Motherships Mod v0.1

[Goblin Wizard]

You're right. Silver Arrow is overpowered if you use it that way. I simply like to have installed many different systems. Hmm... what you prefer: less system slots or lower speed and maneuverability?

General idea: For me battles are too short. All ships (especially fighters) die too fast. Devs gave us 4 tier weapons but ships' hp stays unchanged. What about e.g. doubling all ships hp? It may change some one hit weapons (like torpedoes) to be less useful but it should make the game more challenging. Let me know what you think. Any other ideas are welcomed too. I'm open to any suggestions.

PS. Dumorimasoddaa check your pm.

Careful, not all ships scale well. E.g. I tripled ships' hp but then capital ships take too long to kill. Missiles damage is still ok if you use pilot with rocket perks. Try 3x fighter hp, 2x capital ship hp. Stations don't need adjusting. Pulse laser damage divided by 3 is still strong. Actually, you could try halving all damage.

Other than that, I dunno. Been playing hard difficulty + fleet mod so I get in plenty of large fights and I agree they're over too fast. It's not easy to figure out what to adjust without breaking something else.

Silver Arrow? Fewer slots would be better than sacrificing maneuverability. Main problem is we can't limit gun tiers / guns are too strong. With maxed Bryna&KT I don't even have to tank, just park it near the fight and it'll kill anything. Often I don't even bother launching my fighters... that's wrong

We still can't get rockets on mothership? Might be better to have only 1-2 guns, the rest use rocket slots. Thoughts?

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

We still can't get rockets on mothership? Might be better to have only 1-2 guns, the rest use rocket slots. Thoughts?

Check this test version.
Changes:
In the maintenance station menu you'll find Summon Trade Station perk (it's free). In the mothership section buy alien dread. It has 4 missile slots. When you activate the perk you can load missile luncher. In order to prevent wasting missiles you have to load lunchers just before the shot and unload it manually if you want to stop shooting (if you use torpedoes it's not a problem). Perk has 99 uses so it shouldn't be a problem. It's the only way, I've found, to simulate on/off fighters ability. After you deplete the missiles you have to manually unload empty rack and load new one.

For now you can buy some fighters and guns in the shop but I'll probably remove them in the normal version. FTU market contains one BigShip converted to Interceptor so you can try a little alien fleet . Unfortunately, interceptor's AI has some problems with handling big, slow ships.

Of course, you can change all your ms armament during a fly. Imo it's cheating but I can't prevent it

I'm waiting for comments

Thanks Goblin Wizard, I'll test it when I get back. Btw what do you mean torpedoes are not a problem?

Manually reloading the rocket slots (i.e. triggering the Summon Trade Station) should be okay with 99 uses. Changing armaments on the fly is a problem... maybe. As long as players can't actually buy anything new from the perk it should be ok - the perk summon is calling up an empty station, right? Try this: limit the perk to 20 uses so that the player is not careless with changing gear every 2-3 minutes. 20 uses should be enough, hell I spam the regular skills just fine and those are 5 uses. Do we know when the player skills are reset?

Are those rocket slots for the mothership identical to rocket slots on fighters? If not I can design ones more suitable for the mothership. No big deal if they are the same, just thinking of variety.

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

Thanks Goblin Wizard, I'll test it when I get back. Btw what do you mean torpedoes are not a problem?

There is one torpedo in a pack. That's why ms can't waste it like e.g. Hailstorm (32 in pack)

Manually reloading the rocket slots (i.e. triggering the Summon Trade Station) should be okay with 99 uses. Changing armaments on the fly is a problem... maybe. As long as players can't actually buy anything new from the perk it should be ok - the perk summon is calling up an empty station, right?

You can actually buy some ships and equipment in the shop but emptying it, it's not a problem.

Do we know when the player skills are reset?

What do you mean?

Are those rocket slots for the mothership identical to rocket slots on fighters? If not I can design ones more suitable for the mothership. No big deal if they are the same, just thinking of variety.

Slots are identical. You can use the same missiles as fighters use. To make a difference we can set some of the missiles "ONLY_BIGSHIP" and others "ONLY_FIGHTER" (like systems).

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

There is one torpedo in a pack. That's why ms can't waste it like e.g. Hailstorm (32 in pack)

Hmm, so there is no problem because there is only 1 missile to fire.

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

What do you mean?

I mean when do the pilots' skill usages get reset? Example, pilot has 3 uses of salvo. After using them up, when does the game reset it so he can use it 3 times again? Just realised this isn't important to know - I was thinking about using this to limit the number of times the perk can be used but maybe it's not possible. I'd rather actually have the perk use to fire the missiles, and not care how many times the player loads. This way player can choose when to fire them instead of mothership automatically firing them the moment it detects hostiles.

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

Slots are identical. You can use the same missiles as fighters use. To make a difference we can set some of the missiles "ONLY_BIGSHIP" and others "ONLY_FIGHTER" (like systems).

Oh right, I forgot about those tags

Edit:
Crap, cousin borrowed that laptop so I can't test until next week.

[Goblin Wizard]

All perks get reset when you jump through the gate.

[Dumorimasoddaa]

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

For now you can buy some fighters and guns in the shop but I'll probably remove them in the normal version.

Of course, you can change all your ms armament during a fly. Imo it's cheating but I can't prevent it

Keep it as a stocked shop and sell the fighters and such from the maternee station there.

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

Of course, you can change all your ms armament during a fly. Imo it's cheating but I can't prevent it

I'm waiting for comments

+ It works
o Can't see how many missiles are left - fortunately can just view inventory (press B) instead of using up a perk
- Players can attach any module, not just rockets - reattaching any shield module fully recharges shields to max, this is a big exploit
- Cannot use perk unless hero is launched

I noticed you modded torpedo 1 to have 10 uses. Btw the Alien Dreadnaught isn't the best ship to test missiles, it turns too slowly and it seems to only fire missiles within a narrow arc - most of the time it doesn't even turn to face hostiles but relies on turrets. I didn't attach any turrets at all so the ship just hovered there facing one direction while enemies flew around shooting it. Perhaps this is due to how the rocket slots are positioned. In a way, this is good, since the mothership won't simply spam rockets unless target is within arc of fire. It also only seems to fire rockets if the target is at a certain distance - I noticed it wouldn't fire at point-blank targets. This might be a particular rocket setting though.

[Goblin Wizard]

Alien Dreadnaught isn't indeed the best ship to test but the only one with 4 missile slots now. But imo mothership is not supposed to kill fighters with missiles. The missiles for mothership are those with long range and high damage (and eventually MIRVs). Mothership should use missile to fight with other mothership, battle stations and such.

You're right. This method has many disadvantages. Activating shop via perk is generally an exploit but it's the only way to load/unload missile bay. There is no command in the script which let you do it. You can't add fighter's options to mothership's GUI too. So.. the question is: Is this method really worth to keep it that way? Do we need mothership with missiles that much?

btw If you want to fire at point blank you have to load missile first and then set target (or simply cancel the fire order and set it again). I think it worked that way.

P.S. 10 torpedoes is just a remnant of previous tests.