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Author Topic: [0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)  (Read 34455 times)

Undefined

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[0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)
« on: April 25, 2017, 07:13:06 AM »


Arkandian Institute
(Ver. 0.1.0)

   *DOWNLOAD LINK*    



The Arkandian Institute is my first attempt at a decent sized Starsector mod, I've been playing the game for years and as a techy-tinkerer have played with various bits and pieces from time to time for my own use but generally have been content to fill my universe with the wonderful creations other people have made. With the 0.8 release I felt that it was a good time to really flesh out and develop a faction of my own to share and give back as well as potentially work on some larger ideas I have for new mechanics. This initial release is the bare bones addition of a new faction, though they're fairly substantial bones. In all the mod introduces 24 new ships, mostly frigates for variety, 11 new weapons and a couple of basic ship systems.
I have a lot more planned to bring something a little more unique but felt it's in a good place to get some feedback on what I have so far and the direction it's taking and I'm sure everyone loves playing with new ships as much as I do when I see a new mod. :)

Next step I have in mind is to flesh out the selection of civilian ships and add a specialised frontier exploration ship given the focus of this recent update, I want this faction to not use anything but its own technology though at the minute it's still using a couple of vanilla systems/hulls, I also want to do a lot of tweaking to current stuff both visually and code-wise. Graphically several ships can look quite flat and dull.

The mod is designed to be fairly well balanced to vanilla, the faction is high-tech, quite reliant on drone systems and has some glaringly large weaknesses to exploit such as weak PD and an absolute lack of any missile capability along with an over-reliance on energy weapons. The Arkan system & faction have been added to the campaign and can be found within the core worlds, they've also established small outposts in a couple of neighbouring systems to get them more involved with sector politics.

Lore is still a WIP as I'm not really a lore guy, but is present in-game in a basic form: The Arkandian Institute was established very recently. Arkandia itself was held, trapped in a temporal stasis field and cloaked from the outside galaxy by advanced technology within its orbiting station, the origin and purpose of this is unknown along with the duration that this field was in effect. When the field fell scientists quickly claimed the station and established a shipyard in order to head out and explore the universe which had been opened to them.
The Institute has developed a fascination with exploration and recovering the lost treasures on the galaxy, many believe this is due to their passion to discovering the answers to exactly why and when their world was locked away from the rest of the universe.

Ship Examples

Spoiler


Bulker Frigate


Logicator Carrier/Freighter


Hawkstorm flagship Cruiser


Stellar Caravan Freighter


Star Lance Destroyer


Barclay Heavy Cruiser


Duelist Cruiser


Melded Prototype Destroyer

Lawmaker Capital Ship

[close]

I hope you enjoy, please do let me know of any issues you have or any feedback on particular aspects.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2017, 07:16:20 AM by Undefined »
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adimetro00

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Re: [0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2017, 08:36:02 AM »

The ship looks funky. What software do you use to make the ships?
Also that portraits  :P
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Tufted Titmouse

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Re: [0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2017, 11:12:26 AM »

Download link is Borked
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Undefined

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Re: [0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2017, 01:15:08 PM »

The ship looks funky. What software do you use to make the ships?
Also that portraits  :P

Good ol' Photoshop, I'm not a very good artist but I'm a fair designer, they're constructed from modular ship parts hence the repeated elements you can see in each :)
I want to do a few more passes over them to blend better, drop in some filters and add more aesthetic differences etc.
Those and the portraits are from an old game I was working on but never finished which generated custom ships form modular parts and avatars from adding/removing template elements so I knocked up a bunch to use.

Download link is Borked

Strange, it's working fine for me, does anyone else have an issue downloading?
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Tufted Titmouse

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Re: [0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2017, 01:30:48 PM »

Strange, it's working fine for me, does anyone else have an issue downloading?

Nevermind it was my browser being stupid
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Calodine

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Re: [0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2017, 04:37:36 PM »

So just taking a look at the weapons so far, the archonic disruptor...Seems to be a worse phase lance, with better range and kinetic, but costs 3x the OP and is a large slot. Even if you double the damage, it's still a worse tachyon lance with kinetic damage. Less range, lower damage, no EMP, no EMP through shield AND costs a good chunk more OP - And that's if you DOUBLE it's current damage. Probably needs a bit of a buff :P

The charged archon beam is a slightly better (But costs 1 more OP) graviton beam - stats aren't busted or anything, just, it's almost the same. Slightly more damage and flux/second, slightly higher OP cost. Nothing particularly WRONG with it, just maybe wanna differentiate it a little?

Photon pulsator is much more efficient than a heavy blaster, but fires slower, does quite a bit less damage and costs more OP. I like it as a high damage option vs large ships for frigates/destroyers that can't afford heavy blaster flux costs (So most of them). Is gud.

Null ripper seems too strong - very high firerate, very high dps, HUGELY flux efficient, and 800 range. Almost certainly needs to cost a bit more flux - how much depends, since the description says it's supposed to be wildly innacurate, but it's actually about as accurate as a pulse laser. Maybe moreso? Should probably cost at least 400 flux/second, probably more unless you make it less accurate.

The precision beam doing 10 more DPS than the tac laser probably doesn't make up for the 100 range lost - Again a case where I'd suggest differentiating it somehow, but if you want to keep it as 'slightly different tac laser', could probably go up a bit on damage - 100 range is quite a bit more valuable than 10dps.

The micro fuser seems to just be a mining laser with more range and a nicer sprite.

The photon streamer looks nice - but it's damage is too low. It's range fits in between the LR and standard PD laser (Neither of which are very good), but it has almost half the damage - that's just not enough to kill missiles reliably, let alone fighters. Low flux cost is nice, but a 40dps beam will have trouble doing PD.

The archon cannon is nice, since it fills a niche small energy weapons don't really have at the moment - decent kinetic options. But 200 dps at 800 range is probably too much, even for 8 OP. A light needler costs 1 more, but has 3/4 the damage output. It's less efficient than the needler, but 200 is probably overkill.

Photon slugger is quite nice, but feels a bit too similar to the hephaestus, could do with a bit of differentiating here too.

Photon fountain I dunno - on paper, 2400 dps from a single turret is absolutely insane, especially out to 1000 range. On the other hand, 2400 flux. PROBABLY still too good, but 2400 per second is a lot of flux.

Haven't looked at the ships themselves yet, sorry :(
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Maelstrom

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Re: [0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2017, 04:39:42 PM »

congrats for making your first mod :P Can't say I will use it sadly as I don't like the way ships look but nice job :P
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Owl

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Re: [0.8a] Arkandian Institute (25/04/17)
« Reply #7 on: February 07, 2018, 09:41:36 PM »

been hanging out to try your mod out is it ok with .81a?
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