[Ship][WIP] Kumiho

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Kit
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[Ship][WIP] Kumiho

Postby Kit » Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:17 pm

Hello, FTL community!

Thanks to kartoFlane and his wonderful Superluminal Ship Editor, I'm currently fashioning my first mod for FTL! It's a Stealth Cruiser variant focused around fire, anti-bio weapons, and disabling systems, and I'm after any answers and detailed, constructive feedback you're willing to offer.

This ship will end up having the potential for a fairly strong start no matter what, since I can't do everything I want with it while keeping it balanced to most of the vanilla ships, but I do still want to make it as balanced to the actual game as I can, rather than have an absurdly powerful ship that is only challenging to play with super difficulty mods.

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Here's what I have so far:

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Yes, it is just a recolour, but I didn't trust myself to attempt to imitate the game's art style and still do it justice.

The look was actually inspired in-part by the Shivan, since I like the idea of the hull of a ship having a glow which matches its weapons. Of course, as most of the weapons in the game glow only red and green, I set out to create my own to match.

Now, I will be the first to admit that these weapons may be a little overpowered at the moment, especially when you consider the fact that the ship will likely start with all four of them. Any advice on balancing would be greatly appreciated.

Fire Burst Mark I

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A burst laser that fires super-heated shots capable of starting fires. Takes a while to charge as a result.

Required Power: 2
Charge Time: 15 seconds
Shots Per Charge: 2
Damage Per Shot: 1
Fire Chance: Moderate (4)

Fire Burst Mark II

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A straightforward upgrade of the Fire Burst Mark I, firing an extra shot with each volley.

Required Power: 3
Charge Time: 16 seconds
Shots Per Charge: 3
Damage Per Shot: 1
Fire Chance: Moderate (4)

I tried to balance both Fire Bursts around the vanilla Heavy and Hull Lasers, reallocating some points from breach chance into fire chance, removing the bonus hull damage, and bumping up the charge times.

Volcano Bomb

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Bathes a room in fire, erupting with enough force to devastate crew and systems in the process.

Required Power: 2
Charge Time: 17
Requires missile
Damage Per Shot: 0
Fire Chance: High (10)
Personnel Damage: 2
System Damage: 2

I tried to balance this bomb somewhere between the Fire Bomb and the Breach Bomb Mark II, trading breach chance for fire chance, giving it the longer of the two cooldowns, and leaving in some of the bonus system damage.

Hellfire Beam

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Rips though flesh and leaves a trail of fire in its wake.

Required Power: 4
Charge Time: 18 seconds
Damage Per Room Hit: 0
Fire Chance: High (8)
Personnel Damage: 3
Beam Length: 140

The idea behind this weapon was to combine the Fire Beam with the Anti-Bio Beam while balancing out the fact that it only takes one weapons slot.

Now, this ship's starting systems is where I aim to balance things out a bit more. It's only defenses to start will be Cloaking level 1 and Engines level 4. No Long Range Scanners, no Titanium System Casing. Stealth Weapons will be the only augment.
Shields, Teleporter, and Drone systems will need to be purchased. Apart from that, Weapons and Sensors will start at level 2, meaning you only get enough power for the weakest of your starting weapons, but you get to see every fire you've lit on the enemy ship! Yay! Everything else will start at level 1.

Another strategy for weapons I am considering is just forgetting about the lasers and starting the ship with only the bomb and the beam, but that would require either buffing the starting systems or nerfing the weapons themselves, neither of which seem ideal. Again, this is why I'm coming to you guys.

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I'm close to having a playable version ready for testing! All that's left is weapon coding and likely a little tweaking here and there.

I'll either post a download link here or in a new thread on the Working Mods forum, depending on which happens to be more appropriate for a playable but unfinished mod.

Please, leave me any thoughtful suggestions, feedback, and criticisms you can offer. I want to make sure my very first mod is a good one; something that I won't be the only one enjoying.

Again, thanks and credit to kartoFlane for both his wonderful ship editor and this little text divider I found in his posts that I'm gonna keep using for a while (if that's okay). Also, thanks to VanguardOfValor for making this fantastic tutorial on the use of Superluminal and inspiring me to try my hand at modding in the first place. You're both awesome.
Last edited by Kit on Tue Jun 18, 2013 11:11 pm, edited 25 times in total.
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5thHorseman
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby 5thHorseman » Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:33 pm

I don't have any experience with making weapons but yours sound pretty good. I'm drooling a bit imagining all the fires I can start with those :D

It's also hard to know how the ship will be balanced until you play it for a while. I will happily help with that part once you have a playable ship :)

No shield to start will help keep the ship from being overpowered, though. I experimented with leaving doors and sensors off, and severely limiting the crew in my ship the Potential, and different combinations of those 3 proved to make the ship nearly unplayable. One guy, with no scanners or doors, simply cannot keep fires from engulfing the entire ship. However just leaving doors off, or dropping the crew to 1, can tone down an otherwise OP ship a decent bit more than you'd expect. I won't suggest scanners because I agree: You want to see those guys burn!
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speedoflight
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby speedoflight » Sat Jun 15, 2013 12:06 am

Nice looking ship and nice weapons.

One thing, u should increase the recharge rate of the fire burst mark, or lower the fire chance. I tell u this cuz i have a little experience in fire weapons (i did a bunch of em for my mod) and with fire chance = high in a burst weapon that already deals hull damage is a bit op . That or just remove the hull damage. If u want the weapon to deal hull damage (for support purposes) then u should lower the fire chance, or just increase the recharge rate.

The fire burst mark ii has the same recharge rate than mark I, i dunno if this is intended, but clearly mark ii should have bigger recharge rate. Just a little since the weapon already uses 3 power bars.

To make the teleporting effect of the bomb, u should use some simple photoshop filters combined with transparency, or just use transparency and thats it, the effect will look good anyways. Since the graphics details are so small, sometimes its not necessary to make extra effects when with a simple one u will get a nice weapon anyways.

In fact, u dont even need to make the teleporting effect, for example in my mod i have some bombs that dont use that effect, they just create a energy ball and just before the weapon fires, it creates a small animation of the energy ball growing and getting smaller before the shot. And thats it, u dont need to make any teleporting effect, u can imagine something else. But bombs are really hard to mod, they require more work than other weapons, more timing, more imagination, etc. I only wish u luck lol. In my omicron mod i have the omicron bomb that looks awesome and i didnt use any teleport effect, just an energy sourge and boom!.

NO, u cant make custom beams, if u like the red color, u re welcome, if not dont abuse of beam weapons lol. Thats another lack on ftl modding, sadly.

Now, sadly i cant test the mod right now since im a little busy with my own, but this looks very promissing. Keep the hard work there!.

BTW: Cloaking level 2 and engines at decent level ar far better than shields. U will get less hits than having shields.. besides u have the stealth weapons augmentation... i mean, in that sense the ship is not really hard. U should lower the cloaking level and the engines to 3 or 2. Cuz u will not have any real trouble with that configuration until u can buy shields, and after that... the ship will be a bit op. I mean, u only need to worry about boarders, cuz u will only get 2 or 3 hits max before u kill any ship. Sensors are ok, since we all want and we all like to see people burning!! :twisted:
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Kit
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby Kit » Sat Jun 15, 2013 12:24 am

5thHorseman wrote:I don't have any experience with making weapons but yours sound pretty good. I'm drooling a bit imagining all the fires I can start with those :D

It's also hard to know how the ship will be balanced until you play it for a while. I will happily help with that part once you have a playable ship :)

No shield to start will help keep the ship from being overpowered, though. I experimented with leaving doors and sensors off, and severely limiting the crew in my ship the Potential, and different combinations of those 3 proved to make the ship nearly unplayable. One guy, with no scanners or doors, simply cannot keep fires from engulfing the entire ship. However just leaving doors off, or dropping the crew to 1, can tone down an otherwise OP ship a decent bit more than you'd expect. I won't suggest scanners because I agree: You want to see those guys burn!

Thanks for the offer! I'll be sure to post a WIP version once it's playable.

As the systems are now, the Kumiho will be on par with the DA-SR12; the only difference would be taking 2 points out of Weapons and shoving them into Engines instead. Considering the lack of Long Range Scanners, I want beacons near stars and in asteroid fields to be challenging, not guaranteed death.

I was planning on having the starting crew as one Human, one Engi, and one Zoltan. The Zoltan will offset the massive power drain from using more than one of the starting weapons at a time, the Engi would keep what few defenses you have up and running, and a Human because someone on your ship should be able to survive longer than 5 seconds against boarders. I realize knocking the starting crew down to two could probably balance things a bit more, but this setup lets you take full advantage of your starting systems while still leaving you partially vulnerable to fires, breaches, and getting punched in the face. Any less seems too mean.
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aaaaaa50
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby aaaaaa50 » Sat Jun 15, 2013 3:57 am

First off, all your graphics look kick-ass awesome. Now about how the damage works: Each point of normal damage does one damage to the hull, the system, and the enemy crew. System damage only affects the system, and personnel damage only affects crewmembers. But if you have one normal and one system, they add together so it will do two system damage total. Each point does 15 damage to crew, so your burst lasers will do 30 damage on each laser to crew. And you can get crazy stuff if you use negative damage values.

Now personally I think your burst lasers are balanced just fine. Upgrading to weapons level five for five burst laser shots is disadvantage enough for the fires you get to cause on crewed ships, (burst laser 3 is one weapon slot for five lasers at four power,) especially since drones and rock ships will be counters. What I think is more problematic is that you have four weapons on the ship and all of them focus on causing fires. The fire beam looks wicked awesome to use, but with only burst lasers to lower shields it would probably be too inconvenient to use. I'd recommend trying this in-game for a couple hours before trying to determine what to do to balance it, but just looking at the stats I'd say the two fire burst lasers are enough for a balanced ship, and the Hellfire Beam should be part of an alternate loadout.
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Thunderr
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby Thunderr » Sat Jun 15, 2013 2:44 pm

I love the ship. Maybe you could have two variants, a fire based ship that glows orange and a anti-crew ship that glows green. Your weapons are great, they're just VERY overpowered. You could maybe make two versions of the ships, one OP and one balanced. These are just my ideas though, you don't have to do anything I mentioned here.
speedoflight
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby speedoflight » Sat Jun 15, 2013 3:35 pm

aaaaaa50 wrote:First off, all your graphics look kick-ass awesome. Now about how the damage works: Each point of normal damage does one damage to the hull, the system, and the enemy crew. System damage only affects the system, and personnel damage only affects crewmembers. But if you have one normal and one system, they add together so it will do two system damage total. Each point does 15 damage to crew, so your burst lasers will do 30 damage on each laser to crew. And you can get crazy stuff if you use negative damage values.

Now personally I think your burst lasers are balanced just fine. Upgrading to weapons level five for five burst laser shots is disadvantage enough for the fires you get to cause on crewed ships, (burst laser 3 is one weapon slot for five lasers at four power,) especially since drones and rock ships will be counters. What I think is more problematic is that you have four weapons on the ship and all of them focus on causing fires. The fire beam looks wicked awesome to use, but with only burst lasers to lower shields it would probably be too inconvenient to use. I'd recommend trying this in-game for a couple hours before trying to determine what to do to balance it, but just looking at the stats I'd say the two fire burst lasers are enough for a balanced ship, and the Hellfire Beam should be part of an alternate loadout.


Negative damage values usually doesnt work no matter wat weapon u using. Negative damage values, as far as i remember, only affects the heal bomb (persdamage = negative value). No other weapon uses negative damage.

Hull damage as far as i know, not always deals system damage, that is a question of probability. If u have 1 damage to hull and 1 damage to system, u will do 2 damage in total, but only 1 damage to the systems.

A regular crew member i think has about 10 pers points. So, if your weapon deals 30 persdamage, u will kill any crew member in the targeted room.

Burst lasers, as i said in my previous post that nobody seem to read it, are not balanced while they have very high chance of fire and so low recharge rate. People think killing a ship only with fire is hard, it isnt, not specially if u are igniting fire every hit u make. Actually killing an enemy only igniting fire is easier in som cases than trying to damage the hull or the systems. The only exception is when u encounter a ship with engi or rock members, but still, its far easy, since the only thing u need to to is to fire to the weapons, then fire to somewhere else, and thats it. The crew of the enemy ship will not have enough resources to fight both fires, and by the time they extinct the fire, u already ignited other room of the ship. So, u need to play with the fire chance, the weapon must ignite fire only sometimes, not almost always, even if u have a weapon that only ignites fire, u have 2 options, bigger recharge rate or lower fire chance.
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kartoFlane
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby kartoFlane » Sat Jun 15, 2013 4:40 pm

Not exactly. Negative system/pers damage heals instead of dealing the damage.
That way you can have a weapon that deals 1 damage to hull and systems, but 0 to crew (via -1 persDamage)
DryEagle's Escrort Duty does that, for example.
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Kit
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby Kit » Sat Jun 15, 2013 5:20 pm

speedoflight wrote:One thing, u should increase the recharge rate of the fire burst mark, or lower the fire chance. I tell u this cuz i have a little experience in fire weapons (i did a bunch of em for my mod) and with fire chance = high in a burst weapon that already deals hull damage is a bit op . That or just remove the hull damage. If u want the weapon to deal hull damage (for support purposes) then u should lower the fire chance, or just increase the recharge rate.

The fire burst mark ii has the same recharge rate than mark I, i dunno if this is intended, but clearly mark ii should have bigger recharge rate. Just a little since the weapon already uses 3 power bars.

I can definitely agree with nerfing the burst lasers in some way; that was something I meant to do in the original post, but forgot about. I'm thinking a moderate fire chance, somewhere about the middle of the road, and a much longer cooldown. As for making the Mark II have a longer cooldown than the Mark I, I figured the extra power cost was enough to balance out the extra shot while allowing both to be fired simultaneously in most cases. But I'll trust your judgement on the matter for now and give it a one or two second disparity for my starting playtests.

Hell, I may even just leave only one version in.

speedoflight wrote:To make the teleporting effect of the bomb, u should use some simple photoshop filters combined with transparency, or just use transparency and thats it, the effect will look good anyways. Since the graphics details are so small, sometimes its not necessary to make extra effects when with a simple one u will get a nice weapon anyways.

In fact, u dont even need to make the teleporting effect, for example in my mod i have some bombs that dont use that effect, they just create a energy ball and just before the weapon fires, it creates a small animation of the energy ball growing and getting smaller before the shot. And thats it, u dont need to make any teleporting effect, u can imagine something else. But bombs are really hard to mod, they require more work than other weapons, more timing, more imagination, etc. I only wish u luck lol. In my omicron mod i have the omicron bomb that looks awesome and i didnt use any teleport effect, just an energy sourge and boom!.

Well, call me a perfectionist, but I want all the images and animations in my mod to imitate the game's style to the pixel. My favourite mods for any game have been the ones that fit seamlessly with its look and the feel.

speedoflight wrote:BTW: Cloaking level 2 and engines at decent level ar far better than shields. U will get less hits than having shields.. besides u have the stealth weapons augmentation... i mean, in that sense the ship is not really hard. U should lower the cloaking level and the engines to 3 or 2. Cuz u will not have any real trouble with that configuration until u can buy shields, and after that... the ship will be a bit op. I mean, u only need to worry about boarders, cuz u will only get 2 or 3 hits max before u kill any ship. Sensors are ok, since we all want and we all like to see people burning!! :twisted:

I gave it cloaking level 2 to compensate for the lack of Long Range Scanners, Titatnium System Casing and the long cooldowns I planned to give some or all of the weapons. Like I said earlier, the systems are on par with the DA-SR12. If anything, I'll take the one level out of cloaking and put it into something else, giving it the same defenses as the Nesasio minus the augmentations.

aaaaaa50 wrote:Now personally I think your burst lasers are balanced just fine. Upgrading to weapons level five for five burst laser shots is disadvantage enough for the fires you get to cause on crewed ships, (burst laser 3 is one weapon slot for five lasers at four power,) especially since drones and rock ships will be counters. What I think is more problematic is that you have four weapons on the ship and all of them focus on causing fires. The fire beam looks wicked awesome to use, but with only burst lasers to lower shields it would probably be too inconvenient to use. I'd recommend trying this in-game for a couple hours before trying to determine what to do to balance it, but just looking at the stats I'd say the two fire burst lasers are enough for a balanced ship, and the Hellfire Beam should be part of an alternate loadout.

If anything, I'll ditch the lasers in favour of the beam. speedoflight is right, the First Bursts are too powerful as I originally posted them, and it's easier to take down a ship with fire than some think.

Thunderr wrote:I love the ship. Maybe you could have two variants, a fire based ship that glows orange and a anti-crew ship that glows green. Your weapons are great, they're just VERY overpowered. You could maybe make two versions of the ships, one OP and one balanced. These are just my ideas though, you don't have to do anything I mentioned here.

You're right, they are still too strong, but I'm still not sure how else to balance the beam and the bomb. With fully upgraded weapon systems, I'd like to give people the option of using three of the four weapons at once. Upping the power cost for the Beam or the Bomb makes the other weapons harder to balance if I still want to achieve that.

As for making a Type B, that's totally the plan once Kumiho is in full working order; fully playable, fully balanced, and free of bugs. The Kumiho is focused around fires, disabling systems, and killing crew. The Type B, which I'm calling Haetae for now, will be much the same; just replace "fires" with "hull breaches."

kartoFlane wrote:Not exactly. Negative system/pers damage heals instead of dealing the damage.
That way you can have a weapon that deals 1 damage to hull and systems, but 0 to crew (via -1 persDamage)
DryEagle's Escrort Duty does that, for example.

Thank you, kartoFlane! That's something I'll definitely need to keep in mind.

I have two more questions now, though.

Firstly, will a laser that deals 0 hull damage have no effect on shields, no matter what other kinds of damage it can do? For example, if I gave a laser 0 hull damage, 1 system damage, and 1 personnel damage per shot, would it just do absolutely nothing if it hit a shield?

Secondly, could I give an ion weapon traits like fire chance, personnel damage, or even hull damage, or are they always strictly ion damage and nothing else?
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Re: [SHIP][WIP] Kumiho

Postby kartoFlane » Sat Jun 15, 2013 5:39 pm

I'm not certain, but I think that weapons that have 0 damage will have no effect on shields. It's best to try it yourself, I guess.
As for ion, I don't think there should be any issues... All tags should behave the same way - I haven't tried that, though.
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