[SHIPS/WEAPONS] Star Trek Universe - Final update!.

[speedoflight]

...so how bout a Borg Cube for one ship, maybe make it the Federation Cruiser for the beam weapon, and include the medi-bots as, "Repair Software"

We dont need the fed artillery weapon, we can just create our super beams as a normal weapons. But since all the beams are the same, i prefer to waste imagination on laser and missile type weapons (they are the same, only that missiles dont have animations...) since beams on FTL are really boring and all the same. The Borg will be replacing the Engi slot, they will have no shields, but strong health points, high structural defense, a lot of crew (almost max), 4 weapons slots, 4 drone slots, the nano-medbay and so on. I mean, it will be the strongest ship available, but i will balance it somehow, i need to think on it when the borg turn comes something similar will happen with species 8472, at the beginning of the game, going through with species 8472 is going to be really hard, they start with no shields, only 3 crew members, but with very good advantajes. But u can buy shields later in the game, and teleport, but no cloak. Species 8472 cant use cloak, the same as the Borg.

[Metzelmax]

I'd say 4 drones on borg ships isnt needed (mainly because the UI bugs if you have more than 3) and would prefer the slug repair gel over the nano medbay, since the borghull can regenerate itself. Actually borgships would probably need all augments

I'd start them with a hull repairdrone and make them unable to get shields.

I dont know if its possible (probably not) but for the borg adaption, you could take the powersurge from the rebel flag ship phase 3, when it rebuilds its zoltan shield. That way you could ad a timer that let's the borg "adapt" to the shots fired at them (ie get a zoltan shield after 45 seconds or so).

Assimilation is probably only possible if you'd make blue options for borgdrones who can be chosen instead of normal getting crew options... but that would take long and would be only a little gimmick. Although it would be nice to be able to click always on the option: "we are the borg. You will be assimilated. resistance is futile!"

[speedoflight]

I already changed the nano med-bay of the borg for the slug-gel of the species 8472, since i noitced the species 8472 its toooo way hard from the beginning to beat even the firts 2 enemies. This way, almost its better advantaje to regenerate crew health than breachs. Still species 8472 its really hard to get through, all the ships that starts without shields are, but species8472 has lower hull points, since it is not a big ship, and they have the system casing and the ion inmunnity as augmentations. In fact, i should remove the use of shields for species8472, since they never used shields, but the problem is to make the ship balanced following the theme i used for em.

When u try it, i really will appreciate any balance advise i can get, cuz its really hard to balance a ship that has no shields from the beginning but they will be a bit op once they have em..i could just remove the shields entirely, but then it will be almost impossible to get past the first sector.. and i cant raise the efficiency of the augmentations too much more, they are very high right now.. (still i got killed without remedy by the second pirate scout lol.. and the second game i tried, i was killed in the first asteroid field, without even the opportunity to jump...). The other problem, is the weapons of the species 8472 are not specially destructive, i mean, they have the bio-perforator, that damages only crew (but a very good rechargue rate), then they have the kinetic wave, that deals 1 damage to hull and 2 damage to systems with 17 s. cooldown right now, and they have the storm beam (this is supossed to be the destructive ray that species 8472 used against the borg) that deals 4 damage along 2 rooms and 2 damage to crew at the same time. The problem is, 27 s cooldown. At the beginning, the storm beam will be only available to the attack bioship (the second layout) and the bioperforator. The normal bioship will have the bioperforator and the kinetic wave. But the problem is, by the time u can use the kinetic wave (and pray that u dont miss) u had receive a lot of damage, and the kinetic wave is the only weapon that deals 1 damage to hull. But this is the way the weapons i want for species 8472, i dont want to change em, the problem is to make em balanced with the ship configuration.

The hull repair drone is included in the bioship layouts, i pretend to give the borg 2 system repair robots... should i give the borg a third repair drone? even i was thinking in to make "invisible" system repair drones, and call em "system regeneration", so u can see how the system are being repaired but u cant see the robots.. Opinions??

About the borg, i cant remember phase3 ship u talking about, anyways i cant see anything about it on the blueprints. Im afraid that power surge u talking about is hard-coded, as are a lot of things of the game (sadly).

U right about the drone slots, but i wanted to give the borg everything i could, since only 3 drones it seems a bit dumb for a borg ship, but u right, i prefer to just remove 1 slot and not to make the slots messed up with the ship stats lol.

And.. wat means "blue options"? experience points?? i think that is only possible on crew..?

I was looking for a way to show the classic "we are the borg. You will be assimilated.. etc" phrase in a sound file, but i dont see how or where. If someday we make the storyline, we will put it there.. until then..

Hm, 1 thing i almost forgot, the nano med bay augmentation works without a medbay right?? (i think i saw a few engi ships without medbay) i mean, there is no pre-requisite of a medbay to have working the augmentation?. Cuz if thats true, im thinking on remove the medbay of species8472 and just let the augmentation itself (with increased effect, of course).

[speedoflight]

Hi guys, updated the link in the first post with the last update.

Plz give feedback about species 8472, so i can make a better balance of em.

[Metzelmax]

The ship interiors look awesome!

But gameplay wise its lacking some what. Bioship B is ok, that doesnt need change since it has the beam that onehits everything. That is how I thought 8472 should play.

The A variant... I see how its supposed to be. But the anti bio weapon does not enough damage (3-4 hits to kill 1 guy, while only hitting one room, with 4 guys on the enemy ships) it takes forever to kill the crew and good luck if they have a medbay.
2nd you cant see where the enemy crew is. you dont have slug crew to see them or lvl 2 sensores (and with a ship that crippled I dont wanna waste scrap on buying sensors early on).
And 3rd the K wave is really useless if you dont have a secondary weapon to back it up. Since it does only 1 dmg and has a 15 sec cooldown you need 15*8 = 120 sec to kill the lowest hp ships (if nothing misses). And since it is your only damage weapon, it is really frustrating. But since it needs 3 power and the starting systems are at 3 you cant have anything running with it. So you cant simply kill the crew of the ship, because you already need 85 scrap to have your anti bio and your k wave running at the same time.

Suggestions:
- replace mantis with slug, or even create/edit a 8472 race with stuff like telepathy and decreased suffocation dmg (I mean 8472 is telepathic after all)
- replace nano med bay with rock plating (not 75% cause that's op, either 20-25%)
- k wave 2 power
- increased bio dmg on bio perf.

anyway gj!

ps: nano med bay needs med bay powered

[speedoflight]

Ops.

The A Variants is ineffective cuz i forgot to include another bio perforator xD. Right now it should be the kinetic wave and 2 bio perforators. Of course u need to upgrade weapons if u want to use both bio perforators. This way, u can kill crew faster.. but i intended the bio perforator to be a fast weapon but weak, i mean only designed to damage crew. I cant raise the crew damage cuz if do that i need to increase the cooldown.. and thats wat i dont want for the bioperforators... i mean, weapons like bioperforators are not designed for kill anything in 2 or 3 shots, u need to work on it. If bioperforators deals more damage u will kill the crew really fast, more than 2 personel damage starts to be too much, with 2 bioperforators u can kill a crew member in 3 hits. Thats the thing, u need to worry about the medbay, its not all about killing the crew without giving em chance to heal, if u dont want that, use the k wave to s down the medbay, for example. The problem is like all the ships, at the beginning is really hard to combine 2 weapoons. But thats the point.. or not??

But i dont think its necessary to view the crew, thats the thing, if u want to view the crew, just upgrade the sensor thing. It must be a bit challenging, it will be not good to have sensors boosted since the beginning. Besides, u know there is always crew in the pilot room, and surely in the shields and engines. Wat u dont know is how much health they have. Well, if i raise the sensors to 2, i will need to increase the sensors on the Enterprise to 3 (max) to keep every side unique.. the problem is we only have 3 bars max on sensors...

The power of the weapons used is wat is intended, but wat ima going to do is to lower the cooldown of the k wave, so now u can shot faster. But the power needed will remain on 3, since 2 system damage i think is enough for 3 power requisite. Lowering the power needed to 2 will make the ship a bit op, since u will be able to combine in the beginning the k wave and 1 bio perforator ( i cant remember the actual version i uploaded, but right now i have the bio perforator with 2 power requierement). This way u need to upgrade weapons only 1 time, i think thats enough

I cant replace anything for the rock plating, since rock plating is reserved for the Borg...

And as far as i know, there is no possibility of creating new crew, just replacing the ones in the game, for new graphics. And of course u cant "customize" the abilities of the crew, since they are hardcoded.. and until i change the graphics of the crew, the slug is really not fited with species 8472.

The problem is, there are only a few augmentations available and they cant be added new ones, so i cant use anything more for species 8472, since i think they have the right augmentations right now. I think replacing any augmentation that species8472 have right now for rock plating, will be worst.. or almost less fited for the species8472 theme..

And all of this keeping in mind, once u get shields, the ship will be a bit op, maybe this is intended, since once u got shields, its probably u have been a hard time trying to advance with the bioship and getting shields is like a "reward" for all the toruble u got before.. lol...

Lets see if i can update the link in the first post with the new fixes in the next hours..

[speedoflight]

I uploaded it again with some fixes, tell me if now the things are better. Now is easier to kill the enemies. Not too easy, tou i was killed in the final beacon of the first sector... (but i almost get to the second one :p).

But i was testing in conjunction with the infinite mod, that makes things harder, still the infinite mod gives u 150 scrap at the beginning, i used it to increase 1 weapon bar , update the drone bay, doors and pilot. With that, i could make it through the entire sector, but i was careless in the end and i was killed. I didnt notice i had 4 hull points and a dumb attack drone was hurting me, and when i was going to activate the hul repair drone, it was too late hahahaha.

[DryEagle]

Taking a quick look over your blueprints file, a couple things I noticed:

Code: Select all

   <desc>Ion weapons are very ineffective against the organic integrated systems of the Species 8472, having a 75 percent chance to negate ion damage.</desc>
   <value>0.40</value>

Also, for ships that you say "can't use cloak" - you haven't disabled the cloak to be purchasable in shops (set it rarity 0) meaning it will still be visible for people to buy - except when they try to buy it, they will lose the credits but not gain the system, since there is no room for it to go in.

In the game only the Fed. cruiser has cloaking unavailable in stores and I'm pretty sure this is hardcoded for that ship - for everything else, you must either set it to rarity 0 (globally, so no ship will be able to buy it) or add it as an option on all ships.

Also, for ship starting HP amounts. They should either be a multiple of 30, or divide 30 into intergers. (e.g. 15 or 60 are ok, 25 or 40 are not). Any other value will give a very inelegant display of HP as the default health bar is split into 30 pips.

Also, for your weapons, just a thought, but you may want to add custom explosion graphics (what it looks like when it hits the ship) since you're remaking most other parts of the weapon - these go into the weaponBlueprint as:

Code: Select all

   <explosion>explosion_big1</explosion>

Obviously explosion_big1 is a default value, used by some of the bigger bombs if memory serves e.g. fire bomb.

And in reply to something you said earlier in the thread - adding artillery beam as to a ship is trivially easy, the firing location is the N+1th weapon mount entry, where N is your number of weapons. E.g. if you had 3 weapons and 4 weapon mount locations (in the shipname.xml file) then the 4th is where the beam would shoot from. Just bear in mind that you can't have beam + cloaking on one ship, nor can you do beam + drones + no other weapons without it messing up the UI

[speedoflight]

Thx for the "40" value tip, i didnt notice it. And i am afraid i never will if someone doesnt tell me that..

I dont intend to erase the cloak from the shops, i never intended that. Because if u tell me how can i make the cloak available on shops only to the layout u are playing with it will be awesome. I dont know if that is even possible. If i disable cloak for a layout, it will be disabled for all layouts. Im a wrong??

Starting hp points. I dont see any screwed hull points bar in any layout. And all of em had different hull point numbers. Anyways is not too much work to change em to more reasonable values, just in case. The default hull points, as far as i know is 32, not 30?.

About explosions and gibs.. THEY ARE NOT DONE YET. , they are just test gibs. I didnt even wasted time looking at the numbers, i just copied / pasted. xD. The only thing i did was to assign every weapon mount to a gib. Thats all.

Yeah i know how artillery weapon works, but for the same reason, i prefer by far just adding a 4th regular weapon than the artillery weapon. If u tell me, that artillery weapon is a cool weapon with cool graphics and original, i will prefer the artillery weapon. But since it is just another beam..(the game authors really should ve worked more on this...) its a bit boring. I dont intend to add the artillery weapon to any ship, since i said, i think its a waste of a weapon slot and the artillery weapon should just be erased of the game. Yeah, i hate it.. so?

Wat about the species8472 balance? thats wat concerns me more, anyways i think they are finnally ok, so i just jumped to work on the Romulan ships.

[DryEagle]

Default is 30hp, not 32. And what I meant was, when you take damage, the way it will reduce it is by splitting some of the hp pips, which doesn't look nice (maybe it's just me)

What I said about the explosion tag, that's for weapons, not your ship... read again what I said :)

Artillery doesn't have to replace 4th weapon. You can have 4 weapons + artillery, just add a 5th weapon mount entry and it will use that location.

As for the cloaking.
Yes, you either make it unavailable to purchase for all ships, or none. But, this is a choice you must make. There are 3 options here:
- keep it as you have, where people will waste money buying a cloak that doesn't appear on their ship
- make cloak available on all ships, and buyable in stores
- make cloak unavailable to buy in stores, but start the ships you want with cloaking, to have it from the start of the game. since only a few ships would need it anyway (defiant, romulan/klingon ships... anything else?) this might be the best solution. You can make the upgrade levels more expensive to balance the fact that the ship starts with it by default, if you want.