[SHIP]The Red Arrow

[Auron1]

This is my second Mod, but the first one to be released.
I was disappointed when I found that Superliminality has some limitations, especially about where to place weapons.



You can download the file here: http://www110.zippyshare.com/v/ck442qxH/file.html

Background story:
A Federation Cruiser was stationed in an undisclosed hangar bay while the Federation R&D technicians were trying to obtain a superior firepower against all enemies.
The idea was to place up to 6 turrets on the upper part of the hull, providing massive firepower; however, during the process the O2 system was removed. So only AI units and drones could keep working.
Then the Rebels attacked, and the AI decided to save the ship from assured destruction, without O2, Artillery system and most systems stripped down to minimum.
While the Engi engineers were removing the Oxygen system, they also installed their Med-Bot dispersal: this augmentation was not removed...

NOTE: the ship should NOT be used without those Mods which enable AI crew members.

v.1.0
Known bugs: I forgot about the Thumbnail picture and the SSM description (which I don't even know how to add BTW).

Comments, ideas and positive criticism are all welcome.

[mr_easy_money]

v.1.0
Known bugs: I forgot about the Thumbnail picture and the SSM description (which I don't even know how to add BTW).

Comments, ideas and positive criticism are all welcome.

the thumbnail picture is the miniship image. if you go into superluminal, you'll find where to put it. going into superluminal isn't necessary, as you can just go into the img folder and wherever you put your ship cloak, shields, and hull image, you place an image there. whatever you call this image, make sure the blueprints.xml.append file has the same filename as it's miniship. I think superluminal should do this for you.

what superluminal won't do is give you the actual image. all you have to do is scale the image down. you can look at vanilla miniship images or CE miniship images for a guide on what size they should be

the SSM description is a result of putting a description into the metadata.xml file in the data folder. superluminal doesn't put this in; just find some mod that has a description (like FTL Captain's Edition for example) and just take its metadata.xml and put it in the data folder of your ship mod. open up the metadata.xml file, delete all of the description (or comment it out if you so desire) and in its place put your description

[Auron1]

v.1.0
Known bugs: I forgot about the Thumbnail picture and the SSM description (which I don't even know how to add BTW).

Comments, ideas and positive criticism are all welcome.

the thumbnail picture is the miniship image. if you go into superluminal, you'll find where to put it. going into superluminal isn't necessary, as you can just go into the img folder and wherever you put your ship cloak, shields, and hull image, you place an image there. whatever you call this image, make sure the blueprints.xml.append file has the same filename as it's miniship. I think superluminal should do this for you.

what superluminal won't do is give you the actual image. all you have to do is scale the image down. you can look at vanilla miniship images or CE miniship images for a guide on what size they should be

the SSM description is a result of putting a description into the metadata.xml file in the data folder. superluminal doesn't put this in; just find some mod that has a description (like FTL Captain's Edition for example) and just take its metadata.xml and put it in the data folder of your ship mod. open up the metadata.xml file, delete all of the description (or comment it out if you so desire) and in its place put your description

I have knowledge of what the thumbnail is, but I didn't know its size or if SL could help me in creating it. I'll start working on the v.1.2 right now, thanks

[Auron1]

I have noticed my ship is not "placed" right where the other Fed. Cruisers are. How do I fix that? My guess is that I have to move the ship either with the .xml file or with Superluminal, but I don't know how much I do have to move each piece.

[stylesrj]

Superluminal has a thing called "Calculate optimal offset" or something under one of the tabs. Should align the ship and rooms properly.

[Auron1]

Superluminal has a thing called "Calculate optimal offset" or something under one of the tabs. Should align the ship and rooms properly.

I am sure I used it. I don't know why my ship is not where it's meant to be

Tomorrow I'll remake it from the beginning, starting from the Osprey as base model: I hope the "new" model will be ok.
Oh, btw - I'd have a question: if anyone of you has tried the ship, you'll surely have noticed that the Sensor room is a 4x1 room with custom texture. For some reasons however, the "hazardous" background is not correctly displayed - instead of having red stripes it only appears "pink" in the right half...
Any clue?

[stylesrj]

The O2 hazard images only apply to 1x2, 2x1 and 2x2 rooms. You can't make images for larger or smaller rooms, you can only change the ones that are still there. Most changes either turn them into pink squares or put an O2 icon with a line through it.
I don't like any of them though because it's hard to tell if the room is free of air or just low on air, even if the icon is there.

[Auron1]

The O2 hazard images only apply to 1x2, 2x1 and 2x2 rooms. You can't make images for larger or smaller rooms, you can only change the ones that are still there. Most changes either turn them into pink squares or put an O2 icon with a line through it.
I don't like any of them though because it's hard to tell if the room is free of air or just low on air, even if the icon is there.

Oh! I didn't know this, thanks for your reply.

I am rebuilding the ship, this is how it would look like: I have removed the 4x1 room so there should be no more O2 issues there

[fdagpigj]

If you want people to play your mod, you might want to include a screenshot of it in the hangar so we can see the layout, systems, weapons&drones (incl. number of slots), crew, and augmentations (or if you prefer, for example in case a screenshot would contain too many spoilers, you can write these details out in text), and maybe also mention the reactor power, and explain any custom weapons or drones (if applicable), and if it has a 4-slot teleporter, mention that (especially if it starts without it). Without at least most of that information, I think people will be less inclined to try a ship out, since just a hull image doesn't tell us anything about gameplay or balance.

Oh, and don't blame Superluminal for features missing from FTL (ability to place weapons above the hull), SL is an awesome tool without which making ship mods would be extremely tedious. And the miniship is 191 pixels wide and 121 pixels high. Also, the manning glow in the piloting system looks to be a bit offset

[Auron1]

Since the "v.1.0" came out with many mistakes, I am currently reworking on my Mod. The preview on my last post should be enough, since you even observed that the glowing effect is slightly offset.
I am considering to build a special weapon, but so far I am not able to do that... and since it seems I am not good with ship-mods either, this extra may be discarded very soon.

Do I have to blame FTL instead of SL for being unable to place weapons only below the hull instead of above them? Fine, now I'll start blaming FTL.