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Author Topic: [0.96a-RC10] The P9 Colony Group - Faction mod (v0.54), Nexerelin Compatible  (Read 256491 times)

Zudgemud

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Re: [0.6.2a] The P9 Colony Group - Faction mod (v0.3.4), Exerelin Compatible
« Reply #30 on: February 08, 2014, 04:09:05 PM »

Update!
Spoiler
[close]

Added:

1 ship.
Spore mk II = Space-gocart deluxe, will run circles vs everyone 1vs1 but cost as much as a cruiser to deploy, also very bad at bumpercars.

6 more guns, most with really high flux consumption.
Small:
Taala Laser = small laser with the tachyon lance EMP effect, to balance this it has worthless damage and range and you cant turn it.
Saala Laser = small burst laser, good damage and ok flux consumption, but no turning.
P9 Vulcan = small ballistic, just as the vanilla vulcan but with 60% more projectile speed, slightly more range, 3x normal energy cost and 1 more OP to fit.

Medium:
Vaala Laser = burst laser with good damage but very high flux cost.
P9 Burst-mauler = Heavy mauler with double burst shots for more damage, worse accuracy, damage per shot and flux efficiency.
P9 Double Vulcan = Two vulcans one mount.

Changes:
Updated the looks of the Kaala.
Changed the Kaala ship system by making the charge effect much longer and the cooldown longer, now ships in its way will die when charged (if you charge the wrong things you will also die though).
Nerfed the T3-cannon by increasing the flux cost even more, was simply too fabulus.
Updated several ship variants to use the new guns.

Also made a new faction file for exerelin to include the Spore mk II.
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HELMUT

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Re: [0.6.2a] The P9 Colony Group - Faction mod (v0.3.4), Exerelin Compatible
« Reply #31 on: February 08, 2014, 04:21:28 PM »

I tried the Kaala in the previous version. Seems pretty powerful, it slaughter targets smaller than you but will get crushed against something of equal size or bigger. Not sure about the added lines on the armor, but still better than the previous one.
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Zudgemud

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Re: [0.6.2a] The P9 Colony Group - Faction mod (v0.3.4), Exerelin Compatible
« Reply #32 on: February 08, 2014, 04:41:12 PM »

Well if people think the Kaala is too good I'll just bash it a bit with the nerf hammer. I'm personally pretty OK with it's balancing atm, but this might also be because I'm terrible at using it since I keep jumping into the thick of the fight and dying. :(
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Zudgemud

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The Taala laser needs a little range increase.  I see what you're trying to do with it but I think the range could be 100 or even 150, this would let it be usable without being imbalanced.  At the moment, it's so short that most ships can't use it at all, because it doesn't extend all the way outside of the ship, much less the shield.  Even on something as small as the RS it's not usable, much less any vanilla ship.  As it is it only works when you literally ram the enemy which is suicide for practically any ship in your faction.
They are supposed to require the Advanced Optics hullmod to work effectively.

Quote
As for vanilla usability, I love the P9 Vulcan as an upgrade to the regular Vulcan, my Lashers love the distance increase.  It's also significantly better PD than the regular Vulcan when manually controlled, that projectile speed increase really makes a difference against Salamanders in particular.  I'm not yet sure if it's "good" or "too good" yet but I'll keep testing.  There is a problem, though, it's not set to "Point Defense" so it won't automatically attempt to shoot at missiles.
It is set to point defense so it will shoot missiles on its own, but it does not have the assigned tag to make this clear to the player. This is fixed in the latest version. I also upped the energy cost a bit.

Quote
The only thing I actively dislike about your faction is the fleetwide Burn Speed of 8.  I understand that your faction is meant to be very high speed, low armor, precision-strike-then-get-away strategy, but I can't catch any of their fleets in campaign mode to have some good fights with them.  I have to create a special fleet designed just to be able to catch P9 fleets before I can fight them at all, so I'm not really getting a good idea of how they perform in combat against vanilla.

I'm trying to move away from the "superfast everything + EMP damage" of the current faction setup, so this issue will also get revisited as this includes tweaking down the burn speed of several ships.

As for other things I'm working on for the next release:
Right now I intend to make the faction more dependent on dedicated "disabler ships" to incapacitate the enemy, and have fragile and fast DPS ships to kill whatever gets disabled. So far only the Stress fighter and a new Capital ship are built to be dedicated disabler, and I might add a destroyer sized disabler too, the three ships that currently have the EMP shipsystem are getting other shipsystems that does not incapacitate enemy ships.

This is a new Capital ship, the enormous laser is movable and rotates around the central command bridge. It is big, expensive and slow, lacks good offensive weapon slots or turret layout and has a tough frontal shield with poor coverage. The main selling point of this ship however, is *surprise surprise* the huge laser. The laser will overload any shield and then riddle it's target with EMP, basically doing no damage itself and just incapacitating it's target. One on one it can slowly slowly solo any ship without the speed or ability to get around it, but as soon as you have two opponents or more it dies really fast without backup since it's fat and unagile while only having a fixed forward shield. It's role on the battlefield is to incapacitate the biggest threats while fragile DPS ships such as the Sike and the Korlo can hopefully eat up the smaller stuff.


I'm also making some custom sounds for the various guns and shipsystems etc, though I must admit it's really hard to not make them sound like crap :(
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HELMUT

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That's quite a big baby you got there, bigger than an Onslaught. Your spriting definitely improved since you started this mod. However isn't the left side darker than the right side? It may be my screen doing weird tricks to me again though. If not, would be a good idea to rotate the ship to be more in harmony with Starsector usual lightning.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2014, 09:22:56 AM by HELMUT »
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Zudgemud

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I think it might be your screen that is a bit funny then, as I built the two sides from the same cloned half, lore-wise it is supposed to be a pimped version of the Paragons "Onslaught  like" predecessor, which is why it has that Onslaught like shape. Regarding the art style I didn't put much effort into the ships at the start, just cloned and kitbashed to get something usable, but as I now fiddle with this mod to relax after work I started putting more time into the sprites too. For the next release I'm also updating the sprites on most older ships, like the Tick and the Sike, which I still hate the look of.
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Zudgemud

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Will most likely release the next version tomorrow... without custom sounds for everything though, I apparently suck at this sound making stuff.
As for changes I just changed the Spore MkII to a divebomber, feels pretty awesome to play so far!

Also, no matter how much I polish the look of the Tick it just keeps being a turd :'(
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Zudgemud

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Major update
You can download it here or in the OP

Changes
Added the Samaa-DSI capital ship, made to tank and to disable enemy ships.
Some graphical overhaul on all ship sprites.
RS: Changed the RS shipsystem to an EMP drone, nerfed the speed.
Sl-t2: Changed ship system to frag charge missile defence.
Spore-mkII: Nerfed the speed, changed the two hardpoints to fixed vulcans, gave it a short burndrive and a couple of bombs, now you can play it as a dive bomber!   
Sike: Slight buffs overall
Sike-M: Changed the ship system to a fortress shield and to make it more of a useful distraction.
Mite: Removed the EMP ship system and added a fabulous flare system that gives you a massive speedboost while plopping out a trail of chaff, no steering so aim away from enemy ships...
Tick: Changed ship system to a swarm of weaponless sensor drones. Now it is still harmless but can be used to keep track of the battlefield from the sidelines.   
Added custom sounds for several guns and ship systems.
Added a mission, mainly for my own testing purposes but it's a pretty decent introduction on how to use the new capital ship.

Sadly this patch is not savegame compatible.


Here are the updated ship sprites.
Spoiler
Fighters


Frigates


Destroyers


Cruisers


Capitals
[close]
« Last Edit: March 30, 2014, 05:41:18 AM by Zudgemud »
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Zudgemud

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Woops, I had forgot to update the Exerelin faction shipfile and the mod version number, fixed in OP.
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HELMUT

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Tried to make a carrier based fleet, didn't went very well.

The Stress, while ungodly annoying, isn't actually dealing any form of damage. Good support but definitely not a backbone ship.

The Saksh system seems broken, only one turret is actually teleporting around. The two other usually ends up lost in space.

Couldn't find a MLMV, so don't know what it does.

Would be cool to also have a proper carrier. The Tick isn't really good for this, its phase cloak can't save it very long against enemy fighters, once it overload, it die to absolutely everything.

But the main problem with P9 is the collision damage. It may be an asteroid or a ship derelict, in both case your fleet seems very determinate to crash their own ship to death. There must be a way to avoid that big problem, especially at the start of the battle with the travel drive. Tecrys managed to make his BGE ships very resistant to collisions, maybe you could use the same trick for P9? I don't know how it work but currently P9 is borderline un-playable due to this problem so it badly need something to fix it.

Edit: By the way, WTF?

Spoiler
[close]
« Last Edit: April 22, 2014, 04:09:32 PM by HELMUT »
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Nanao-kun

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Looks like a joke ship.
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JDCollie

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Man, after playing against P9 in Exerelin, I understand what you were talking about with their fleets needing to work together to succeed. Individually P9 ships are almost universally a joke, but there are a huge number of very lethal combinations I have encountered.

In particular, the shield tankers (especially the aptly named "distraction" fighters) when combined with the phase-strike ships are a pain to deal with. Unless I am personally commanding the ships in question, my fleet will take a horrific beating in such a situation.

Also, there is a special place in hell for you for creating the Cyz-CHP. That thing feeds on my tears.  :'(


That being said, P9 ships still feel far too squishy. (With the exception of the CHP, which should go die in a fire) One wrong move, and they melt as if their armor were literally made of butter. I know the P9 are focused around group tactics, but ships like the Korlo still need something to help them against ships with multiple firing arcs. Hell, even PD weapons can deal significant damage at the moment. Maybe some locational heavy armor, such as only on the front "arms" of the ship would help?


The Samaa DSI needs a bit more visual feedback on the EMP beam weapon; I couldn't even tell when/if it was firing half of the time I was fighting it.



Overall though I am very excited to see where this mod goes. It has a fantastic and distinct feel to it, both visually and playstyle wise. Keep it up, man!   :D
« Last Edit: April 23, 2014, 01:53:54 PM by JDCollie »
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Zudgemud

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Had quite the hiatus from modding, too much stuff at work but now since I'm on vacation I can fiddle with this as much as I want!

Tried to make a carrier based fleet, didn't went very well.
I dont plan to make this faction more fighter heavy, but i might add some extra carrier and/or fighter at a future date. I thought about adding some fighter to do point defence though.

But the main problem with P9 is the collision damage.
I fixed this by setting ship weight to something absurdly low, the bad side is that the "impact" factor present in much PD weapons now is pretty good at messing with all P9 frigates, might keep it like that, works as a nice counter to their speed. 

Edit: By the way, WTF?
Spoiler
[close]
Joke ship, I added a much cooler one for the coming patch. :)


Man, after playing against P9 in Exerelin, I understand what you were talking about with their fleets needing to work together to succeed. Individually P9 ships are almost universally a joke, but there are a huge number of very lethal combinations I have encountered.

In particular, the shield tankers (especially the aptly named "distraction" fighters) when combined with the phase-strike ships are a pain to deal with. Unless I am personally commanding the ships in question, my fleet will take a horrific beating in such a situation.

Also, there is a special place in hell for you for creating the Cyz-CHP. That thing feeds on my tears.  :'(
I actually really dislike the Cyz, and I might rework it somehow next, so in time you will probably get rid of the current version.

That being said, P9 ships still feel far too squishy. (With the exception of the CHP, which should go die in a fire) One wrong move, and they melt as if their armor were literally made of butter. I know the P9 are focused around group tactics, but ships like the Korlo still need something to help them against ships with multiple firing arcs. Hell, even PD weapons can deal significant damage at the moment. Maybe some locational heavy armor, such as only on the front "arms" of the ship would help?
I changed the missile spewing Sike-M to a sheild tanker. Also, the general durability of P9 ships went up by quite a lot when I reduced collision damage and added an extra sliver of armor on the ones most prone get infected with sudden explosion syndrome...

The Samaa DSI needs a bit more visual feedback on the EMP beam weapon; I couldn't even tell when/if it was firing half of the time I was fighting it.
Gave the gun an appropriate animation, the problem is if you are too far away that you wont see that or hear the chargeup sound, dont really know how else to make the beam maxima more visible though.

Also, I'm glad you enjoy the mod :)



In the coming version I have so far added two ships and some small and medium guns. The ships are one supercapital (Samaa-EBM) and one cruiser (Silverfish-MPK).

The Saama-EBM is a pretty bog standard supercapital. It's "thing" is big magazine size and (if I get it to work) a minor medium gun damage bonus.
Spoiler

[close]



The Silverfish is a moderately durable armor tanking cruiser, the main features is its armor regeneration and speedburst cloak, it can only mount small guns and have a range penalty though.
Spoiler

[close]


I also made a lot of tweaks to several ships to make them more durable or handled better by the AI, and I doubled the deployment timer for some frigates to make them less gimp in the players hands.

The things left for the patch atm is basically making (non-crap) custom sounds for everything... I find this is pretty hard though :(
« Last Edit: August 04, 2014, 04:51:47 PM by Zudgemud »
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HELMUT

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Quote
I dont plan to make this faction more fighter heavy, but i might add some extra carrier and/or fighter at a future date. I thought about adding some fighter to do point defence though.

For now the Stress can't do nothing on its own and the Saksh turret was bugged when i played it. The last one is some kind of mining drone i think? Can't do much with those currently, at least one multipurpose fighter would help a lot.

Quote
I fixed this by setting ship weight to something absurdly low, the bad side is that the "impact" factor present in much PD weapons now is pretty good at messing with all P9 frigates, might keep it like that, works as a nice counter to their speed. 

Thanks god! Collisions were really breaking this mod. At least it will be playable now. Just have to be careful of graviton beams.

Also your two new ships are very impressive! Especially the Silverfish. I'm not that convinced by reusing the Saama's butt for the EBM variant, even though they are apparently from the same family. At least some little details to differentiate it from the original?

Oh and i love the black tubes thingies at the front.
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Zudgemud

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Re: [0.65.2a] The P9 Colony Group - Faction mod (v0.4), Exerelin Compatible
« Reply #44 on: September 23, 2014, 04:55:39 PM »

Major update!

Did lots of rebalance and various buffing (and now all ships wont vaporize when touching an asteroid) added proper in game info for everything and a couple of portraits, also added the following.

Fighters
Spoiler
Made of murder and terror.
[close]

Cruisers
Spoiler
The carrier poops infinite longrange probes/missiles!
[close]

Capitals
Spoiler
Pretty normal slugger.
[close]

Guns
Spoiler
Small



Medium


Large


[close]
« Last Edit: April 02, 2015, 09:10:59 AM by Zudgemud »
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