Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Discuss and distribute tools and methods for modding. Moderator - Grognak
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kartoFlane
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby kartoFlane » Fri Apr 19, 2013 8:41 am

Sure thing -- the mod is pretty much completed, though I've ran into several issues due to the unpredictability of FTL's difficulty system (ships having all the additional systems as early as in sector 1, but with almost no weapons whatsoever, etc)
Another thing is that, during my testing of the mod, I haven't fought even a single modded enemy, even though I've changed enemy lists to include the B layouts. No idea why that's happening...

Either way, I don't really plan on releasing it; I'll send it over a PM
Superluminal2 - a ship editor for FTL
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Sleeper Service
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby Sleeper Service » Fri Apr 19, 2013 1:13 pm

Oh well that sounds like serious bad news. I guess we can get around the second problem as the stations going to spawn in their own respective event anyway and are not part of the original lists.
Still would be cool if at last custom made lists would work, variety enemies could then be spawned by new custom evens ore simple copies of existing ones. Just more event work to do. Needs testing I guess.

But the issue with the unpredictability of ships spawning gear sounds really worrying. There seems to be no stuff in events ore blueprints that seems to control this anyway.
speedoflight
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby speedoflight » Fri Apr 19, 2013 1:29 pm

Yea its hard to tell when the limits of FTL modding are an issue, i really feel a game like FTL should be more modeable-friendly, but well, its wat it is, sadly.

About the weapon slots, u should put 4 weapon slots, but not strong weapons. Space stations never have strong weapons, since the main purpose of the weapons of an space station is to defend it against a common dangers, but the weapons are an addition. Unless it is a combat space station of course.. zZz.

I know for my own experience that some problems modding with FTL are produced by stupid things, and sometimes it is very difficult to find wat is causing any trouble in the mod.
My currently mods / wips ->
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Sleeper Service
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby Sleeper Service » Sat May 04, 2013 7:11 pm

Progress! All gibs done - the events are next. It is planed that stations will probably appear in less than 20% of hostile becons. The stations of each faction will have a set of different custom events to spawn them. So generally encounters with stations will be set apart from normal ship fights and remain something special.

There's room for some unique events that involve fighting stations here, so if you have (doable or unrealistic) Ideas for these, feel free to suggest.
Current concepts involve, among other things, ghost stations in nebula sectors and suicidal pirate station commanders that rather blow their station up before letting you destroy it (implemented via the flee function). Some Engi stations will still have really weak engines, to enable them to flee normally.

The automatic scouts also get some stationary support, you can finally encounter one of these 152 automated turret satellites that you always hear about. Also each station will come with 2-3 different room layouts, effectively creating different classes of stations that fill different roles.
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Last edited by Sleeper Service on Sun May 05, 2013 1:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
966socho
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby 966socho » Sat May 04, 2013 8:56 pm

I eagerly await this mod. By the way, do the stations all have telepads?
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Sleeper Service
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby Sleeper Service » Sat May 04, 2013 11:10 pm

That will depend on faction and class. Pirates, Rock, and Mantis will have them available. There probably will be one designated Mantis station class that always starts with a teleporter. Other faction might still have them available for certain classes of station, like the federation medical station.
speedoflight
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby speedoflight » Sat May 04, 2013 11:42 pm

This looks very promising, i wish u luck!.
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steel915
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby steel915 » Sun May 05, 2013 4:31 pm

One way to encounter a station could be to meet a distress beacon of a ship requesting help raiding/destroying a station (the story could be that they harbour illegal mining/weaponry etc) and you get the option of *helping them* to attack the station. If yes - they give you a quest beacon, some ammo and fuel as an incentive and the scrap/weaponry from the station could be the reward? (obviously bigger reward given the size of the stations)
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Sleeper Service
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby Sleeper Service » Mon May 06, 2013 10:47 am

Oh well, so many event files. Does anyone know if it is really necessary to put, lets say, Engi sector events in events_engi.xml.append? The game seems to have no problem to access IDs from different XML files. I guess they are smudged together into the data file anyway upon patching Grognaks right? So would it be possible to just edit all new events into events.xml.append for example? Would be less confusing...
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Sleeper Service
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Re: Fight Stations: No engines/piloting?

Postby Sleeper Service » Thu May 23, 2013 10:40 pm

Moving into Beta-stage with this. Station layouts and gib animations are finished now. All the basic events have been written, almost all have textlists with three to ten lore friendly flavour texts. The station encounters are quite varied and offer new challenges and opportunities. Some of the station classes can also be encountered as non-hostiles in neutral events, that should give room for interesting decisions and blue events. Some quests, distress events and trade stations have also been added. The events can still be extended a lot though... Testing the existing stuff commes first.

Right now the stations are integrated via the eventlists, I hope that gets them into the first sector as well, as I have no real idea how that one is controlled.

The mod will not get a solo release, but will instead be incorporated into a big mod compilation that will also include Balanced Arsenal (b), New Enemy Classes and other lore friendly mods that are free to use, like Diversity Mod Graphical. I plan to extend this compilation further within the future, maintaining all my mods in one big compilation.

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