[WIP] [Steampunk] Lighter than air

[dalolorn]

Quick question, are you planning to keep shields in game? if not we need to rework the concept of weapons in ftl by a lot.

I think there won't be any shields in the current imagination of the mod. I agree we would need to heavily re-balance hull and weapons.

I think upping the rarity of beam weapons would be in order. Beam being stuff like fire beam, focused sun light, etc.

replacing the concept of lasers with ballistics.
Missiles seem okay, just a bit more rare but not as rare as the other stuff.

I think ballistics should be the main weapon most groups will use. While being deserve such as a series of ballistics that can do extra damage to system, double hull damaging, shield pierce (1 bubble), incendiary (can cause fire), etc etc etc. Heavy (cannon) ballistics, fast breaching sniper. etc.

Just some ideas and concepts, I got quite a lot of ideas so if you do not like this one or want it altered I can patch up another right up for you.

These ideas are all decent and could all really fit into a steampunk world. I especially like the sun-beam though

I think you could use Zoltan shields around the main hull, making the balloons more vulnerable than the wooden framework.

[a Sir]

Wow! So much activity happened today/yesterday!

Since you can't actually increase the cost of buying reactor power how do you plan on limiting the power the player can have? You could possibly lower the cost of system upgrades and the scrap gain you can get from events and defeating ships I guess. It's also too bad that you can have only 8 crew because that means you can't implement your whole Zoltan idea as deeply as I would have liked.

Lowering the cost of everything and the scrap gain certainly works as a method. I assume system upgrades can be even cheaper, since you usually won't even need that much power for one system.
Actually, we could constantly apply the Plasma-Storm event, so you only get one power bar for every two you buy.

my first drone and possible hardest choice for me to do as my first.
I realized it is hard to do a propeller that is 3 pixels wide from the view point or 1 pixel wide without it looking like random lines. Perhaps you can edit it a bit.

I got some other ideas in mind that would be easier due to lack of prop.

That looks amazing! The propellers aren't that bad...

i've been working on some steampunkish weapons. I know this is still very similar to the vulcan, i'm still figuring out a good steampunk style.

The weapon looks pretty solid. I think it certainly has a steampunk "feel" to it.

Thanks guys!
Have some thoughts on workarounds re:downward walking

My opinions; Jet/steampacks just for mantis, as they have the speed to no make it look awkward

Could have steampunk base, maybe one race a bit deiselpunk (mantis?) and maybe one with verne/tesla attributes (Rock?) and another more clockwork (engie?)
Remember races/ships/augments don't have to line up the same as vanilla.

A Tesla race could use zolt shields+the new zolt sheild drone as defence- make it a tesla coil of sorts.

I believe the whole "race" thing needs to be redefined.

All the ships will be composed of mostly humans (with the zoltan passive). That means that between factions, the people's outfits won't be able to be drastically different.

I think i'll call the actual different races "classes" for now.

The worker class is a reskinned Zoltan. The most common and most useful, every ship starts with at least two of them... They are human, and can be from any faction. The worker class is the main source of power on all the ships.

The fighter classes are reskinned Mantis and Rockmen. These classes are really only useful for fighting and manning a couple stations, since most energy comes from the worker class. They could be human, or automatons, or both??

Another boarding class would be a reskinned Lanius. It might be interesting for an automaton that can depressurize/freeze/produce a lot of smoke inside the ship.

Humans and Engis could be removed from the game or used as quest-specific characters.

The important thing to note is that this means that the crew inside the bee-ship won't be able to be mostly disguised as bugs ( sorry Gencool, the sprite could still be for the fighter classes though)

The different factions only change the ship's design and their main play-style, and not the crew within.

With hull/sheild;
Shield could mostly be replaced w/ dodge or cloak.
If all ships have at least 1 autopilot, it gives them free, innate defence.

With weps;
I like the idea of hull damage being rarer.
Maybe have the majority of weapons use 'blast' targeting (meaning it's harder to hit exactly what you want to)
Beam weapons could all be much shorter and slower (less ship-cutting)

Dodge and cloak are probably going to be a must-have to survive most of the mod. I like the idea of blast targeting! I can see a whole line of hull damage weapons, mid-damage blast damage weapons that could hit systems and system-only damage weapons.

Using the 'frill' and balloon design, I made this 'mosquito' (add prop engine for finished drone).

I like it very much! It fits perfectly with the steampunk theme.

Edit: normally I won't help 'to much' with overhauls especially since I'm helping one and (forever) alone on my own. But your work is a LOT more harder then me, practically removing or altering every weapon, augment, drone, race in game into your own or own cover. As well as events and names and everything.
It makes my one seem easier/ shorter. hehe.

Thank you very much for the help! I appreciate it a lot I'll make sure to help out with your mod if you need it!

I found a good sprite to replace the mantis in your mod!

Unfortunately, like explained earlier, there won't exactly be a "mantis race" in the mod, since that would defeat the whole energy rework aspect of the mod. I'l make sure to include this in the mod somewhere... (actually)

Really nice to see that this is all coming along! I really like your ideas Gencool. Especially the idea for a Tesla race that is the only one to use Zoltan shields. "Steampacks" is an awesome name. The tesla race will be cool because they can rely on things like hacking and "ion weapons" (whatever your planning to turn those into).

The next ship will definitely be form the tesla-race... It sounds like it could be really awesome.

Also, I realized that "humans" if given the Zoltan ability, will also explode when killed and I believe they will explode in a green cloud so keep that in mind as well.

That might be a small problem... Maybe the steampunk lore can explain it.

And I was thinking about some ideas for hazards the ion storm will just be a normal lightning storm, which will be cool because you could still use the clouds and you can even keep normal nebulas as storms (would also look cool on the world map). Suns could be I guess just a big heat wave, say you're traveling over a desert region. Asteroids could even be like hail storms. And pulsars I'm not sure, maybe some kind of anomaly related to the Tesla race? Or another kind of lightning storm.

[/quote]
These hazard ideas are all pretty nice! I believe the ion storm won't be extremely effective though, since most energy comes from the worker class anyways.

Ionisation would probably have to be changed to something akin to 'locking up'.

Ionisation makes sense as "locking up". Although I fear ion weapons might be too powerful without shields.

Were not really in the process of writing events right now though, but it's cool to brainstorm. I'm thinking that most hazards would probably just involve various storms, but if you can think up something else interesting please say so.

I'm sure ionization can be easily explained by overloading or shorting various systems, electrically.

Hazards being meteorological storms seems so perfect. It makes so much sense!

I'm not so sure that electricity was widely used in steampunk...

I do have some awesome ideas with defense drones though that will require a broken UI but oh well.

Sounds interesting... I can't wait!

I think you could use Zoltan shields around the main hull, making the balloons more vulnerable than the wooden framework.

I would have imagined it being more logical to have Zoltan shields around the balloons, since they the most vulnerable part of an airship... But for the mod it makes sense for it to surround the hull, or everything.


Wow, this reply took me so long to write... Thank you everyone for all the ideas/art/suggestions! I updated the main post to credit you guys

[Gencool]

Thanks Sir!

Ha, I know, Workers (zolts) are the main. I was mostly doing it to prove it could work (well, mostly because it was fun, I guess).
The explosion sprites can be replaced easily.


I recon the best workaround would be to make Workers rarity 1, everything else's 0 (except rock/mantis at, say, 4/5), and the cost of non-Workers to be doubled.
The Mantis (Vanquishers? Knights?) and Rocks (Heavies? Sentries? Gaurdians?) would be the only other vaguely common ones. Probably one of each on tougher ships.
I'm not sure if you can remove specific crew in events, but you could have some of them temporarily join your crew before a battle, and leave straight afterwards?


I'd love to see slugs stay in, if only because I can see them looking similar to the Twins from Bioshock, and having 'escort' missions where you take a psychic man/woman to a specific destination.
Psychics and pre-cogs are allways good for story telling, too!

I think engies/humans could be totally scrapped, or I guess could use 'peasant' sprites and be used for civilian ships? Like if you wanted to go full-on pirate...
Lanius could be quite nice as small, trundling, smoggy mechs? (Handmaiden?)



Can you change the price of powerslots? Maybe just ramp them up to 140 a pop. Still -mostly- affordable, but suddenly it's a choice between power and, say, cloaking.
Ionisation may be less powerful than system damage, if no weapon ever went over 1 ion?





Figured I'd put up the sprite sheet so far. Learnt a fair bit from working with it.

Notes:
You can have crew larger than 35x35, but unfortunatly it's measured from the top right corner (so no steam trails)

The time value dosn't do a whole load when under 1. However having more/less frames makes a /huge/ difference.

I had a go at working around the 'climing' issue. I think we'll have to make sheets that are twice as long so that I can have the 'still' frame only half as prominant. Not too bad with jetpacks, but I want to try climbing.

Since we're loosing 'up' and 'down', we could use the corresponding animations to make alternate animations for manning stations. My suggestion; L/R as sat down facing L/R, and U as stood up facing R, possibly with a ship's wheel. This meens that the captain can have a unique animation. Not sure what to use d for.



I also started blocking out rough sizes for Workers, Mantis and Rocks, but I would like to see any references you guys want to use.
The .ftl is purely crew-cosmetics, and very very very unfinished, but may be useful for building/testing ship designs.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tfzw9rejyu7ab ... isTest.ftl



And with this, I stop work on this mod for a week and go back to moving/ CrewD.

[a Sir]

Thanks Sir!

Ha, I know, Workers (zolts) are the main. I was mostly doing it to prove it could work (well, mostly because it was fun, I guess).
The explosion sprites can be replaced easily.


I recon the best workaround would be to make Workers rarity 1, everything else's 0 (except rock/mantis at, say, 4/5), and the cost of non-Workers to be doubled.
The Mantis (Vanquishers? Knights?) and Rocks (Heavies? Sentries? Gaurdians?) would be the only other vaguely common ones. Probably one of each on tougher ships.
I'm not sure if you can remove specific crew in events, but you could have some of them temporarily join your crew before a battle, and leave straight afterwards?


I'd love to see slugs stay in, if only because I can see them looking similar to the Twins from Bioshock, and having 'escort' missions where you take a psychic man/woman to a specific destination.
Psychics and pre-cogs are allways good for story telling, too!

I think engies/humans could be totally scrapped, or I guess could use 'peasant' sprites and be used for civilian ships? Like if you wanted to go full-on pirate...
Lanius could be quite nice as small, trundling, smoggy mechs? (Handmaiden?)

All these things sound pretty good to me. Pre-cogs is an awesome name... It even has a small steampunk pun within it.
It might not be possible to remove specific crew, but if say there's only one pre-cog in the whole game, I think it's possible to remove a specific race, since the Engi-Virus event was able to remove your Engi? (or did it simply rename and upgrade the engi?) Therefore, we could technically make an escort mission with a pre-cog or civilians or something else.

Can you change the price of powerslots? Maybe just ramp them up to 140 a pop. Still -mostly- affordable, but suddenly it's a choice between power and, say, cloaking.

The reactor upgrades are apparently hardcoded... so no, you can't change the price :/

Figured I'd put up the sprite sheet so far. Learnt a fair bit from working with it.

Notes:
You can have crew larger than 35x35, but unfortunatly it's measured from the top right corner (so no steam trails)

The time value dosn't do a whole load when under 1. However having more/less frames makes a /huge/ difference.

I had a go at working around the 'climing' issue. I think we'll have to make sheets that are twice as long so that I can have the 'still' frame only half as prominant. Not too bad with jetpacks, but I want to try climbing.

Since we're loosing 'up' and 'down', we could use the corresponding animations to make alternate animations for manning stations. My suggestion; L/R as sat down facing L/R, and U as stood up facing R, possibly with a ship's wheel. This meens that the captain can have a unique animation. Not sure what to use d for.

Nice discoveries in the character sheets! I like the idea of having alternate animations for manning stations, it could open up some interesting possibilities... D could be a weapon loading animation.
I originally imagined the station animations to be facing away from the player, looking at the wall, so you see the back of their head... Thinking about it again, if it is like that, there could potentially be 3 unique station manning animation. But I think I prefer Left/right better overall, it gives the player a better view of the crew working.

I also started blocking out rough sizes for Workers, Mantis and Rocks, but I would like to see any references you guys want to use.
The .ftl is purely crew-cosmetics, and very very very unfinished, but may be useful for building/testing ship designs.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tfzw9rejyu7ab ... isTest.ftl

The mantis is amazing! Keep up the awesome work
For the workers, I assume steampunk represents a fairly sophisticated age, hence they might be wearing top-hats and gloves or gauntlets. There can be a lot of accessories for the workers: robotic arm, goggles, monocole, dresses...

And with this, I stop work on this mod for a week and go back to moving/ CrewD.

Hehe... We can wait


Also... new ship! It didn't turn out as good as I expected it to be, but I guess it doesn't really matter.

The... Tesla-ship!



Some kind of mix of diesel-punk and tesla-punk... This faction uses their highly advanced Tesla technology to create an extremely potent electro-magnetic field that can destroy the first couple of cannon-balls (Zoltan shield) Their airships are confined in the tightest space possible to keep the whole ship under the electromagnetic field for protection. Because of that, the balloons are comprised within the hull of the ship. Random golden plates around the ship also seem to be in this faction's decoration of choice.

[Russian Rockman]

I like the idea of repeating the ion storm event!!! That combined with reduced scrap rewards and low starting power will probably make this whole concept work quite well! The lightning storm events would probably have to be reworked anyway.

The humans exploding on death will probably just be a minor side effect. Maybe related to the "steam packs"?

When I say electricity I was mainly referring to the tesla race's kind of weapons only. But ion weapons could be explained multiple other ways as well. (Seems like we're mixing it up a bit here to keep each of the different factions unique, which is awesome) They could use ion type weapons maybe. I don't think ion weapons will be too strong without shields. They can easily be rebalanced to lockdown systems for a shorter time.

Also, I think Engi's should be left in as a repair automaton. Humans could just be peasants that are nothing special. Yes, that Engi event did remove the Engi from your ship and give you a basically brand new Engi so you could have escort missions and such.

I think the Mantis ships may not be able to have all "Mantis" crew, but you could make the crew consist mostly of the warrior class. Since the enemy AI won't know how to deal with power distribution anyway, you'll have to give them some innate power to do stuff with. It all balances out since you are smarter than the AI. Also, an interesting concept would be to have the Tesla ships all have a backup battery so they can use their mysterious "electricity" to power systems that are not being manned.

I'd like to see crew animations from the side and replace the terminals with random gears, levers, pulleys, and other gizmos

[a Sir]

I like the idea of repeating the ion storm event!!! That combined with reduced scrap rewards and low starting power will probably make this whole concept work quite well! The lightning storm events would probably have to be reworked anyway.

Since we are also changing the UI, the danger warning and other things could also be removed, making it appear normal aswell!

When I say electricity I was mainly referring to the tesla race's kind of weapons only. They could use ion type weapons maybe. I don't think ion weapons will be too strong without shields. They can easily be rebalanced to lockdown systems for a shorter time.

Ah! That makes sense! Tesla-faction and electricity is completely logical. Oh, and yeah, I take back the ion weapons being too strong... there's also the energy factor. I doubt that many people will waste energy to power up weapons that can't do damage.

[xlandar]

How are the weapon mounts going to work? will they be on the deck, or hanging of the bottom, or something else? Anyway, i've created a steampunk mortar type thing.

[a Sir]

How are the weapon mounts going to work? will they be on the deck, or hanging of the bottom, or something else? Anyway, i've created a steampunk mortar type thing.

Nice mortar! I like it a lot! The weapon mounts are probably going to be mostly under the ship, with maybe a couple on top if there is space. There's not a lot of space on top of most of the ships because of the balloon...

I finished the first enemy ship...

[a Sir]

Accidental double post

[xlandar]

are you going to change the rebel symbol? Also, how do you propose doing charge up animations?