Subset Games Forum

It sounds like a great undertaking but I think it would require a lot more than just adding new aliens and abilities.

The Envi already sounds overpowered on either side. What if one gets on your ship and you have no ion bombs to teleport? You've got an invincible killer wreaking havoc across the ship.

Sounds great if it's your (hard-earned) Envi and you can laugh at the enemy's pathetic attempts to try and kill it but not everyone is able to grab ion explosives and fend off a hostile Envi if they board your ship.

The ghosts? What happens if your entire crew are ghosts, you have no Repair Bombs (or you're out of missiles) and your piloting is shot? You'd have to restart the game. I once ran an automated ship where both the Engines and the Drone Control were shot and hull breached. No repair drones could be sent out and my ship couldn't move anywhere. Brought an end to what was quite a good run without a crew.

Then there's the Spiders. They're definitely a joke. They'd lose HP once they go to their stations, then they'd run off to the medbay where they'd heal up and not lose health, then they'd return to their station, lose health...
The AI would have to be modified quite a fit so that two of the same crew would stay in the same room. Cue the Maston in-fighting.

I think the aliens have some good ideas, but even if it was possible to mod them, they all wouldn't work with the AI of the game itself. (Although a Ymph on an auto-drone with a Mantis sounds like it could make boarding those ships viable)
There's always the idea of fanfiction to expand the universe out. Isn't that what the Expanded Universe essentially is? Fanfic writers make a canon and then the original creators are like "Sure, let's go with that"

stylesrj wrote:It sounds like a great undertaking but I think it would require a lot more than just adding new aliens and abilities.

The Envi already sounds overpowered on either side. What if one gets on your ship and you have no ion bombs to teleport? You've got an invincible killer wreaking havoc across the ship.

Sounds great if it's your (hard-earned) Envi and you can laugh at the enemy's pathetic attempts to try and kill it but not everyone is able to grab ion explosives and fend off a hostile Envi if they board your ship.

The ghosts? What happens if your entire crew are ghosts, you have no Repair Bombs (or you're out of missiles) and your piloting is shot? You'd have to restart the game. I once ran an automated ship where both the Engines and the Drone Control were shot and hull breached. No repair drones could be sent out and my ship couldn't move anywhere. Brought an end to what was quite a good run without a crew.

Then there's the Spiders. They're definitely a joke. They'd lose HP once they go to their stations, then they'd run off to the medbay where they'd heal up and not lose health, then they'd return to their station, lose health...
The AI would have to be modified quite a fit so that two of the same crew would stay in the same room. Cue the Maston in-fighting.

I think the aliens have some good ideas, but even if it was possible to mod them, they all wouldn't work with the AI of the game itself. (Although a Ymph on an auto-drone with a Mantis sounds like it could make boarding those ships viable)
There's always the idea of fanfiction to expand the universe out. Isn't that what the Expanded Universe essentially is? Fanfic writers make a canon and then the original creators are like "Sure, let's go with that"

The Envi already sounds overpowered on either side. What if one gets on your ship and you have no ion bombs to teleport? You've got an invincible killer wreaking havoc across the ship.

Basically they would be set up so they wouldn't use teleporters while acting as an AI enemy, their ships just wouldn't have it. Something about the energy used to teleport is too much like ion energy and it frazzles them, and as such teleporting them while they're on your team would render them vulnerable to combat damage for a time! Theyre meant as hyper aggressive to any other species just so that you wouldn't end up fighting a mantis ship that just HAPPENED to have an Envi with them (which would f*ck you over of course) a mix of how they fight ship-wise and what their abilities are is what makes them a balanced enemy crew. You can take on their ships easy enough, but you really wouldn't wanna go boarding crew on their ass.

The ghosts? What happens if your entire crew are ghosts, you have no Repair Bombs (or you're out of missiles) and your piloting is shot? You'd have to restart the game. I once ran an automated ship where both the Engines and the Drone Control were shot and hull breached. No repair drones could be sent out and my ship couldn't move anywhere. Brought an end to what was quite a good run without a crew.

Assuming here that you're talking that you'd play as a ship where you would chose to allow your whole crew to be ghost- OR alternately, assuming the undertaking of making this mod would be possible, that you earned layout A of a ghost ship- lets say you get two ghosts and an engi (just for example) and your engi dies thus leaving you with a ghost crew who soon come to be useless as soon as things start to get damaged. Both of these cases mentioned, as macrocosms of any other possible situation where you WOULD have an all ghost crew illustrate the point I think i'll probably be laying out quite a few times before this thread comes to a close. That being that it's all a risk and reward scenario, where the possibility of having an all ghost crew (ill-advisable for the above mentioned reasons) would be completely avoidable save for an unlucky draw of the cards. Of course it would be a terrible situation, but avoidable, and if it happens? Tough luck! That kind of stuff happens across vanilla FTL all the time (as anyone trying to get used to the shield less stealth ship or layout B of the Engi cruiser would likely know).

All that said you bring up some good points revolving around the ghosts, considering their likeness to the zoltan, maybe some form of impenetrable Ghost Shield could be a add on to their ships- just spit balling here but- maybe they'd act as temporary invulnerability alike to the cloaking mechanic except it gradually repairs all systems while active... the more ghosts on board the more it repairs. Again. Spitballing.

Then there's the Spiders. They're definitely a joke. They'd lose HP once they go to their stations, then they'd run off to the medbay where they'd heal up and not lose health, then they'd return to their station, lose health...
The AI would have to be modified quite a fit so that two of the same crew would stay in the same room.

I agree with the sentiment on the spiders, me and a friend (who initially helped develope the ideas) agreed that it would probably be smarter to say they lose health when not on a SHIP with at least one other spider rather than the same room. That seems a lot more flexible and given either the engi nano-bot augment or a crew of lyxaris- they could probably survive without another spider anyway- with that said I imagine most events in game where you get a spider might usually end up with you getting two extra crew. Clone bays also. Clonebays are also cool.

Thank you for voicing your concerns!!

i think the aliens have some good ideas, but even if it was possible to mod them, they all wouldn't work with the AI of the game itself. (Although a Ymph on an auto-drone with a Mantis sounds like it could make boarding those ships viable)
There's always the idea of fanfiction to expand the universe out. Isn't that what the Expanded Universe essentially is? Fanfic writers make a canon and then the original creators are like "Sure, let's go with that"

Ah yes. Fanfiction. Sweet, glorious fanfiction.