NarnKar's Nonsense

[NarnKar]

Some ideas for the secret sector (of the total conversion (which I will never get to making)):

There's an augment called Sleeping Pills, which replaces the Stasis Pod. If you keep your captain alive, at the end of any sector...

Blue option: "[Sleeping Pills] Inter-sector travel is going to take a long time."

Blue option: "[Captain] You need the rest. Take the pills."

You get transported to the secret sector, called "Paradox Space" or "Dream World". It's not an actual physical place, but more like some strange dimension that's--well--sort of like a dream.

Every beacon here takes you to Earth, and the Solar System, frozen in different moments of time. There's no combat; it's more so just...a moment to reflect, I suppose, and a teeny bit of lore on how humanity started exploring the stars. (And get free scrap.)

Or, I guess this is me writing shitty fanfiction.

"Your jump places your vessel on Earth's surface, in the middle of a sandy plain. A burning orange sun is setting on the horizon, permanently affixed in time.

To the humans long before you, the sun was something sacred and beautiful. To you, it's just another star. But seeing it like this, you appreciate why people would call it the most beautiful sight in the world."

"You exit warp-speed just above a small island nation. There's a flash of red light, frozen in time. There was a city there, and in a flash, it was gone. They would rebuild it, in a few long years. But in your present day, that city is gone again, shrouded in smog and falling into disrepair, because all of its inhabitants packed up for the stars long ago. You take a moment to wonder what that war was about."

"An antiquated space station is drifting nearby, in orbit above a planet. You can clearly tell that the tech is outdated, but it appears to be brand-new and well-maintained. You recognize this place from your history textbooks--it was the first human space colony, which became the base of human operations in space.

But when we made First Contact and formed the Federation, we moved our command further out, so that other species could access it, forgetting about this station...we leave a lot of things behind when we move forward."

"In the distance of your viewport, you can see Earth. You don't recognize it, at first, but something in your instincts tells you that it's Earth, that it's your home. This is where it all began. It feels like it should be bigger, but it's so small. You feel like you could fit it in the palm of your hand."

"Your craft bumps against a golden capsule. You open it up, and find a golden disc inside. The disc contains a recording of a very old song, the sound of people talking in different languages, a photograph of an old building at night...you don't recognize any of it. All you recognize is the word 'hello'..."

[stargateprovider]

I think the atmosphere and story there would make for a very enjoyable sector. Would/Are the Sleeping pills meant to be used just once? Since the stasis pod augment disappears when you find a blue option for it.

[stylesrj]

I think the atmosphere and story there would make for a very enjoyable sector. Would/Are the Sleeping pills meant to be used just once? Since the stasis pod augment disappears when you find a blue option for it.

I don't think that's possible to implement. Otherwise, Captain's Edition would have used those same rules as the Stasis Pod did to get rid of trade augments in a store.

[NarnKar]

I think the atmosphere and story there would make for a very enjoyable sector. Would/Are the Sleeping pills meant to be used just once? Since the stasis pod augment disappears when you find a blue option for it.

I don't think that's possible to implement. Otherwise, Captain's Edition would have used those same rules as the Stasis Pod did to get rid of trade augments in a store.

I actually got the idea from Kieve, who was considering implementing it for his TC, Incursion.

I'm well aware that removing "custom" augments is impossible. That event is hardcoded specifically to the Stasis Pod and doesn't have any actual code in the XML that performs the removal.
-BUT! This is intended as a complete overhaul. I don't plan on creating an augment, merely renaming the Stasis Pod augment itself, and using <event load> to call that specific Zoltan event - albeit with the flavor text changed around.
I don't know if it'll work, since I have yet to test it, but I'm hoping that simply changing the text won't break the event's hardcoded function.
If it doesn't work, I'll just have to think of something else.

I'm thinking it would take the Zoltan Research Facility event's blueprint name ZOLTAN_CREW_STUDY, hardcode remove STASIS_POD. However, the event called ZOLTAN_CREW_STUDY would have different text and choices, and the STASIS_POD augment would be called Sleeping Pills. Since I'm overwriting the crystal sector with my own stuff anyway, I figure I don't really need the crystal stasis pod. They'll just show up as a regular sector.

Kieve's idea doesn't work for CE because CE has many different trade augments, and doesn't want to replace the STASIS_POD; instead, it adds all of its trade augments as new augments.

Then again, I didn't test it either, so I have no idea if Kieve's theory about the hardcode actually works

[NarnKar]

Question: So there are events that happen when the Rebel Fleet catches up to you, right? Do those draw from a generic pool, or are there specific events/event pools for each sector type?

I'm thinking about the "dream sector" again, and I want to replace all "rebel fleet caught up" events with something else, since rebels can't really catch you in your dreams--and since you're playing as Rebellion...yeah those events would be changed to Federation pursuit, at least.

"You exit hyperspeed, expecting to see another part of the dream. But it seems this part has already collapsed, replaced by nightmares. You see lasers flash from a Federation bomber, leaving long streaks of light through space; you hear your sensors beep about hostiles, the sound echoing in your mind. You know it isn't real, but you're scared that one day it might be. There is nothing more for you here. You hurry to move on."

It would spawn some dummy ship with weapons that do 0 damage, but that fired frequently and had modified "dreamlike" effects.

[Gencool]

Not sure why, but that reminds me of an idea I had ages ago, where you could find a sector around a Class-B sun.

Basically, each jump would either be classed as a sun, sun+asteroid, or be 'shaded' by a debris cloud (you ship would still catch fire on arrival, and these could also have asteroids), but you'd always see this huge blue star in the background.

You'd only find autoships in this sector, but even then rarely. If you're 'shaded', both ships catch fire on the escape/surrender events.
There's also a Rock mega-ship which you can dock with to use their store (they have event-based bartering with extremely rare items).

Maybe there's a few wrecks to explore, and you catch fire more the longer you spend there (each choice has a chance for loot but also creates fire)

The important thing, though, is that the rebels -do not- enter this sector.
There's no time penalty for staying here, other than you're potentially gonna take a load of damage, and if you're willing to risk it you get great loot.

[NarnKar]

Hmm, thinking about it from a purely mechanical standpoint--the Rebels would have to be delayed 1 jump every time you made a jump, in order to preserve the balance of "rebels not approaching".

For my dream sector I'd also have to make each event disperse one Fuel, just to make sure the player doesn't run out of fuel while in the dream sector. Maybe give them a whole bunch of fuel at the beginning, too, just for finding that secret place...

That sector idea sounds cool by the way, Gencool! Quite tense, I think, for literally everything to be setting you on fire--and a little bit funny too.

[NarnKar]

@Gencool your most recent ship pack, specifically the Aquilifer, reminded me of a ship idea I had--it would be some sort of freight or shipping vessel, with a large doors room that was ostensibly for "storage". The room art would be a whole bunch of cargo scattered around, and all the "functioning rooms" like weapons and piloting would be off to the side and squished together.

Alternatively, it would be a whole bunch of rooms surrounding a big "tank", which isn't a room, but a modified floor image that looks like a room is there, and that's full of garbage. You couldn't get to it because it would just be a picture of a room and not a room.

I discarded it because it would be nice to look at, but mediocre in terms of "gameplay originality"--that is, the concept plays too much like vanilla to be particularly exciting.

[Gencool]

Idunno, different floor plans always lead to different play styles, even if its only a minor change.

Ok, what if the 'garbage' room was an in-acessible O2, and/or a flak artillery?

Having a cargo room thats just 6 big, empty, inaccessible rooms still means your crew's mobility is impaired, and changes which weapons are more of a threat to you.
If you put sensors in the top left, you can have a huge floor image which would show the cargo, and still make sense why it vanishes when they're down.

Oh! You could have drone control be in the cargo hold, with a pair of 0 power system repair drones to 'look after the stock' (0 power drones work even when the system's down iirc)
That way you can have any buyable systems be installed in what would otherwise be empty storage space. Totally works thematically. Players could try to get a combat drone to kill boarders who spawn in there, as even having ventilation isn't going to stop them from causing a fair amount of damage (especially if the vents are only on one end, as they likely will be- in fact, that's also a logical place for door control...)



((Edit: I knew 'doors as storage' reminded me of something; http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21536))

[NarnKar]

Ok, what if the 'garbage' room was an in-acessible O2, and/or a flak artillery?

Yeah I thought about making it a Flak Junker of sorts that fired flak artillery. like a space garbage truck that fires garbage at the enemies and does so with gleeful abandon. The rest of your ideas were also ones I considered, and I do agree with your implementations of them.

I also thought there was a part where you suggested that shields only cover the cargo room, but either you edited that out or I was hallucinating. At any rate, you had an idea that was where the shields only covered the cargo room. I wanted to expand on that, like--the "ellipse" boundaries are specified much bigger, kind of like how DryEagle did his Scarab mod's shield. So the actual shields only cover the cargo room, but the drone ellipse circles around the entire ship. Is that possible? It would be justifiable IMO, using drones as external defense and an internal "energy matrix".

EDIT: Yeah Lemonade does the "doors as storage" thing on all his ships, it's a neat little signature of his.