[FotF] Final Ships v0.03 + Mantis Combat Simulator v0.01

[Whale Cancer]

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Additionally, I put up the basic Mantis combat simulator if anyone wants to check it out. Once I get all the combat simulators our and tie them to each sector beacon, FotF will be playable as a weird combat-heavy game. Following that quests and events will be added sector by sector (I have a bunch done, but I just write them as I come up with them; they are systematic enough to warrant a release).

Thanks! By the way, some of the federation scout NPCs are incorrectly spaced. (i.e they're off the enemy ship view) perhaps this is because you're using the same floor as them?

I actually laughed at this. Yes, this is because of a namespace conflict I didn't anticipate. The playable ships use the federation_scout and federation_bomber designation while the NPC/Enemy ships use the human_scout and human_bomber designation. I never noticed this, because I always test through debug menus rather than jumping around (and when I am testing human vessels I have my FotF_Federation_Sector.ftl mod loaded).

It doesn't make sense for me to fix this for the playable ships release, since it will fix itself once I release the Federation Sector mini-mod/component. I will, however, make a note of this conflict on the main post. Thanks!

[jacktionman101]

Some really nice ships you got here I've always wanted to play as a Fed. Bomber, so thanks for that one Just wondering, whats the current progress status?

[anzuu7]

Ooo, really looking forward to the final product of FotF!

Playing a 7-hull scout with no cloak, drones, or zoltan shields in Infinite Space is getting just a little disheartening

[Dave]

I really want this mod to work, because I think it would be fun to play these ships, and am looking for more of a challenge now that I've done everything the base game allows. I tried the mod however, and 5 hull strength is a little too low. Even the scouts in the game have about 9.

Also, when fighting against an enemy scout, It was impossible to target certain portions of the ship, because it was not facing to the left like my ship was, and hung off of the screen.

[DryEagle]

I just had a look at the video,
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems entirely pointless to me that you would include external doors (airlocks?) on a ship with no possibility of getting a door control... is that just for aesthetics (boarding doors etc)?

[Dave]

The Donut needs door control, and a bit more hull strength.

[Dave]

Just beat the game with the Zodiac, so it works well.

[Dave]

The Fed Bomber, or Nutcracker, kind of works, but I'd rather have something else that does hull damage rather than two small bombs. Also, when fighting against a pirate fed bomber, you can't see their weapons room because it must be off the screen, so it's nearly impossible to stop them before they kill you.

[Dave]

So I've wanted to play FTL with a scout or other light ship for more of a challenge, and found some of your ships to be very fun. Others were not so fun, so I took some notes and figured I'd give them to you as feedback. I don't know exactly what your are planning FotF to be like, but I assume you will want it to have similar challenges to the base FTL, so here are my experiences.

Firstly, 5 Hull is too low. I would say 8 or 9 should be the lowest you go, since that's what the scouts normally have. Also, 5 doesn't allow you to explore asteroid fields, shield other ships with yours, dock and rescue survivors, side with fugitive mantises, or survive markers that are too close to class M suns. I found the 10 Hull of the Advocate to be a nice challenge. So far it's the only small ship I've been able to beat the whole game with. I've gotten the Wehl and the Moebius to the third stage of the boss, and can probably beat it with them if I have better luck with resources up to that point.

I was not able to test out the scouts themselves, because I am not a fan of rockets that do 1 damage each, and was not very impressed with the cannons. I like the idea of some sort of mass driver, but in their current form, I could not see any reason to use them over other guns as I went through the game.

In at least the Wehl and the Moebius, and probably a few more, the med bays only accept one person at a time, which is very annoying when you are trying to survive boarders with a small crew. Also, along those same lines, the Donut desperately needs door control. Perhaps you can split the weapons room in two. I also think you might want to start the small ships with two crew, or at least anti-personel and system repair drones on the Moebius.

I haven't tried the halo, because the weapons are the same as the Torus, so it doesn't seem intriguing at all. I'd give them some thing different for variety.

With many of the ships, you can still buy additional systems for them, even when there is no room for them to go in. There has to be a way to limit this, because you can't get cloaking on the Fed Cruiser.

I like the look if the Zoltan beam, but the only difference I found it had from the Halberd is that you can't use it for events where you could normally cut them out with a beam weapon.

Two small bombs on the bomber is funny, but they do no damage, so you wind up using all your missiles before you can actually kill anything.

You probably know this by now, but the graphic for the enemy bombers and the fed scouts are messed up in the game.

I hope this helped. I've had fun playing around with what you have so far, and I'll give the Mantis thing a go soon. I look forward to seeing what else you have for FotF.

[Ehecatl]

Hey there. Been trying out this mod and really liking the ships. I figured I'd post some bugs for you. You may already know of their existence (or fixed them), but if not I hope you find this helpful. The "Hippogriff" missiles had a bit of a bug where the name is sunk down nearly at the bottom of it's icon. Here's an example:



Did a little testing of whether you can still buy systems despite not having room space for them and it seems you can. I paid for sensors on a Magpie (lol...) and though I spent the money, I did not get the system and nothing stopped me from basically blowing my cash. Not sure if you're working on a way to limit the player from doing this but it might save them a headache thinking they can buy a certain system only to find they basically wasted their scrap for nothing. Sure, "common sense" would seem to dictate that if you don't have room for it, why would you buy it, but some players may become confused if they've a ship with empty rooms and think they can buy a vital system to place there, only to find that that room was never made for that system they bought and lost scrape on.

Also, on a non-bug related note, looking up the stats on that Hippogriff, I am curious as to its balance. It seems a little over-powered. Then again, once this is all done, it may be balanced in comparison to how these little ships are already at a disadvantage compared to the cruisers we already use. But a 2-shot missile is a 2-shot missile. They easily bypass drones in many cases, and while it half as much damage as the Pegasis, it has less than half its cooldown. Maybe I'm being picky, but I wouldn't see much need in buying a Pegasis if I had these missiles, especially as I believed the Hippogriff costs 35 scrape compared to the 80 scrape Pegasis? I'll have to look up the numbers on that. Not to mention its energy is less meaning you can have theoretically 4 Hippogriffs where as you could only ever have 3 Pegasis. Not that that is particularly unbalanced, as it might just be a good way to retain its usefulness come late game. For instance, four hull missiles can theoretically be better than 3 breach missiles come end game in terms of shear numbers and yet the hull missile requires less energy. So that doesn't make it necessarily unbalanced. Just something to consider though.


Anyway, hope you find this information useful. Your mod is pretty fun even as is and I appreciate the work you're doing! Thank you!