[MOD] FTL:CE different artillery for each ship

[Marads]

I finished creating and basic testing the weapons, I edited the op to show what probably will be the ifnal version of the guns, I still need to give them names and descriptions.

I'll paste here the old quotes about the ships.


Kestrel

Type A
Very generic ship since it is the starting one, the normal artillery it had fits well in it, but with my experience with type B I decided to buff it just a notch.
Increased breach and fire chance.
As a side change this might buff the flagship, but I think that is ok.

Type B
This ship starts with 3 light laser weapons, having a heavy laser as artillery didn't fit that well, the theme is overwhelm the enemy with projectiles.
30 sec cooldown, fires 6 laser projectiles that do 1 damage, no fire or breach chance.
The total damage is the same as the type A, but I decided to remove the fire/breach to reduce the cooldown, but maybe 30 is too low.

Type C
It has a flak and a baton beam, the flak is mostly used to break the shields to use baton so I decided that an anti personnel artillery was the way here.
30 sec cooldown, fires 5 laser projectiles that ignore shields and do 60 crew damage and 2 system damage, no hull/fire/breach damage, also has small chance of stun.
The mantis anti personnel artillery is only 20 secs, but doesn't do system damage, so I maybe it's in a good balance spot, after testing I might reduce the system damage.

Engi

Type A
While the normal artillery fitted the style it was way too unreliable and overall bad imo, so I decided to change it to something that would fit the theme of taking out the shields with ion and using drones to finish the ship off.
40 sec cd, fires 4 ion projectiles that do 3 ion damage.
It's stronger then the old design because it will surely hit shields, but maybe 4 projectiles is too much.

Type B
This one could also stay with the old artillery, but unreliable was the word. Since the original idea wouldn't work due to game limitations I decided to keep the original but buff it.
Changed the amount of projectiles from 6 to 20 to reliably ionize the enemy ship.

Type C
This ship uses drones to take out ships, but doesn't use ion to take out shields, it uses lasers, I couldn't just do a simple laser artillery because that is already on the kestrel, then it came to me.
30 sec cd, fires 3 projectiles that do 2 ion damage and 2 system damage, no hull/fire/breach, small chance of stun.
The idea was that they are making a prototype laser weapon that can do ion damage, but due to the changes it is too weak to do hull damage.
Maybe 3 projectiles is too little to break enemy shields, then I could reduce the cd or add another projectile.

Federation

Type A
The vanilla artillery, at first I didn't want to change it, but then I wanted to put my finger in it, just to make it a little different.
Changed to 30 sec, reduced the length, increased damage to 2, remove fire chance.
For comparison the length is smaller then long beams with extended mod, but still longer than just the normal long beam, also the actual damage decreased when I tested and that is why the 30 sec cd.

Type B
When I saw the two hull smashers I knew that this artillery would have to breach.
40 sec cd, beam with almost twice the length of the vanilla vindicator, extremely high chance of breach and 1 system damage, but deals no hull/fire.
This one feels so good, I didn't expect it when I designed it, but it was the one I liked the most while testing.
I'm considering on removing the system damage, if then it feels too weak I can reduce the cooldown.

Type C
Flak artillery has always been a mystery to me, was it just so devs could show they could do it?
40 sec cd, beam with the length of vanilla vindicator, deals 105 crew damage.
I still didn't test it, but since you can't aim it might never actually kill the enemy crew so I might make it 30 cd.

Zoltan

Type A
I had quite a hard time thinking of this one, having a good beam and a good missile makes it hard to get a theme going so I decided to just buff the one it had.
Differently from the federation one, this beam doesn't have shield pierce, instead it just is so strong that it can pass them
By the end of the run all enemies have 4 shield bubbles so it has potential to do instant 5 damage if you manage to break the shield, but on a 40 sec cd it was too weak imo.
My idea is making a beam that gets stronger with each fire and has a high chance of breach.
So 20 sec cd beam with 3 damage that gets 1 damage every time it fires with high breach chance.

Type B
This ship has an ion and a beam with crew and fire damage, by this point I really want to be able to increase other stats with each shot, unfortunately I can't so I'll do something else here.
I think I'll make it like type A but instead of breach it has crew damage and fire chance.


Type C
For this one I could just run another one like A, but I want to make them unique, having two ion stunner and a hull beam drone gave me some ideas.
In the end I decided on 20 sec cd beam that ignores shields, deals increasing ion damage, if I can do it at least.

Lanius

Type A
At first I didn't knew what to do here, a chain laser and ion doesn't show much of what the theme for the ship is, after thinking a little it was a little too obvious.
Ion gun that gets reduced cooldown every time it fires, if reducing cooldown works.

Type B
This is the only ship where I think it's ok to have the vanilla flak artillery, but still I wanted to buff it a notch because it always felt underwhelming when I used on fed C.
Vanilla flak artillery that reduces cooldown with each shot, if reducing cooldown works.

Stealth

At first I liked the original missile that scrambles the enemy defense, then when I looked at the code I discovered that it was just a laser shot disguised as a missile. It is genious, but I felt cheated.
I still don't know what to do with the stealth ships. I have some ideas but didn't go much deep into them, I'm still getting over the laser missile thing. I will leave these for last.

Type A
Keep the same "scramble missile" but make it do more damage on systemless because it feels underwhelming the way it is.

Type B
Fires 4 "scramble missiles" to be in line with the ifrit idea.

Type C
I have no idea, if only I could make it work like a defense drone.
I'll just leave the normal one but it increases damage with each shot.

Rock

All of the rock artillery looks good enough, but I will do some balance on A and change C to be just a little different from crystal A.

Type A
Reduced the spread so the damage becomes a little more reliable.
It may fire 8 projectiles but when only 3 or less of them hit it feels way too bad.

Type C
Instead of 3 shots on 40 sec I made it 1 shot on 20 sec.
It fits well with the fact that it has 2 13 sec lockdown crystal.

Slug

Type A
Having a anti personnel and a shredder anti bio just screams for a artillery that deals crew damage.
Once I looked at how the original artillery worked I was perplexed, it fires 40 projectiles with a 20 sec stun, it doesn't even have a special stun chance, if one doesn't stun then there is another 39 projectiles that can so it effectively stunned the whole ship most of the time.
It was so weird that I just added a 15 crew damage on it just to see how it would be then, that means that each of the 40 projectiles does 15 crew damage, since they are spread on the whole ship it might just do 15 damage to a single enemy crew or kill the entire crew in a single blast, but most of the time it takes around half of their life.
Probably I will reduce the amount of stunned time to compensate for the extra crew damage, but will leave it at 20 for now.

Type B
I had a lot of trouble with this one because the whole idea of the ship is sending your units over and healing them using bombs, I had some ideas on how to go on this one.

I could go with the theme and make it drop mines that heal the crew, the thing is that they are random so it would be quite ineffective, so I don't think I would ever use this.
The most useful one is having it be a minelauncher that does hull damage only, certainly is easy to make, but way less unique.
I could do something like type A but instead of doing damage it would heal, so the heal amount would be random and spread, but not having damage would make it worth it? Considering adding crystallize effect so that it heals and does entire ship lockdown.


Type C
This one, swag, I have no ideas for this one.
In the end I might make it have a single shot that can 1 hit almost anything, but is really slow and doesn't have shield pierce.

Mantis

Type A
I just can't not make it a bomb launcher that deals a high amount of crew and system damage. I will make sure that it has a long explosion time so that you can take your invaders out before the explosion.

Type B
This is another tricky one, the theme is invading the enemy ship, if I make it do damage to crew then your invaders would be hit too, so I'm in a though place.

After many tries I've settled on an effector type with 20cd that hits 3 areas for 2 ion.

Type C
Because of the clone bay you don't really care for the crew you send to invade.
It would probably be a bomb launcher that hits 4 areas in the enemy ship, with high breach chance, but also doing crew damage with small stun and good system damage.

Crystal

These, like the rock ones, already have unique artillery for them, once I get to test them I will balance them if I seem like it needs it.

Type B
It feels too weak, 40 secs on something that might not do damage to crew and has only a small chance of breach.
Reduced cd to 30, removed radius in hopes that all 12 projectiles hit the shit, increased crew damage 15 to 30

[redlerred7]

Kestrel B
This ship starts with 3 light laser weapons, having a heavy laser as artillery didn't fit that well, the theme is overwhelm the enemy with projectiles.
30 sec cooldown, fires 6 laser projectiles that do 1 damage, no fire or breach chance.
The total damage is the same as the type A, but I decided to remove the fire/breach to reduce the cooldown, but maybe 30 is too low.

I was thinking bit more along the lines of a weapon that shoots several shots at once like a flak gun. Okay hear me out: Vanilla Red-tail uses the Alpha strike method of attack in which it shoots everything at the same time and overwhelms the shields with projectiles. So...

4 standard laser shots in one salvo
35px radius (same as vanilla Flakgun)
20 second base cool down (lvl1 is 25sec, lvl4 is 10sec)

It's basically like having 4 basic lasers. You even use the same amount of energy.

Engi A
While the normal artillery fitted the style it was way too unreliable and overall bad imo, so I decided to change it to something that would fit the theme of taking out the shields with ion and using drones to finish the ship off.
40 sec cd, fires 4 ion projectiles that do 3 ion damage.
It's stronger then the old design because it will surely hit shields, but maybe 4 projectiles is too much.

Okay, you probably didn't read the CE wiki. The Ion pulse artillery shoots six instant hit ion projectiles that pierce shields. Ions that pass through shields will not only ionize the shields, but other systems as well provided that they land on a room with a system. You have a chance of doing 12 system damage (which is equal to what you're suggesting)
Also, take note that for every ion damage to a system, five seconds is added to the lock down timer. Six ion projectiles hitting the shields for six ion damage will take down 3 layers AND lock it down for 30 seconds. At max level, your ion weapon has a cooldown of 20 seconds so you can ionize that last layer before the lock down end, allowing you to effectively knockout enemy shields to 1 or none for a good minute.
What you're suggesting is actually inferior to what we already have since there are less projectiles and more to lose if some of them don't hit.

Federation C
Flak artillery has always been a mystery to me, was it just so devs could show they could do it?
40 sec cd, beam with the length of vanilla vindicator, deals 105 crew damage.
I still didn't test it, but since you can't aim it might never actually kill the enemy crew so I might make it 30 cd.

Okay, but how about this? Shrapnel cannon.
12 projectile flak cannon
radius equal to vanilla flak
Pierces all shields
only does system and crew damage.
It fits with the whole "the crew of this ship do not value their lives" schtick they have going for them

Stealth C
I have no idea, if only I could make it work like a defense drone.
I'll just leave the normal one but it increases damage with each shot.

I actually have an idea for this. Stealth C exchanges it's standard tech for new tech. How about creating a sort of ion missile that does like 3 ion damage along with it's 3 system and hull damage? I'm pretty sure that since it pierces shields, it'll do quite a lot of ion damage. Plus, it'd be great at taking down Zoltan shields (six damage to a zoltan shield? That's on par with the Glaive and Flak 2 in vanilla)

Slug B
I had a lot of trouble with this one because the whole idea of the ship is sending your units over and healing them using bombs, I had some ideas on how to go on this one.

I could go with the theme and make it drop mines that heal the crew, the thing is that they are random so it would be quite ineffective, so I don't think I would ever use this.
The most useful one is having it be a minelauncher that does hull damage only, certainly is easy to make, but way less unique.
I could do something like type A but instead of doing damage it would heal, so the heal amount would be random and spread, but not having damage would make it worth it? Considering adding crystallize effect so that it heals and does entire ship lockdown.

Okay, so here's my idea, Healing cluster bombs, heals crew but does heavy system damage and breaches hulls. Has the indicators of where it will appear just like with the standard CE bomb weapons

Well, there's my two cents for your ideas. I haven't tried the other artillery yet though so I'm not sure what to comment on (Rock A/B, Mantis, Crystal B)

[NarnKar]

Rock B artillery is one of those awful plasma launcher type weapons that's supposed to set a lot of fires, but really can't do that because it needs shields to be down or else it just plunks against shields uselessly.

[Marads]

I was thinking bit more along the lines of a weapon that shoots several shots at once like a flak gun. Okay hear me out: Vanilla Red-tail uses the Alpha strike method of attack in which it shoots everything at the same time and overwhelms the shields with projectiles. So...

4 standard laser shots in one salvo
35px radius (same as vanilla Flakgun)
20 second base cool down (lvl1 is 25sec, lvl4 is 10sec)

It's basically like having 4 basic lasers. You even use the same amount of energy.

4 at 20 sec was one of the ideas, as you said it would be like having 4 basic lasers, but they are not only about power, they have to look good and that is why most of them have 40 sec, so they can be strong and look good at the same time.

Another thing is that it works like a shotgun, that is the only way we can make artillery fire lots of bullets.
I think that radius is useless in this case, it only makes it hit a little off of the center of the room, would be added just for the looks, but I'm not worried about them just yet.

Okay, you probably didn't read the CE wiki. The Ion pulse artillery shoots six instant hit ion projectiles that pierce shields. Ions that pass through shields will not only ionize the shields, but other systems as well provided that they land on a room with a system. You have a chance of doing 12 system damage (which is equal to what you're suggesting)
Also, take note that for every ion damage to a system, five seconds is added to the lock down timer. Six ion projectiles hitting the shields for six ion damage will take down 3 layers AND lock it down for 30 seconds. At max level, your ion weapon has a cooldown of 20 seconds so you can ionize that last layer before the lock down end, allowing you to effectively knockout enemy shields to 1 or none for a good minute.
What you're suggesting is actually inferior to what we already have since there are less projectiles and more to lose if some of them don't hit.

You are right the old one is stronger, all my ideas for engi A and B either didn't work or was weaker, I'm pretty close to just leave the original one for engi B and have engi A be something around 8 ion actual projectiles on 20 sec cd that shield pierce, so it would work the same way except with halved bullets and cd.

Okay, but how about this? Shrapnel cannon.
12 projectile flak cannon
radius equal to vanilla flak
Pierces all shields
only does system and crew damage.
It fits with the whole "the crew of this ship do not value their lives" schtick they have going for them

My problem was the fact that it was a flak cannon.
Throwing rocks at the enemy ship that doesn't do hull damage would be weird imo.

No other ships have the beam artillery like fed A and B so it makes sense that C would have one too.
I wanted this one to be like a modified version of the vindicator,so lore wise it would originally be just like vindicator but they changed the beam so that it would kill the crew but leave the ship intact so they could loot it.

I actually have an idea for this. Stealth C exchanges it's standard tech for new tech. How about creating a sort of ion missile that does like 3 ion damage along with it's 3 system and hull damage? I'm pretty sure that since it pierces shields, it'll do quite a lot of ion damage. Plus, it'd be great at taking down Zoltan shields (six damage to a zoltan shield? That's on par with the Glaive and Flak 2 in vanilla)

This is a really good idea, it's unique enough between other stealth artillery and it's different from engi C, the problem is that ion damage when piercing will do ion for every shield it pierces no matter what, so in the end it would ionize all shields and then do 3 ion to whatever it hits, that would make it a little too strong imo.

Okay, so here's my idea, Healing cluster bombs, heals crew but does heavy system damage and breaches hulls. Has the indicators of where it will appear just like with the standard CE bomb weapons

The problem lies in the game engine, it can't have artillery fire more than 3 bombs, by then I would need to have a low cd to compensate for only affecting 3 rooms at a time, then the damage couldn't be good because it would just hit everything all the time.
I actually was testing it to drop bombs nonstop, it would drop around 10 bombs and the cd would be near the end of the 10th bomb exploding so it would really be nonstop bombing, but the game can't handle it.

What I settle for isn't the ideal, but is just so much more fun, it basically does lockdown on the whole enemy ship while healing your crew and it feels awesome, still balancing it though.
The only thing is that I can't change the lockdown effect from being crystals to something else, but otherwise I like how it is now.

Well, there's my two cents for your ideas. I haven't tried the other artillery yet though so I'm not sure what to comment on (Rock A/B, Mantis, Crystal B)

I took a good break from ftl because I was playing and then modding for about 7 days straight, I didn't even touch it in the past few days.
In the next few days I will make the final changes and put a beta version up for everyone to download.

Rock B artillery is one of those awful plasma launcher type weapons that's supposed to set a lot of fires, but really can't do that because it needs shields to be down or else it just plunks against shields uselessly.

I already buffed it, in amount of projectiles and gave it 2 shield pierce, I still didn't test it much so I might buff it a little more.

[Marads]

Going to upload a beta version, expect bugs, copying old op into text to this one to keep it saved.

I used to like the game, but then I discovered CE and never went back. Using Infinite mode, endless loot and random flagship.
I had bad runs most of the time, reached the flagship about 3 times out of several runs but only once I was able to beat it, maybe if I grinded some more, but then it kinds looses the purpose imo.

This one time I was playing with kestrel B, at some point I bought the artillery and because of that I used the artillery fix so I could save and leave, but after the run ended I forgot to remove the fix and at the hangar I could see all the artillery for all ships.

I must say I was disappointed that for most ships had just a single artillery for all types, except for the rocks and crystal, I think the creator liked rock ships more than others, then I decided to make a unique artillery for each ship.

To think about the designs I looked at the ship loadout and tried to think of a theme, much like the rock artillery fits the theme of the ship.

I still don't have a finished idea for every ship, but I would appreciate a lot if you guys could help me with feedback on the ones I already have and comment if you think they are too strong/weak or if I should change it to something else.

I don't want to put an unfinished version, but if someone is willing to test them in game and help balance them I will gladly accept and put a version up.