WIP:Captain's edition Ship rebalance.

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Knightmarez
Posts: 143
Joined: Fri Nov 08, 2013 3:30 am

WIP:Captain's edition Ship rebalance.

Postby Knightmarez » Fri Nov 21, 2014 9:06 pm

Captain's edition Ship rebalance.

Basically I am a game designer and i was working hard on a side project of mine for FTL. It was a captian's edition fully compatible mod (infact it required CE) that rebalanced the player ships and the enemy ships.

then ADVANCED EDITION came out, and my work no longer err...worked.

I am now rebuilding it with the new super-ship-maker.
I want to be on the credits for CE.
I want my work to be *in* the standard CE.

The problem I felt with the game is that the different ships were too similiar. It was like going to a pizza place. Sure you can pick slightly different toppings, but it's still pizza. you order the toppings you know your GF likes, and you will probably get snuggles.

The version of FTL i was playing for months felt like you were going to the mall and had 10 different food places to take your girlfriend.
There, the waiters and chefs would hurl insults at each-others restaurants, a fire broke out. the police arrested you for a crime you didn't comit.
When you got back home your robot vacume cleaner attacked you, but finally, if you play your cards EXACTLY RIGHT you would finally get some snuggly time with the GF.


My work aimed to make all the player ships *extremely* dissimilar. In effect if you are the wrong captain make bad choices, you died. Lots. But, when you played the ship correctly, the difficulty went back to normal...
My changes included modded version of the mods.
Advanced Battlesystems
Augments
FTLcaptains.
etc
Here are some screen shots.

Image
The new 'fighter jet' that has no cloak, and no shields, and only 16 starting hp.
But it does come with weapon pre-igniter as standard XD
Kill the enemyquickly or be murded. beams are your Nemesis.

Image
RSS Joyride. The Rebel cruiser type C.

Image

The Engi Cruiser type C
A drone, with no crew. Only AI that you would summon for 1 scrap each.
you would end up attacking civilian transports and loosing crew. but you don't care!
A sort of 'blue choice' for those events.....in a HAL 9000 kind of way XD

Image

Mantis Boarder. The ultimate in boarding...with triple mantis pheromones. Your crew move FAST.

Image

Rocks civilian transport. You start with 3 hull missiles and 99 missiles. Notice the big rooms. whats that? no shields? Yep.
Easy play-though? NOPE

Image

Me testing my new Engi type A ship. Notice the only two weapon slots and 4 drones. How it should be! Be smart or die!

The changes also were on the topic of Enemy ships.

I revamped what the random weapon selection tables for enemy ships were, and changed the spawns that would happen, giving them far more intense 'racial flavour'.
This made the sector choices intense.

This involved making the different sectors more themed.
go to rock sector, encounter more rock ships, with rock people on board, using heavy slow weapons focused on hull damage. Meet and elite rock ship and you are likely to be boarded and burned, if not both at the same time.
Yet NONE of them had shields, because shields are for weakling races!

Go to Engi space, face more engi based drone ships. including custom boarding-drone-only-'troop transports'.

The list of changes i made went on and on. and with my skills as a game designer, it still remained balanced.

I made custom textures for many ships, including revamps of all the space stations. I made custom skins for ships etc etc etc.

now its all WIP, but what i want to know, is how can i get my work into the final version of CE? after i make it AE compatible of course.
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NarnKar
Posts: 778
Joined: Thu Jun 19, 2014 4:24 pm

Re: WIP:Captain's edition Ship rebalance.

Postby NarnKar » Sat Nov 22, 2014 12:45 am

You can get your work into the final edition of CE by making this a standalone mod with CE compatibility. At best, I think it would be added as an alternate campaign, like CE Infinite is an addon to CE Basic. It seems like it's interesting and has potential, but one of CE's selling points is that it tries to go for a vanilla balance, which your mod eschews.

As a side note:

Knightmarez wrote:I am now rebuilding it with the new super-ship-maker.
I want to be on the credits for CE.
I want my work to be *in* the standard CE.


I'm not gonna lie--that makes you sound more power-hungry than anything. Perhaps that's not your intent, but it makes you sound like you're saying "I am doing this because I want recognition". Consider rephrasing, or re-evaluating your intentions.
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Knightmarez
Posts: 143
Joined: Fri Nov 08, 2013 3:30 am

Re: WIP:Captain's edition Ship rebalance.

Postby Knightmarez » Sat Nov 22, 2014 2:28 am

hahah maybe a lil bit.....truth is though the heart and beating core of my project was the mad adrenaline rushes and screaming at the screen that occurred, and the weird satisfaction i got from finally figuring out how to fly the ships with their strengths and weaknesses. My own creations no less.

Not seeing things that would annoy me (like rock ships in rock sectors with no rock crew) also felt good.

Also....my mod would fiddle around with stuff and i couldn't get it to work as something '' on top '' of CE. It was only stable when i made my own version of CE.

for example, my drone ship (props to mod its based on) was only balanced when the augment for generating crew members cost '1' scrap not 10. That required me going though the event log.

Also i would touch up lots of UI elements.

Basically it was alot of hassle to make it work on-top of CE, and was alot easier to make it CE.
I made *so much* content it just became a matter of efficiency.