Subset Games Forum

The intention of this mod is to give a total different feel to the game, unlike vanilla or any other mod. Of course that doesn't mean superior, just different for the people who would like a change to freshen up the game .
Overall the goal is to make it much more hectic. Ships more potent offensively on both sides, ability to use more drones, boarding, weapons. More breaching, fires, and stuns, niche weapons are better at what they do.

I'm updating the 1st post now with what has already been done, the original post is still below it, for changes I still intent to enact.


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Got things working as slipstream mod

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6seporzazb5i5ja/LLL.ftl?dl=0

Changes thus far:

Cooldown of weapons have been squeezed into a 9-14 second window(1 weapon is at 15). This should make battles more hectic, and combat progressively more explosive as the game progresses. Battle plans will have to made quickly at the start of battles.

Single Laser - 11 cooldown
Dual Laser - 12
Triple Laser - 13
Quad laser (was 5 shots) - 14

Basic laser power req is linear with shot amount, each hit has 40% fire. The custom dual lasers has 11 cd instead of 12, but -20% fire chance.

Single Heavy - 12
Dual Heavy - 13
Heavy Pierce - 12

Heavy lasers now do only 1 damage, but have 60% fire + 60% stun, 10% breach. Heavy Pierce is reduced to 30% fire + stun. Again, power req. is linear with shot amount.

Ion 1 -8, 1 Ion DMG, 30% stun, 10% Fire, 1 power
Ion Heavy -9, 2 Ion DMG, 70% stun, 20% Fire, 2 power
Ion Blast II - 5, 1 Ion DMG, 20% stun, 3 power

Ions have lower cooldowns than almost any other weapon type. They've had stun and fire odds buffed. The ion blast 2 is lower on statuses, and thus more specialized for ion damage to shields + systems.

Leto Missile - 9, 40% for all statuses, fire/breach/stun
Hermes Missile - 10, 70% for all statuses, 2 damage, 2 power
Pegasus Missile - 11, 2 dmg + 30% all statuses for each missile, 3 power
Breach Missile - 12, 100% for all statuses, 3 damage, 3 power
Artemis Missile - 12, 20% all statuses, 2 dmg, 1 power

Missiles are now slightly lower cooldown than lasers, as well as having higher odds for statuses. This should make them more appealing to the player. Most player ships will be starting with way to cope with enemy missiles, such as a defense drone, or a repair drone to patch up between nodes.

Mini Beam - 10, 30 Length Beam, 1 DMG, 20% Fire, 1 power
Pike Beam - 11, 140 Length Beam, 1 DMG, 20% Fire, 2 power
Halberd Beam - 12, 90 Length Beam, 2 DMG, 40% Fire, 3 power
Glaive Beam, - 13, 80 Length Beam, 3 DMG, 60% Fire, 4 power

Beams have had their cooldowns and fire chances buffed, but also have had their beam lengths reduced. Balancing will be done by further decreasing the length, no chance of dodge is already a great asset.

Dual Hull Smasher -14, 2 Shot, 2 DMG, 0% Fire, 50% Breach, 2 power
Triple Hull Smasher - 15, 3 Shot, 2 DMG, 0% Fire, 50% Breach, 3 power
Hull Smasher Laser - 14, 110 Length Beam, 1 DMG, 50% Breach, 3 power
Hull Smasher Missile, 12, 1 Damage, 40% Fire, 40% Stun, 100% Breach, 1 power

Hull Smasher weapons now specialize in breaches, and actually have 0 hullbust, which I thought was a pretty messed up mechanic. The lasers also do 2 damage instead of the typical 1. But their cooldown is 2 higher than the base lasers. If too strong, an increase to +3 CD could work. The Hull Smasher Laser my be the king of breaching, with 110 length and 50% breach. If it is too weak for 3 power, the length may be increased (or power down to 2 and other stats decreased). I may nix the Hull Smasher missile, and instead use it as an AI only weapon with custom stats.



These are all the non-conventional weapons, meaning no normal/ion damage (exception being ion bomb). They've all been made much faster on CD, so they get to act first. The plan is to make them especially useful for a mixed strategy, i.e. boarding.

Fire Beam - 8 , 50 Length Beam, 0 DMG, 100% Fire, 1 power
Bio Beam - 9 , 60 Length Beam, 45 Crew DMG, 2 power
Small Bomb - 7, 1 System DMG, 45 Crew DMG, 50% Fire, 20% Breach, 2 power
Breach 1 Bomb - 8, 2 System DMG, 45 Crew DMG, 30% Fire, 100% Breach, 3 power
Breach 2 Bomb - 9, 3 System DMG, 60 Crew DMG, 100% Fire, 100% Breach, 4 power
Fire Bomb - 6, 30 Crew DMG, 100% Fire, 2 power
Ion Bomb - 8, 3 Ion DMG, 20% Fire, 70% Stun, 3 power
Heal Bomb - 5, heals 65 crew health, 2 power
Lock Bomb - 5, 3 power

The 3 traditional bombs now suck up a lot of power, but do a lot more crew damage, have higher status %s, and have exceptional cooldowns. Breach Bomb 2 can take out Zoltans in 1 shot, although takes as much power as the Glaive Beam.

Triple Crystal -13, 3 shots, 1 DMG, 10% Breach, 40% Stun, 1 Shield Pierce
Heavy Crystal - 12, 1 shot, 2 DMG, 30% Breach, 70% Stun, 1 Shield Pierce
Heavy Crystal 2 - 14, 1 shot, 4 DMG, 70% Breach, 90% Stun, 2 Shield Pierce

Crystal weapons have the same cooldowns as their laser counterparts, with lower fire but some breach and stun. Might end up increasing the CD by another second.


Weapons now cost 5-30 scrap. Generally, 5 per laser/ion damage, or 'tier' of missile. Bombs and beams start higher, at 15 or so, and reach the cap of 30. While this makes weapons more accessible, it also decreases the scrap selling from weapons by a ton. I hope to encourage the player to keep a variety of weapons on hand, and allow them to change up their strategy more, through buying at shops.


Combat Drones/Beam Drones now need 1 power, but have reduced firing speed (close to half)

Combat Drone II needs 2 power, but have double firing of Combat Drone 1. So the benefit is fewer drone slots, fewer drones spent. Might reduce firing speed slightly, to balance them with Combat 1.

Defense Drones now cost 1 power, and have 15 second cooldowns. Defense 2 costs 2 power with 7.5 second cooldowns. This probably will lead to power micro managing, as I think the cooldown decreases when they are not powered. Will keep considering alternatives, the goal is to make them good against missiles, but not nearly full proof. Lower chance to intercept would be great, if I can figure out how to do that.

For now Kestrel A is the only ship I'm balancing around this mod. Here are the changes, thus far:

10 hull
Starts with 4 engine to give better dodge from the start, may increase that even more
starts with backup battery (once I get the AE stuff ready)
Starts with drone system(2 power)
Starts with repair drone, ship repair drone, and boarding drone.
starts with boarding(1 power)
Weapon power decreased to 2. Starts with Basic Ion, Single Laser, Bomb 1, and Artemis
Starts with Shield Recharge Booster and Adv. FTL Navigation
Now starts with 7 Humans, hope to make player crew die more often, but this is mostly to enable a boarding strat early. Enemy ships will be made stronger to compensate.

The next big step is an overhaul of the enemy ships to make them more focused and better at what they do, and thus requiring less of a "one size fits all" player strategy. Enemy boarders will be more aggressive, gunships will be more overwhelming and thus require a quick assault or disabling of their systems. Enemy beams will be synchronized on cooldowns with lasers, or beams will be taken out altogether.


current crew prices

Human - 15
Slug - 17
Engi - 20
Mantis - 27
Rockman - 32
Zoltan - 35
Crystal - 50



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Old Post
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Crew
All costs decreased, generally it was rarely never worth it to buy crew in shops. This should make them a more viable option.

Human - 15
Slug - 17
Engi - 20
Mantis - 27
Rockman - 32
Zoltan - 35
Crystal - 50

Systems

Similarly, all system costs are decreased, making sub-systems more cost efficient. The best systems are also reduced in price, but more so for balancing combat.

Oxygen
2 - 25
3 - 25

Teleporter
B - 30
2 - 30
3 - 30

Cloaking
B - 50
Max upgrade now level 1 (may change to 2, but at very high price)

Pilot
2 - 20
3 - 20

Medbay
B - 20
2 - 30
3 - 30

Shields
B - 50
2- 20
Max Level 2 (may change to 4, at high price)

Artillery
B - 30
2 through 4 - 30

Engines
2 through 8 - 20

Weapons
2 through 8 - 25

Drones
B - 30
2 through 8 - 20

Sensors
B - 20
2 - 25
3 - 25

Doors
B - 30
2 - 30
3 - 30

Weapons
Some enemy boss weapons given lower cooldowns

Most weapons buffed, here are general buff directions

All lasers have minimum 20% fire chance
Heavy lasers have 50% fire, 20% breach(down from 30%), 50% stun
Missiles have significantly lower cooldown and/or power req, higher breach and stun odds
Beam weapons have higher cooldowns and/or power req, higher fire chance and larger ones have small breach
Ion weapons have shorter cooldowns, higher stun, and stronger ones have small chance of fire. Also very cheap in shops.
Bomb weapons are lower cost and power, higher fire, breach, personel damage. But, higher cooldown (some cooldowns hardly changed since they were already high).
Crystal weapons, in comparison to heavy lasers, have higher stun chances and lower breach chances, and no fire chance.
Fire, Bio, Health weapons are much lower in cooldown and power requirement.
Drones are a lot cheaper in shops, more ships start with drone systems, drones generally weaker but less power requirement, resulting in a net buff.

Fuel cost increased from 3 to 4
Drone cost reduced from 8 to 4
Missile cost reduced from 6 to 2

Almost all player weapons lowered in cost, many significantly


Here are some nerfs

Dual Shot Laser - Cooldown increased from 10 to 14
BL2 - power consumption increased from 2 to 3


Augments

Crystal Shard -
2 damage, 50% breach, 50% stun, 30% chance on hit
Rock Plating - 15% to 30% ignore hull damage
Crew Stims 25 - > 35% buff
Drone Speed 25 - > 60% buff
System Casing - 15 -> 50% ignore system damage
Repair Arm - down to 5% scrap reduction, from 15%
Scrap Collector - nerfed to 5% scrap increase
Auto - Reloader - reduced from 10% to 5% CD reduction
Pre-Igniter - cost from 120 to 140
Rechard Booster - 25% to 40% FTL charge increase
Drone Recovery - cost increased to 70


Player ships health changed to 10 through 15
Stronger starting crews
More starting systems, most often drones (with accompanying drones) and boarding

irrelevant now

Note post on mod goals/changes:

Distinct alterations to combat in different sectors, requiring different strategies

6+ mantis boarders in Mantis sectors, making Aspyhixiation not as plausible as a defense against boarding. Pushes the use of the much buffed bombs that can target friendly rooms (or resulting in casualties, which is easier to recoup with cheaper crew in shops)

Rockships way more durable, making conventional weapons a hassle, asphyxiation or boarding preferred approach

Zoltan ships with tremendous firepower, requiring boarding or selective system destruction (not as solid on this one)

Slugs with more fire spam, mind control, hacking etc., similar to slug home nebula

Human and Engi both balanced threats like now, with Engi emphasis on drones

Er.....


Most mods don't clobber. Most mods also don't really rely on .dat distribution, and don't rely on FTLDat or FTL Dat Manager. (In fact, .dat distribution is explicitly forbidden, I think.)

I think what you're doing is, you're naming things as blueprints.xml and animations.xml, when they should be named blueprints.xml.append and animations.xml.append. With the .append suffix, SMM will recognize those better and patch them into the existing archive, rather than completely overwrite it. This also eliminates the need for manually opening up the .dat and replacing the files yourself.

That having been said, since you're mostly rebalancing everything, it doesn't particularly matter if you clobber or append. If you append, FTL will recognize the last object ID as the one it will use--in this case, it'll be the stuff you appended, and it'll work fine. Whereas if you clobber, it will overwrite the previous blueprints/animations file, replacing it with all your stuff.

But in any case, most mods are put in a .zip archive, and then renamed from mod.zip to mod.ftl. I don't really know what the deal is with you opening and closing FTL .dat managers over and over again. :/

NarnKar wrote: I think what you're doing is, you're naming things as blueprints.xml and animations.xml, when they should be named blueprints.xml.append and animations.xml.append. With the .append suffix, SMM will recognize those better and patch them into the existing archive, rather than completely overwrite it. This also eliminates the need for manually opening up the .dat and replacing the files yourself.

Nope, I made that mistake once then fixed it... so I'm a bit perplexed because the instructions seem pretty straight forward. Change .rar extension to .ftl, change .xml to .xml.append. Have it in the "data" folder. There shouldn't be any syntax errors, it runs in the game fine, I only changed numbers in blueprint.xml, didn't delete any lines of code. Used notepad++ as was suggested.

Levgre wrote:Change .rar extension to .ftl

No, .zip is the correct archive encoding. .rar won't work at all; it's completely different.

Yup, got that advice in the slipstream thread, haven't used .zip in nearly a decade. Basically forgot about its existence.

Update post:

Got things working as slipstream mod

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6seporzazb5i5ja/LLL.ftl?dl=0

Changes thus far:

Cooldown of weapons have been squeezed into a 9-14 second window(1 weapon is at 15). This should make battles more hectic, and combat progressively more explosive as the game progresses. Battle plans will have to made quickly at the start of battles.

Single Laser - 11 cooldown
Dual Laser - 12
Triple Laser - 13
Quad laser (was 5 shots) - 14

Basic laser power req is linear with shot amount, each hit has 40% fire. The custom dual lasers has 11 cd instead of 12, but -20% fire chance.

Single Heavy - 12
Dual Heavy - 13
Heavy Pierce - 12

Heavy lasers now do only 1 damage, but have 60% fire + 60% stun, 10% breach. Heavy Pierce is reduced to 30% fire + stun. Again, power req. is linear with shot amount.

Ion 1 -8, 1 Ion DMG, 30% stun, 10% Fire, 1 power
Ion Heavy -9, 2 Ion DMG, 70% stun, 20% Fire, 2 power
Ion Blast II - 5, 1 Ion DMG, 20% stun, 3 power

Ions have lower cooldowns than almost any other weapon type. They've had stun and fire odds buffed. The ion blast 2 is lower on statuses, and thus more specialized for ion damage to shields + systems.

Leto Missile - 9, 40% for all statuses, fire/breach/stun
Hermes Missile - 10, 70% for all statuses, 2 damage, 2 power
Pegasus Missile - 11, 2 dmg + 30% all statuses for each missile, 3 power
Breach Missile - 12, 100% for all statuses, 3 damage, 3 power
Artemis Missile - 12, 20% all statuses, 2 dmg, 1 power

Missiles are now slightly lower cooldown than lasers, as well as having higher odds for statuses. This should make them more appealing to the player. Most player ships will be starting with way to cope with enemy missiles, such as a defense drone, or a repair drone to patch up between nodes.

Mini Beam - 10, 30 Length Beam, 1 DMG, 20% Fire, 1 power
Pike Beam - 11, 140 Length Beam, 1 DMG, 20% Fire, 2 power
Halberd Beam - 12, 90 Length Beam, 2 DMG, 40% Fire, 3 power
Glaive Beam, - 13, 80 Length Beam, 3 DMG, 60% Fire, 4 power

Beams have had their cooldowns and fire chances buffed, but also have had their beam lengths reduced. Balancing will be done by further decreasing the length, no chance of dodge is already a great asset.

Dual Hull Smasher -14, 2 Shot, 2 DMG, 0% Fire, 50% Breach, 2 power
Triple Hull Smasher - 15, 3 Shot, 2 DMG, 0% Fire, 50% Breach, 3 power
Hull Smasher Laser - 14, 110 Length Beam, 1 DMG, 50% Breach, 3 power
Hull Smasher Missile, 12, 1 Damage, 40% Fire, 40% Stun, 100% Breach, 1 power

Hull Smasher weapons now specialize in breaches, and actually have 0 hullbust, which I thought was a pretty messed up mechanic. The lasers also do 2 damage instead of the typical 1. But their cooldown is 2 higher than the base lasers. If too strong, an increase to +3 CD could work. The Hull Smasher Laser my be the king of breaching, with 110 length and 50% breach. If it is too weak for 3 power, the length may be increased (or power down to 2 and other stats decreased). I may nix the Hull Smasher missile, and instead use it as an AI only weapon with custom stats.



These are all the non-conventional weapons, meaning no normal/ion damage (exception being ion bomb). They've all been made much faster on CD, so they get to act first. The plan is to make them especially useful for a mixed strategy, i.e. boarding.

Fire Beam - 8 , 50 Length Beam, 0 DMG, 100% Fire, 1 power
Bio Beam - 9 , 60 Length Beam, 45 Crew DMG, 2 power
Small Bomb - 7, 1 System DMG, 45 Crew DMG, 50% Fire, 20% Breach, 2 power
Breach 1 Bomb - 8, 2 System DMG, 45 Crew DMG, 30% Fire, 100% Breach, 3 power
Breach 2 Bomb - 9, 3 System DMG, 60 Crew DMG, 100% Fire, 100% Breach, 4 power
Fire Bomb - 6, 30 Crew DMG, 100% Fire, 2 power
Ion Bomb - 8, 3 Ion DMG, 20% Fire, 70% Stun, 3 power
Heal Bomb - 5, heals 65 crew health, 2 power
Lock Bomb - 5, 3 power

The 3 traditional bombs now suck up a lot of power, but do a lot more crew damage, have higher status %s, and have exceptional cooldowns. Breach Bomb 2 can take out Zoltans in 1 shot, although takes as much power as the Glaive Beam.

Triple Crystal -13, 3 shots, 1 DMG, 10% Breach, 40% Stun, 1 Shield Pierce
Heavy Crystal - 12, 1 shot, 2 DMG, 30% Breach, 70% Stun, 1 Shield Pierce
Heavy Crystal 2 - 14, 1 shot, 4 DMG, 70% Breach, 90% Stun, 2 Shield Pierce

Crystal weapons have the same cooldowns as their laser counterparts, with lower fire but some breach and stun. Might end up increasing the CD by another second.


Weapons now cost 5-30 scrap. Generally, 5 per laser/ion damage, or 'tier' of missile. Bombs and beams start higher, at 15 or so, and reach the cap of 30. While this makes weapons more accessible, it also decreases the scrap selling from weapons by a ton. I hope to encourage the player to keep a variety of weapons on hand, and allow them to change up their strategy more, through buying at shops.


Combat Drones/Beam Drones now need 1 power, but have reduced firing speed (close to half)

Combat Drone II needs 2 power, but have double firing of Combat Drone 1. So the benefit is fewer drone slots, fewer drones spent. Might reduce firing speed slightly, to balance them with Combat 1.

Defense Drones now cost 1 power, and have 15 second cooldowns. Defense 2 costs 2 power with 7.5 second cooldowns. This probably will lead to power micro managing, as I think the cooldown decreases when they are not powered. Will keep considering alternatives, the goal is to make them good against missiles, but not nearly full proof. Lower chance to intercept would be great, if I can figure out how to do that.

For now Kestrel A is the only ship I'm balancing around this mod. Here are the changes, thus far:

10 hull
Starts with 4 engine to give better dodge from the start, may increase that even more
starts with backup battery (once I get the AE stuff ready)
Starts with drone system(2 power)
Starts with repair drone, ship repair drone, and boarding drone.
starts with boarding(1 power)
Weapon power decreased to 2. Starts with Basic Ion, Single Laser, Bomb 1, and Artemis
Starts with Shield Recharge Booster and Adv. FTL Navigation
Now starts with 7 Humans, hope to make player crew die more often, but this is mostly to enable a boarding strat early. Enemy ships will be made stronger to compensate.

The next big step is an overhaul of the enemy ships to make them more focused and better at what they do, and thus requiring less of a "one size fits all" player strategy. Enemy boarders will be more aggressive, gunships will be more overwhelming and thus require a quick assault or disabling of their systems. Enemy beams will be synchronized on cooldowns with lasers, or beams will be taken out altogether.

"Ion Blast II - 5, 1 Ion DMG, 20% stun, 3 power"

Didn't the Ion Blast used to have a 4 second cooldown? That way it could stack on itself and take down systems very gradually; I believe that was its main attraction.

"Lock Bomb - 5"

Due to the bomb's insanely low cooldown, you can permanently trap people in rooms. That seems really broken to me, although I'm not quite sure of it.
Which does bring up an interesting point--the object of your gameplay mod is "speed". But that doesn't necessarily work well with systems with long cooldowns, such as cloaking, hacking, mind control, and low-level mind control. Is that moddable? Do you plan on modding it?

"Heal Bomb...heals 50 health"

How did you do that? I thought <persDamage> was done in increments of 15.

"Ion Bomb - 8, 3 Ion DMG"

Although it seems pretty brokenly powerful at first glance, I guess that was your intent. Still kinda wary of it though.

"Defense Drones have 15 second cooldown". Er, what about if there's two missiles in a volley? De-powering to reset the cooldown and repowering one frame later for the drone to re-fire--is that your intent? That seems more frustrating than anything, although I haven't tried it myself.
Also, the depower-repower makes the Defense II even less viable than it already was--due to its tendency to fire at lasers ahead of missiles, the Defense II was less preferred over two Defense Is, and now with repeated depower-repower there's even less incentive to use it.

Although I'm not sure of this, I don't think there's any way for Defense Drones to be any more/less accurate. They do have trouble targeting the front of the player ship, but that's past a certain threshold on screen, and only due to strangeness within FTLgame.exe.

The Ion III is much more accessible now than before (15 scrap), it may have been OP but but just didn't fit the 'vanilla meta' so to speak, of bursting BL2s and Flaks. It certainly made an Engi A game pretty breezy until hard mode. The 20% stun is added value. I actually tried it at 3 seconds but that was crazy, I can bring it back to 4 if it's too weak.

It's possible crew damage is done in segments of 15, I think I saw wacky numbers I didn't intend in game. If so it will be 45 or 60.

If Ion Bomb is too strong, I'll increase power to 4, or alternatively reduce damage to 2. It still has the chance to completely wiff, and the higher firepower weapons also have significant cooldown reductions (13-15 instead of 16-20ish).

If defense drones completely reset their cooldown when you power them down, I will have to do something different. Probably just increase power req and keep them as is.

The lock bomb is rapid fire, yes, but it consumes 2 power for no damage, and I'll be making enemy ships more packed with crew so so it will be harder to block them all off. I mainly put the CD low to make it helpful for early boarding (since the mod is pushing for quick, decisive strategies). Rather than increase the cooldown, I'd probably increase the power req. to 3-4 (maybe 5 if it's super good?). If it is broken, the CD would need an increase.

Cloak has a max power of 1, I may increase that to 2, for high scrap. I think the up front value of a single hacking/mind use makes them viable, and some battles will drag on. Same for cloaking, 5 second delay of all enemy weapons, and an auto dodge is still strong.