[WIP](AE) Lady Sigma's Pride (Update 4/23)

[Pokepika01]

Stories tell of an ancient queen of an advanced nation from early in human history. Said to appear as angels, they saw humans as their playthings, and inspired many ancient myths. Then a humble girl of their nation rose up, spoke out, a lone teenage girl against a king with technology unheard of and legions of artificial soldiers at his command. And somehow, she won. She became queen of this nation, a kinder queen than the angels had ever seen. The nation prospered and, in as much as they could while staying hidden, they shared his golden age with the humans.

Then, one day, they disappeared.

No-one knows why, or where to. Some say they died off, or transcended existence. The most prevalent theory, however, says that the left this solar system, stricken by grief when their queen died. Millenia later and light-years away, a lone being has gained information on the Rebel flagship. Desperate to reach the Federation base, the being stumbles across an old ship. Coated in a layer of dust literal feet thick, and heavily beat up, this is obviously a very old, and storied, ship. The person looks at the ship and finds the interface strange at first glance, with an obviously alien control system. A blink later, however, and the person finds the controls resemble those of their old command, the Kestrel. A quick look at they system readout informs them that the ship has neither shields nor cloaking, although it is quite fast. It is also barren of beam weapons, left with only a few scant missile weapons and a large stock of missiles. This battered, beaten old ship with few defenses would not ordinarily be the being's first choice of command, but with the literal entirety of the rebel fleet hot on the person's trail, they had no choice. As they arrived at this decision, the ship suddenly felt, well, grateful, as strange as it sounds. And so the pilot departed, on this old ship with no shields, a patched-up hull, and a feeling of life in it.

One Exposition later!...
Lady Sigma's pride is a ship I made for personal enjoyment. It is designed to be usable by a single person, with drones to fix systems and fight off intruders, and fixing it's own hull breaches. It is also very old, and as such any shield systems it may have had are long gone. This is heavily work-in-progress, and I eventually want to create some custom weapons for it, and maybe give it an artillery beam, but quite frankly I'm surprised I manged to get it working as well as I did, comboing between Superluminal and xml editing.
I have beaten the game with it, so it is possible, although I don't really know how OP or UP it is to start. This is intended to be more about lore, and the bond with the ship, than perfect balance or an innovative new mechanic. I plan to make this focused on using high speed to avoid hits long enough to get out your weapons, and as such plan to give you a more upgradable engine and weapons, with less upgradeable cloak & shields.

*Update 4/23* I have updated the system images, so those should look fine now. The layout has changed, with sensors split in 2 and and accompanied by doors in the other half, and mind control where doors used to be. Players also start of with 2 less Pegasus, and 5 weapons power instead of 8. The hull has been updated slightly to have shading, with the gibs to follow suit when I have time and inclination. I may still darken the colors a bit to fit in better, but I like it for now.
TL/DR: Graphics less ass now, startup severely nerfed.

*Future Updates*
- New gibs for the new hull.
- Fix the gib positions.
- Redraw the hull again so the shading matches other ships.
- Change certain system stats, so, for example, engine, pilot, & weapons have more potential, but shields & cloak
have less potential.
--Specifics: 3 shields,(6 bars)
1 cloak
10-12 engine
10-12 Weapons
4 Pilot, w/ 4th allowing full dodge while unmanned.

This ship replaces the Nisos, or Federation cruiser 2.

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/30h3r1j81z49vee/Uranus.ftl

*Images*
The hull:

SOL_base.png

Layout with all Systems (Dev's Cheat version): https://www.dropbox.com/s/a3egmphcmsdxotm/Screenshot%202014-04-25%2008.13.38.png

*Issues*
The gibs seem to be acting awkward, too.

Constructive criticism is always welcome, as are any tips.

[ScubaSteve3465]

Umm... all i can say is... is that weird image of a triangle supposed to be a ship lol?

[Pokepika01]

I know it looks kinda bad. I'm more used to a pad & pencil than digital drawing tools, although I'm already working on a (hopefully!) better looking iteration.

[Estel]

While indeed it's heavy (heavy-heavy-heavy) WIP, it got an interesting story I hope you manage to get it decent-looking and *not* OP (it seems you don't plan to OP it, judging by description), as it may get interesting.

Just a thing to consider - while original story is nice thing, it won't help, if ship will be feeling "vanilla" to play with. Think about some ways to force different play style with this ship (so it won't become twisted stealth a/b, or kestrel after few sectors worth of upgrading), or maybe, some permanent very strong points against certain opponents, and very bad weaknesses against others?

Keeping thumbs up for your work - it was kind of brave to publish it when its so early in development. Hope it won't remain in this state forever, abandoned

/Estel

[sovietbear]

The hull it's... it's just that... well... to put it lightly... it doesn't look very good.