Subset Games Forum

As i said in the first post, this mod is oriented for experienced players. Yesterday i got the last sector but i failed to kill the boss. Next time i will take a screenshot :p and i did it with the science ship, that is harder than almost anything else.

The first thing u need to do before almost anything else is to upgrade engines and pilot. I tell you, everytime i play i am not killed before sector 4 or 5. The great achievement of this mod is to reach the boss and of course beat the game.

The prices are so high because is intended, weapons and drones are more powerful than vanilla ones, so they need to be really expensive. Besides, this translates in high prices when u sell any omicron stuff, for example (that is an advantaje as well). Also, you will not be able, for example to use at a time 3 or 4 powerful weapons, like you do in the vanilla game, because thats intented as well, in conjunction with the high prices of every system and everything so you need to think how to configure your ship. In the vanilla game you can have a ship with even teleport, and cloack installed as well and usable and u will have power even to use 4 powerful weapons. This will not be possible in this mod most of the times, so you need to think wat configuration you want for your ship. As for this reason, when you select a class you need to be aware of all the systems available and all the features the ship have, because it will be not so easy to upgrade all the systems and adquire the weapons you want or the defense systems you want, not like in the vanilla game that there is no much sense since the prices are ridiculous sometimes, and u dont need to worry about not having scrap (i always ended with so many scrap in the vanilla game... and with all the systems maximized etc..). If u have a defense mark 2 available, the first thing in conjunction with engines is to upgrade the drone bay. Omicron ships depends a lot on defense systems, so when you have the chance, u need to adquire better defense systems (mark 3, mark 4, ultimate defense). This is difficult, but its really important to pass through later sectors. Engines is the most important thing, cuz this mod is not like vanilla ships, Omicron ships will need to run away a lot of times from a battle. Omicron ships are weak, they have low hp points, so when you see that u almost lose more than half of your hp bar, u need to run away from a battle (because its better to run away, repair and improve something else and return to the battle, to risk more hp points trying to finish an enemy). Because you dont need to worry about the fleet pursuing you, you ca nalways run away and improve some systems or investigate further the other beacons and then return again to the battle.

You just need to try with other classes, the easier ones. Ships that have great firepower like battleships, destroyers, planet killers can survive pretty well if you use the right weapon every time, the important thing is to aim always to the weapon systems of the enemy if you can. If the enemy has a drone bay and it is using attak drones to attack you, aim to the drone bay instead. Its more dangerous to having a drone around your ship than worrying about enemy fire (unless the enemy has missiles and you dont have even a defense mark I). If you have the chance to buy mantis crew, do it. Since when you fight the Omicron renegade ships (in the event) in some cases they will board you and if you manage to kill some of their crew (something that is hard without mantis crew, rock crew are great but is always faster attack, like mantis) you can run away and return again, Omicron ships crew are engi, so they will not be able to repair so fast the systems you destroy (usually using Omicron ships you will be damaging systems instead of just doing hull brute damage and thats one of the tactics to use with omicron ships).

Its hard, but its not impossible , in fact sometimes its easier than it seems, some games are just impossible to advance because FTL is based 50% on luck, and u can encounter a really hard ship just in the first beacon of the first sector (happenede to me xD) and its not the same playing with a vanilla ship with full shield cover than with an Omicron ship.. but thats the point of the mod. If someone is able to beat the boss, i will invite him to a couple of beers

I have not played this yet so no feedback for you. But I was wondering, how did you change the shields so that they only protect certain systems?

agigabyte wrote:I have not played this yet so no feedback for you. But I was wondering, how did you change the shields so that they only protect certain systems?

You can modify the size / position of the shields, and the systems that are out of the shield range will not be protected. As easy as modify the size of the shields in the myship.txt file

now, the hard part of this mod was to make the ship designs to fit the shield ellipse, and to let space for other rooms and the rest of the ship design. The enemy omicron ships are even harder, since the shield size needs to be modify manually (in player ships you can do that with an editor like superluminal) in the txt files and it cost me various trial/error changes to make the final size / position 100% accurate to the "guide" that covers the shields mounted in all omicron ships. Besides, the ui space for enemy ships is even smaller and enemy ships need to be smaller to fit in it.

Anyways, an inminent update is coming, with 2 new events and 2 new omicron enemies. These omicron enemies will be very hard, but you will able to adquire another blue energy source and a new unique weapon prototype, the omni laser.

Hey, quick question, I don't know if it's already been answered. How'd you get the one ship, the Omicron Grinder, to be able to start with 5 drones? Did you do that in the blueprints xml?

Starting drones are defined in the blueprints.xml.append. If using custom drones, these have to be defined as well.
count= refers to the number of drone types the ship is to start with
name= lists the starting drones (actual names are also in the blueprints)
drones= is the amount of supplies/uses
droneSlots tells the game how many drones can be powered at the same time, and how much space is needed for the UI.

As UltraMantis explained-

One thing, in <droneList count="1" drones="11">, the number specified in the "drones" part must be equal or higher than the total number of drones available in the ship, or some of them will dissapear. This is a bug i noticed time ago.

This could lead to some interesting possibilities that aren't allowed with the superliminal ship editor. A ship with, say, 7-8 guns, but no drones, or pretty much the exact opposite: 8 drones, not even a slot for a weapons control. although it could still have one custom weapon on it. *cough* artillery *cough*. Sadly, these ideas of mine could get a LITTLE overpowered quickly. And yes, I know normally you can only have 8 power in either weapons or drones, but that is changable. Which brings me to a different question: Is the reactor able to be enlarged, or is that hardcoded as well?

The problem on having only drone loadouts is that eventually your drone bay can be damaged or unusable, and that will really terrible xD. Besides, the UI will look just awful and you will not be able to click in the 6th drone and further xDD (the drone ui square cant be moved, this means it remains always in the same spot , no matter how many drone slots u use..) . I also thought on that as well, but actually the limited defenses of omicron ships will not survive to an only-drone loadout ship. I dont think you can make a ship with more than 4 usable weapon slots, never tried but thinking straight i dont think thats possible in any way.

The reactor power cant be changed, that is another hardcoded feature, sadly.

In vanilla game, having 8 wepon power bars is traduced that u can use 4 different weapons and even u will have more power than u will need xD. In this mod, u cant do that, since upgrading weapon systems is expensive and you will need to distribute all the upgrades you make, not like in the vanilla game, that u can upgrade everything u want/need without worrying about scrap or anything else..

Actually, if you don't have a weapons system, drones shift over to take it's spot. Noticed that when using a save editor to check out the flagship. (Also, oddly, the icon for the drone system had itself stuck on top of the artillery icon, instead of next to it like weapons does.) I'll have to test giving a ship more weapons as well. Either option would definitely need a new ui though. I haven't tried out your ships yet, but I want to. (I'm currently already using a mod that changes all player ships.)

ChrisM1A2 wrote:Actually, if you don't have a weapons system, drones shift over to take it's spot. Noticed that when using a save editor to check out the flagship. (Also, oddly, the icon for the drone system had itself stuck on top of the artillery icon, instead of next to it like weapons does.) I'll have to test giving a ship more weapons as well. Either option would definitely need a new ui though. I haven't tried out your ships yet, but I want to. (I'm currently already using a mod that changes all player ships.)

Really?
Ow i always thought, since you cant freely change the drone ui component, that even if you remove the weapon ui the drone slots will remain in the classic place no matter wat. I will need to look into that, but of course i dont like the icon of the drone by over the artillery one.. lol. Thats a bit odd..