleport is literally an aspect of the ship that the player has no control of when building a loadout, given they start with it and can't remove it. (In any case, removing an advantage that one already has is much odder than avoiding acquiring one in the first place.) This means that no matter how one builds their loadout, it will still feel very similar to the other ships in this pack due to a combination of aspects, my primary focus being the Reconstructive Teleport.

Now, these ships are not on the extent of some of the modded ships, which throw balance of any kind out the window, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be further improved. Since you made the upgrades cheaper, it's not a huge amount of investment in the end to upgrade the main boarding systems. Also, upgrading the Crew Teleporter to max can be seen as giving you some scrap back, if you account for the scrap needed to buy power bars. Not that you necessarily need to focus on maxing them all out. Since the Reconstructive Teleport already does such a good job at healing, upgrading the medical facilities on these ships is pretty pointless. Forcing choices of where you want to put your scrap is something I am fully in support for and something the Reconstructive Teleport, as currently implemented on these ships, is against.

You're the only one who can know for sure how you want the ships to feel. I don't want to try to convince you to remove something you feel integral to these ships. Nerfing the teleporter to how the system works for vanilla FTL for cost and number of upgrades could be a good alternative, in case you agree with some of my points. And there are more involved solutions. I intentionally didn't directly say that removing the Reconstructive Teleport was the solution. (I condensed my first comment to the main points rather than including a lot of what I wrote here, since it bloated the point I was trying to make with what I felt was unnecessary information.)

These ships are meant to be seen like an upgrade to the vanilla Mantis ships, so making the main point of these ships cost more would literally defeat the purpose of this ship pack, like the rest of my ship packs are meant to be seen as evolutions of their respective race/faction ship slots receiving upgrades/improvements. These ships would have ended with having Artillery as an installable system, but then during my test runs I got destroyed by the Flagship because I had not enough defences and recalled why Fed C is considered an anti-synergy ship.
The power for level 4 TP would still need to come from somewhere, and there are cases where you literally can't move it for one reason or another. The systems are 10 scrap cheaper to switch in case of the medical system and upgrade for both medical system and TP, excluding level 3 TP which is 20 scrap cheaper, with a decent scrap investment required for level 4 on both systems. I could have also made some blue option that required special stuff to be on your ship to give the player the level 4 systems, but that would have been a waste of time and effort on my side and something that would/could have been totally ignored by the player while he plays.

All things considered, I agree with none of your points, and if a player can get to a point where the ships are fully upgraded then good for him, he did it with his own effort plus some good RNG and without some strange arbitrary system limitations imposed by the creator of the ships that you think would make them more balanced. I feel the ships are balanced as is, because even someone that isn't experienced in boarding on Hard mode like me can still manage to win with lots of ups and downs along the run.

[P0rtalGunn3r]

These ships are meant to be seen like an upgrade to the vanilla Mantis ships, so making the main point of these ships cost more would literally defeat the purpose of this ship pack, like the rest of my ship packs are meant to be seen as evolutions of their respective race/faction ship slots receiving upgrades/improvements. These ships would have ended with having Artillery as an installable system, but then during my test runs I got destroyed by the Flagship because I had not enough defences and recalled why Fed C is considered an anti-synergy ship.

[...]

All things considered, I agree with none of your points, and if a player can get to a point where the ships are fully upgraded then good for him, he did it with his own effort plus some good RNG and without some strange arbitrary system limitations imposed by the creator of the ships that you think would make them more balanced. I feel the ships are balanced as is, because even someone that isn't experienced in boarding on Hard mode like me can still manage to win with lots of ups and downs along the run.

Neither of us seem to fully understand what the other party is saying and I'm not planning to extend the discussion further. But ignoring everything else, I'd just like to know your reasoning with The Chakram, if you would be willing to share.
Given you give it the Anti-System Healing Burst and it starts with the Crew Teleporter already at level 3. You mention anti-synergy, and these two healing methods definitely step on each other's toes.
I don't plan to argue against your reasoning or probe for more, in case you dread an endless cycle.

[porcu93]

Neither of us seem to fully understand what the other party is saying and I'm not planning to extend the discussion further. But ignoring everything else, I'd just like to know your reasoning with The Chakram, if you would be willing to share.
Given you give it the Anti-System Healing Burst and it starts with the Crew Teleporter already at level 3. You mention anti-synergy, and these two healing methods definitely step on each other's toes.
I don't plan to argue against your reasoning or probe for more, in case you dread an endless cycle.

Basically an "Engi B but it's a Mantis boarding ship", with enough ways to keep that single starting Mantis alive, such as prolonged boarding on enemy ships, enemy boarding events (with a possible medbay getting destroyed) and so on.