sM Polish Kit: Insurrection v1.6 [CE Support + Modules]

[Mr. Mister]

I don't really like the idea of enforcing the use of the new equipment by default, that's what the additional ftl file is for.

Thing is: Currently, users of sMPK-CE that want the alternate layout have to load your ad-on, while players who want the vanilla one have to load the CE add-on.
If you load nothing else now, you get CE's alternate loadout but with sMPK's stats, which might break a few things for OP or UP.
If you did as sleepy, then only those who want the vanilla loadouts would have to load an add-on, while those who want the alternate loadout would have to load nothing. It's a win-neutral situation.

The special weapons have their own little section now. The drones had been added before, hiding in plain sight

Oh, those two? Since I saw them in the xml, I thought they had been introduced before. That explains it.

The flare drone's model might do with some more love though, compared to all the other beauties. And I guess it should go to the missile drones' row.

[slowriderxcorps]

The logic is sort of baffling me, likely due to fatigue. The way the mods are set up I believe. is that base CE loads Sleeper's CEPS layouts, sMPK for CE main patch has the vanilla layouts with CE in their names (as if the title screen wasn't enough proof you were playing something cool), and my CE Player Ships has my special layouts.

Oh, and a little heads-up to Sleeper, you have one of the enemy Defense drone variants with a rarity of not-zero, I think it was one of the new ones.

EDIT: The video processed, huzzah.

[slowriderxcorps]

Alright. After going over the test footage, things were tweaked around over the last several mini-iterations. To prevent myself from forgetting any of the more notable changes (with luck), I've chosen to list them down here.

* The travel speed of the laser on the Defense I was increased by about 50%. The aim of this was to attempt to improve the reliability of the drone against missiles, however on certain problematic ships such as the Kestel and both the Mantis and Federation cruisers on the whole are unfortunately inflicted with what I call the Targeting glitch, where the drone will often completely ignore firing at missiles flying towards the nose of the ship. There is no way to fix this through modding aside from trying to shift the entire ship to the left, and given the nature of the Thruster graphics on the Kestrel and Federation cruisers, this isn't an option. [Base and CE]
* The travel speed of the Hull Lasers has been reduced to match that of the other laser weapons with the aim of making their behaviour in a timed salvo more favourable. One strange fact with these weapons is that their shots travel 25% faster than normal lasers, with the exception of the Hull Laser II (which travels 50% faster) and CE's Hull Crusher Laser (which travels at normal speed). [Base and CE]
* The events in CE where you are forced to wait around a radioactive wreck for a set amount of time with no Life Support have been altered in such a way that if you arrive there with no fuel, the event will /eventually/ let you go. Of course, the way this is done is such that by the time you are capable of jumping away, your ship will have completely drained of oxygen, but it's no longer an automatic Game Over (or even a stalemate if you have any Holograms on board). [CE]
* The enemy Artillery strikes in CE have been tweaked around to shift their emphasis onto ship damage, with an increased chance of fires/breaches, but the removal of the completely unmentioned extra Personnel damage. Indeed, the only reason I discovered that it existed was to jump away from one and get hit during the jump, only to find an engine room with three damage, and nobody at all where my fully healthy Zoltan engineer used to be.. [CE]

[Mr. Mister]

I'm not so sure you should buff LD MkI in that respect. Higher reliabity in not missing the shots is what makes LLD drones special, as well as the HLD. And on the LD MkI, this would decrease the effectivenes off salvo kissiles.

[slowriderxcorps]

I'm not so sure you should buff LD MkI in that respect. Higher reliabity in not missing the shots is what makes LLD drones special, as well as the HLD. And on the LD MkI, this would decrease the effectivenes off salvo kissiles.

It's not the reload time that was changed, but the travel speed of the lasers that it fires. In that regard, the vanilla CE Scatter-Laser Defense drone reloads in less than a third of a second and I anticipate would do that anyways. The problem with the Defense drones is that there is no real solid way of making any Defense drone completely reliable because of the targeting glitch.

I'm also looking more into the shot speed of various weapons now, and I'm probably falling back on the Hull Laser speed decision, but also trying out a few other little touches.

[Mr. Mister]

Yeah, that was exactly what I was saying: light laser defense drones have the drawback of a higher reload time, but the advantages of a smaller power consumption and a faster projectyle. The latter means that, while they might shot at less things, whatever they shoot ends up intercepted. Giving that advantage to the laser defense drone MkI would take away the only drawback from it (apart from power usage), making it an all-around perfect tier1 defense drone and paling the light laser series in comparision, Essentially, the LD MkI should have an interception rate of less than 50% on drone missiles.

[slowriderxcorps]

Yeah, that was exactly what I was saying: light laser defense drones have the drawback of a higher reload time, but the advantages of a smaller power consumption and a faster projectyle. The latter means that, while they might shot at less things, whatever they shoot ends up intercepted. Giving that advantage to the laser defense drone MkI would take away the only drawback from it (apart from power usage), making it an all-around perfect tier1 defense drone and paling the light laser series in comparision, Essentially, the LD MkI should have an interception rate of less than 50% on drone missiles.

I guess I should throw some numbers into the air so you can better visualise the travel speed of these Defense shots as they currently stand:

Basic Defense 1: 60
Changed Defense 1: 90
Defense 2/3: 120
Scatter Laser: 80
Heavy Laser: 120
Light Laser: 160
Light Missile: 90
Swarm Missile: 90
Ion Defense: 40

[Mr. Mister]

I see... is that pre-tweaking or post-tweaking? If it's pre, I say put the defense missile at 60. and the LD MkI at 80.

[slowriderxcorps]

I see... is that pre-tweaking or post-tweaking? If it's pre, I say put the defense missile at 60. and the LD MkI at 80.

The only tweaked one on this list is what the Laser Def I was marked as, everything else is the default stats from CE.

[Mr. Mister]

Mmmm... in that case, I would put it at 75 and put the obsolete light missile at 60, so the swarm is all-around better than the latter. It should leave some missile in every now and then, and if as you said those cockpits can't be protected, then it's irrelevant, ain't it?