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[Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 3:29 pm
by Whited
This is my second attempt to create a ship/jet in FTL.

Any criticism is appreciated.

WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet

The WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet was designed to capture by force enemy cargo ships, but can be effective against armed ones too! (Replace Kestrel-A)

Highlights:
¤ Two Basic Ion guns
¤ Three teleportations at once
¤ A Boarding Drone

Image

Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/54loeyme4cu22 ... D.ftl?dl=0

V1: Release
V2:Added 2 slots for weapons
Added 1 Boarding Drone
Rework of rooms & shield
Bug Fixes
V3:Removed one weapon slot
Removed one Rockmen

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet [V1]

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 4:47 pm
by SentryJumper
...guess who :)

So I played a bit with this and have a few suggestions.
First... is the 6 man teleporter really necessary? That's all but two of your crew on the enemy ship at any one time, and 4 is really overkill by itself most of the time. It also means that you can't pull them out all at once of, say, the ship goes up in flames. I'd suggest changing to a 4 man teleport.

Is the shield meant to only protect the front? Fair enough if so, but you may want to make the arc a little wider - the current shield barely covers anything. Maybe a semi-circle arc? I like the concept, at any rate.

The part I was most fond of, strangely, was the double ion. It still means the ship is boarding focussed, but means you can stall a missile coming your way without doing damage. I actually can't believe I haven't seen it before - its simple, but works really well.

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet [V1]

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 5:18 pm
by Biohazard063
Guess it's up to me to sort this one out considering Styles did your first ship. ;)

1 thing I want you to start using if you plan on making more ship mods :
The Mod Testing Environment
Once you're done designing your ship, load up this mod followed by your ship mod. And see if the things you want to do are indeed possible or if some unexpected problem shows up.

In this case : A 6 slot teleporter will house 6 people, but will only teleport 4 people over at max when used.
Knowing that, the maximum of 2 weapons and 1 drone slot is quite crippling. I'd personally would say to add 1 slot to both systems. Would also get rid of the fact that the autofire button disappears. There is however 1 other way to sort of fix this. And that's by setting the teleporter to be able to be upgraded to lvl 4. This will grant you a teleporter without a cooldown.
Needless to see how powerful such a thing can be.

So it's clear the ship is focused on boarding, it might be worth while to remove the manning station in the medbay, allowing it to be used by 4 peeps at once. You can check to see if one of the 2x1 or 1x2 would fit in there instead to make it look less odd.

One last thing, long layouts can run into problems. Not sure if this is the case here, but it does warrant some testing. If you ever payed attention to what your shots do when they go behind the enemy window, you'll notice they don't reach the end of the screen, but disappear roughly a quarter of the way past it, just like enemy shots appear there. If your shield layer goes past that quarter, any enemy shot that "spawns" there, will not go past the shieldlayer and just bypass them. The easiest way to test if this is the case with this ship is to just park it in an asteroid field when there is another ship present. Accept a surrender or something.

Naturally we'll end things on a positive note, since feedback can often be quite dreadful to read through.
It's an interesting concept to pair up a boarding party with ion weaponry. Lasers weapons take hull damage and bombs require a missile supply.
Ions don't, though they do require to be powered and firing constantly. Nice.

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet [V2]

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 6:13 pm
by Whited
Feedback much appreciated.

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet [V2]

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 6:24 pm
by stylesrj
I recommend not starting with two Boarding Drones. One is fine but a second one makes me go "Free scrap!"

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet [V2]

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 6:40 pm
by Whited
Done.

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet [V2]

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 7:39 pm
by Biohazard063
stylesrj wrote:I recommend not starting with two Boarding Drones. One is fine but a second one makes me go "Free scrap!"

Like you wouldn't sell both the first chance you got. I've seen you play this game before. :lol:

In regards to the ship, seems like things are getting sort out pretty great.

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet [V2]

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:03 pm
by stylesrj
Biohazard063 wrote:Like you wouldn't sell both the first chance you got. I've seen you play this game before. :lol:


Well I would say "I'd keep it until I got a sufficient boarding crew" but well I'd immediately put the Rockmen on the teleporter and let loose.

Speaking of which, the ship starts with 5 crew?
Three of which are a competent boarding team? Ummm... that's probably not a good idea.

Recommend taking it down to one Human and two Rockmen or just a Human and a Rock so people have to get some use out of the Boarding Drone until they get more crew (think of the Mantis B)

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet [V2]

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:18 pm
by Whited
At the start, the only way to destroy/capture enemy ships is to board them so i'm not too keen to remove a rockman, maybe removing the boarding drone.

Re: [Ship] WA/T-63 Paratrooper Jet

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:23 pm
by stylesrj
I refer to the Mantis B which has only one way to deal with automated ships and that's the single Boarding Drone which you hope lands in the right spot...
The Crystal B also can't destroy automated ships at the start but that's another matter. But it is possible to board with small crews.

Removing all Boarding Drones would then mean you'd have to take the Drone Control out (to be bought later) because there is no point to a Drone Control with no drones; it's just a wasted system then.