[SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser -AE compatable

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spudcosmic
Posts: 37
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:18 am

[SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser -AE compatable

Postby spudcosmic » Wed Jan 29, 2014 1:19 am

Hey, this is my first ship mod as well as my first post here on the forums! I made this ship for those of you that like boarding, but also like an interesting challenge.

Federation Medical Cruiser
This specialized cruiser was never designed for front line combat, instead it would escort large federation battalions and teleport severely wounded crew into it's full fledged on board hospital. This old model; however, was dry docked at a medical station, but with the advancing rebellion fleet you will have to flee the station with the only cruiser available. Without anti ship weapons, your only offense is to grab some small arms and get in the teleporter to board the enemy ships.

Overview:
Image

Image

Systems-
Pilot: 1
Sensors: 2
Doors: Not Installed

Weapons: 1
Shields: 2
Engines: 2
Medbay: 2
Oxygen: 2
Drones: 2
Teleporter: 1
Cloak: Not Installed

Augments:
Pharmaceuticals (Captain's edition only)

Weapons: None

Drones: Defense Drone I

I tried to give this ship systems based on the lore I kind of gave this ship, like sensors level 2 so it can see inside ships to tell if crew are wounded and obviously the level 2 medbay. This can lead to some pretty interesting events, especially when they deal with diseases.

As you can probably tell, the special thing about this ship is the 8 man medbay, large enough to fit your entire crew. The ship is designed around boarding, and the 4 man teleporter combined with the 8 man medbay might lead you to believe this is an overpowered ship, but I assure you it is not. This ship starts out alot like the mantis B, but it is a little more challenging because the human starting crew.

The pros:
4 man teleporter
8 man medbay
good airlock coverage
lots of blue events in green sectors

The cons:
mediocre starting defense
human only starting crew (makes early boarding very difficult)
no weapons makes AI ships a pain


Download:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/137 ... ruiser.ftl
thanks to 4DaDiamonds for the AE updated version and the cloak and gib images!

Let me know what you think about this ship! Is it balanced? Overpowered or underpowered? Does it look hideous and I need to spend more time on the looks?(It was kind of an experiment) I'm open to suggestions too.

Left to do:
maybe improve seams on the hull
Last edited by spudcosmic on Thu Apr 17, 2014 4:01 am, edited 3 times in total.
English Narwhal
Posts: 402
Joined: Tue Dec 03, 2013 9:12 pm

Re: Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby English Narwhal » Wed Jan 29, 2014 5:22 am

Dang, this is pretty cool.
Image
4DaDiamonds
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: [SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby 4DaDiamonds » Sun Apr 06, 2014 11:45 am

I really love this ship, however I completely agree that it needed balancing/editing in the way of gibs and the cloak image, in fact, loved this mod so much that not only did I balance it (gave it a dual laser), but i also did a bit of editing here and there.
If you give me suitable credits, I could send you the edited .ftl file and you could post it here, (bear in mind that the gibs are still not finished) how does that sound? :)

P.S I also had to change the layout ever so slightly in order to fix some graphical bugs
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Estel
Posts: 466
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Re: [SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby Estel » Sun Apr 06, 2014 6:03 pm

Very nice ship, especially for a first attempt! I like how it fits the lore, and how you tried to not make it OP, and how you integrated it - a little - with CE :)

From my limited testing, it seems a little overpowered, but only for as bit. I would remove engi-mod dispersal, it hardly seems natural re lore, and may be the thing that pushes it a little over the edge.

While I agree that cloaking images and fixed gibs would be great, keep hands away from giving it things like proposed dual lasers, please - for such ideas, there is "easy" mode in game, already ;)

BTW, could you update it to contain correct places for new AE systems? (sorry if it's done already - haven't tried to load it into AE, I assumed it isn't optimized for it yet).

Cheers,
/Estel
4DaDiamonds
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: [SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby 4DaDiamonds » Sun Apr 06, 2014 8:50 pm

Estel wrote:I would remove engi-mod dispersal, it hardly seems natural re lore, and may be the thing that pushes it a little over the edge.

While I agree that cloaking images and fixed gibs would be great, keep hands away from giving it things like proposed dual lasers, please - for such ideas, there is "easy" mode in game, already ;)

BTW, could you update it to contain correct places for new AE systems? (sorry if it's done already - haven't tried to load it into AE, I assumed it isn't optimized for it yet).

Cheers,
/Estel


For the moment, I'm going to keep the engi-med bot dispersal included, as early on in the game, it is one of the only things protecting your crew from large amounts of boarders due to the missing door control, however, I have removed the dual laser as it does make it a bit 'easy mode-ish'.

As for the gibs, cloak and AE content; the first is nearly done (90%), the cloak is ready to go, but the AE content hasn't been started for the following reason: I edited this ship using the Superlumial editor, and as of this post, it has not received any update to support the AE content. I assure you, the moment I can do so, I will add an option to obtain all of the AE systems, however, to steer away from balancing issues, the ship will still spawn in my current configuration; it will not spawn with of them.

If you would like to receive MY EDITED copy of the ship, just ask, and a dropbox link will be provided.

4DaDiamonds
Last edited by 4DaDiamonds on Sun Apr 06, 2014 11:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Sleeper Service
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Re: [SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby Sleeper Service » Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:48 pm

It's actually possible to make ship mods AE compatible even without superluminal. Just mentioning this in case karto can't update it too soon.

From what I can tell, a ship mod does not need a lot of work to be compatible with AE. Here is what you could do:

1. Assign AS new systems to you ship
Extract dlcBlueprintsOverwrite.xml from your new AE FTL folder. The extraction programs all still work. You can have a look at the new AE player ship blueprints this way. Notice how the new systems are named; and that medbay and clonebay share the same room.
Now you can go to your ship blueprint and copy in the AE systems, changing their room tag to room numbers your ship does not yet use for other systems. If you want to rework the layout for that, you can still do that with the old superluminal.
You ships medbay should probably share the room with the clone bay as well.

2. Check if cloak works correctly
There where some changes to how cloak images are positioned on enemies, but I'm not entirely sure if that also effects player ship. Note that ship layout xmls have this offset tag:

<offsets>
<floor x="63" y="32"/>
<cloak x="-10" y="-10"/>
</offsets>

You can control the cloak image with that. If the old ship layout xml does not have it, you can also coppy it in.
4DaDiamonds
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: [SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby 4DaDiamonds » Sun Apr 06, 2014 11:43 pm

(Breaking character: OMG! SLEEPER SERVICE ACTUALLY REPLIED TO ONE OF MY POSTS!! :D)

So far I have managed to get the Medbay/clonebay replacement working, however, I have a fairly simple question; how do I find out the 'room number' of a particular room? This has, so far, hindered me greatly and it would be a huge tip to know for the future.
Also, what do these lines of text mean?

<slot>
<number>1</number>
</slot>

These confused me for a while, as changing them from their default values cause the ship to explode in the hanger, or an immediate force close. Knowing this could also allow me to set stations in the doors and sensors, as I have a very faint idea on what they mean.

4DaDiamonds

P.S I am very new to ship modding OUTSIDE of Superlumial, it's probably best to assume that I know little to nothing on the subject :(
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kartoFlane
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Re: [SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby kartoFlane » Mon Apr 07, 2014 10:44 am

SleeperService wrote:It's actually possible to make ship mods AE compatible even without superluminal. Just mentioning this in case karto can't update it too soon.

Quite a bunch of stuff has changed in AE internally, so that makes it tricky to update the old editor for AE (especially since the code for the original editor could best be described as "spaghetti"). Instead, back in December I have started a total rewrite. It's coming along slowly, and it'll probably be a month or more until I release an update.

4DaDiamonds wrote:how do I find out the 'room number' of a particular room? This has, so far, hindered me greatly and it would be a huge tip to know for the future.

You need to take a look at your ship's shipname.txt layout file. The syntax is described here.
You're looking for ROOM entries, and then the ID entry, which is the first number after ROOM.
So this:

Code: Select all

ROOM
0
1
1
2
2

Is a 2x2 room located at 1,1 offset, with ID = 0.

4DaDiamonds wrote:Also, what do these lines of text mean?

<slot>
<number>1</number>
</slot>

These confused me for a while, as changing them from their default values cause the ship to explode in the hanger, or an immediate force close. Knowing this could also allow me to set stations in the doors and sensors, as I have a very faint idea on what they mean.

These are what defines the location and facing of the system's station. They are numbered like so:

Code: Select all

2x2 room:  1x2 room:   2x1 room:
0  1          0           0  1
2  3          1

So the above slot would be located at the top right corner in a 2x2 room. <direction> tag defines the facing of the station. Medbay and clonebay have no <direction> tag. For them, the <number> defines which slot is blocked. -2 means no blocked slot.
Superluminal2 - a ship editor for FTL
4DaDiamonds
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: [SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby 4DaDiamonds » Mon Apr 07, 2014 6:35 pm

With lots of help from SleeperService and KartoFlane, the UNOFFICIAL update for the Federation Medical Cruiser is available here!
This ship has been updated by me in order to include all of the new systems and subsystems introduced in FTL:AE. Also, the ship will now gib upon death, it now has an improved cloaking image and there has been some minor/semi-minor tweaks to the layout and textures.
Please feel free to comment on any thing that needs adjusting, as any support will be greatly appreciated.

- 4DaDiamonds
spudcosmic
Posts: 37
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:18 am

Re: [SHIP]Federation Medical Cruiser

Postby spudcosmic » Mon Apr 07, 2014 9:53 pm

4DaDiamonds wrote:With lots of help from SleeperService and KartoFlane, the UNOFFICIAL update for the Federation Medical Cruiser is available here!
This ship has been updated by me in order to include all of the new systems and subsystems introduced in FTL:AE. Also, the ship will now gib upon death, it now has an improved cloaking image and there has been some minor/semi-minor tweaks to the layout and textures.
Please feel free to comment on any thing that needs adjusting, as any support will be greatly appreciated.

- 4DaDiamonds

I want to thank you guys for updating my mod for me, and do you mind if I use your updated version as the official? Because you did give it a nice cloak image and gibs. I have yet to figure out how to really work paint.net, if someone could tell me how they made the cloak image, that would be great.
Currently I have for the most part been unable to use the forums due to it being down half the time I try to use it, and it was surprising to see all the attention this was getting, I didn't think that many people used this ship. Once superluminal is updated and the forum stabilizes I plan on continuing my ship mods, probably do one more ship in the spaz showcase, maybe start a Starsector ship mod showcase, and I want to do more vanilla style splicing ships like this one. Thanks again for what you guys did!