I'm also 90% sure this mod is not compatible with Multiverse, so don't blame me if stuff broke on your save or something.
"Artillery in the base game is mostly useless." [general quote]
Well then, I'll try making something worth to be called "Federation Artillery", by changing and improving the weapons themselves and increasing the level cap from 4 to 5. I've also tried making some original artillery weapons, with all of them having their own visible image, all of which are animated. Every ship will also start with 5 missiles and 5 drone parts and an Automated Re-loader (unless specified otherwise).
NEW: starting from V 3.0, other than the 3 new ships and their respective artillery, the Weapon Control system received an increase in its level cap, which has been increased to level 10, and the upgrade costs have been reduced. Also, this update includes 2 vanilla bugfixes, a new expanded store that will replace the vanilla one, all ships can install the Temporal Manipulator, have a higher reactor cap with lowered scarp prices, a system cap of 10 and my Clonebay Gas Remover mod incorporated. It will also revert the Hyperspace hacking fix, so now in this pack you can power down hacking while it's mid-space without making it explode.
With that being said, here are the six ships I've made for this mod:
What do I mean by "Battlescarred"? Well, you know how the ship had to travel from the Rebel Stronghold to the Federation base? Imagine if during the travel it went through various asteroid fields and a few satellite defense systems that went haywire. The hull was somehow still in one piece but full of cracks basically everywhere and the artillery beam has been damaged. The room layout had to be remade, and with some science ingenuity the beam has been repaired and improved to deal 1 extra damage, swipe quicker and charge faster, with a length reduction from 500 to 400 (a 20% reduction) while still being able to pierce all shield layers. The ship has been given 2 Dual Laser as the starting weapons, as they run out of Burst Laser II to install on ships.
You know the Fregatidae, the ship that comes with the kind of useless Flak Artillery with a 2-crew Teleporter that did the opposite of synergizing? A crew of Lanius found it and, with a joint collaboration with the Federation, they reconstructed the artillery weapon and improved the targeting system by using components of the now removed Teleporter, and gave the ship itself some weapons. The Flak Artillery installed in this ship fires a grand total of 15 flak projectiles plus 15 flak decoys to give the enemy defense drones their worst day in their robotic lives. The weapons installed are a Flak Gun I and a Mini Beam, as each side gave one weapon to install. Why is the ship a dark blue with purple stripes? Well, initially the blue comes from the colour in the Lanius Cruiser A and the purple from the Lanius Cruiser B, but I didn't like how both colours looked normally, so I've changed them to look a bit better in my opinion.
There was once a laser aficionado that gave a Kestrel with a Rebel paint-job 4 Basic Laser. That same guy strikes again after reading sensitive data about the Flagship's weaponry. After many days of tireless non-stop working and lots of caffeine, he finally built a monstrous Laser Artillery, combining the potential from the Burst Laser II for the number of projectiles shot, the Hull Laser I for the laser's speed and double damage on systemless rooms, and the Piercing Heavy Laser I for the base damage and shield pierce quirk. This laser artillery fires 3 projectiles, each dealing 2 damage, double damage on systemless rooms, pierces two shield layers and it will always cause a breach. All of this has been made possible thanks to stolen Rebel funds and a big help from the Federation for building this weapon. The developer had just one request: instead of the classic orange and blue colour scheme, the main body now has a darker orange for the whole hull with green stripes, like the projectiles fired by the Artillery. The ship has been also given not one, not two, but four Heavy Laser I, as the laser aficionado, the one piloting the ship, still had extras laying around.
The first of the new pirate ship trio. This ship, which comes with standard Federation weaponry, combines Human ingenuity and Zoltan technology to bring forth an upgraded artillery beam that will also deal tons of ion damage whenever it fires. Unfortunately they had to camouflage it with pirate markings to avoid having the ship being stolen like the original Osprey and keep the whole operation undercover, otherwise the Rebels might have ended up with upgraded beam weaponry.
When the first chain laser weapons entered the market, some pirates tried to integrate such weapons onto the Artillery system. The results where mixed, but they kept trying to increase the fire power of the weapon, thus they slowly changed, replaced and directly rebuilt the whole weapon into something completely different for what it was: a multi shot laser with high velocity projectiles, a special plasma mix that heavily damages the ship's enemy systems and subsystems with a shield pierce of one layer, while also charging faster the more it fires (to test if it works). Unfortunately you can only see the barrels of that weapon, and it totally isn't because I can't make a good looking weapon...
Some people likes their lasers, others are intrigued with beams. This ship's captain was so obsessed with missiles that stole the Missile artillery blueprint along with some kind of Federation ship blueprints from a Rebel database and built them from scratch, with the changes to the artillery becoming a monstrosity that can fire 5 different types of missiles by applying the concept from the Swarm Missile weapon. And on top of that, it gave the ship the excessive loadout of 4 Leto missile launchers and a hefty missile stockpile of 50 plus an Improved Explosive Replicator that makes the chance to not use missiles equal to 80%.
So, here's the few things that have been changed with this mod:
- the Weapon Control system upgrade costs from level 2 to level 8 are 30/10/25/40/55/70/85 instead of 40/25/35/50/75/90/100, with level 9 and 10 requiring 100 and 120 scrap respectively for the upgrade;
- the Artillery system upgrade costs from level 2 to 4 are 20/45/70 instead of 30/50/80, with level 5 requiring 140 scrap for the upgrade;
- added the tooltip for level 5 Artillery;
- added a level 5 Artillery UI indicator to avoid showing a nullReference image (the yellow triangle).
People who played the ships:
Rand118
- 2.0 Federation C Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qArzHqFGL9M
- 2.0 Federation A Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq4MB-UnVXM
- 2.0 Federation B Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyT_nq1ZPxk
- 3.0 Federation D Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5EY0n0Sguo
- 3.0 Federation E Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MEXxz62-PY
- 3.0 Federation F Hard Difficulty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw_YX_3O7rE
And with all the ins and outs taken care of, here is the download link, enjoy ^_^
v 3.1.1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RAZq0dUP2Ux0gfzzF6-l453s56ZRwe1m/view?usp=share_link
Code: Select all
Changelog:
v 3.1.1: added a missing blue option for the Temporal Manipulator on the Stasis Pod event if you use the Rock Plating blue option.
v 3.1: minor changes to the pack:
- removed shield and cloaking image duplicates;
- removed parts of code no longer needed;
- removed the custom thruster animation, using the vanilla image in place of it;
- reordered and commented the XML code to be more readable for others;
- all ships are now aligned to be in the same place;
- minor grammar fixes and text changes;
- changed the ship cloaking images a little bit to be more "glow-y".
v 3.0.2: Minor text fixes.
v 3.0.1: Removed redundant images.
v 3.0: MASSIVE EXPANSION UPDATE:
- added 3 new ships, each one with its own special artillery;
- increased the level cap of weapons to level 10, with upgrade costs changed to be more affordable;
- changed the sprites of the 1st Generation ships artillery weapons;
- the Automated Re-Loader is no longer a hidden augment;
- level 5 artillery costs increased from 120 to 140 scrap;
- small changes to the sprites of some gibs for the original three ships;
- the reactor cap has been increased to 35, the scrap cost has been reduced;
- the system cap has been increased to 10;
- all six ships have the engine animation like the vanilla Federation's animation;
- added the Temporal Manipulator as an installable system;
- incorporated the Clonebay Gas Remover standalone mod;
- hacking will not explode when deactivated while it is travelling;
- added a new store, which replaces the vanilla one;
- Hull Missile is now usable for missiles related blue options (vanilla bug fix);
- Combat Beam II now uses the correct images when on and when firing (vanilla bug fix);
- included a much needed level 2 Clonebay blue option for Slug sectors (vanilla bug fix, probably).
v 2.1.1:
- removed the custom Artillery charge bar indicator in preparation for the upcoming Hyperspace release, the level 5 Artillery UI indicator has been instead adapted for what the actual charge level will charge up to;
- fixed some typos plus some minor rewording in some places.
v 2.1:
- changed the file's and mod's name, this has been applied to the previous versions too;
- changed the weapon room floor image of the Fed A, the manning point didn't change;
- small changes on all 3 artillery weapons;
- minor nerf to the Flak Artillery radius, which got increased from 20 to 25 for a smaller but higher chance for the single projectile to miss the room;
- minor price changes to the Artillery upgrade costs;
- the mod will now show a short description on Slipstream Mod Manager.
v 2.0: MAJOR CHANGES:
- buffed all artillery weapons with a lower cooldown;
- increased the Beam Artillery's length to 400;
- increased the Laser Artillery's shield pierce to 2;
- minor room layout changes;
- heavy graphical changes to most of the room floor images (made by me) and redid the "Breach and Bust" hull and gibs (thanks R4V3-0N for the suggestions);
- added a Human crew to the "Lanius' Fregatidae" starting crew;
- added a Zoltan crew to the "Breach and Bust" starting crew;
- changed the "Breach and Bust" weapon loadout to have 4 Heavy Laser I instead of a Hull Laser I and a Heavy Laser I;
- the Auto Re-loader starting augment is now a hidden augment for all three ships.
v 1.0: Initial release.