[MOD][WIP] FTL: Engi Brigade

[R4V3-0N]

FTL: Engi Brigade is going to be an overhaul mod that places you not in the Federation Fleet, but instead the Engi Brigade.

Note: this is a WIP and would be a challenge for me being inexperienced in some fields of FTL modding, but I will try to do it to the most professional manor possible. I do have exams and other events in my life that slowed me down but do not worry.



This mod overhaul will include...

- 28 new ships and revisited vanilla ships for player use, type A, B, and C's.
- new weapons
- new drones
- new enemy ships (mainly Mantis)
- type B enemies (along with type B hulls)
- enemy cruisers
- new quests
- Engi Pirates added (yes the same ones in CE)
- Easter eggs

Player ships type A, B, C hull images. http://imgur.com/a/zdLkj

Player ships for FTL: EB

Engi Scout, Engi Bomber, Engi Cruiser, Engi Mobile Station,
Engi Interceptor, Engi Defender, Captured Mantis (Scout, Fighter, Bomber), Stealth cruiser.
special:

Engi Flagship
???? (secret)




OLD Ship download/ threads: [Warning: Not up to date with out of Date AE]
Engi Flagship thread: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17847
Engi Interceptor: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6efk0s9cqchwd ... ceptor.ftl

Each player ship will have a different play style and interesting pro's and cons, the B's can be similar to the A but in a different manor. Some ships may lean into the "OP" side, some may lean more into the "UP" side, but all and all they're all reasonably balanced (hopefully) and should not be to easy... at least in the first half of the game, RNG has ways of giving you everything you need... no matter how early in game, and can take that away in an instant.



There will be the addition of new weapons that will come along with this mod. Most likely centered around beams and ions (being the 2 most popular engi weapons). As well as the addition of 'new' weapon types and series.
New drones will also be around as it is the engi key piece of there ships typically.
All new content will be balanced accordingly to the vanilla game

The economics may be altered for the game and so is the player interaction with the rebels, mantis, and the federation but there will be a large difference for all races in general.

New events, quests, and enemies will be added to add more flavour to this mod. Will not only be just new player ships and weapons but you will able to put them to the test to new enemies, ships, and factions.

This mod is planned to be compatible with nearly any mod possible and to further that compatibility this mod will be made modular so you can remove certain aspects from it and change things around, This feature will aid in the next overhaul if this is ever finished (next faction will be unknown at this current time).



This is inspired from "Player rebel" and "Foundation of the Federation".
some resources may be edited or came from FotF, if this happens then Whale Cancer would be credited and mentioned, if he is against this in any way (if he returns) I will cut out the content involving FotF, I do not claim any of his work for my own.

Also if you got ideas to make this thread better then ask away.

that would be all for now.


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. All assets of this mod, besides third party ones which are not created by the author, are free to use for other modders, as long as they use them for non-commercial purposes and a willing to share their work alike.

[agigabyte]

I plan on making a Federation enhanced mod that replaces all ships with a Federation type A and a Rebel type B, and it will be kinda like your's.

[R4V3-0N]

Yes, quite a few people plan on doing things like these, I originally wanted to do a rebel or federation fleet thing, but then I noticed to much people doing that. Then I turned to the race that rarely gets any love and isn't common for modding yet will make sense to fight the rebels.
(Sorta... there is a peace thing between the engi and rebels... but I think there are encounters where an engi vs a rebel)

And for your mod I hope you do it okay, you might refer to the old rebel design back at alpha to help yourself if you run out ships to put in game, recolour it to federation (which is easy for that ship) and make the A and B the regular rebels.

[NewAgeOfPower]

I'd like to see an effective All Engi Boarding ship

[R4V3-0N]

Well I'll sure try and make one then
It is hard though trying to make it not like the zoltan boarding ship 5thhorseman made nor make it 'overpowered' or to generic at boarding. I am thinking of making a med bay nanobot bomb to pair with it, defence drones so you can ditch the ship with all your crew and not get hit, And just 1 system repair drone to make sure to repair anything if something goes down hill.

I just wish I can have someone to work with me with my project here, Someone who is more experienced in weapon modding, that way we can both work at what we are efficient in instead of I having to do everything.

[NewAgeOfPower]

The issue with Engi Boarding is that Engis deal 50% combat damage, statistically making them even worse than Zoltans at boarding combat...

Your issue with modding is that when you get stuck on one error, you get demoralized and quit, instead of using utilities like Vhati's SMM's built-in-XML validation tool or kartoFlane's Error Checker to get you ahead.

For my own mod, I was initially a story-writer. But I had no artist, so I got familiar with GIMP. After I became a (half-assed) artist, I had no coder, so I got used to XML.

I'm better at story-writing than art, and better at art than coding, causing me to scrap 95% of my events.xml code, but that's life on these forums.

I did get a free piece of art from Kieve (<3, heavily modified, will release on arc III of Ascension) though, maybe it's because I released something cool awhile back?

Almost all modders will be working alone. If Sleeper can near-singlehandedly make CE and slowrider the Polish Kit, then most people should be able to make a half-assed mod by themselves.

[R4V3-0N]

never knew the about the SMM checker, but I tried karto's and It only picks up errors from in game, eg cut augments, cut ships (eg "Rebel_transport") ("PLAYER_SHIP_EASY"), etc.

I can't even find what is even from my mod and what isn't, at first I thought my mod some how did the following...

removed pathing for BREACH_BOMB, f'ed up some mantis and rock quests, mess up the kestrel, etc when I was reading through the list of things and problems, then I realised those still appear without my mod installed then remembered it was things that was left in game, eg a (test I assume) quest that gave 2 people, meaning if you got cap, you crashed. I did read the readme so it must be my windows 8 goofing off again or the fact I got 2 SMM stuff, 1 for my project and the other for just playing the game, I got tired after I can't tell soon which is mine and which isn't and also my huge mod list gotten really big really fast.

I know how amazing Sleeper and (no offense I forgot) that other guy did those mods.
But I am still relatively new with my weapon problems and the fact I have to open gimp and measure every single time to centre every damn ship and stuff. If you can compare my project to a similar project, eg FotF, you are the rebel, and others, you see that most of them ended up in the person leaving, forgetting about the mod, or never appearing, only difference is in 1 case, kieve, is actually still slowly but still is, doing progress.

I will go see if SMM checker thing works. wish me luck.

Edit: forgot to mention that another problem is apparently for my ship interceptor, I got the A and B on the same blueprints, only 2 ships, but when I put it in game, the A and B are there but there is a different type B replacing a different ship with vanilla weapons. I checked and it isn't there if I remove all mods, nothing in any blueprints show any sign of that ghost ship.

[NewAgeOfPower]

You're not being patient, detailed or sufficiently analytical. I'm guessing your like, 18?

XML parser issues are common for code using base code as example. My core code has tons of these; thats not the issue.

Karto's tool is more powerful than the built in SMM validator, but both are incredibly useful.

Due to the way GMM and now SMM patch mods into the game, you'll find your own mod towards the end of each xml file. Go through each line carefully.

If it's your weapons animations that have issues, not even the error checker will be able to determine what's wrong if your weapons animations are screwed up; only why they aren't working.

For that, you need to be smart. Know the size of each frame of your weapon. Build it in a single frame version first (with canvas size constricting final size), to ensure no errors, then copypasta it over to the final strip as a template. Spot check the borders of the strip and between each frame to ensure consistency. Then check the numbers in animations.xml to verify.

Measure every single time? I mean, you know the dimension of each weapons file animation strip, the total amount of slides... Center each ship? What does that even mean?

I mean, I have internal design documents, but it's more for balance, storyline, and big-picture than for exact numerical details...

DryEagle and many others leaving was due to a a combination of factors; FTL's level of hardcoding preventing them from making many meaningful changes they've envisioned in their mod, and real life issues. I took a hiatus from modding for both of these reasons, and now I've reappeared on the scene.

Might have to take shorter breaks in the meantime, but oh well.

[R4V3-0N]

when I talked about people leaving, I mean people like Whale Cancer who left in mid project (that is similar to mine)

When I meant centering a ship, I mean things like... http://i.imgur.com/LjVZvgz.png?1?8246 (this was an abandoned mod, It was gonna be a slug flagship player, the problem is I wanted more slug accurate weapons and that means I need to make them custom image and all, it was to far from my skill level and this was being made for personal use anyway.

Anyway, I won't reveal my age due to generic privacy issues, only 1hint, I know the difference between music and a dying duck. (referring to good music and some things that pass of as music these days...).

I found the problem, seems to be that I can't path the images to vanilla ones, so I had to make a copy of each part and rename it.

That random type B ship is still unknown.

and I know the problems with the engi, but a smart boarder knows how to use any race to be effective, a 2 star engi boarder is better then most races at no experience level. That and you will have the aid of healing bombs. Or maybe a high level teleporter.

Edit:

Well I finally did what I was thinking the problem was, rename the animation, added copy and renamed images, etc, now suddenly all the weapons do not function or show up even though I didn't touch them specifically.
I am just going to stop for a bit, the lack of video tutorials, only 1 'how to' thread/page/forum/post/anything. etc.
I doubt I will make this mod if I can't even do 1 of the 2 only goals I have to achieve till I am happy with this, let alone making enemies, quests, augments, ui changes, hanger change, etc.

I am not giving up, I am just packing things away and will wait until my one of my friends becomes available to help me mod. Sadly he is less experienced then me but he goes to a university of... software stuff that I just forgot and would know a thing or two about things I don't.

I can't simply do this alone, I got multiple wounds and medical stuff, I got economic issues, etc. I started modding because I always loved to create things, how ever it's usually with a mechanic in the game that allows to create things, so there is no codding parts.

As I said before, my strength's (in terms of ship modding in ftl, not involving other possible moddable things) are creating hull images, thinking of concepts and designs, weapon stats, room lay out and such (eg, not having a 20 x 4 room on a ship with a vanilla system image (2 x 1 eg) stretched in and having 90% of the room off the ship, that and making the room layout appealing).

I continuously read that same thread over and over and I continuously run into a dead end to dead end. I will see if I can at least salvage the situation on my type A interceptor and then ditched the type B that is riddled with issues. (type A uses the weapons I had issues on before on the other thread that you guys helped me out... hence the part it is the only working weapon I made so far and the "Engi Heavy Laser" that has normal vanilla images)

Edit 2:

^
This does not mean the mod is dead (already), it means it would just take more time

[agigabyte]

How do you make gibs? I have no way of perfectly dividing my ship images.