[Ship][AE] Custom Arwing [v2.1]

[Gencool]

Thankyou R4ve, must admit I've read a lot of that sorta thing recently. Maybe be where I got the inspiration.

Pilou, glad you got it working.


Quick update; I added a system repair tool to the start event in Adventures, just to make downtime a little less infuriating when out of battle.

[stylesrj]

Just an idea for Adventures:

When I go to collect a gun, it's a rather simple affair of taking down a Zoltan shield and smashing the systems to bits (even when it's an automated ship who stole it).
Maybe it could be spiced up a little bit. You could have the crates carry one missile in its inventory and a dummy gun that does 0 damage, has no projectile, charges in 1 second and it uses up that missile. The gun plays a sound file like R.O.B saying "Location confirmed, dropping supplies" or something.

Heck a lot of ships could actually do that, that have dummy weapons that sound like combat taunts. This does of course mean they can't use missiles (unless you make the gun use 100 missiles and give the enemy ship 110 missiles, like Captain's Edition does with artillery ships).

It's probably add to the Starfox experience without playing the music from it (because Youtube hates music)

[Biohazard063]

Hey there,

Did a 4 part showcase of the mod that will start uploading tomorrow actually. You're good at creating mods making me go over the allocated episodes I plan.
Had to shoot it up the list since someone's mod wasn't ready for showcasing yet.

In any case, I'll leave the general likes and dislikes for the showcase, but here are some things I'd like to mention and or ask :

1. Picking Fox as your captain means you have a spare system slot. Which means you can get shields. Are shields supposed to be only 1 bar when you buy them ? I saw that when you picked Peppy it gave you one bar and the next pop-up upgraded it to 2. But this means that when you buy shields as Fox (which would be the most logic system to get), it will set you back a grand total of 225 scrap for a first shield bubble not counting power. Is this intentional?
2. The systems that can be repaired manually by crew : are those deliberately picked ? As in artillery instead of engines and cloak over weapons? If yes, then no further comments from me.
3. Had a game crash when Falco was stranded on the enemy ship and my teleporter got destroyed. Crash happened when the message that your crew takes a shuttle back should've appeared. Not sure if this is because of your mod or CE is at fault. I'll post it there as well just in case.
4. I completely missed the fact that the arwing repair weapon repaired hull damage. Just a heads up...

Oh, and don't worry, I did enjoy the mod a great deal. Splendid work as always.

[Gencool]

Thanks Bio! Looking forward to watching as always ^^


Answers:

1) Not intentional at first, but it made sense for game-play so I left it in. Really, the only reason Fox has a spare slot in the first place is because MindControl doesn't suit either him or Falco, and you can't give a second Artillery system via event. The Arwings' playstyle is heavily based on the Stealth Cruisers, which is why they mostly don't have shields. Fox's load out (esp. fast reload + early twin lasers + Peppy's hypershield + Falco's defending + cloaking) is already very powerful, so having personal shields feels like it pushes you over the OP line, so I think the cost is pretty fair.


2) I wish they were deliberately picked. The game seems to go by alphabetical order when layering systems, with A being the top and Z being the bottom, although Medbay seems to take priority over Sensors and doors, so it's possible that Subsystems are stacked lower. That said, Battery still overrides everything else, but that was introduced in AE, so maybe it's just down to the order they were coded.
Again, having Medbay, Cloaking and Artillery as the top layers wasn't planned, but I quite like how it effects the gameplay, and they're probably the systems I would have chosen to prioritize anyway.

Side note; I find it interesting that station manning also seems to stack through layered systems, fully leveled characters provide the usual boost over the AI system, but the AI manning stops crew gaining experience.


3) I'm fairly sure this is due to the Auto Pilot + 0 Crew bugset, and have no idea how to fix it beside giving the player more crew. As with Fox, the Teleporter wasn't my favorite choice for Falco, but was used due to limited options (putting a teleporter on a ship seems to make people go straight into a boarding strategy, and usually that's not quite what I was aiming for). Sorry about that!


4) Ah, man. My poor writing skills back to save the day, eh?



Styles - I love that idea, but I think I'm done with this mod now. If you want to extend it in any way please feel free!

[Biohazard063]

Thanks Bio! Looking forward to watching as always ^^
Answers:

1) I guess so, just crossed my mind since I forget to set drone control to 2 starting power every freaking time I create a ship.

2) Could be the way they are set in the blueprint... Not sure myself either.
Sidenote : So that's what is going on. Crew doesn't level. I saw some odd things happen once I got some extra crew in. I thought the second crewmember was manning doors or something...

3) Made note of it on the CE post. Going for a boarding strategy just makes sense when you have a TP. Higher rewards, more goodies...

4) Just looked at the weapons descriptions. Guess we can share the "blame" here. It does say it does -1 normal damage compared to the system repair's -1 system damage. But the description doesn't mention it repairs hull. I'd say changing "fix up your Arwing when out of battle" to "fix up your Arwing's hull when out of battle" would help prevent any confusion.

[Gencool]

Just watched the first vid - shame about the ending but was good fun.

Actually, hearing your spiel on the shield cost and the math behind it, maybe it could use a bit of a tweak.

I actually tried reordering them in the blueprint, to no avail :\

It does kind of annoy me that killing crew is so much more preferable. Personally I'd tweak it so that it lets you pick a reward out of what's on the ship (i.e. fuel only, scrap only, a weapon, a dronepart, a crewmember), but if you want to pick up something else it speeds up the fleet a bit. I.e. dead crew means you can be picky, but you'll get less overall.

Woo! We're both to blame! Nah, I need to get better at writing efficiently, really.

All stuff I can have a look at updating, but I may wait till the run's completed.

[Biohazard063]

Snip

Backed myself into a corner a bit on that one...

Well, can adjust the cost of shields or the cost of the second bar. 225 is a lot... but you get a great system for it in return.

Was a long shot to begin with.

Well, it was even worse pre-AE. AE dropped rewrds for boarding by quite a bit I believe. And CE made me loose a lof of interest towards boarding as well as it's no longer OP against the flagship thanks to those $"#é&{[ rooms that |@#{[^# connect the }{^[#|# weapons to the main |^{#"'(§ body of the flagship. A decent change in my opinion. Though annoying at times.

We all have our small downsides. Mine is being crud at custom art. Which is actually kind of a big problem when it comes down to making custom ships...

[RAD-82]

All stuff I can have a look at updating, but I may wait till the run's completed.

Good thing that you wait; recent video shows Smart Twin Lasers not working correctly. Seems the chain values are reversed, causing it to drop by 1 second 5 times rather than 5 seconds once.

[ComradeKrush]

Erm, what does it replace?

[Gencool]

Kestral (sorry, I should've said)

Considering a new update soon: I think Fox will be given Mind Control as standard, and I'm going to raise the cost of drones to 999 (they should never be upgraded)