[MOD][Challenge] Sensory Deprivation[v06]

[stylesrj]

Styles - Mwahaha! I was hoping someone would go up against the random Flagship. Love the use of the Randtrel, hadn't even considered that!

I didn't load Random Flagship though. I should have but I thought "I'm never gonna get there, I'm gonna play this as long as I can until I die."

I admire that flawless knowledge of the enemy ship layouts, too ^^

Yeah, "flawless" sums it up... until the parts where I don't know anything that the Flak is hitting
Good thing Hacking gives me a general idea.

Oh, and Scared Senseless is just a different icon pack, it doesn't make anything more or less difficult, just, as Bio would say, SpOoOoKy.

I know it would be spooky, hence why I'd do a run with it around Halloween.

Did you get my suggestions on how to make the mod even more vague? No sector names, just dots.

[Gencool]

Sorry, bad writing- I meant that refering to the haloween run (lots of stuff jumbled in my head right now)
And I forgot, I'd considered that, but I figured that some ships have huge problems with certain sectors - I wanted to keep the game fun, and that seems like a great way to make people rage-quit.

[meklozz]

Open to anyone:

Why doesn't this work?

Code: Select all

<mod:findLike type="shipBlueprint">

	<mod-overwrite:class>Targeted Ship</mod-overwrite:class>


		<mod:findComposite>
			<mod:par op="AND">
				<mod:findWithChildLike type="systemList">
					<mod:selector room="0"/>
				</mod:findWithChildLike type="systemList">
				<mod:findWithChildLike>
					<mod:selector room="1"/>
				</mod:findWithChildLike>
			</mod:par>
			
	
				<mod:findLike room="0">
					<mod:setAttributes room="1"/>
				</mod:findLike>
		
				<mod:findLike room="1">
					<mod:setAttributes room="0"/>
				</mod:findLike>
		
		
		</mod:findComposite>


</mod:findLike>

I'm not sure if I'm using findComposite right, as I've not used it before, but I was fairly sure I knew what I was doing...

I was trying to find whether the ship has systems in room "0" and "1", and then swap those numbers.
The idea being that this way the code won't introduce numbers higher than the ship actually has, and that loadouts would be unchanged.

Thing is, not only does it not swap systems, but the class name doesn't even change. The file's placed and named correctly... I'm at a loss.

Firstly, I wondered about that composite, thanks for clearing it up for me!

Secondly, it does work for me (the class part), except the first ship in the blueprints is actually commented out, it might have misled you?

Thirdly, you can't specify the value of the tag (I have no idea if I'm using the right words here), when you write room="1", that should be type="room", I'm not sure it even understands that or just find any 'Like' it can. Anyway, that's what the selector is for. So try:

Code: Select all

<mod:findLike type="shipBlueprint">
	<mod-overwrite:class>Targeted Ship</mod-overwrite:class>
	<mod:findComposite>
		<mod:par op="AND">
			<mod:findWithChildLike type="systemList">
				<mod:selector room="0"/>
			</mod:findWithChildLike>
			<mod:findWithChildLike type="systemList">
				<mod:selector room="1"/>
			</mod:findWithChildLike>
		</mod:par>
		<mod:findLike>
			<mod:selector room="0"/>
			<mod:setAttributes room="a"/>
		</mod:findLike>
		<mod:findLike>
			<mod:selector room="1"/>
			<mod:setAttributes room="0"/>
		</mod:findLike>
		<mod:findLike>
			<mod:selector room="a"/>
			<mod:setAttributes room="1"/>
		</mod:findLike>
	</mod:findComposite>
</mod:findLike>

The 'a' is there so the ones you just made don't go back to being zeroes.

@edit
And as for the artillery, for vanilla, it should be enough to change just the two that come with the ships. Maybe do CE ones, too, I guess?

[Gencool]

Ahha!

Thankyou, that really helped! I also realized I'd mixed up closing tags too.

Step one done, gonna automate some stuff real quick and make this mod even more horrid! (It will be an optional patch, don't worry)


Hmm, fair point, but I don't really like patching stuff that's actually in CE encase it changes later :\
I may do it anyways, let's see how quickly I can knock out this system reorganizer...

[meklozz]

I've already mentioned it, but the direction and number tags are going to be problematic. Number, especially, creates big problems when mixing rooms with 2 and 4 tiles, some of the originally bigger rooms might become impossible to man, the pictures cross onto other rooms etc. If you were to delete the room graphics anyway, you could change all the numbers to 0, so they always stand there, as it is, I don't know...

I suppose I could just have the Hacking tell you if there's a system there or not? Is that too much of a nerf?

Didn't notice this before..

I don't think that would be fair. I've wondered about maybe mixing up the system types. Who's to say engines and piloting aren't actually defensive, for example (easy to identify shield was the biggest thing imo)? Drones could be ship systems, etc.

[stylesrj]

Who's to say engines and piloting aren't actually defensive, for example (easy to identify shield was the biggest thing imo)? Drones could be ship systems, etc.

Some shield rooms are 2x1. But you can guess that if it's a defensive system and not at the back or front, then it's probably a shield.

In my video run, I get confused where the guns are on some automated ships and get a missile in my butt for my troubles

[Gencool]

Oh, I forgot to say, you're totally right with the manning thing, which is why I'm only going to scramble ships in the autoBlueprints file (their manning points are defined by the game engine rather than the XML)

And yeah, I might have edited the post a bit. I tend to do that, 'cause my writing and memory atrocious. Sorry!

Fair point. I think engines and piloting are safely ship systems, but drones is very difficult to categorize, since they can be both offensive and defensive. Having them as a ship system actually makes sense... It's all so confusing.

The more I think about it, I might remove the station images from enemy ships. Say both piloting and drones are defined as ship, and nothing else - if you have hacking you can just look for the one that doesn't have a station. If neither have a station, you can still watch the crew activity to figure it out...

But you can guess that if it's a defensive system and not at the back or front, then it's probably a shield.

Don't worry, we'll fix this


[edit] D'oh - dlc blueprints, of course!

[meklozz]

Who's to say engines and piloting aren't actually defensive, for example (easy to identify shield was the biggest thing imo)? Drones could be ship systems, etc.

Some shield rooms are 2x1. But you can guess that if it's a defensive system and not at the back or front, then it's probably a shield.

Fair point. I think engines and piloting are safely ship systems, but drones is very difficult to categorize, since they can be both offensive and defensive. Having them as a ship system actually makes sense... It's all so confusing.

Thing is that when I played, there were only two defensive systems that I saw - cloaking and shields. Since cloaking doesn't get manned, this was a no-brainer with hacking. If there were more defensive ones, it would be weaker.

And, that's what mixing up the systems is about, right?

(their manning points are defined by the game engine rather than the XML)

Cool, didn't know that.

And yeah, I might have edited the post a bit. I tend to do that, 'cause my writing and memory atrocious. Sorry!

Yeah, I get that

[Gencool]

AWHYEAH

So I realized some of the ships weren't updating 'cause they were overwritten by the dlc
Thing is, the dlc blueprint-overwrites also have player ships in them

Thankfully the <mod:par op="OR"> command actually works as an ANDOR, so I was able to just write a list of tags only enemy ships have, which stops any player ships getting scrambled.

Step 1 complete!

It currently searches for up to 20 rooms, which means even the flagship will get randomised, but currently it's just 0=1, 2=3, and so on.
When I start switch rooms by multiples of 5, it will mean some rooms on smaller ships don't get swapped. This means that smaller ships systems won't be swapped in the same manner as larger ships, as they'll occasionally skip steps.
Oh man being evil is fun!

[meklozz]

There are actually quite a few files with ships in them:

autoBlueprints.xml
blueprints.xml
bosses.xml
dlcBlueprints.xml
dlcBlueprintsOverwrite.xml
dlcPirateBlueprints.xml

Bold have player ships, as well.