Subset Games Forum

Posted: **Fri Sep 19, 2014 8:19 am**

I was playing the Extreme Weapon Pack for Doom the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcuGtbyPGWk

Then a thought occurred to me:

FTL already hard to play with certain ships. What about making the game 159% more harder than the next leading ship mods?
The problem is: I don't know how to make it just that more painful.

The best I can think of for the moment would be this:

1) Engi Boarding Cruiser - Comes with 2 Engies, Mini Beams for weapons, Medbay and a Teleport. The intent is to board ships with the Engies, take down the shields and use the beams. But considering just how bad Engies are at boarding... you either get a Mantis or two or play with the AI and hope you don't get shot to pieces before you escape/lose your crew.
2) Rock Maze - Your standard Rock ship with 2 Rockmen. However the doors don't go where you think they go - Oxygen and Piloting are near each other but going through the doors takes you across the whole ship before taking you to the room. Same for all the others. Would also make venting an absolute pain. Since Rockmen are slow, it means getting emergency repairs done is more difficult. I thought about Mantises but they're swift even if their repair sucks.
3) Zoltan Power WTF! - Have a ship with Zoltans and several stacked systems together. Sounds fun or OP? How about Artillery and Shields are in the same room as Piloting? You want to board? Better make it fast or have a Clone Bay, because you can't turn off the artillery (which should be some sort of heavy crew-damaging weapon).

The intent is to make something frustrating to play but still be winnable. It shouldn't be a matter of "How far can I take this before I die" like a ship with isolated systems.

Any other ideas or improvements? Let me know.

Posted: **Sat Sep 20, 2014 2:00 am**

Because I want these ships to be somewhat unique and not just vanilla ships with an altered room layout, here's an example of a PITA ship:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/33jwl ... oarder.ftl
(Replaces Mantis B)

The Dodecahedron. Comes with 3 Engies, nanobot dispersal, a mini beam and a 4-person teleporter with a nearby 4-person medbay.

Any suggestions on how to make it even more frustrating? Or is it a bit too cruel?

Posted: **Sat Sep 20, 2014 3:26 am**

Honestly, it's a mix of things. Four person teleporter and medbay combo is always OP no matter how you slice it, and even though your crew is Engies it's not so terrible. The starting weapons, on the other hand, are ridiculously weak no matter how you slice it, seeing as how you've included a damage-dealer instead of a boarding support weapon.

Posted: **Sat Sep 20, 2014 6:47 am**

Honestly, it's a mix of things. Four person teleporter and medbay combo is always OP no matter how you slice it, and even though your crew is Engies it's not so terrible. The starting weapons, on the other hand, are ridiculously weak no matter how you slice it, seeing as how you've included a damage-dealer instead of a boarding support weapon.

So in other words, it's incredibly frustrating and challenging but not unplayable, right?
Should I reduce the size of the Medbay and Teleporter?

----------------

On another note:

How about a ship with no weapons except for a single Artillery (or a pair of them) that fires like a Chain Vulcan. Except faster, but the spread rate is ridiculous that not only can the enemy avoid being hit, but most of the shots don't even come close to hitting the ship itself?

Posted: **Sat Sep 20, 2014 11:53 pm**

I'm trying to create the highly inaccurate chaingun. I thought if I added a radius tag, it would be inaccurate, but every time it fires, it hits the centre of the circle every single time. How do the Flak Gun/Swarm Missiles do this?

What obvious thing am I missing?

Code: Select all

<weaponBlueprint name="BADCHAINGUN">
	<type>LASER</type>
	<title>Laser Gatling Cannon</title>
	<short>LGC</short>
	<tip>tip_chain_laser</tip>
	<desc>This laser weapon is quick to warm up. Each time it fires it decreases the cooldown, eventually able to take down any amount of shields. However the targeting systems are outdated.</desc>
	<tooltip>Cooldown drops the more it fires. Highly inaccurate</tooltip>
	<radius>200</radius>
	<damage>1</damage>
	<shots>1</shots>
	<sp>0</sp>
	<fireChance>0</fireChance>
	<breachChance>0</breachChance>
	<cooldown>5.1</cooldown>
	<power>2</power>
	<cost>95</cost>
	<bp>2</bp>
	<rarity>0</rarity>
	<image>laser_light1</image>
	<boost>
		<type>cooldown</type>
		<amount>4</amount>
		<count>1</count>
	</boost>
	<launchSounds>
		<sound>lightLaser1</sound>
		<sound>lightLaser2</sound>
		<sound>lightLaser3</sound>
	</launchSounds>
	<hitShipSounds>
		<sound>hitHull2</sound>
		<sound>hitHull3</sound>
	</hitShipSounds>
	<hitShieldSounds>
		<sound>hitShield1</sound>
		<sound>hitShield2</sound>
		<sound>hitShield3</sound>
	</hitShieldSounds>
	<missSounds>
		<sound>miss</sound>
	</missSounds>
	<weaponArt>chainlaser_2</weaponArt> 
	<iconImage>laser_chain</iconImage>
</weaponBlueprint>

Posted: **Sun Sep 21, 2014 2:51 am**

Swarm missiles always hit their target, I thought? In any case...

Radius is a tag that only works on BURST type weapons. BURST weapons fire many projectiles in a single "cluster".

Code: Select all

<weaponBlueprint name="BA_SHOTGUN_SMALL">
[irrelevant code removed]
<radius>40</radius>
<damage>1</damage>
<shots>1</shots>
<sp>0</sp>
<spin>720</spin>
<fireChance>0</fireChance>
<breachChance>0</breachChance>
<cooldown>14</cooldown>
<power>1</power>
<cost>45</cost>
<bp>10</bp>
<speed>26</speed>
<rarity>1</rarity>
<projectiles>
    <projectile count="2" fake="false">debris_med</projectile>
    <projectile count="6" fake="true">debris_small</projectile>
</projectiles>
[irrelevant code removed]
<weaponArt>ba_shotgun_small</weaponArt>
<iconImage>flak</iconImage>
</weaponBlueprint>

Here I'm looking at the Balanced Arsenal's Flak Gun Mark I. If you'll look under the projectiles tag, you'll notice that some are "fake" and some aren't. The fake projectile animations still require a shot animation, and are fired out of the gun with the real shots, but do no damage whatsoever (and are only there for visual appeal).

The spin tag is, well, spin. You don't want that, probably, given that it's a laser weapon. It's okay though; you can just remove it.

One more thing to note is that <shots> is set to 1. FTL's hardcoding is weird, and if you set <shots> to more than 1, it will fire every single projectile individually, and then a cluster of all the projectiles. So if you have 3 fake "small" projectiles, 2 real "medium" projectiles, and 1 real "large" projectile, setting <shots> to 2 will fire like this:
>small small small medium medium large [cluster]
Not that it matters.

As a final note, I was actually thinking about making a "Type B" of sorts for my ASB Cruiser, the Wanderlust. The Type B would feature two gigantic Vulcan Artillery Systems that could "constantly pepper the enemy ship with gunfire"...although I wasn't considering a radius tag, given that artillery weapons can't be aimed anyway, our ideas are still very similar, hehe. But then again, I wasn't going to make mine "extreme"; I was just going to put a 30ish second cooldown, with 5 cooldown drops of 6 seconds each, and it would fire 3 shots at a time.

Posted: **Sun Sep 21, 2014 3:01 am**

Swarm missiles always hit their target, I thought? In any case...

Well there's a radius to them and the first missile isn't always centred. Then again they might always hit their target

As a final note, I was actually thinking about making a "Type B" of sorts for my ASB Cruiser, the Wanderlust. The Type B would feature two gigantic Vulcan Artillery Systems that could "constantly pepper the enemy ship with gunfire"...although I wasn't considering a radius tag, given that artillery weapons can't be aimed anyway, our ideas are still very similar, hehe. But then again, I wasn't going to make mine "extreme"; I was just going to put a 30ish second cooldown, with 5 cooldown drops of 6 seconds each, and it would fire 3 shots at a time.

Well the idea of having them be artillery is that they can't be aimed and second of all, with the high radius, they will never hit their target effectively.

Perhaps I should just have it like this: Artillery 1 fires projectiles rapidly that only deplete shields (no hull damage or system damage) and does it rapidly. Artillery 2 is a very slow charging (perhaps 40 seconds), high damage weapon.
That'll be its only weapons - you have to actually buy a weapon's subsystem and even then it'll only have 1 gun

Posted: **Mon Sep 22, 2014 9:48 am**

Well, I got the artillery system fixed and made firing it 159% more prettier than the next leading artillery system.

Behold:
The Cassowary!

http://www.mediafire.com/download/8naqk ... estrel.ftl
(Replaces Kestrel A)

It has 2 artillery systems, fires every 2 seconds, shoots a barrage of 31 projectiles per gun with a massive radius. You might get lucky and the enemy ship will be scrap metal in 20 seconds or you'll be there for a long time as the gun keeps firing and missing. At least they'll go through shields so you're not waiting for the shields to be depleted as well as the enemy hull. It's not that cruel.

Also, you have no weapons subsystem. You gotta buy it in stores. It'll probably be available for free but it'll start at level 1.

Few things to note:
Don't waste money upgrading your artillery. It won't show up on the UI and won't do anything for either system.
Don't hit restart. Hit "hangar" and try again. If you restart without going to the hangar, the second artillery system will disappear!
If you're playing with a mod that adds the ghost race to the game, two of the crew will be replaced with ghosts.

Oh and when you inevitably die from lack of proper guns, the ship has gibs!

Guaranteed to be frustrating or your money back!*

* Since this is available for free you won't get any money back if you're not satisfied.

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