Balanced Arsenal Mod 1.2/1.12b

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Sleeper Service
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Balanced Arsenal Mod 1.2/1.12b

Postby Sleeper Service » Sat Mar 30, 2013 7:43 pm

Image
now with
Image
content may differ

This mod has been merged into FTL Captains Edition and will no longer be supported as a stand alone version.

Download Version 1.2
or
Download Version 1.12b (Contains some weapon related custom events, but might conflicts with event mods. Recommended to use Captains Edition instead)
Install with Grognack's Mod Manager

Want new weapons from the start? Then use:
Balanced Arsenal for Player Ships Addon 1.2
(equips all player ships with BA weapons and DE drones, has to be loaded after Balanced Arsenal to work properly.)

Balanced Arsenal currently adds 29 new weapons and 8 new drones to the game, all of them with custom models and animations.
Among them are five beams, five missile launchers (mostly multishot variations), five bomblaunchers, seven lasers, six ion weapons (three of them electronic warfare devices that work quite differently), four combat drones and two defence drones.

The aim here was to create stuff that fits into vanilla, both visually as well as from the side of balance.

Most of the sprites have been created from existing FTL images. The missile launchers are heavily inspired by the variety mod. Its a great mod and I recommend using it alongside. You might also want to use Drones Plus by karmos, to get even more drones.

Also feel free to use any of this mods content in your own mod.

Did I install this correctly?
If Kestrel Layout B has an "Old Laser" among its loadout then yes. If you use the addon all player ships should have BA weapons.

Compatibility?
Should work with almost everything. The b version conflicts with event mods.
-Since version 1.05 Balanced Arsenal has compatibility weapon lists for New Enemy Classes. The new ships that use custom weapons-lists then also get the arsenal weapons. Note that Balanced Arsenal has to be loaded after New Enemy Classes for this to work. You can adjust the load order in GMM's modorder.txt file.

How do I get the weapons?
Just play through the game and they going to show up at some point. There is a chance that they are sold at shops. But beware: They are also added to the weapon lists of the different Factions, so enemys will use them against you which should add new challenges. Weapon distribution was meant to be lore friendly (Rocks get more missiles, Engi going to use the ion Stuff and so on). The weapons come in all tiers and can appear in any sector (well no crystal stuff so far though).

Are the weapons really balanced?
Well I hope so. Numbers wise most of them are balanced after another already existing weapon but differ in way that should make using them feel new and tactically interesting. With some stuff like the beams and the electronic warfare devices I'm not completely sure. I'm always open for any balancing suggestions.

So this is just new weapons that do old things?
To some extend, looking at numbers yes. Lasers fire, missiles surpass shields and beams beam. Still each of the weapons was designed to feel unique while used. The mod also includes some weapons that can fill quite different roles in combat and hopefully offer you a new experience, allow for new tactics etc. Some examples:

Light Laser Mark II
Anti personal laser that pierce hulls but cannot damage ships structural integrity or deplete shields.
Fires 3 shots that damage crew but cannot deplete shields. Slight chance of breaching.

Alternative to the bio beam.

Effector Mark II
Electronic warfare device that can continuously disrupt systems with a combination of hacking routines and magnetic field generation.
Does no damage but continuously tries to disable up to 2 bars of the system it is directed on. Surpasses shields.

They are quite rare and can only unfold their full potential with a qualified weapons chief and maybe an automated reloader.

Artillery Laser Mark I
Artillery lasers causes even more destruction than heavy lasers and can pierce right through weak shields.
Fires 1 shot, causes 4 damage with good chance of fire and breaching. Ignores 1 shield.

Pretty useless against dodging targets. Also require support fire to deplete shields.

Anti-Personnel Drone Mark II
Fast drone that attacks enemy crew with a light lasers. Deals more damage than Mark I.

Ideal to soften up resistance before your borders move in. Bad for killing single crew members as you can not control where it shoots.

I can't handle this!
Remember that there is an autofire key (default is left control?) that lets you turn on autofire for a certain weapon. Some of the weapons (Effectors and Autolasers) are pretty much designed to be autofired.

Is there more?
If you use the b version then some of the weapons can trigger custom blue event choices (counterhacking!).

What to come?
I'm pretty much done with this thing and work on a new project now. Still there are a few weapon ideas that are not implemented yet (high tier scrambler missile launchers that can't be targeted by Defence Drone I and have more complex animations than standard launchers).

Enjoy!



Changelog

1.2
-Contend: Drone Extension component added, adds eight new external drones (of which two are for defence) and four flavour variants of internal drones to even out probabilities
-Balanced Arsenal for Player Ships Addon updated to support the new drones
-Asteria missile launcher removed from standard weapon list, was not intended to be in pirate hands
-Hull weapons removed from standard weapon list, should fix crashes on enemy spawns
-Some spelling errors fixed
-Scythe Beams charge glow fixed

1.12
Balanced Arsenal for Player Ships Addon 1.0 released.

1.12
-Enemy version of the Light Laser should no more be acquirable by the player
-Small Fire Bomb values changed to distinguish it more from vanilla fire bomb

1.11
-Artillery lasers pierce shields again :D Some other values adjusted to distinguish mark I and II a little more from each other.
-Kestrels Old Laser fixed (silly to mess up the indicator that identifies the mod as correctly working while everything else in the mod actually works correctly, isn't it?)

1.1
-Content: two beam weapons and three bomb-launchers added.
-Balancing: Artillery lasers no longer pierce shields
Light lasers got their projectile speed increased, they pierce on shield now and have slightly higher breach chance.
-Some weapons renamed to keep coherency with vanilla weapons
-Some glow added to modded and vanilla bombs to make them look like they are charging/overloading when they are being launched/detonated.

1.06b
-Some spelling mistakes in event files corrected
-Cleaned up stray Zoltan event-file, other files with tilde (~) will be left in the mod cause I'm not sure if they might have some function on other platforms/in Linux itself. They do no harm.

1.05
-Minor fixes
-Compatibility weapon-lists for New Enemy Classes added

1.0
-Content: five lasers and two ion weapons added

0.86
-Custom events are now only included in a separated "b" vesion of the mod. Therefore the main release of the mod will no longer conlict with event mods. Use the b sides if you have no other eventmods installed.
-ba_ suffix added to all of Balanced Arsenals assets to ensure further compatibility (just in case any other mods have a MISSILES_FIRE... :roll: )
-Effectors reworked, I didn't quite entirely understand how ion damage works. They should now do what the description says, but became actually less effective, therefore they have been rebalanced as well.
-Content: two new bomb weapons

0.85
-Event scripts cleaned up.
-Spelling rechecked.
<!-- Shoutout to leycec for the detailed feedback. -->

0.82
-Audio directory fixed.

0.81
-Ion beams removed. Metzelmax was right, they don't actually work. :(
Last edited by Sleeper Service on Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:42 pm, edited 42 times in total.
fireclaw2006
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Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2013 3:19 pm

Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby fireclaw2006 » Sat Mar 30, 2013 7:54 pm

How do you auto-fire certain weapons? I never learned how.
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Metzelmax
Posts: 364
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Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby Metzelmax » Sat Mar 30, 2013 9:34 pm

The real problem with ion beams is that they dont work. I tried it once. They just destroy all shields in an instant even if you hit only one room. And that's totally op; having a weapon that removes all shields and afterwards goes through your systems too. Sad but thats how ftl does it.
Here is the Stuff I made:
ImageImageImageImage
And stuff is always better than no stuff, right?
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Sleeper Service
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Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:49 pm

Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby Sleeper Service » Sat Mar 30, 2013 11:08 pm

You can configure the autofire key in the options. I think default is left control. You have to hold it down while aiming the weapon.

The Ion beams did work as intended I thought, but I did not do enough testing with higher level enemies. You are right, they always deplete all shields. I removed them for now... :(
speedoflight
Posts: 660
Joined: Mon Feb 18, 2013 11:08 am

Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby speedoflight » Sun Mar 31, 2013 7:19 pm

Sleeper Service wrote:You can configure the autofire key in the options. I think default is left control. You have to hold it down while aiming the weapon.

The Ion beams did work as intended I thought, but I did not do enough testing with higher level enemies. You are right, they always deplete all shields. I removed them for now... :(


Nop. Ion beams doesnt work as intended. The problem is the ion beam disables shields always, and the ion damage is multiplied for every room, so 2 ion damage, for example in 3 rooms will be 6 ion damage. So, once the beam hits the first room, it will deal 2 ion damage -> shields disabled. After that, the beam will hit the second room, again 2 ion damage (even if u cant pass through shields, the ion effect on shields remains...) and so on. In the end, u are dealing 6 ion damage to shields. Of course, after that, u will be free to kill any ship u want.

Well, i m not sure if thats the complete work around of the ion beam issue, i never use ion beams for the same reason. But i think thats pretty close on wat is the problem with ion beams.

Anyways, good job with the weapon graphics, i love that one with the antenna shape :)
My currently mods / wips ->
ImageImage
leycec
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:42 am

Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby leycec » Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:59 am

Fantastically thematic imagery, as others have noted. I'm (pleasantly) astonished you're not the author of Diversity! Given the mechanical similarities and explicit compatibility, perhaps liakad and you might contemplate a weapons megamod together?

Unfortunately, after patching with Grognak's Mod Manager, I espied the following errors on FTL startup:

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Initializing Crash Catcher...
Initializing Video
Video Initialized
Opengl version = 3.0 Mesa 9.0.1
Starting audio library...
Audio Initialized!
Resource Preload: 10751
Initializing animations...
Animations Initialized!
Loading Ship Blueprints....
Blueprints Loaded!
ERROR: Repeated Event Name! Name: ASTEROID_EXPLORE
ERROR: Repeated Event Name! Name: PIRATE_CIVILIAN_BEACON
ERROR: Repeated Event Name! Name: NEBULA_SLUG_CHOOSE_DEATH
ERROR: Repeated Event Name! Name: NEBULA_SLUG_DOORS
ERROR: Repeated Event Name! Name: NEBULA_SLUG_OXYGEN
Initializing Sound Data....
bad sound file in sounds.xml
Generating world...
Loading achievements...
Loading score file...
Creating FBO...
Running Game!


Note the five ERROR lines and "bad sound file in sounds.xml". After a bit of investigatory legwork, I'm afraid "Balanced Arsenal" is the culprit. Your mod fails validation under Grognak's Mod Manager 1.7, giving two egregious errors and one warning:

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Results

@ Balanced Arsenal 0.81.ftl: see below
  -------------------------------------

! Unsupported Folder: waves/

> data/sounds.xml.append
  Done

> data/animations.xml.append
  Done

> data/events_slug.xml.append
! Fix this and try again:
  mismatched tag: line 20, column 3
  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~
     </event>
  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

> data/events.xml.append
! <choice... hidden=... hidden=...>
  Done

> data/events_engi.xml.append
  Done

> data/autoBlueprints.xml.append
  Done

> data/blueprints.xml.append
! <!-- No other dashes should touch. -->
! <shields>...</slot>
  Done

FTL itself can tolerate lots of errors and still run. But invalid XML may break tools that do proper parsing, and it hinders the development of new tools.


I'm fairly wary of startup errors, so "Balanced Arsenal" may be sitting the next playthrough out. :(
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Sleeper Service
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Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:49 pm

Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby Sleeper Service » Tue Apr 02, 2013 9:37 pm

Aah thanks for the detailed bug report. I'm quite sure that happened cause my folder structure for the audio file was wrong. My bad. :?
I did not experience that error though, I might have to update my modmanager. A new version is uploaded and this should be fixed now. But please tell in case the error persists.
leycec
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:42 am

Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby leycec » Fri Apr 05, 2013 1:18 am

Thanks for the quick audio fix. Due to your inordinantly awesome graphics work, I decided to brutally hunt down and eviscerate the rest of your XML errors. (May they rest in pieces.)

Three popped up. The first is line 19 of "data/events_slug.xml.append", which should read:

Code: Select all

    </choice>


Rather than:

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    </event>


The second is line 684 of "data/blueprints.xml.append", which should read:

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    </shields>


Rather than:

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    </slot>


The second is line 60 of "data/events.xml.append", which should read:

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    <choice req="weapons" lvl="6" hidden="true">


Rather than:

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    <choice req="weapons" lvl="6" hidden="true" hidden="true">


Unsure how those slipped in there, but Murphy's Law will happen. Repacking the mod back into an .ftl file and repatching with GMM now shows no errors. And the Engi did sing with mechanical glee!

Incidentally, I heartily recommend the Validate button bundled with GMM 1.7. ;)
leycec
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:42 am

Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby leycec » Fri Apr 05, 2013 5:04 am

Oh, bloody hell. You duplicated events, as well. The following five events are duplicates of events already defined by FTL itself:

* ASTEROID_EXPLORE and PIRATE_CIVILIAN_BEACON in "data/events.xml.append".
* NEBULA_SLUG_CHOOSE_DEATH, NEBULA_SLUG_DOORS, and NEBULA_SLUG_OXYGEN in "data/events_slug.xml.append".

I'm reasonably sure that .xml.append files can only define new events – not redefine events already defined by FTL itself. Happily, the fix is simple: just assign each of the above events a unique name.

I don't know how far down this rabbit hole I want to hurl myself, but... well, the event text you added contains numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes. For example:

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             <text>It takes some time to reconfigur the beam pattern. In the little ramaining time till your FTL is charged you cut some usable material from a medium asteroid.</text>


Should instead be (with exclamation points following each correction):

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             <text>It takes some time to reconfigure! the beam pattern. In the little re!maining time till your FTL is charged,! you cut some usable material from a medium asteroid.</text>


In short, the mod could use a bit of touching up. But even though it's not quite ready for the primetime, I reckon it's not too far either. :)
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Sleeper Service
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Re: Balanced Arsenal Mod

Postby Sleeper Service » Fri Apr 05, 2013 11:50 am

Thanks for the great feedback! A new version is up and it validates correctly with Grognack's now. That validate button sure is a great feature, might use that excessively in the future. ;) (Still get one error message for dashes in bluprints.xml that shouldn’t touch, but cant manage to find where that happens). I also did recheck the spelling (not my mother-tongue, sorry).

The events have now unique names. Still one question: Eventlists in appends do overwrite the originals, right? I thought I saw that in other mods. Cause for the events its somehow important that the original event don’t occur any more. Would it work like this?

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<eventList name="NEUTRAL2">
   <event load="PIRATE_CIVILIAN"/>
   <event load="PIRATE_STATION_CROPS"/>
   <event load="REBEL_TRANSPORT"/>
   <!-- <event load="ASTEROID_EXPLORE"/> -->
   <event load="MERCENARY"/>
   <event load="DISTRESS_BEACON"/>
   <event load="FRIENDLY_SLAVER"/>
   <event load="PIRATE_BRIBER"/>
   <event load="AUTO_DEFENSE_MAP"/>
   <event load="AUTO_DEFENSE_ITEM"/>
   <!-- <event load="TAVERN_HIRE"/> -->

   <event load="BA_ASTEROID_EXPLORE"/>
</eventList>