[Ships/Weapons/Drones/Events] Omicron Dynasty Updated 18/08

[UltraMantis]

Sorry to be a party pooper, but i should point out that distributing files that you do not own, or have right to distibute is not legal.
You could not upload music from another game or something like that, but it's possible to suggest listening music or even make an .xml for it, just without packing music files in it.

There's some good free music available if you dont have the ability to make your own music. Some of it may require permission, some can be used without.
http://dig.ccmixter.org/
http://socialtimes.com/royalty-free-music_b37470
http://modarchive.org/index.php?request ... blicdomain
or google free royalty free music

[ChrisM1A2]

Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder UltraMantis. I had forgotten that. Not to be on to point fingers, but there is a mod that at one point was using music from another game. But as I was interpreting it, speedoflight was intending on making his own music. And I am certainly not at the point that I would consider adding music to my own, but thank you for the warning.

[speedoflight]

Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder UltraMantis. I had forgotten that. Not to be on to point fingers, but there is a mod that at one point was using music from another game. But as I was interpreting it, speedoflight was intending on making his own music. And I am certainly not at the point that I would consider adding music to my own, but thank you for the warning.

Actually there are various mods that uses music from other sources.. i mean, everybody that wants custom music will use a song from other source, or if he have the skills create one by himself , but i dont think this last option is used nowadays lol. Almost any mod out there that you can think off, if it includes custom music im sure it is not the mod author's creation.. or if you make a star wars mod and you include the bso, that is copyrighted material as well... i mean i dont think this issues applies on modding FTL, or almost more than half of the mods in the community will be deleted...

[Messiah_Simplex]

Just wanted to say thanks for what looks like the amount of effort, aesthetic design and imaginative creativity that went into this mod.

I just played it for the first time, I tried the two Science ships and got my ass handed to me in the first battle each time (once against a Rebel Scout and once against one of the mercenary Omicron enemies...veteran FTL player, but there's definitely a learning curve for these new ships...which is def. part of the fun).

However, I noticed a pathfinding bug that came up when a crewmembers are told to transition between the discrete sections.

On the Zenit, if a crew member is told to walk from the forward section to the weapons room in the rear "shielded" section they will walk straight over to the hallway below it, then back into the med bay, then diagonally through the walls up into the weapons room, then back down again into the hallway then finally up into the weapons room. Same thing though slightly different if they are ordered from the front section to go to the Engine room.

If they are in the engine room or weapons room in the aft and ordered to go to the O2 room back in the front section, they will walk into the shield room, then up diagonally through walls into the 1x1 "airlock", then back down into the shield room, up diagonally through walls into the 02 room, then back out into the airlock before finally returning to 02 room. Similar thing happens on the Ammon (haven't tested any other ships).

It makes coordinating movement really glitchy, and a couple times I had my low health guys die when rushing to a room to make a repair because they kept running into and out of burning or vented rooms in the way over and over on what should have been his straight path to where he needed to be.

[speedoflight]

Thanks for the feedback, Messiah_Simplex.

About the path movement bug, there is nothing we can do to avoid that, since that is a bug that appears when we use rooms not physically linked. This bug will appear in any mod using that configuration, not only this one.. sadly (FTL was not designed to work that way lol).

The only thing i can recommend you is, when you move through not physically linked rooms, instead of click on the last destination, click in the next room besides the empty space, and after that, click in your final destination. That way, you will waste less time, but as i said, theres nothing we cant do to avoid those glitches. Thats one of the reasons i never liked to make ships with rooms phisycally not linked, but in the end, it is just a glitch that we need to get use to.

And yes, science ships are really a pain in the ass if you dont get a little luck in the first battles, but thats the whole point of the mod. Anyways, i am going to change the defense mark I, in the next update mark I will have the ability to shot lasers as well (like all the rest of the defense drones) but the interval between shots will be really big. I hope that way the game turns out easier without compromising the balance of the difficulty.

Im trying to balance the omicron marauders, so far i coudnt kill any of em xD, i was about to do it, but the incredible AI of the game made the marauder to disable my weapons systems in the last second. I needed to run away since i had about 6 hp left lol. sigh. I think they are really hard but can be killed, i just cant find the perfect balance for em. If i remove 1 more weapon, then they will be really easy i guess.

[UltraMantis]

Speedoflight is correct. It's a direct consequence of using un-linked rooms. The engine wasn't coded to support this, and it barely tolerates it. It works, but as you noticed there are issues.

Generally using unlinked rooms is discouraged, but some modders deliberately use this as a way of adding extra difficulty. For balance purposes, not for being dicks.

There are also estetic reasons why a split section may look better and it's pretty esential if you're going to use "multiple" ships. Such as the Escort Duty or Duality mods.

[ChrisM1A2]

I wanna say that somehow I destroyed one maurader once, but it was using one of the ships that replaces the crystal ships, and I think in an ion storm. Oh, and it was before you took one of there weapons away. It was the last ship I destroyed in sector one. May or may not have used an attack drone mk I, and actually, I think I did. I don't even buy it, got it free from an event. On the other hand, the first jump in the next sector was a marauder that pwned me, with the same ship, so it was largely luck.

[Messiah_Simplex]

Glad the pathing error isn't the mods fault.

I had finally figured out how the glitch works on the Omicron Nimbus and the Corsair (the ships with a really long, multi-segmented aft hallway) when crew would take "two steps forward and one step back" as it were for each room they entered until they reached their path destination...and how that could be avoided by only pathing them to the first linked-room beyond the connection before routing them further. Once I knew that the micromanagement just became another aspect of the game.

Ah, I hadn't seen the Escort Duty mod before, that looks pretty nifty.

[speedoflight]

About the Marauder, thats weird, it should never be an ion storm on the Marauder event.. u sure it was the Marauder lol? did you gather the omni laser weapon once you destroyed it? well, the omni laser will not be always available to gather, its just a question of luck, but there are high probabilities of gathering it once you destroy the Marauder.

Now im trying to add a new sector to the mod, by so far, no luck, i cant get the new sector to appear in the sector select screen when you reach the final beacon. I tried 5 times already, i never see the new sector sigh. I need to keep trying i guess.. but since i dunno how to test it and if i did everything ok.. this is going to take A WHILE....

[ChrisM1A2]

Must not have been an ion storm then. I am 95% certain that what allowed me to win was the vanilla attack drone, and those things fire really fast, compared to some of the stuff in this mod. But wait, the enemy defense drone. I dunno, maybe I didn't destroy one. And I'm not sure I it's possible to add a new sector to be the lat area. I haven't done much testing with adding sectors, I've only poked around the XML. Later today, so long as I have time, I think I might try messing with sectors, because there are even a few sectors not actually used by the game, although they are by-and-large empty as they sit. But, school work must come first, especially when it is essays. Not big ones, but still.