[WIP] The Cyclone - first attempt at designing a ship

[DryEagle]

So, this thread has kind of become a work-in-progress blog for my first attempt at making a ship. I'll just leave it as it is. Current state of it: http://i.imgur.com/STXfk.png going to do some more testing and tweaking now, will report back in some hours.

[Kieve]

This may be of use. There's a reason it's stickied.
If you've already read through it (carefully) and something in particular isn't working, explain in a bit more detail and I'm sure someone around here will be able to help you through it.

[DryEagle]

I'm getting stuck on step 4 of that guide, the room layout. Tried for near-on an hour to make helm stick to a room and it just doesn't want to work, either appears in room with other systems, or none at all.
That and fiddling with some of the graphics stuff, which I'm no good with (though I'm only planning on using the original vortex ship model though with an entirely different layout...

edit: here's a couple screenshots of what I'm trying to achieve, maybe someone can finish it from here?


The idea, obvious, is that you have only medi-nanites to heal the crew, and a repair drone to fix the medbay if that breaks. Defence drone provides protection against boarding drones in there and you can suffocate any humans. Wondering how this will go, seems like an interesting challenge...
a few other considerations added for difficulty... you have a fairly good weapon, but a single hit to your weapons system will disable it, and it has a long charge... and only a single airlock... engi crew with no option to use antio-boarding drones... looks like a good challenge
and yes, i did come to this idea after seeing the other fellow who made the ship-split-in-two but went for a somewhat more viable but hopefully still interesting version

[alextfish]

That does look like a fun setup

I've had occasional glitches like that with FTLEdit as well. A couple of thoughts:

* FTLEdit gets very confused if you have the Options open while editing the ship. I'd suggest trying to close the options dialog. If that itself doesn't work, then you might need to Alt-Tab until you can find whatever window it's popped open accidentally (sometimes the Open dialog for loading a floor or base image gets opened accidentally).

* If that doesn't work, then simply just kill it and try again. Maybe do things in a different order, like design everything in the floor plan, then move the floor plan mostly off-screen, so that only the "Options" button is visible. Then click Options, set all the options, and export it.

[DryEagle]

I've tried it several times. Even when I load stock ships, the cockpit either doesn't show up at all, or goes in the same room as drone control. Don't know why. Reinstalling it didn't help. Maybe someone else can 'publish' the blueprint in a useable package? That would be great...

[DryEagle]

Well, I went ahead and created the ship anyway ignoring the fact that it had no cockpit. The game, graciously enough, added one in the right spot. No idea what that was all about...
Still a few bugs to iron out, especially when it comes to the single-size rooms... don't think the game likes those as you can see here:

[thashepherd]

What I've seen seems to imply that the "No Oxygen" stripes work sort of like the room images - there are separate layouts for 1x2, 2x1, 2x2, etc. If a room in an unsupported (non-vanilla) size runs out of oxygen, it ends up using a sprite that doesn't match the room's layout.

No proof that this is the case, but I've only seen it happen on 1x3 and 1x8 rooms. Fortunately it aligned with the airlock so it was actually a cool effect.

[DryEagle]

ah ok, well if that's how that works, any way to 'rotate' the no-air sprite so it doesn't point down? if i could make them be 2x1 and point across into each other, they wouldn't be noticable (in theory)?
currently I'm working on all of the interior room sprites so that none of them are blocking doors etc, will post more screenshots as I go... hopefully I won't have to redesign the whole bottom section because of the air issue...

[thashepherd]

ah ok, well if that's how that works, any way to 'rotate' the no-air sprite so it doesn't point down? if i could make them be 2x1 and point across into each other, they wouldn't be noticable (in theory)?
currently I'm working on all of the interior room sprites so that none of them are blocking doors etc, will post more screenshots as I go... hopefully I won't have to redesign the whole bottom section because of the air issue...

I doubt it; if you find a way to make it work, please let me know.

[DryEagle]

Well, I've gone and redone the layout entirely, to use only 2x2 and 2x4 rooms.
I've stacked the medbay and dronebay on top of each other - seems to kind of work, though I'm not sure if it's venting air properly or not... seems like one of the rooms is, and the other isn't... the repairdrone does repair the medbay when it takes a hit, so that's ok, haven't managed to test it far enough to get boarders in there yet. screenshot showing both the actual starting gear, and after buying stealth+teleport: