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

[slowriderxcorps]

Hey, I've noticed that you've been adding a few modules to your kit, but there's a lack of description of what these modules are and what they do. Would you please consider adding some descriptions to your first post and readme please?

It was about time that I poked the front page with a stick regarding the modules. The first post has now been amended with a Modules section and the currently available Modules.

Code: Select all

Augmented Weapons Module (sMPK/CE/CEi) - Adds many different variations of weapons, each with their own unique perks and aesthetics.

Hard Flagship Module (all) - Replaces the final boss fight with a personally fine-tuned flagship engineered to put up a firm challenge to even the most powerful of cruiser.

Fleet Disabler (sMPK/CE) - Attempts to disable the Rebel advance by delaying them severely at the start of every sector.

Enhanced Systems Module (all) - Raises the upgrade limits on certain systems and subsystems, enabling them to be upgraded to new heights.

[Mr. Mister]

I'm pretty sure I updated my files, but... do you still have the "limit to 1 bar" method in for when the enemy hacks your engines? While you're right in that it does prevent lv1 engines' from not being able to jump off, it's also pretty bullshitty for dodge tanks, and pretty much every moment in late-game: you saw what happened to Bio when the 3rd stage flagship did it to him. You should really just put it at half and accept the only downside, though any player losing when he stil had lv1 engines didn't lose that much progress either.

Also, seems like the Light Crystal Bursts only have downsides compared to the Light Anti-Crew lasers. Consider giving them either 3 shield piercing instead of 2, or a higher breach chance, to compensate for both the higher cooldown and their intercepteable nature (unless you conwsider that to be a plus in front of some slow tier 1 drones).

In any case, what's your opinion on these slightly altered layouts? Keep in mind that your starting engie is not supposed to be taken on with this Vorted, but feel free to do so if you wanna keep him in the medbay 'til you buy some oxygen.

[slowriderxcorps]

I'm pretty sure I updated my files, but... do you still have the "limit to 1 bar" method in for when the enemy hacks your engines? While you're right in that it does prevent lv1 engines' from not being able to jump off, it's also pretty bullshitty for dodge tanks, and pretty much every moment in late-game: you saw what happened to Bio when the 3rd stage flagship did it to him. You should really just put it at half and accept the only downside, though any player losing when he stil had lv1 engines didn't lose that much progress either.

Also, seems like the Light Crystal Bursts only have downsides compared to the Light Anti-Crew lasers. Consider giving them either 3 shield piercing instead of 2, or a higher breach chance, to compensate for both the higher cooldown and their intercepteable nature (unless you conwsider that to be a plus in front of some slow tier 1 drones).

In any case, what's your opinion on these slightly altered layouts? Keep in mind that your starting engie is not supposed to be taken on with this Vorted, but feel free to do so if you wanna keep him in the medbay 'til you buy some oxygen.

I never went back to alter that.. the reason why I left it as such was that I tested that out as the Federation Cruiser unwittingly.. and to be perfectly honest, against Phase 3 of the flagship, it really didn't tilt the odds ridiculously against me. Then again, I did have the Artillery (Awesome) Beam, but then again any other ship would have Cloaking, so.. I don't know.

Light Crystals are actually really good compared to Light Lasers because of their damage in 'kit CE. They deal 30HP of crew damage each, in comparison to the 15HP for player-controlled non-spreadshot Light Lasers. I'd consider their vulnerability to drones and their sheer exclusivity to be their drawbacks.

As for these loadouts.. the Hasta (or now known as the Needle Beam) on ManB is curious, but I still personally stand on my belief that it should retain its second Shield. It's one of the two defining features of the ship compared to the rest, and I believe that a Tier 2 defense drone is not an acceptable substitute for the second shield because the first enemy shot will hit the shield bubble anyways before it is intercepted.

Vortex has Sensors but no Life Support, just like you like it.. you know, I might consider this as a module. I still kind of want the ship to behave like the normal Vortex, but the AI crew is still a neat idea.

Bravais appears to be a crew-nerfed vanilla CrystalA. Seeing Bio's play with the current loadout, I actually like that a lot. The way the Lock-Blast and Light Crystal work in unison with each other to seek and destroy enemy crew is beautiful, despite not having Lv2 Sensors or Slugs.

And Carnelian lacks any working Shields. I still don't know what to think of this. Fighting drones is a near-death sentence, but add a Zoltan Shield to the target ship.. if I do this, I'll HAVE to stop Zoltan Bombers from spawning in Sector 1. Those bastards are stupid enough in the super-early game as it is. Also, I'm not sure if the Light Crystal has any effect on Zoltan Shields at all.

[Mr. Mister]

Light Crystal has no effect on Zoltan shields. I didn't notice it was 30 perssonnel damage per shot, that explains why some of my strategies appeared riskier than their were... all is fine then, though I still think they could benefit from, instead of that, having double the breach chance, which would make the one my Carnelian starts with more useful against auto-ships (remember that time Bio had to shot 20 times before causing a breach? Yeah).

This Carnelian should be seen as an investement: if the enemy has Zoltan shields, you can either rely on vengeance (not recommended, though it's the one reason I once suggested making it 1-ion and 1-damage instead of full shield piercing), pray you have enough time to jump out, or surrender and give scrap. I like that it makes that last new option feel useful. Notice I also gave it one extra engines to compensate: it's no Stealth A, but it gets the job done.

BTW, I'm currently on a Carnelian run with that and I'm about to max my ship out... on sector 6 (Normal), drone control included. With boarding, you can hit the 100 scrap needed for shields far quickier than the Zoltan B (which is appropiate, because sometimes shields isn't what you should get first with the Zoltan B).

I gave the Hasta beam (I haven't played with that and I don't know what you did to it when you called it needle; I supose you didn't give it any shield piercing, right?) to the Mantis B so it started with a (very, very crappy) weapon, so it wouldn't strike so odd to have weapon systems but not weapons. It also lets that ship (excruciatingly) deplete Zoltan ships from the very beggining, which is also why I took away the second shield. I found that the defense drone can be used well if micro-managed, something I found accepteable though. Notice how it also starts with lv2 cockpit (Carnelian doesn't), which admittedly would be much more useful if the devs had decided to let auto-pilot charge FTL too.


O2-less Vortex can be lots of fun (boarders are always hilariously dead). My most precious memory was finding a ZOltan in an event and confining him to medbay- he would be alive without leeching power from the ship. There he remained, a spectator for the rest of my run.

BTW, the Mini-Beam drone series are from your inclusion, or are they in default CE too?

[slowriderxcorps]

Light Crystal has no effect on Zoltan shields. I didn't notice it was 30 perssonnel damage per shot, that explains why some of my strategies appeared riskier than their were... all is fine then, though I still think they could benefit from, instead of that, having double the breach chance, which would make the one my Carnelian starts with more useful against auto-ships (remember that time Bio had to shot 20 times before causing a breach? Yeah).

This Carnelian should be seen as an investement: if the enemy has Zoltan shields, you can either rely on vengeance (not recommended, though it's the one reason I once suggested making it 1-ion and 1-damage instead of full shield piercing), pray you have enough time to jump out, or surrender and give scrap. I like that it makes that last new option feel useful. Notice I also gave it one extra engines to compensate: it's no Stealth A, but it gets the job done.

BTW, I'm currently on a Carnelian run with that and I'm about to max my ship out... on sector 6 (Normal), drone control included. With boarding, you can hit the 100 scrap needed for shields far quickier than the Zoltan B (which is appropiate, because sometimes shields isn't what you should get first with the Zoltan B).

I gave the Hasta beam (I haven't played with that and I don't know what you did to it when you called it needle; I supose you didn't give it any shield piercing, right?) to the Mantis B so it started with a (very, very crappy) weapon, so it wouldn't strike so odd to have weapon systems but not weapons. It also lets that ship (excruciatingly) deplete Zoltan ships from the very beggining, which is also why I took away the second shield. I found that the defense drone can be used well if micro-managed, something I found accepteable though. Notice how it also starts with lv2 cockpit (Carnelian doesn't), which admittedly would be much more useful if the devs had decided to let auto-pilot charge FTL too.


O2-less Vortex can be lots of fun (boarders are always hilariously dead). My most precious memory was finding a ZOltan in an event and confining him to medbay- he would be alive without leeching power from the ship. There he remained, a spectator for the rest of my run.

BTW, the Mini-Beam drone series are from your inclusion, or are they in default CE too?

That's just a matter of luck, I guess. The Light Crystals have a 20% breach rate by default, whereas the basic Light Lasers have only a 10% rate.. except the enemy variants for some reason. I know they also deal double damage, but I'm not sure if double Breach Rate is also warranted.

I'm thinking more on the CrystalB'ness.. might actually go with it, after going through the enemy ship generation. Also the Mini Beam Drone II was a personal replacement for one of the ray drones, as I felt that both the Ray drone and the Heavy Beam drone did pretty much exactly the same thing with only a super-minor nuance in their proc rates that I didn't feel was enough to warrant it being a thing. In its place instead is the Mini-Beam II drone with its Anti-Ship II attack rate.

[Mr. Mister]

You know, the Beam Drone MkII was the reason I asked Sleepy about negative shield piercing on beams: if said shield piercing isn't weren't to be calculated when there are no shields to pierce, then said drone could be a 2-damage but -1-piercing. That would give even more variety, and the Ray Drone (which is one of my favourites) could be brought back.

I don't have the time now, so try testing beams with negative shield piercing (my recomendation is to start with a Shield Disruptor to ensure you can have shield-less enemies).

[Russian Rockman]

Hey Slowly,

I'm almost done with the UI stuff, mostly just need to redo a little bit more of the text which shouldn't be too hard.

Going through Aaaaaaaaallllllll the files though I noticed a lot of the tiny things you've changed. One thing I noticed was the realignment of some of the crew. I'm still not sure exactly what you changed, but I did notice before that some of the vanilla crew were a little off when using terminals and walking through doors and stuff. I noticed that the people files get overwritten by the Captain's Edition though, and probably any CEPM files as well. Do you think that is a big deal?

Also, I was playing around with the Federation Artillery animation and was trying to create an animation consisting of pretty much only glows, but then when I used that the front of the Federation Cruiser where the artillery would go went transparent on certain spots. It was weird. I even tried removing the first 2 frames of the artillery entirely, but it still went transparent. I can give you more details if you want, but I don't know what would cause that.

[SgtFrog]

This mod doesn't seem to work with the Beginning Scrap Advantage mod that Slipstream comes with. Argh.

[Russian Rockman]

This mod doesn't seem to work with the Beginning Scrap Advantage mod that Slipstream comes with. Argh.

Most mods don't work with that. Try downloading the FTL Profile Editor if you really want a starting advantage. It also allows you to do other things like rename your crew, I highly recommend it.

[slowriderxcorps]

Hey Slowly,

I'm almost done with the UI stuff, mostly just need to redo a little bit more of the text which shouldn't be too hard.

Going through Aaaaaaaaallllllll the files though I noticed a lot of the tiny things you've changed. One thing I noticed was the realignment of some of the crew. I'm still not sure exactly what you changed, but I did notice before that some of the vanilla crew were a little off when using terminals and walking through doors and stuff. I noticed that the people files get overwritten by the Captain's Edition though, and probably any CEPM files as well. Do you think that is a big deal?

Also, I was playing around with the Federation Artillery animation and was trying to create an animation consisting of pretty much only glows, but then when I used that the front of the Federation Cruiser where the artillery would go went transparent on certain spots. It was weird. I even tried removing the first 2 frames of the artillery entirely, but it still went transparent. I can give you more details if you want, but I don't know what would cause that.

Yeah, the crew realignment was something I did myself, primarily to fix the positioning of certain species within the Crew List as well as the crew customisation screen within the hangar, making them more central.

Fed Cruiser animation was hard to get to work right because the weapon won't appear at all unless the area where the weapon is is either partially transparent or not there at all (which makes the ship look wrong when making FTL jumps as all the ship weaponry isn't rendered during a jump).