[MOD] FTL:CE different artillery for each ship

[Marads]

Short version is, while using CE, I'm making a mod that adds different artillery for each ship and I would like some feedback on them, if you don't want to read context just skip to the quotes for the ideas.

I have a beta version for testing up, balancing still subject to change, names and descriptions are wrong for some artillery.
For easier testing it makes all ships start with the artillery component and at the start of the game you can select to mine an asteroid field to get 100k credits.

Load it as the last mod of your list.

I can't attach it to the post so I'll have here a link to download it, if anyone has a better way to share I would like some recommendation.

http://www.filedropper.com/ceuniqueartillerywip

Kestrel

Type A
Heavy burst laser, 40 sec cd, fires 3 shots that do 2 damage, high chance of breach and fire.

Type B
Light scatter laser, 30 sec cd, fires 6 projectiles that do 1 damage, low chance of breach and fire.

Type C
Antipersonnel scatter laser, 30 sec cd, fires 5 projectiles that do 2 system damage and damage crew, ignores shields,low chance of stun

Engie

Type A
Ion scatter blast, 20 sec cd, fires 8 projectiles that do 1 ion damage.

Type B
Waveform EMP, 40 sec cd, ionize all sheilds and random areas of the enemy ship.

Type C
Ion laser prototype, 30 sec cd, fires 3 projectiles that do 2 system and 2 ion damage, small stun chance, deals no hull damage.

Federation

Type A
Vindicator beam, 30 sec cd, deals 2 damage, 300 length (vanilla is 500), ignores shields

Type B
Hull smasher beam, 40 sec cd, deals 1 system damage, always creates breaches where it passes, 900 length, deals no hull damage, ignores shields

Type C
Anti bio beam, 30 sec cd, kill enemy crew on it's path, 500 length, no hull damage, ignores shields

Zoltan

Type A
Single room beam, 20 sec cd, deals 2 damage that increases by 1 with each shot, high breach chance, damage is reduced by each shield

Type B
Single room beam, 20 sec cd, deals 2 damage that increases by 1 with each shot, deals moderate crew damage, high fire chance, damage is reduced by each shield

Type C
Single room beam, 20 sec cd, deals 2 ion damage that increases by 1 with each shot, ignores shields

Lanius

Type A
Chain Ion gun, 30 sec cd, fires 3 projectiles that do 2 ion damage, cooldown reduces by 5 with each shot to a minimum of 20 sec

Type B
Chain flak gun, 40 sec cd, fires 7 projectiles that do 1 damage, cooldown reduces by 5 with each shot to a minimum of 30 sec

Stealth

Type A
Stealth hull smasher missile, 30 sec cd, fire 1 missile that deals 3 damage, 2x damage in systemless room, ignores shields, evades defense drones

Type B
Stealth swarm missiles, 30 sec cd, fires 4 missiles that deal 1 damage, medium chance of breach and fire, ignores shields, evades defense drones

Type C
Stealth adaptive missile, 30 sec cd, fires 1 missiles that deals 3 damage which increases by 1 with each shot, ignores shields, evades defense drones

Rock

Type A
Swarm missile, 40 sec cd, fires 8 missiles that deal 1 damage, ignores shields, evades defense drones

Type B
Plasma thrower, 30 sec cd, fires 9 plasma that have high chance of starting fires, ignores 2 shields, can't deplete shields that it hits

Type C
Crystal lockdown blast, 30 sec cd, fires 1 crystal that deals 2 damage, lockdowns the room, high chance of breach, ignores shields

Slug

Type A
Neural stunner, 40 sec cd, stuns and deals a random amount of damage to the entire enemy ship, ignores shields

Type B
Ship lockdown, 30 sec cd, causes cystal lockdown in the entire enemy ship, heals your crew in the enemy ship by a random amount

Type C
4 damage 20 sec cd spinning missile. I need something better than this

Mantis

Type A
Big shredder bomb, 20 sec cd, self teleporting bomb that kills any crew and deals 4 sys damage

Type B
Stolen effector, 20 sec cd, deals 2 ion to 3 random rooms in the enemy ship, ignores shields

Type C
Crystal bomb, 20 sec cd, 3 self teleporting bombs that lockdown the room and deal damage to crew, medium breach chance

Crystal

Type A
Lattice lockdown blast (unchanged), 40 sec cd, fires 3 crystals that do 2 damage and causes lockdown, high breach chance, stun crew for 10 sec, ignore 1 shield

Type B
Crystal flak, 30 sec cd, fires 12 crystals that damage crew, small breach chance

[NarnKar]

Kestrel B: fires 6 laser projectiles that do 1 damage, no firee or breach chance.

This won't work on an enemy that has six rooms; FTL will crash. In general, if an artillery system has more shots than an enemy has rooms, the game will crash. Because CE has turrets with only 3 rooms, the maximum number of shots on an artillery is 3.

Zoltan B: A 20 sec cd beam that grows in crew damage and fire chance.

Is this even possible? I think chain weapons can only increase damage or ion damage. Crew damage might be possible but I'm not sure abkot fire chance. Ill have to test this out.

[Marads]

Kestrel B: fires 6 laser projectiles that do 1 damage, no firee or breach chance.

This won't work on an enemy that has six rooms; FTL will crash. In general, if an artillery system has more shots than an enemy has rooms, the game will crash. Because CE has turrets with only 3 rooms, the maximum number of shots on an artillery is 3.

Zoltan B: A 20 sec cd beam that grows in crew damage and fire chance.

Is this even possible? I think chain weapons can only increase damage or ion damage. Crew damage might be possible but I'm not sure abkot fire chance. Ill have to test this out.

I can see why it does crash, the laser artillery can't target the same room twice, which is just stupid imo, but the burst type weapon can fire even 40 projectiles and be ok with it, I'll just change it to some other type of weapon and make it work.

I'm still not there, but you can try to make it have a low cd with no fire chance and raise to have a high chance, if it lights a fire it means it works

EDIT: I changed kestrel B and engi A to burst and it works, but most probably I will change them to be laser again but with a small cd

[NarnKar]

So messing around with boost and boost type.

FTL crashes if it doesn't have a boost type it recognizes. The only two it recognizes are damage increase and cooldown reduction. So you're shit outta luck there, sorry to say.

[English Narwhal]

So messing around with boost and boost type.

FTL crashes if it doesn't have a boost type it recognizes. The only two it recognizes are damage increase and cooldown reduction. So you're shit outta luck there, sorry to say.

Sometimes, for reasons I have yet to uncover, it flips out and crashes anyway. It really, really doesn't like boost and artillery together sometimes, especially if there are lots of other artillery or another artillery is active for you or the enemy.

[Marads]

So messing around with boost and boost type.

FTL crashes if it doesn't have a boost type it recognizes. The only two it recognizes are damage increase and cooldown reduction. So you're shit outta luck there, sorry to say.

Sometimes, for reasons I have yet to uncover, it flips out and crashes anyway. It really, really doesn't like boost and artillery together sometimes, especially if there are lots of other artillery or another artillery is active for you or the enemy.

Dam that sucks, well I will still see what I can eventually do given the limitations, thanks for the help with these. I'll go edit the op now.

If only we had access to the code maybe, just maybe, we would be able to fix these.

EDIT: Actually I will play with the values a little before giving up on my designs, who know maybe I can find a way.

[English Narwhal]

So messing around with boost and boost type.

FTL crashes if it doesn't have a boost type it recognizes. The only two it recognizes are damage increase and cooldown reduction. So you're shit outta luck there, sorry to say.

Sometimes, for reasons I have yet to uncover, it flips out and crashes anyway. It really, really doesn't like boost and artillery together sometimes, especially if there are lots of other artillery or another artillery is active for you or the enemy.

Dam that sucks, well I will still see what I can eventually do given the limitations, thanks for the help with these. I'll go edit the op now.

If only we had access to the code maybe, just maybe, we would be able to fix these.

That discussion's been held a thousand or so times. We can't get the source code. However, there are a few versions of the game being developed here on the forums in various other coding languages.

[stylesrj]

You know, I'm sick of that argument "Oh some ships only have 4 rooms or 1 room! Therefore the artillery MUST absolutely suck and only fire three shots!"

Seriously, why does the Kestrel Artillery have to suck? Can people just I dunno... NOT fire it at a small ship? I know I forget to power it down sometimes as well but three shots every 20 or so seconds... that's like buying a Burst Laser II (Sure it might be Heavy, but even Heavy Lasers only take down one bubble) and taking up a system slot that could have been useful.

There's always the Burst option if you want 6 shots going to one place but please don't limit artillery limits because the game might crash if you fire it at the wrong ship.

I'm under the impression that all artillery sucks no matter what you put in it. Making them overpowered and insane would probably make it a viable system to purchase as opposed to something useful.

Sorry... I'm just annoyed by how limited the system is. I've tried CE's Artillery and it all sucks. Even the vanilla Fed A sucks. I really wish Artillery didn't take up a subsystem slot or could be swapped out. I'm talking to you Fed C!

[redlerred7]

Going through these, I somewhat agree with you. The artillery systems could be better. But they don't necessarily suck. SleeperService said they were all situational and required builds that weren't standard. I used two combat drones and two scythe beams in Engi A because it made the most sense for the ion pulse artillery. Never will you see something like that in a hard run of vanilla FTL.

I feel like you guys are just frustrated at how underwhelming they are - I know I was when I first tried them out. Understand: this is a mod trying to mimic the feel of vanilla while still trying to add to it. FTL isn't supposed to be easy. Some of these buff you're suggesting would make some of the artillery so overpowered that the entire game would become a joke.

Still though, I agree that some of them need a buff of some sort. Just not to the level that you suggested

[Marads]

Going through these, I somewhat agree with you. The artillery systems could be better. But they don't necessarily suck. SleeperService said they were all situational and required builds that weren't standard. I used two combat drones and two scythe beams in Engi A because it made the most sense for the ion pulse artillery. Never will you see something like that in a hard run of vanilla FTL.

I feel like you guys are just frustrated at how underwhelming they are - I know I was when I first tried them out. Understand: this is a mod trying to mimic the feel of vanilla while still trying to add to it. FTL isn't supposed to be easy. Some of these buff you're suggesting would make some of the artillery so overpowered that the entire game would become a joke.

Still though, I agree that some of them need a buff of some sort. Just not to the level that you suggested

This is the reason I decided to make a post instead of just finish it, what designs you think are too strong? How do you think they should be to be balanced?
Remember that the objective is beating the flagship, if the artillery doesn't help in that, like the mantis artillery, why would you ever buy it over cloak?

The important thing to me is making them more desirable, when I bought it with kestrel B I was disappointed and wished that I have bought cloak instead, then when I saw that all kestrel had the same artillery, that means I would never ever buy it on kestrel again.

I could just buff the ones CE offer but they would still be all the same for A B C, I want them to be unique more than strong, so that you buy it because it fits the theme of your ship.