NarnKar's Nonsense

[NarnKar]

So this overhaul mod would put you in control of a Captain, formerly with the Rebellion, trying to make his way back to the Federation Coreworlds for unknown reasons. I'm not saying that because I don't know his reasons--I'm saying that because his reasons are deliberately left as a mystery to the player. But whatever they are, they're strong enough to motivate him to travel through eight sectors of deep, dangerous space, risking his life at every jump, just to have a chance at getting to the Coreworlds...

Although the Captain's death doesn't automatically result in a game over, you'll have incentive to keep the captain alive: the captain has special captain-only blue options at events, and is necessary to unlock the alternate/hidden endings of the campaign.

You might be asking, "but wait, how are you going to make things specific to the captain?" The answer: the Ghost race, dummied out of FTL's code; known as Holograms in CE. Mechanically speaking, the Captain will be a member of the Ghost race--and the only member of the ghost race. No other ghosts will appear in the game, for hire or as enemies. For all intents and purposes, he is the only one of his kind--as it should be, as he's supposed to be a special character.

As a member of the Ghost race, the captain's racial attributes are 50HP, and no suffocation damage. But in the mod's lore, he's not going to be a ghost (although the vengeful ghost of a Rebel Captain coming back to haunt the Federation is a cool idea). I was thinking that, in the brief time-span after the Flagship's destruction, but before the Rebellion's total surrender, that this person was injured in the ensuing chaos. He couldn't make a full recovery, in part due to lack of decent medical equipment--however, with cybernetic enhancements, he was at least able to come back to life, although weaker than before, and more machine than human. The enhancements also replaced his need to breathe, by dummying out the respiratory system entirely.

[stylesrj]

That sounds like a plan. Using the ghosts as a placeholder for the Captain. Alternatively you could repurpose the Crystals into a Human Captain, make them impossible to find, including the Crystal sector and events relating to it. No stasis pods, etc.

That was you could have a Captain that's extremely powerful. Heck, you could actually do both. Have the Captain be the weak Ghost and have their guard be the Crystal, both with their own events and outcomes.

For example:

You encounter a ship. It activates its teleport!
1) Prepare for battle - Intruders come onboard, fight with enemy ship
Bodyguard: I'll handle those boarders - No intruders, still fight ship (description of event would include how much butt the guard kicked, like that Mantis and those oxygen deprived Slugs)

Then later on you might find a Rebel supply cache
1) Try to open it - Access denied. Boobytrap!
Captain: I have the codes - Medium reward!

Seriously, make a massive story out of their adventures. Lots of unique outcomes. Descent into Darkness tried but once past the intro, that was really it. No more narrative. There was so much potential that could have been done during ship encounters or idle beacons, etc.

[NarnKar]

Brilliant idea there, styles. You are right--a duo of characters provides opportunity for lots of character interactions and narrative goodness, and while it doesn't fit my original concept/vision of my overhaul, I'd still love to see it implemented one day. (And that's why I originally opened this thread as 'speculative discussion about an overhaul', heh...)

I say that it doesn't fit my vision because this overhaul was always meant to be a bit of a solo adventure--when I first envisioned it, I wanted to explore themes of loneliness and isolation (I said, pretentiously). You're just one man, all alone, drifting in the sea of stars; the odds are stacked against you and no one in the galaxy likes you and no one will hesitate to blow you up; but you have to push through anyway; not for any tangible reward, but for reasons that you hold close to your heart, yet that you're not sure you understand, yourself. It's alienating and crushing and almost Kafkaesque, when you think about what you have to do in the original FTL; and yet it's something that almost always gets glossed over. I wanted to expand on that.

There's an event in CE that I think captures this feeling well, and what inspired the atmosphere behind this mod in the first place. You're fighting a Rebel Cruiser in an asteroid field, with fleet support on both sides; the heat of exploding ships warps their wreckage, Federation and Rebellion alike, fusing their scraps to the asteroids in bizarre and alien structures. CE comments: "This could be a war memorial one day". And I think part of what makes that so powerful is that it's a reminder of the effects of war--not in a "many died" kind of way, but simply in a way that says "its effects will last long after the war actually does"...and I think the context and scale and reality of warfare often goes ignored, given that your quest often has you going solo anyway.

That's not to say that I want to be heavyhanded and go "WAR SUCKS" at every single event. No. That's not subtle at all, that's fucking grating and annoying. Part of creating great, effective media is knowing when to yell, and when to whisper; part of creating horrible media is thinking you have to yell all the time. I guess I just want to draw attention to it a little more than the original FTL does.

Of course, I'm not sure those kinds of feelings transfer well in this particular game, where half the fun is in conflict and battle anyway. People are here to play games, not read and think. Good games can make people think, but they have to be good games first; they have to use the medium well. And all things considered, walls of text aren't using the medium of video games well.

Then again, if I'm writing well, I'm not writing walls of text; I'm writing a few short sentences. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all. Unfortunately, as the paragraphs above show, I'm kind of a dumbass in that regard.

[NarnKar]

...which reminds me. The music.

There's this artist I found one day on Soundcloud who has like...seven followers, but whose music I think is really good for FTL, and who I think captures the sort of darker and more isolating aspects of FTL. (Also, they drop some good beats. Would make for some nice Combat tracks versus Exploration tracks.) I dunno. Is this going to sound too much like an advertisement? Hah, I barely even know them and I've never even asked if I could use their music in my mod, mostly because I thought I'd never finish the mod anyway, so it would've been a moot point.

Here's a track.
Here's another track. With constant machine whirring and a name like "silicon cave", it seems pretty fitting for Engi sectors, don't you think?
Here's another track. Zoltan, perhaps? It has a sort of mystical vibe.

[stylesrj]

Why not ask them about the music? Because it does sound FTl-ish. Or at least on the same track as the songs in CE.

[NarnKar]

Today's update will not be about The Stars are Beautiful--although, trust me, I haven't forgotten what I wanted to say about it. (Weapon balancing, sector types, and multiple endings.) Instead, this post is about a bunch of other random stuff. I'm headed off to college now, so I don't have as much time to work on FTL stuff--plus, I left my FTL-modding computer at home, and I have to remotely log in to use it.

(And I still haven't bothered making simple, one or two line updates to my ships...lmao)

Anyway, here's some images and ideas I had lying around.



The grey isn't the final colors; it's actually just placeholders so I can remember which parts are in shadow and which parts are raised above the main body. I have absolutely no idea how to try and do the middle and back of the ship, since the front is so bulky, the back has to either match its bulkiness or be even bulkier somehow.

If you do something good with this half-complete art, feel free to take it and make it your own mod. Just give me a tiny credit at the bottom.



And this ship again. You've seen it many times before, at this point. I changed the engines again, and added some more details to the left thruster (with the right one unedited, for reference). Still not really sure about them, but at this point it's probably going to stay that way. I think it's about ready for shading, but I still want to do more things with the back of this ship, since it's looking quite plain there....



Remember this thing? Despite the Hunter's Instinct being nearly complete, I still haven't released that damn thing yet. Weapon art, system modifications, gibs and room layout -- I think everything is done except just publishing the damn thing. I was thinking maybe I could mess with events so that you never acquire a slug (because the whole point of the ship is flying blind), but I'm a stubborn idjit who wants to figure these things out himself.

And of course, there's the "nanobot bomb" I should've put on the Abductor ages ago, but never got around to. Christ, why am I so lazy about this stuff?

Here are some other, miscellaneous ideas that I never got around to. You are more than welcome to use any of the following; just ask, and give credit in your thread.

-I wanted to update my Wanderlust/ASB Cruiser so that it used bombs instead of lasers for the double ASBs. That way, Defense Drone IIs don't shoot down the ASBs. Alternatively, I could use high velocity projectiles.

-I wanted to create a Type B of the ASB Cruisers called "The Night Fury", which would use double beam artillery. These beams would be special "gravity beams", which had high damage and high breach chance, but -4 shield piercing, so that the beam effect would be greatly diminished on shielded ships. After all, unlike regular beam energy, gravitational energy has a tough time passing through the shield matrix.

Negative shield piercing, as I found out, works rather strangely. When shields are down (level 0), the beam does full 6 damage -- you might expect that, or you might expect it to only deal 6-4=2 damage. But they do the full 6 damage. When shields are at level 1, the beam does 6 -4SP -1 shield layer = 1 hull damage; when shields are at level 2, they glance off harmlessly.

The Night Fury would also have bombs as support weapons, to take down shields--bombs seem more vicious than ions, and thus seem more appropriate for the savage, ripipng theme.

-An "Apocalypse" cruiser, with a massive artillery cannon. The cannon would take a very long time to charge up, but fire a devastating 9-damage, 5-shield-piercing beam, which would instantly destroy enemy ships. While waiting for the main cannon to charge, the cruiser would use its various Ion Pulses to try and disrupt enemy ships, preventing them from firing or fleeing before the main cannon charges. The Ion Pulses would be similar to the Effectors in CE, combined with the ion weapons in kartoFlane's Auto Cruiser: in other words, each Ion Pulse would be a bomb weapon that costs no ammunition, and does ion damage to a selected system, with additional side effects (short stun, fire chance, 15 biological damage).

I axed this idea quickly. Sure, it's an interesting idea, but waiting for 3 minutes at every single fight is boring as hell.

A note about the big beam's art: most beam effects are kind of underwhelming, since in-game beams are rendered as a fade from (beam color) to transparency. For this big beam, I thought that would be too disappointing, so I thought--why not add something to the firing animation? Here's a quick mockup:



WIth the white added to the firing animation, the beam now goes from bright white--fading to beam color--THEN fading to transparency, which makes it look much glowier and much more powerful. Here's a sketch of what it might look like in-game, with in-game beam effects added:



-A weapon idea, but it would be the Rockman equivalent of a Crystal weapon--much like the Rocks themselves are descendants of the Crystals; they would have some rock technology that was similar. I'm thinking maybe a cannon built into an asteroid (just like the crystal guns are built into crystals).

-Another weapon idea, the Geode Launcher, would be built into a rock with a vein of some crystal ore. It would fire three crystal projectiles from the veins of ore; kind of like a swarm missile.

That's all for now. My laptop's getting kind of hot.

[stylesrj]

Negative shield piercing, as I found out, works rather strangely. When shields are down (level 0), the beam does full 6 damage -- you might expect that, or you might expect it to only deal 6-4=2 damage. But they do the full 6 damage. When shields are at level 1, the beam does 6 -4SP -1 shield layer = 1 hull damage; when shields are at level 2, they glance off harmlessly.

Wait, so the beam works as you expected or it doesn't work as you expected?
Because that's an interesting concept for a beam to use...

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By the way, those sketches of the beam firing animation could be mistaken for something else

[NarnKar]

Wait, so the beam works as you expected or it doesn't work as you expected?
Because that's an interesting concept for a beam to use...

Poorly worded, sorry.

Depending on how you looked at it, both ways make sense as things you'd expect:

If you think about it as "0 layers of shields", then you'd think 6 damage -4 SP - 0 shield layers = 2 damage.

If you think about it as "shields are down, shield piercing doesn't apply to nonexistent shields", then you'd think 6 damage, with the shield-pierce multiplier ignored. (In practice, this is the correct one--shields all the way down makes the beam do its full 6 damage.

[stylesrj]

So it does 6 damage on no shields, and 1 damage on 1 layer?
This sounds like an awesome weapon to have.

I had this idea for a ship-killer at one time called Sharla's Rifle (Xenoblade FTW!) - it'd be a cannon that takes a minute to charge up and does a lot of damage to an enemy ship but only if the shields were down (Basically the Headshot ability). Meanwhile you had a choice between multiple ion blasts to disable the shields (Electric Bullets) or a single, powerful ion (Headshaker) if you knew evasion wouldn't be much of an issue.

But an always-accurate beam that does low damage on shields and full damage on unprotected ships might be a better idea for the "Headshot"

[NarnKar]

So it does 6 damage on no shields, and 1 damage on 1 layer?
This sounds like an awesome weapon to have.

Indeed, quite powerful in the right hands. The main caveat is that you don't get partial benefits like you do on the Glaive, for example--with this beam it's all or nothing.

Remember this art, from the Previews thread? I never ended up using it for its original purpose; however, since the animation strip is basically already there, you could probably repurpose this thing for powerful-beam purposes. Its original name was the Lionheart Beam.



A simple Hue-Saturation shift of the red bits to purple or black, and you've got yourself a nice gravity beam. Actually, I'm pretty sure I have that somewhere...along with the glow for this beam.