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With the 'Proposed Auton Changes' ticket at Ministry, I may consider removing the Oracle autons and their derivatives (or simply disable them) because ZapSats are one of the more processor-intensive items in the game.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies and Drakian Legacy to Xelerus.

This is mainly a weapon rebalance. Beamers gain WMD to make them useful. Drake loses some ammo weapons and gains some new matter weapons. Also, added new manufacturer Dartz, who have taken the multiturrets and zapsats based on them away from Drake. With the new weapons Drake gained, Drake had too many weapons again, and the dumb-fire ammo weapons were removed (which were too similar to Akan30 and thermo cannon anyway) and the weapons Dartz gained did not feel like Drake's style (which is whatever weapons I want to use, and I like to use my beamers as energy weapons). After losing those excess weapons, Drake still has a bit much, but within acceptable limits.

A note on WMD for beamers. I decided that because WMD is irrelevant against the playership (because player can only pilot small ships), and shot speed beyond a certain point is irrelevant against NPCs (because they do not dodge or move erratically), I decided to use the greater of shot speed or WMD for the purpose of balancing beamers. Beamers should be more satisfying to use now, instead of being an inferior Star Wars blaster with worse DPS and range.

After adding more weapons to Drake, I am considering removing some of the weapons that were given to Brik, namely the spikers and fusion blasters. Since I could not make a good decision, I left them alone for now. In particular, I like the spikers, but they seem too powerful for their level. Better than medium range, fast shot speed, good WMD - basically Flenser-lite. The new Earthdrake cannons added to Drake are sort of meant to be a toned down replacement (although my main priority at the time was something with more range and WMD than a beamer, before I added WMD to beamers).
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies to Xelerus.

Notable changes:
* Added two launcher-mounted beamers that use ammo. I added this as an energy damage option for the launcher slot. While they get the job done, I may not be totally satisfied with them. It is an experiment of sorts.

* The Brik spikers now take two slots to install. In exchange, they have more range and damage. The autons that used these weapons were removed.

There are few more minor bug fixes.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

After playing through a recent game, I will probably work on a minor update to Drake Technologies to address some things. I found one or two minor bugs I forgot to fix and should fix. Aside from that, after playing around with a drone bay and the command device, I will probably remove the latter or maybe make it a Tinker exclusive. The reason is drones require too much micromanagement to use properly after they become a fleet to command. In serious fights, the fragile drones keep getting hurt enough to return to your ship then redeploy, and the player needs to command them yet again to either make them fight or reset formation. Also, I am still not completely satisfied with some of the recent additions and I may change or remove them.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies to Xelerus, again.

This is a minor bugfix and tweak release. However, few items were removed and a restart will be necessary.

Notable changes:
* Removed the high-level beam launcher and two of the ammo it used. The remaining one (the Taze knockoff) is compatible with the low-level beam launcher.
* Removed the Swarmer style drone bays for producing too fragile drones, while enabled the alternative matter damage drone bays from Drake.
* The drone command device can no longer be purchased normally. I will probably keep it as a unique reward for a later release.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies to Xelerus, yet again. This one is minor tweaks to the mining weapons. The beamer drills have passthrough to pass through mined ore, making it possible to get more than one mined ore per burst (instead of the first mined ore blocking the beam and slowing down mining unnecessarily). DPS of those weapons were reduced by about 50%. To compensate, damage to asteroids with ore will be multiplied by six (to be on par with omni ion drill) to make it more likely it will spew more ore in fewer mined ore objects. The Shockdrake cannon was also given the damage bonus to asteroids to try to cut down on the mined ore spam.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Some comments about my mod Drake Technologies after playing a few real games with it.

Finally tried the berserker device, and with good armor, it feels too powerful. I was able to go through nearly the whole game with it, and did not replace it. I have half a mind to tone down the speed bonus to about two-thirds faster, or speed:60 instead of speed:50. I do not want to remove the berserker device because it is fun to use, and I may have an idea for a new manufacturer that is centered around the berserker device.

Items leveling up feels like cheating. Player with money to burn can easily upgrade various item just by spending money at dock services. It is also a loophole around shop level limits. On the other hand, leveling up is convenient for reducing the number of items I would add. It kind of stinks adding many items whose only difference is the level. (Just look at Drake's Tier shields. I would rather add three or four that can level up instead of ten, one for each level.)

After playing with most of Drake's weapons (in two real games), I am mostly satified with the beamers and most ammo weapons. I am uncertain with the new *drake matter weapons, although they were added in case I need them for new ships to come later. I had fun blasting endgame enemies with the Tachyon Bella. Feels a bit too unfair with the Domina power Strengthen. Might tone down the damage a bit.
I think I will start on another update. Some ideas I will try to work on or things to do.

Ammo forge! New 150 ton hold that can fabricate missiles, given enough materials. Something to use when trader and miner holds are no longer useful. Will likely be a Tinker recipe (maybe requiring miner's hold and patcher arm to craft).

Dartz has been renamed to Licht. Idea is to use gratuitous German names for everything about the manufacturer. Maybe add a mine launcher that deploys static beam zappers to reinforce the Ruby/Emerald/Sapphire theme. So far, they were handed the energy weapon scraps from Drake.

I am strongly considering removing Brik. The DRx armor will probably be removed, since they were designed before the 1.8 armor rebalanced and have not aged well. Some of the weapons might be removed or moved to different manufacturers. If Brik stays, it will probably be renamed so its name does not look too similar to the new manufacturer I may add.

I may add a new manufacturer called Blud (blood). Their gimmick will be the berserker device, and they may steal some of the close-range weapons from Brik. I have a few ideas I try and can give them goodies if they work out.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies to Xelerus.

The highlight of this update is a new "missile forge" hold. It is level 4 and "rare". In addition to adding up to 150 tons of capacity like most other holds, it lets the player feed ore and industrial resources to the forge for resource points and spend them to fabricate missiles for ammo weapons installed on the playership. Illegal or military ammo requires military ID.

Berserker device has been weakened a bit. Now speeds up weapon fire rates by about 66% instead of 100%. I almost gave it to Brik, but decided to leave ownership to no one for now.

The Brik "Track" module has been generalized. Now, it applies to any blast weapon that does not use ammo and is not a howitzer. It works on slam cannons, Moskva weapons, magma cutter, most of the unlimited blast weapons added by Drake Technologies, and other similar weapons from other extensions. The speed penalty is still there, but now omni weapons and tracking weapons are exempt from the penalty.

Brik is still here for the moment. I decided to focus on a theme of weapons for Brik, which is short-ranged brawling weapons. I removed all of the (old) HiX cannons because they had too much range (compared to the rest of their weapons) and they were not much more than a Xiphon cannon knockoff. In their place, I added more flare guns, or fragmentation blast weapons, plus an unlimited flamethrower. I keep one HiX weapon as a replacement mining weapon. Also removed the spikers and the DRx armor. In the end, I decided not to add Blud, but change Brik to fit the theme. If I go for a name change later, Serc or Zerk could be an idea.

Dartz has been renamed to Licht. I tried beam zappers, or mines that shoot beams at enemies (kind of like Hydra from Diablo games), but they felt cheesy and overpowered, and dropped the idea.

I forgot to lower the damage of Tachyon Bella this time. I may fix that next time.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Just a quick note that I am working on another update to Drake Technologies, given the changes wrought by 1.9 beta 2, especially with autons.

I am considering redo-ing the drone bays. For the next attempt, I will probably take an idea from my recently finished missile forge hold and make the new drone bay build some special auton types exclusive to the bay (smaller versions of Redshirt and friends with weaker but cheaper weapons and armor). I will probably make this new drone bay eat resources just like the missile forge (although maximum will be higher). It would be more like a variant auton bay rather than free-roaming zapsats.

I have disabled the barrier arc projector. I noticed that missile collisions have changed, when makes the barrier unreliable.

After I finish the next update to Drake Technologies, I will probably take a quick pass on Playership Drones and Star Castle Arcade to at least update the API number to 50.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
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Periculi
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You've done great work! Been checking out your mods and really enjoying the tricks you have come up with. Ore scooper! Brilliant! Power Ups too?! Awesome! Gave me some great ideas to play around with, thanks.
PM
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Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Updated and uploaded Drake Technologies Alpha, Playership Drones, and Star Castle Arcade to Xelerus.

Playership Drones and Star Castle Arcade merely received an apiVersion change from 49 to 50. No other changes.

Drake Technologies received more than an apiVersion update. Some changes that come to mind are the fixing of the missile forge that broke in 1.9b2, the addition of up to +150 cargo space for drone bays, and changed effects for some missiles.

I previously mentioned about possibly re-doing the drone bay to work like the missile forge. After some experimentation, it felt lame and (after finding a way to add cargo space to the current drone bays) I dropped the idea.
Periculi wrote:
Wed Sep 02, 2020 11:47 pm
You've done great work! Been checking out your mods and really enjoying the tricks you have come up with. Ore scooper! Brilliant! Power Ups too?! Awesome! Gave me some great ideas to play around with, thanks.
Glad you enjoyed my mods, thanks.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies to Xelerus. This update makes minor tweaks to two beam weapons.

IMPORTANT! BUG ALERT!
Both Drake Technologies and Star Castle arcade have become unstable in 1.9b2 and may crash suddenly and unexpectedly. Recurring events, which are used heavily by the zapsats in Drake Technologies and wall segments in Star Castle Arcade, are likely the cause somehow.

For now, do not play permadeath with Drake Technologies. Your ship will probably die via game crash.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies to Xelerus again. Release was delayed for various reasons, among them is my dev computer is non-operational at the moment. Thus, I will be unable to continue work on my mods for some time.

As for the update, here are changes I remember at the moment...
* Flare guns fire slower, but are a bit more powerful. This is to make them feel like their higher-level fusion blaster relatives.
* Some FRAGs were changed to fragment the more powerful flare gun fragments, to keep calibers consistent. Ripper FRAG has a new flaming effect.
* I removed the Drake Force module, and replaced them with different devices.
1) A generic shield boost that adds minor hp to shields and greatly speeds up recovery.
2) Two shielded armor enhancers that take the shield slot. Adds +30% to all shielded armor.
* Renamed the Drake enhancers. Instead of Drake "Boost" module, it is now Drake missile booster. The "Energy" module is similarly renamed.

Also fixed few minor bugs:
* Corrected some erroneous description of the conversion rate with resources for the missile forge.
* Sped up firing speed of Sparx zapsats.

Some rambling thoughts...
In my recent games, I have used shields less, and once I get my hands on shielded or walled armor, I remove shields and use something else. I kind of like the idea of Drake being powered armor (well, shielded armor) specialists, especially since they offer zapsats and now shielded armor boosters. What I may do is give their Tier series shields to Brik or Imagik, and maybe give some of their exotic armor like the gilded and mercurial armor to Imagik. Giving some of Drake's items to the other corporations could flesh out their inventories and motivate me to treat them on par with Drake Technologies. So far, Drake Technologies is the big, major corporation that is the star of the mod, while the other corporations are mere excuses to host items that do not make sense for Drake to offer (due to style or simply keeping item spawns down to a reasonable level). If the other corporations become big enough as a result of Drake's losses, that should be a good thing.

Shielded armor is meant to be armor with its own mini shield generator. That is why they interfere with shield generators, because the armor is basically a slab of metal or whatever protected by an energy shield... which is why green electrical effects spark when shielded armor takes a damaging hit (and also why the old Force module affected shield armor in addition to conventional shields). What would be interesting is if there was a way to determine if a given attack is a shield penetrator, and if so, do more damage to armor. Come to think of it, I should have shielded armor check if it has the shield interference mod, and make it take more damage if it does.

I think I am (mostly) done adding weapons to Drake Technologies. I probably should give armor and maybe shields another rebalancing pass. Keep what is interesting, remove the filler. Maybe try to design new armor that is interesting. Once I get the items nailed down, I really should attempt to build ships and stations. After that, maybe start writing an excuse plot (i.e., quests and missions) to integrate the items further into the game.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies to Xelerus again. This one is some minor item tweaks, based on the previous post. Tier shields are now Brik's, and Gilded and some other armors are now Imagik's. Added cloaked armor for Drake, which is simply shielded armor with stealth that cost and weigh more. (Cloaked armor is intended to be a replacement for jetskin eventually.) Also, the shield armor energizers now add +regen to other armor (which is a bit underpowered but better than nothing).
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Yet another reupload of Drake Technologies with minor tweaks to Xelerus. Added more zapsats, and changed the Earthdrake weapons to be lighter.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
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