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dpelectric

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Looks good to me. My only concern is that I'm not it will be possible to get the xenopedia entry without downing the UFO with regular interceptors (it depends on whether you recover stuff from a Fury's attack or not).

It might be necessary to tie it into another tech somehow.

EDIT: @Kevin: it won't have a crew, as they don't leave crash sites.

EDIT 2: Actually, is it worth indicating that in the xenopedia entry in case people take it as a challenge to try and shoot it down with regular interceptors to get a different UFO ground mission.

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Looks like I forgot that bit. Added the bolded bit:

If the Battleship was a thunderstorm, then the Dreadnought is a typhoon. I have reason to believe that the Dreadnought is the aliens’ most powerful ship class in the alien fleet. Its crew complement is similarly fearsome, holding the cream of the aliens’ army.

The vessel is even faster and armored than a Battleship, cruising at 48 hundred kilometers an hour and sporting hardened alenium plating more than a meter thick. Its armament is even more impressive. Not only does it have a powerful forward-facing beam that is capable of annihilating skyscrapers, it also has a point-defense system that renders our missiles and torpedoes useless.

Battling this beast with conventional interceptors is highly unadvised. Even our venerable Marauders are unable to keep up with this vessel, and even if they were able to catch one their weaponry is outmatched and they will be easily swatted aside. Not all is lost however. Our Furies are capable of intercepting these vessels and the Gravity Pulse Torpedo can be detonated out of the effective range of the point-defense system. Although it is regrettable that the technology contained within is lost, even I understand sacrifices must be made in the battle against extinction.

How's it read now?

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Looks good to me. My only concern is that I'm not it will be possible to get the xenopedia entry without downing the UFO with regular interceptors (it depends on whether you recover stuff from a Fury's attack or not).

It might be necessary to tie it into another tech somehow.

Hm, well that might be a little problem, if we were to tie it to another tech what would you suggest?

EDIT: @Kevin: it won't have a crew, as they don't leave crash sites.

EDIT 2: Actually, is it worth indicating that in the xenopedia entry in case people take it as a challenge to try and shoot it down with regular interceptors to get a different UFO ground mission.

I'll try to come up with some fluff saying so, but any suggestions?

Anyway, edited the beginning of the Battleship Xenopedia entry to indicate it's not the alien's ultimate craft.

The Battleship is an enormous alien UFO with a crew of elite alien soldiers. We believe it represents the one of the largest UFO class in the alien fleet, matching the second largest orbital signals we have been tracking almost exactly.

Edited by skaianDestiny
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Regarding the xenopedia drop, I honestly don't know.

Potentially, it could be tied in with a UFO type of equivalent class. E.g. the Battleship core could give the Dreadnought entry too, or they could be merged into a single "Alien Capital Ships" entry instead perhaps. In fact, I'm not sure there's likely to be a better solution than that, even though it's not especially great.

EDIT: Regarding the no crash sites thing, possibly something to do with the anti-gravity field being integral to holding the ship together and if it is damaged or destroyed then the ship will tare itself apart?

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We could have the battleship not immediately give info on itself, and have it trigger a research called "Battleship datacore decryption". This unlocks both the Battleship and Dreadnought entries. Lore-wise it's justified as since it's one of the aliens' more important types of craft (they contain Praetors after all), they spent the time to encrypt the data within.

I was thinking the dreadnought having a larger singularity core, which is more fragile than a battleship's. Significant enough damage to down a dreadnought destabilizes the core and incinerates the craft. If we go with this, how does removing the rewards for shooting it down sound?

Edited by skaianDestiny
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Regarding the xenopedia drop, I honestly don't know.

Call this a dumb question if you must but since I have never used the Fury (Built one and then got the final mission so I skipped using it.)

If a Fury takes on a Fighter or Heavy Fighter do you not get the 1x alien alloy??

If so re-purpose that code to cause an un-useable but unique to the new ships item to drop to trigger entries. If not well then it was a dumb idea.

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Apparently you haven't read through all of it.

Um, this is really easy to do if you actually pay attention. The game outright tells you what UFO it is if you have the quantum whatever building, which you should have once the larger ships go come, and even before that you can ID a UFO with the speed that is listed with the pop-up.

Well that is a new building for me. I have had three campaigns and never gotten that building (mind you I only survived to the end once but still....)

Yeah, if you read the last couple of pages this was a pretty big subject of debate. It's hard-coded into the game that any weapon with the "super-heavy" attribute will instakill anything. The only way to get around this is to give the Fury heavy hard points, and that defeats the purpose considering we want the Fury to be relevant. [/Quote]

Thanks I was trying to clear that up. I guess I was reading the last few pages of this too fast in my excitement to post my thoughts yesterday.

Well I have said it before, the Hardpoint system in this game is too simplistic. This is just another example. I would love to see Light/Medium/Heavy Missile pylons, with the pylon having the weapon count. The Heavy Missile would be a "Torpedo" replacement and Super Heavy Missiles would be the big damage dealer (and not an auto complete kill.) Probably a question to post in a seperate thread but, how much, if any, of this kind of thing is the CE group able to affect for Mods?

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Well that is a new building for me. I have had three campaigns and never gotten that building (mind you I only survived to the end once but still....)

Thanks I was trying to clear that up. I guess I was reading the last few pages of this too fast in my excitement to post my thoughts yesterday.

Well I have said it before, the Hardpoint system in this game is too simplistic. This is just another example. I would love to see Light/Medium/Heavy Missile pylons, with the pylon having the weapon count. The Heavy Missile would be a "Torpedo" replacement and Super Heavy Missiles would be the big damage dealer (and not an auto complete kill.) Probably a question to post in a seperate thread but, how much, if any, of this kind of thing is the CE group able to affect for Mods?

You'll have to ask the community coders. But from what they said about the super heavy hard point it's impossible to change this.

---

EDIT:

So I found a bug. Because Kabill specified that the new UFOs can land, and IIRC the maps needed weren't specified. So when I tried loading a mission with a grounded dreadnought the game was stuck loading. To fix this I've removed "CanLand" feature from the new aircraft.

Edited by skaianDestiny
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Okay, I'm implementing this idea:

We could have the battleship not immediately give info on itself, and have it trigger a research called "Battleship datacore decryption". This unlocks both the Battleship and Dreadnought entries. Lore-wise it's justified as since it's one of the aliens' more important types of craft (they contain Praetors after all), they spent the time to encrypt the data within.

I want to create a new Researches.AlienCapitalShips, however I don't want the old research Researches.AlienBattleshipDatacore to be shown. How would I go about doing this?

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500px-GoodNewsEveryone.jpg

Good news everyone!

Chris was able to give the psd file for the destroyer! Dicked around a bit and produced this:

UFOassaultcarrier.png

Not exactly high-quality, but it was the best I could do. If anyone's better at photoshop, I can pm you the destroyer's psd file.

But yeah, I think this mod's getting closer to completion.

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The things that seem to be off from that pic compared to the normal Xenopedia pics:

A small black line should be stroked around the main picture.

The background color is slightly off.

There's one pixel of pure white in the orthographic projects to the side of the pic.

The orthographic projections should have a slightly darker base color than the background.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to photoshop at home any longer, and I doubt that work would be happy if I used their computers for this. I'd do it in GIMP except I can't figure out how to do the stroke the proper way in GIMP (I haven't really used it before), so... Hopefully my points will help whoever comes in and does it properly.

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The things that seem to be off from that pic compared to the normal Xenopedia pics:

A small black line should be stroked around the main picture.

Did the stroking.

The background color is slightly off.

Nope, I used the UFOs.psd file in the xenopedia images folder, where the background is a separate layer.

There's one pixel of pure white in the orthographic projects to the side of the pic.

Fixed.

The orthographic projections should have a slightly darker base color than the background.

Yeah, I'll need help with this. I'll PM you the psd for the entire thing.

Here's what it looks like now:

UFOassaultlander2.png

Strike Cruiser for reference.

UFOstrikecruiser.jpg

---

I've made some changes to the Assault Carrier.

-Renamed from Assault Carrier to Assault Lander.

-Weaponry is now 2x AV.DESTROYERMISSILES. Their stats are shown below.

AV.DESTROYERMISSILESDamage:			50ROF:			0.1Ammo:			100Firing Arc:		140Lock Time:		1Proj. Speed:		18000Proj. Turn Rate:	500

-HP has been reduced to 4000

-Xenopedia entry has been completed:

The Assault Lander is an evolution of the Landing Ship that we have grown familiar to. Whereas the Landing Ship was a slow, bulky transport, the Assault Lander is a sleek, lightning fast, and armed to the teeth. Like the alien Bomber however, the Assault Lander’s ammunition will detonate if the vessel has been damaged enough to be “sunk”, so to speak, leaving little to salvage.

The armament consists of a two rapid fire missile launchers at the tips of the front section. These missiles seem to have an extremely high tracking and turning ability, making evasive maneuvers nearly useless and shredding any craft should they attempt close combat. It also sports a small beam whose purpose is to shoot down any missiles that are fired at the vessel, making long range attacks useless. In addition, the Assault Lander is capable of attaining speeds greater than any UFO we have previously encountered.

Like its predecessor, the Assault Lander possesses an abnormally large crew for its size. Unlike its predecessor however, the Assault does not seem to be stocked for long-term goals. Indeed, with a not-insignificant amount of space taken up by the weapons, there is barely room for the soldiers, let alone supplies for a base. With these factors in mind, I have determined that the Assault Lander was meant to strike deep in enemy territory, using its weaponry and speed to bypass any defenses.

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