Subset Games Forum

RAD-82 wrote:SMM should have a readme file for modders. From your post, it looks like you tried <mod-append:rarity>, and I believe that would work, since the game will probably just overwrite the previous instance of rarity when it actually loads the weapon. However, you actually want to use <mod-overwrite:rarity>, so that you replace the rarity. I don't have the readme available at the moment, but I think the spelling for the tag is overwrite; when there are tags like findName and findLike, I think you need to be aware of capital letters.

Yeah, that's exactly how it was done. I need to find this readme now.. also updated the HFM with a nerf to the ion weapon in Phase 1. I learned the hard way that it actually fires so fast that it chains on itself. Even a crazy person who loves hard challenges told me that was too much.
EDIT: Also re-adjusted the rarities in the AWMs after learning of a theory on how they actually behave. It seems plausible that simply causing every weapon not augmented to simply be Rarity 1-3 is a bad idea, as when the game tries to draw a Rarity 4 weapon it ends up automatically drawing a 5 instead.

MORE EDIT: Made some form of progress on the weapon skinning department. Make of it what you will.

The primary AWM has been updated with more colours. Wahey. CE colours will be coming soon-ish.

An amount of unfathomable repetition later.. the new colours have been successfully applied to the AWM-CE weapons, as well as the fixing of a few little discrepencies with the 'kit Dual Lasers as well as the Hull Beams. Strangely though, the Hull Beams had the 'description' error in the base game as well, so as to how they'll act now.. well, we'll see soon enough.

The fine-tuning and description-altering of AWM-CE isn't finished just yet, but it's close. Current build is now available to explore.

Now THOSE are cool reskins.

Anyway, here's three Crystal-related suggestions/requests:

1) Please, could you make unique blue 0-rarity variants of the Crystal A's starting weapons? It's quite unfitting that they're red. You could even declare them on the player ships add-on.
2)Here's an idea on how to make the (alternate) Crystal B closer to vanilla but still nerfed to an acceptable level: Give it back cloaking but make it start with lv1 shields, like the Zoltan B. You could also give it back the light crystal MkI to further help compensate for the shield against cloaking opponents and so it can keep control of auto-ships' repairs. This will make it more different from both the vanilla Crystal B AND the alternat Mantis B.

3) On the sMPK-CE file, the Crystal Lock-Blast series has wrong description/stats regarding number of shots. Description says 1-shot for MkI and 3 shots for MkII, but stats say 2 shots for both. Personally, I would make the MkI two shots and the MkII 3 shots and leave their power requirements as they're now (2 and 3), and also make a new weapon, a 1-shot 1-damage no-lockdown crystal. The Crystal A could start with it and a Lock-Blast MkI (consider re-naming the family to Lock-Burst), and it could be used as the most likely outcome of the weapon-rewarding Crystal conversation outcome.

Also, sleepy once said that he was concerned with the crystal sector possibly being too harsh on early sector appearences now that rock-controlled sectors can get you to it, so said weapon could help by being a low-tier but still damaging crystal weapon.

Mr. Mister wrote:Now THOSE are cool reskins.

Anyway, here's three Crystal-related suggestions/requests:

1) Please, could you make unique blue 0-rarity variants of the Crystal A's starting weapons? It's quite unfitting that they're red. You could even declare them on the player ships add-on.
2)Here's an idea on how to make the (alternate) Crystal B closer to vanilla but still nerfed to an acceptable level: Give it back cloaking but make it start with lv1 shields, like the Zoltan B. You could also give it back the light crystal MkI to further help compensate for the shield against cloaking opponents and so it can keep control of auto-ships' repairs. This will make it more different from both the vanilla Crystal B AND the alternat Mantis B.

3) On the sMPK-CE file, the Crystal Lock-Blast series has wrong description/stats regarding number of shots. Description says 1-shot for MkI and 3 shots for MkII, but stats say 2 shots for both. Personally, I would make the MkI two shots and the MkII 3 shots and leave their power requirements as they're now (2 and 3), and also make a new weapon, a 1-shot 1-damage no-lockdown crystal. The Crystal A could start with it and a Lock-Blast MkI (consider re-naming the family to Lock-Burst), and it could be used as the most likely outcome of the weapon-rewarding Crystal conversation outcome.

Also, sleepy once said that he was concerned with the crystal sector possibly being too harsh on early sector appearences now that rock-controlled sectors can get you to it, so said weapon could help by being a low-tier but still damaging crystal weapon.

1: I still don't know where to stand with tuning something that's as powerful as the Carnelian. I want to say that giving it cloaking but 0.5 shields is a terrible idea as the ship will automatically die to any beam drone in the first sector, potentially even moreso than StealthB. As for the Lock-Blast and Light Crystal skins.. I don't know either. I don't really want them to be completely indistinguishable from the vanilla Crystal weapons, that's the main problem. And the Crystal weapons are.. they possess a graphical style that's really, really hard to replicate properly, beyond my abilities.

2: Thanks for pointing out this mess-up, that's now been fixed. The base CE Lock-Blast II was something that I automatically didn't like as soon as I saw it. Two projectiles which lock down the room and cause guaranteed breaches? That room would almost never ever be repaired barring very heavy medbay/repair drone abuse. And if the target room was a medbay.. well that kind of explains itself.

Well, in case of beam drones it's not that apocalyptic: just gotta teleport directly two crystals (instead of waiting for the pilot to get there too) into the enemy drone-room (which would still be empty) and use both crystal's lockdowns until drones are down, which shouldn't take that long, maybe even shoot at your own boarders with the light crystal to keep the room locked until you can teleport the third crystal in. Seems more effective than the Stealth A even with tiitanium casing, which can only inflict one system damage with the hull beam each round.

Mmm, I'm seeing that sMPK-CEi overrides some of the new music, though the sector_data changes on it are probably of your volition and not because of CEi, since the latter's only contains data for the ancient sector type. So the solution seems to be another module: a custom music re-re-enabler to be used after sMPK-CEi.

Mr. Mister wrote:Mmm, I'm seeing that sMPK-CEi overrides some of the new music, though the sector_data changes on it are probably of your volition and not because of CEi, since the latter's only contains data for the ancient sector type. So the solution seems to be another module: a custom music re-re-enabler to be used after sMPK-CEi.

Hmm.. the music patch hasn't really been touched much since its creation. I personally decided that for CEi and basic Infinite Space, the infinitely-looping sectors should have every music track in the game, so as to not have just 2-3 pieces of music for the entirety of an infinitely-looping game.

I mean for the Industrial and Quarentine sectors. CEi doesn't touch them, so sMPK-music can be loaded before CEi no problem, but sMPK-CEi does modify the sector_data entries for both sector types, so they won't have their new music tracks if sMPK-music is loaded before sMPK-CEi. But if you order them the other way, then the changes you made in sMPK-CEi (whatever they are) won't have an effect.

Mr. Mister wrote:I mean for the Industrial and Quarentine sectors. CEi doesn't touch them, so sMPK-music can be loaded before CEi no problem, but sMPK-CEi does modify the sector_data entries for both sector types, so they won't have their new music tracks if sMPK-music is loaded before sMPK-CEi. But if you order them the other way, then the changes you made in sMPK-CEi (whatever they are) won't have an effect.

It's all very strange. In any case, I've just completely reworked the CEi patch, stripping it of its commonalities with the base patch and therefore a significant amount of unnecessary bulk, leaving only changes relevant to the Infinite Addon. As a result, it will need to be installed with and after the base patch to remain effective.

Mr. Mister wrote:I mean for the Industrial and Quarentine sectors. CEi doesn't touch them, so sMPK-music can be loaded before CEi no problem, but sMPK-CEi does modify the sector_data entries for both sector types, so they won't have their new music tracks if sMPK-music is loaded before sMPK-CEi. But if you order them the other way, then the changes you made in sMPK-CEi (whatever they are) won't have an effect.

Speaking of that, I wonder if there is a way to increase the chance of those "CE specific" sectors spawning. My initial idea was to remove all generic versions of each faction's sector (I.e. Not Homeworlds) and maybe the Federation, Rebel, and Pirate Sectors. All of the events that would normally be found in these sectors can be found in "Deep Space" so you're not losing anything. The normal sectors then would be only Homeworlds, Industrial & Quarantine sectors, AI Sector, Ancient Sector, & Hazard Sector for the "Standard Space" sectors. I think that reduces the amount of sector types to about 11-12, also perhaps messing around with the "unique" tags might be necessary. Perhaps you could also make all sectors "unique" and make duplicates of certain sectors like the Homeworlds to get the total number of sectors up to 20 (which I think is the max that can spawn). That should "slightly" increase the chances of jumping into a Quarantine, Hazard, or Industrial sector, etc... But not by too much.

Alternatively, if there was just some way to integrate those sector types into Infinite Space that would be great. I don't think Sleeper even would be opposed to that he just doesn't have time to rewrite a whole bunch of events.

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On a different note, what do you think about changing the trade system in CE to weapons, that can be placed in Cargo, rather than Augments. In order to use them in the Blue trade events all you would have to do is "equip" them when you get to a store. I figured out a way to allow the player to do this at the store before the trade "event" is displayed.

It works like this...
Essentially though the player only sees 3 screens.
1.) Flavor Text
2.) Actual Store Screen (where they can "equip" trade goods via the Sell menu)
3.) Trade Event

Russian Rockman wrote: I think I may have found a way to fix this issue though... I've tested this out and it works seamlessly. Basically it's a way to allow a player to visit the store, BEFORE being given the option to trade their special goods. This could also be useful for a couple of different things, event wise. At the very least you've got to admit it was interesting. Basically it works kind of like this:
1.)Player jumps to a STORE
[Event designated STORE displays intro flavor text, using ship load="" a neutral dummy trade station is loaded}
2.)Player chooses Continue...
[The station is set to ship hostile="true"]
3.)The Store screen opens and can be used normally, players can equip and unequip items using the Sell screen (This is hardcoded to happen before ship events and after normal events, a nice thing that can be exploited)
4.)When the Store screen is closed the trade screen immediately appears with the trade options to buy and sell, this used to happen before the Store opened.
[This is the important part: The ship which was set to hostile immediately surrenders, because the surrender conditions are set to min="22" max="22". The trade event is loaded and the station is reset to hostile="false".]
5.)The trade system works exactly the same as before in all other respects.

Of course some balancing issues might occur. To accommodate the new ability to transport multiple trade goods without sacrificing an Augment slot some of the trade good sales prices may have to be adjusted.

I'm just interested in hearing whether you think that would unbalance the game or not or whether you think it's not intuitive, etc...