Subset Games Forum

Shield drones are pretty limited. I don't think you can mod them at all, except for power requirements. Because their cooldowns are hardcoded, I think, based on how many levels of Zoltan Shielding you have--8 seconds for 0 layers, 13 seconds for 1 layer...I forget the rest.

I'm not sure if you can do custom graphics, but it doesn't look like it. Sleeper Service has a note in CE that says "some drones didn't make the final cut...they didn't work as intended", and one of them looks like a shield drone.

Sleeper Service wrote:Currently, about 40 new drones are added to the game. Some of the drones that where planned didn't work as intended, they didn't make it into the mod and are sad now.


sad drones

Somewhat related question for Sleeper: why didn't they work, and what were they meant to be?

One of those (5) looks like an anti-bio beam. When the game randomly targets beams, it starts from the middle of one room and heads towards the middle of another room. This effectively creates some areas that can't be hit by the beam, like the pilot position on the Rebel Rigger and Rebel Fighter ships. I believe that is why it was left out.

I think some of those (3 and 4) look like effectors, which use bomb mechanics. Drones can't use bombs.

You already know about the shield drone limits, so I guess I don't need to say anything about those two on the end, which I assume are shield drones.

I have no idea what those first two are.

NarnKar wrote:Shield drones are pretty limited. I don't think you can mod them at all, except for power requirements. Because their cooldowns are hardcoded, I think, based on how many levels of Zoltan Shielding you have--8 seconds for 0 layers, 13 seconds for 1 layer...I forget the rest.

That's quite unfortunate. Healing beams and improved shield drones not working = [

OP updated.

RAD-82 wrote:I have no idea what those first two are.

Those where additional mine-layer drones that where cut because there where already enough of those. The first one was eventually reworked to become the decoy drone.

Is there any way to mod the number of crew members in pirate ships? I haven't found any section of code where you tweak them.

Amount of crew is controlled by the crewCount tag in pirate ship blueprints, contained in dlcPirateBlueprints.xml.append.

<shipBlueprint name="REBEL_FAT_P" layout="rebel_squat_pirate" img="rebel_squat_pirate">
<class>Pirate Rigger</class>
<systemList>
<pilot power="1" max="2" room="0"/>
<oxygen power="1" max="2" room="1"/>
<shields power="2" max="8" room="2"/>
<engines power="2" max="4" room="7"/>
<weapons power="1" max="6" room="4"/>
<drones power="2" max="8" room="5"/>
<medbay power="1" max="3" room="6" start="false"/>
<doors power="1" max="3" room="3" start="false"/>
</systemList>
<droneList drones="4" load="DRONES_STANDARD"/>
<weaponList missiles="10" load="WEAPONS_REBEL"/>
<health amount="9"/>
<maxPower amount ="8"/>
<crewCount amount = "3" max="5" class="random"/>
<boardingAI>sabotage</boardingAI>
<cloakImage>rebel_squat</cloakImage>
</shipBlueprint>

Thanks, another question. I tried to set mantis ships to invasion AI. I assume one thing this does is it makes crew abandon their systems to board instead, and that was good.

However the problem I found is the AI ship teleports immediately, even if it doesn't have the room filled with crew. The AI will fill the room for later teleportations.

Since I don't think it's possible to set crew layout for enemy ships, I'm guessing this can't be avoided?

Why does the Rebel Flagship have manning consoles on its artillery? Do enemies get bonuses for manning artillery? And if so, why don't players get that bonus?

Levgre wrote:However the problem I found is the AI ship teleports immediately, even if it doesn't have the room filled with crew. The AI will fill the room for later teleportations.

Since I don't think it's possible to set crew layout for enemy ships, I'm guessing this can't be avoided?

It looks a lot like the game places crew in rooms following a certain priorities. If ships have enough crew the game will place crewmen in the teleporter room and these will teleport immediately when the enemy attacks. I think fewer enemy crew will prevent this from happening, but I don't think this can be avoided entirely.

NarnKar wrote:Why does the Rebel Flagship have manning consoles on its artillery? Do enemies get bonuses for manning artillery? And if so, why don't players get that bonus?

That might just be for style or some internal reasons. But have you tried placing a system station in a player ship artillery room? Maybe artillery can be manned after all.

Why does the Rebel Flagship have a sensors room? What does it even need with Sensors?