[Preview] Unofficial CE Addon: Weapons Crafting

[Kiloku]

Hey, this is my second mod, and it's actually a mod for another mod!

Everyone around here probably knows about Sleeper Service's incredible Captain's Edition mod, and the equally amazing Endless Loot add-on (powered by ranll's software). I decided to take advantage of these mods to expand on one element, which is: Crafting

The mod's basic concept is that you can get certain "Weapon Blueprints" in many events. These blueprints, similarly to CE's trade goods, enable new choices at stores, where you can build a weapon for a cheaper cost than the original price, and with certain control on it's quality!


The following pictures are from a test earlier today (using CE 1.21 and EL 1.0b)

Full album

Current features:

• Choosing general quality level (by paying more or less scrap)
• Seamless integration with CE and EL
• Lore friendly text

Planned features:

• Crafting drones as well
• Special blueprint related events
• Special choices when you have crewmembers of certain species
• Racial prefixes for weapons (example: Zoltan weapons would be optmized AND shield penetrating. And very rare/difficult to obtain)
• Special choices when you have an on-board assembly line, as well as some other augments. (example: Assembly line + Science Lab = radioactive weapons)
• As an external secondary addon: Super rare weapons. Requiring successfully completing quest-lines as hard (or harder) as the Crystal Ship quest, but extremely powerful.

Questions? Suggestions? Critique? Post away, I want to hear it!

Again, this mod will require Sleeper Service's FTL Captain's Edition mod (As well as the Endless Loot addon). It also will require Vhati's Slipstream Mod Manager (Version 1.2 or higher), as the mod needs some features of this incredible tool to be properly installed.



PS. It's not available to download yet because I don't consider it to be good enough for an open beta yet.

[Russian Rockman]

Although it would take some work, this type of thing could work really well with the Endless Loot add-on for CE. You could find an Effector Blueprint, some Overcharge Capacitors, and some Brainwave scanners or something. At a shop you could then combine these to produce a fast-charging, stunning, Effector. The scrap cost would just be dependent on what base level of Effector you wanted. This would use up all your augment slots though.

You can't really make crafting a way to "upgrade" existing weapons because then you would still keep the old weapon as well as have the new one, so creating weapons from scrap and then having people sell off the components at the store was a good idea. I read that there wax a way to "force" blue options now though so maybe you could just prevent people from crafting and Effector if they already have one?

Also, I know a way to allow a player to jump into a "store" beacon, read the initial dialogue, have the store screen open automatically, and then have some extra dialogue AFTER the player closes the store screen. This would allow the player to collect "crafting components" in the form of dummy weapons and then equip them in the store screen to receive blue options after the store screen is closed. The initial text could say something like, if you want to craft a weapon equip any components you have, then in the store menu they could equip the components from their cargo hold, and then after closing the menu they could have blue options. It's kind of complicated though, but if you really want to know how to do that I can tell you...

Otherwise good job so far. A basic but interesting add-on for CE.

[Kiloku]

I does work with Endless Loot, maybe I should clarify that point: the reward is chosen randomly from a pool of rewards for each expense level. For example, with a Burst Laser II Blueprint and paying the high price, you could get and Advanced B.L. II, a Hull Ripper B.L. II, a Custom B.L. II, or some others.
Conversely, if you paid the lowest price, the best you can get is a regular B.L. II, with the risk of getting Faulty, Substandard, Unreliable, or other negative mods.

[English Narwhal]

If only it were possible for augments and weapons to be taken away by events...

[Kiloku]

Yeah, that's the main problem with it, and it also affects the Trade module from CE :/

[Russian Rockman]

If only it were possible for augments and weapons to be taken away by events...

Another thing I've thought about to allow people to get rid of augments manually or open up the ship menu to equip things is to give them 4 "Blank" augments. Meaning an augment with no description that does nothing. It doesn't crash the game actually they just all appear on the left side of of the ship menu where you throw augments away stacked on top of one another. Giving the player 4 augments instantly makes them go over capacity and they can still drag things into the left box they want to get rid if or are supposed to get rid of or equip items they might want to equip for blue options... Very unconventional.