Subset Games Forum

Maybe its just me, but maybe you could reduce the rarity of the artillery laser a bit. In about 40 playthroughs i have only seen it once in a store and once on a enemy ship. The burst laser mk 3 and 4 come up much more often than it even,

I just spent a solid week editing every text entry in the mod and sending the files back to Sleeper. I don't doubt that there are still errors lurking in there, but I think I've eradicated the vast majority of them. If you folks see text errors in the mod after Sleeper's next release, blame me, not him.

Has CE gotten harder, or am I just on an unlucky streak? I haven't even seen sector 8 the last several times I've played. I just had my most "successful" mission in a while, dying in sector 7 in the Zoltan B: only 2 layers of shields, L4 engines, L6 weapons, drone control & teleporter, but no cloak. Pretty pathetic for being near the end. My weapons were an Ion Burst Mk II, Ion Burst Mk I & Pernach Beam - not so hot. I bought the IB Mk I instead of a Burst Laser Mk I, because it was one power vs two, and since I was struggling, I figured I could get it going before the BL. Sold a Scythe Beam and an AP laser (2 power, forget the name) because they weren't going to help with taking down shields. Rotten luck with getting weapons, either given to me or at stores, which seemed to have lots of crew, but not good weapons. I did see an Ion Field late, but of course, I had nowhere near 120 scrap.

KJ4VOV wrote:I just spent a solid week editing every text entry in the mod and sending the files back to Sleeper. I don't doubt that there are still errors lurking in there, but I think I've eradicated the vast majority of them. If you folks see text errors in the mod after Sleeper's next release, blame me, not him.

Dang, and I just jotted down a bunch of notes. But I look forward to the next release to see the results of your work.

Well there you go. Some of the boss related stuff that was discuses made it into thr mod already. Phase one will also be less harsh again, the PDS artillery interfered with the regular weapon cool downs, which has been fixed now.

Thanks again to KJ4VOV. He did a splendid job with the spell checking.


1.09
- Entire mod has been professionally spell checked by KJ4VOV
- Boss phase one artillery and weapon cooldowns fixed
- The Boss gained some internal drones in phase two
- The Boss deploys a Heavy Defence Drone instead of a Defence Drone Mark I in phase two
- Boss will prepare for a forced AI takeover in phase three by shutting down oxygen and medbay
- Boss AI takeover event now also acts as a deadline for phase three and triggers a wave of boarders
- Slug Hacker station event now displays the station immediately, so you know what you'll have to deal with
- Placing minefields cost's one missile less
- Blue options in quarantine sectors readjusted, offer some more options for lvl 2 medbays now
- One Rock hazard cloud textlist and related background generation fixed
- Combat aug use against for a few left out enemies enabled
- Defence Drone MK III fire rate decreased

Great job Sleeper and KJ4VOV!!!
I just have a few comments and suggestions....

-"The boss gained some internal drones in phase two."
I'm not sure yet what exactly you changed here, but if the boss uses more than 4 drones it will not work because it's hard coded to never use more than 4 drones. However, if you took out the (GODDDAMN!!!) Boarding Drone and replaced it with an Anti-Personnel or System Repair Drone that will work. Also think it is possible to get it tonuse more than 4 drones, but never at the same time, meaning if it lost a single power bar and it took 2 power for it to use a drone it might turn on a 1 power drone. (This might actually be a way to diversify the drones, but I haven't tested this out myself yet).

-"The Boss now uses a Heavy Defense Drone..."
I think because the CE drones are so much cooler you should change the Offensive Drones for the Boss as well. Personally I changed the flagship drones to a Heavy Laser Drone (2 power), Light Laser Drone (2 power), and Light Defense Mk(2?) (2 power .6 Cooldown). I do like that the Heavy Defense can shoot down lasers too though. I don't think either of the 2 offensive drones need to be there because the power surge calls a whole bunch of laser and beam drones, therefore the "main" 2 drones don't have to be laser and beam drones they could be more specialized offensive drones.

-Boss AI Takeover Event
I like this idea, but in order to make the boss more random could it be added as a random possibility? Like the possibility of having to fight in a sun, nebula, or asteroid? I think that would be a better choice.
Also, if you move the position of the drone room it will also be possible for the flagship to gain internal drones when the AI event is triggered. You could set the drone control power to be loss="4-8" at the beginning of every other event so it can't use drones and clear it or just not use loss="" for the AI event.

-Boss AI Takeover event acts as deadline for boarders
Does this mean you found some way to make them board when the AI takes over or not board until the ship is out of oxygen? If so awesome!!! You could also say instead of HAL9000 taking over that the crew is "abandoning ship," but they are leaving the remains in the hands of an advanced AI.

-"Placing Minefields costs one less missile"
I was actually wondering if you could make placing a minefield cost something like 6-10 or even more missiles, because it is a minefield after all. The trade off could be that the fleet is delayed by 2-3 turns though. I'm not sure exactly how broken this would be, but I think the trade off should be that you basically have to buy all the ammo at every store you visit to compensate for the huge missile requirement and the sectors you go to in the 2-3 extra jumps you have would need to give you just enough or slightly more scrap than it cost to buy the missiles.

That's it for me I think.
Again, awesome job on the new update, as usual.

EDIT: Actually one more thing. I've noticed Sleeper, that you've been trying to hangs the fleet backdrop of the boss to <fleet>battle</fleet> but it never seems to work because, like most things to do with the boss, the rebel fleet backdrop seems to be hard coded. Would it be possible though to make some custom backgrounds that include the federation fleet though?

Any chance we could, instead of a level 2 medical bay, use the Engi ship's Med-bot dispersal aug? If this is already added, sorry (I haven't noticed this yet).

Another thing for Quarantined sectors could include the option of either curing a few people for a small reward, or curing a larger amount for a better reward but the rebel fleet catches up a bit.

ikeelyou300 wrote: -"Placing Minefields costs one less missile"
I was actually wondering if you could make placing a minefield cost something like 6-10 or even more missiles, because it is a minefield after all. The trade off could be that the fleet is delayed by 2-3 turns though. I'm not sure exactly how broken this would be, but I think the trade off should be that you basically have to buy all the ammo at every store you visit to compensate for the huge missile requirement and the sectors you go to in the 2-3 extra jumps you have would need to give you just enough or slightly more scrap than it cost to buy the missiles.

That's it for me I think.
Again, awesome job on the new update, as usual

Hmmm... This actually gives me an interesting idea... What if you could recover missiles from enemy minefields under certain conditions? Like suppose you could do it if you had the ammo manufacture augment AND any mine weapon?

Edit to add: And being able to do it in battle against a foe using mines would be awesome...

"You picked up the last broadcast from a rupturing Zoltan frieghter, 'The Mantis, they're here, please-' You're interrupted by fire off the port bow!"



More like rebels with a slave engi right? That does look like a bug if that is a bug.

*Edit: I've just now encountered the Mantis Assassin and it also has mantises replaced with humans and boarding event was also bugged the same way.

ikeelyou300 wrote:-"The boss gained some internal drones in phase two."
I'm not sure yet what exactly you changed here, but if the boss uses more than 4 drones it will not work because it's hard coded to never use more than 4 drones. However, if you took out the (GODDDAMN!!!) Boarding Drone and replaced it with an Anti-Personnel or System Repair Drone that will work. Also think it is possible to get it tonuse more than 4 drones, but never at the same time, meaning if it lost a single power bar and it took 2 power for it to use a drone it might turn on a 1 power drone. (This might actually be a way to diversify the drones, but I haven't tested this out myself yet).

I guess that needs some testing then. I'll probably go for multiple drones with different power requirements if it does not work as it is now. Did you test this with giving the boss additional drone slots? This would be one more thin that works for the play, yet not for the boss...

ikeelyou300 wrote:-Boss AI Takeover event acts as deadline for boarders
Does this mean you found some way to make them board when the AI takes over or not board until the ship is out of oxygen? If so awesome!!! You could also say instead of HAL9000 taking over that the crew is "abandoning ship," but they are leaving the remains in the hands of an advanced AI.

Yes, I'm going for the crew abandoning ship/planned AI takeover here. Some Rebels might stay behind and suffocate, but I guess they knew what they signed up for. Id rather keep that as a global thing, cause it gives a deadline on boarding at a moment in the fight when it can again be quite powerful. It also makes the fight more harsh as it drags on and the auto repair allows the flagship to have a last comeback when it kicks in.

ikeelyou300 wrote:I was actually wondering if you could make placing a minefield cost something like 6-10 or even more missiles, because it is a minefield after all. The trade off could be that the fleet is delayed by 2-3 turns though. I'm not sure exactly how broken this would be, but I think the trade off should be that you basically have to buy all the ammo at every store you visit to compensate for the huge missile requirement and the sectors you go to in the 2-3 extra jumps you have would need to give you just enough or slightly more scrap than it cost to buy the missiles.

Possible... the aim here was to give more incentive to keep the mine launchers around. I feel like most players would be tempted to just use the launcher at the beginning of the next sector and then sell it off. Low, affordable delays might be more suitable to make the player keep deploying fields, unless they don't have a better weapon yet.

There is already a blue option for deactivating minefield mines with your own minelayer. Recovering mines from that could be a feasable outcome.

ikeelyou300 wrote:EDIT: Actually one more thing. I've noticed Sleeper, that you've been trying to hangs the fleet backdrop of the boss to <fleet>battle</fleet> but it never seems to work because, like most things to do with the boss, the rebel fleet backdrop seems to be hard coded. Would it be possible though to make some custom backgrounds that include the federation fleet though?

Yeah, this obviously does not work. Problem with custom backgrounds would be that the Rebel fleet will still be displayed on top of it, wish might look kind of messy. Also backgrounds can only be set one time per beacon. If the player has already visited a beacon, that the original background will be displayed there when jumping back, event for the flagship fight as far as I can tell. That sometimes already prevents the regular "Fleet in Range" warning to appear. It's still something to consider.

I experimented a little with pre-made fleet backgrounds displayed as planets, for that Mantis convoy event. It's definitely a nice thing to play around with and might be used in some more events in the future.

abyssion425 wrote:"You picked up the last broadcast from a rupturing Zoltan frieghter, 'The Mantis, they're here, please-' You're interrupted by fire off the port bow!"



More like rebels with a slave engi right? That does look like a bug if that is a bug.

*Edit: I've just now encountered the Mantis Assassin and it also has mantises replaced with humans and boarding event was also bugged the same way.

Haha, the insects are no longer insects. What a bug.

You might meet a few more of these human crewed Mantis ships. Fix is under way.