Estel wrote:This is becoming really interesting ship - I think it's going to my (extremely small) list of custom ships that I download and treat as "canon", as soon as it gets proper gibs and cloak image.
Suggestion, thought - why custom weapons? I quite dislike the pattern that every custom ship must get a custom weapon. If you would care to release a vanilla version and CE version separately (or CE-only version, as far as it bothers me, but speaking for the right of others) you could use one of the plethora of weapons available in CE that fits your ship design (ship cutter), without running into possible balance issues (too OP when your custom weapons get paired with some types of normal weapons - really, masking weapons balanced is much harder task, than most ship creators think it is), not to mention avoiding element of immersion-breaking. It is not very "realistic" to have ship with only-one-in-galaxy weapon type, unless it really, really fits the lore. For me, this ship may act like great "one of many" lanius scavenging vessels, no much sense in it having something that no one else in galaxy can get.
/Estel
First off, thank you for your feedback. This is some good criticism, and I appreciate it being thrown my way. I'm flattered that you think my ship is "almost canon".
Now let me say this: Mini Beams are incredibly powerful weapons, even being the very weakest laser in the game. The most Mini Beams any ship in the game starts out with is one, for VERY good reason - It's a 4-damage weapon for quite a few ships, and putting two of those things on is immediately 8 damage every 12 seconds, once you get through shields. To make a ship with three beam weapons of ANY type and not have it be overpowered or completely useless, I had to make weaker beams. A design choice, not an assumption, if you will. So for balance issues, I can't use even the weakest beams in the game, and therefore had to make something custom.
Also, I'm a fledgling game designer, I need the practice in balancing weapons. And yes, I understand it's difficult, but you look at Flak weapons and tell me that getting two of those isn't completely crazy in terms of damage output. There are powerful weapons in the game, and weak weapons in the game. Things are supposed to be a little unbalanced, that's what makes the game INTERESTING, and I'm saying this, again, as someone who has studied game design. I'm confident that I'll be able to make acceptable weapons with enough feedback from how they actually play.
I'll look into a CE version, certainly, but I'm going to have to try CE out first - I usually only play vanilla, and from what I've seen of CE, it's very slightly poorer quality than what I'm used to, with typos and immersion-breaking dialogue. It's not bad, it's just not FTL. I'll get around to it eventually, I'm sure.
And as far as canon goes, think about this: The Lanius are a mysterious and solitary race. Why should everyone and their mother have a Lanius weapon - No - Have a Lanius *tool*? Because that's really what these are, they're tools used to cut ships. In terms of damage output, you'd be far better with just three Mini Beams, which are widely available. The mod already distributes the beams to shops, so I could always make an enemy version of the Fishhook and add the cutting beams to the Lanius weapon list... Although something tells me they wouldn't really use the beams for war, which would be the purpose of the military escorts we've heard about. They would consider them tools, not weapons, and they likely might not make the connection between the importance of oxygen to other races and the ability to cause hull breaches.
Thank you again, and I hope my mod becomes something you can enjoy. Please, try it and see for yourself if the weapons are really that OP or UP - I've spent several hours already tweaking them, and I'll likely spend many more doing exactly that.
