[SHIP] The Viper

[DryEagle]

The Viper is an assault-class cruiser. Strong offensive potential and level 2 shields right off the bat, at the cost of weak secondary systems.




The Viper is armed with 2 unique Venom Cannons - these will burn and disable your enemies without inflicting direct damage - finding additional weaponry is strongly recommended as autonomous drones, and to an extent Rock ships, resist being poisoned in this manner.

The Viper, as you might expect, is crewed by Mantis, and captained by a Slug, in reflection of the ship's offensive nature and usage of biological weaponry. Being staffed by biological creatures does leave it vulnerable to fire, especially until door systems are purchased.

Mod info: The Viper includes a full set of room sprites customised to the layout of the ship.
The Viper includes custom shield graphics and unique starting weaponry not found anywhere else in the game.
The Viper will replace the starting Kestrel though you can just change which ship it overwrites in the blueprints file - all of the files the ship requires have unique names so it will work in any slot.
- **warning** this ship is not very easy. while it can handle most ships pretty well, it is rather prone to catastrophic failure, and needs upgrades to be able to take on all types of enemies

Shouts: thanks once again to alextfish and especially kieve for help answering questions during the design of this ship.
All art assets come from the base FTL game though some have been modified to suit the style of the ship.

.ftl download link: http://www.2shared.com/file/iqwFm_SY/Viper.html
alternate mirror: http://www.mediafire.com/?6ccgu93mqrgd6cc

Playthroughs:
BrenTenkage #1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy0skEo9AZU
VanguardOfValor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lldeBIoA2DI (part 1)
BrenTenkage #2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvGDMxbbX-0
GingerDragon87: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEk0IGDRTyk
5fhHorseman: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... 0QlTpb-Xe-

[DCChuckles]

This ship is pretty awesome Although for the weapons how about a Lockdown (for the paralysis) and 1 crew damage? It'd be a great weapon when combined with the boarding drone.

[BrenTenkage]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy0skEo9 ... GDOzeIlvv0

here

[DryEagle]

Thanks for making a video
I've only done one very minor change to the mod since posting it and that's to remove the option of buying cloaking from shops, since the ship cannot use a cloaking device.

Chuckles, I could of course add lots of other effects like crew damage but I didn't want to make the ship horribly overpowered - I mean you can already trash the boss with just starting equipment + teleporter if you know what you're doing... I want there to be at least a little challenge
I did put a fair bit of thought into the balance... giving the slug at the start helps with putting out fires, and offsets to some extent not having sensors, but most of your crew is still bad at repairing
The weapon itself, 60% burn chance with 1 ion (though since the shield pen, it does 1 ion to target and 1 to shield) with 12 second cooldown... this was the stat set I came to after testing it quite a bit which made it feel strong but not fall-asleep-easy-mode since a game without challenge is usually not fun. Hope that makes sense

[alextfish]

I was in the mood for trying out a mod, so I gave this one a go.

It's fascinating. I pretty much died (lost 2/3 hull and/or 2 crew members) in Sector 1 a couple of times. Auto-ships, which are particularly prevalent in sector 1, really ruin this ship's day. (I had this problem with my troop transports in my Starcraft mod too - the Medivac, Overlord and Warp Prism. Theoretically the fire from Venom might be able to take systems out on airless ships, if you can keep it sustained, but man it would be slow and unreliable.) And fires or damage are a massive problem too: with 1 Slug as the only competent repairman, you've got problems if your shields or weapons get hit.

Once you get over the hump of finding something to deal with auto-ships, and some way to deal with fires (an Engi would be ideal, but a doors system and a human would do), the next step is finding sensors and getting them up to level 2. Venom is so much fun once you can see what it's doing

Venom is a really interesting weapon: something like an ion burst, but pretty different too. The shield piercing-and-ionising works pretty well on low-shield ships as a way to clear shields for whatever your other weapon is. And of course because it takes out crew before systems, you get massive payouts. This was the first game for ages where I maxed out both shield and thrusters.

Here's my closing loadout on the game where I beat the boss:



The Anti-Ship 1 drone is virtually the only feasible way to actually finish the boss off! But with its shields taken down by fire and Mantises, the drone makes pretty quick work of it.

[DryEagle]

The stock ship can kill auto-drones, albeit incredibly slowly - the boarding drone will kill a system, the auto-drone will self-heal, boarding drone kills it again... 1 hull damage each time the system is destroyed. And in the meantime you're ioning their weapons so they don't shoot you too much. The fire goes out too quickly to damage the systems even if you stagger the venoms. However, as I said earlier, it was intended not to be a total easy-mode ship, so you can't automatically win every fight - if your boarding drone lands in an empty room for example, or you're not the patient sort, you'll need to just jump away from auto-drones until you pick up another offensive option.

The early vulnerability to fire was another intentional choice, as every ship needs some kind of drawback; I originally intended to package it with 4 mantis, but found it took about 15 minutes to put out a fire that started in 1 room, since it just kept spreading about as fast as they could put it out and heal at the medbay; this wasn't terribly fun, so the slug was included to make that easier (and give you an idea of where stuff on enemy ships is, as this helps track fire indirectly).

[alextfish]

The stock ship can kill auto-drones, albeit incredibly slowly - the boarding drone will kill a system, the auto-drone will self-heal, boarding drone kills it again... 1 hull damage each time the system is destroyed.

Nope. Auto-ships will only repair systems in rooms that don't have a hull breach. And the boarding drone creates a breach. (OK, it'll work on auto-assault ships that have doors, but not the more common auto-scouts.)

The early vulnerability to fire was another intentional choice, as every ship needs some kind of drawback;

Oh yes, it's fine. It is a significant drawback, but you mention it upfront in the mod description.

I originally intended to package it with 4 mantis, but found it took about 15 minutes to put out a fire that started in 1 room, since it just kept spreading about as fast as they could put it out and heal at the medbay; this wasn't terribly fun, so the slug was included to make that easier (and give you an idea of where stuff on enemy ships is, as this helps track fire indirectly).

Yeah, I discovered with my Starcraft mod that having a crew of only Mantis is pretty horrible. Even just having to sit around at the end of a fight repairing systems takes an age. A Slug was definitely a good call, especially with Venom being a non-damage-based weapon that you need to target at crew. (Venom is much more fun once you get lvl 2 sensors, though. Perhaps consider a B layout of the Viper that starts with 2 levels in sensors, in exchange for losing the boarding drone and turning the slug to a human?)

[MrHoody]

Where on the page do I click to download the files? Every link I click leads me to some suspicious download programme/ toolbar thingy

[UltraMantis]

Unfortunately many filesharing sites are like that, with crap download managers or toolbars disguised as links. In this case, there are two download buttons, the first is bs, the one below links to the mod.

I wouldn't say i recommend it, but speedyshare is a better alternative.

[MrHoody]

Oh dear...the link...IT DOES NOTHING (Redirects me back to the same page and saving the link does nothing at all lol)