[A17/B18] Orbital Hubs United - Dropships 1.2 (14.02.2018)

[Ruisuki]

whoa badass. does this affect difficulty significantly by making resources easier to get?

[Xubrim]

whoa badass. does this affect difficulty significantly by making resources easier to get?

It will trivialize the difficulty of moving extracted resources or finding someone rich enough to buy your goods. You still have to craft goods and physically extract resources, so I don't know if "easier" is the right word, but your caravaning woes will be a thing of the past. That said, you've all but won the game by the time you've researched and built a ship, so who cares?

One balance issue I'd love to see addressed in the future is fuel. As is, the ships haul 6.67 times (20 times for Fireflies) the mass per unit chemfuel, and they do so with no wasted no resources. Having them burn fuel at least 5x and 10x faster would be more than reasonable, and realistically, even 20x/60x might not be enough to slow down their use. Is this hardcored, or would it be difficult to make this a user defined variable?

I love the idea of the ships, and they're a blast to have, but they're so good no one would ever use caravans again. Transport pods will always retain some unique tactical advantages, but a dropship with cannon might overlap pretty heavily. It'd be nice if they were expensive/fragile enough, somehow, that the player at least considered taking a caravan instead. Tuning the ships via components after flights? Fuel consumption based on mass carried, with X fuel burned per take off? Require a more expensive (in terms of time, too), refined version of chemfuel?

Then again, as I said before, you've basically already won when you've built one. It might be silly to even try to balance this.

[Constance68W]

I play for longevity... Have a colony last until it becomes unbeatable in Raids, Food Production, Hold-Out time, Etc.. Then I can claim a victory, but I just love playing, watching everything happen, help neighbors get some great stuff, help them beat back some Raiders, do some trading, all that fun stuff.

The Dropships have only sped that up dramatically..
I can effectively set up a small outpost near a Raider outpost, send my second ship with fighters and an empty cargo hold..
Then move a few to the Raider objective to "scout", then land my dropships beside them with the Mortars/MGs/Whatever we brought to assault.

It also makes trading nice, if you do that alot, but I prefer to wait for traders to come to me, they usually.. more often than not, have alot more of what I actually need.

I do agree, though, that the fuel consumption could be upped... I spent SOOO much money on ChemFuel during trades and all that, it's barely disappearing and I've done at least 6 combat landings and a good amount of exploring different tiles for stashes.

And to go back to another point, I've never used a ground caravan since I got OHU's Dropships..

[Ruisuki]

whoa badass. does this affect difficulty significantly by making resources easier to get?

It will trivialize the difficulty of moving extracted resources or finding someone rich enough to buy your goods. You still have to craft goods and physically extract resources, so I don't know if "easier" is the right word, but your caravaning woes will be a thing of the past. That said, you've all but won the game by the time you've researched and built a ship, so who cares?

One balance issue I'd love to see addressed in the future is fuel. As is, the ships haul 6.67 times (20 times for Fireflies) the mass per unit chemfuel, and they do so with no wasted no resources. Having them burn fuel at least 5x and 10x faster would be more than reasonable, and realistically, even 20x/60x might not be enough to slow down their use. Is this hardcored, or would it be difficult to make this a user defined variable?

I love the idea of the ships, and they're a blast to have, but they're so good no one would ever use caravans again. Transport pods will always retain some unique tactical advantages, but a dropship with cannon might overlap pretty heavily. It'd be nice if they were expensive/fragile enough, somehow, that the player at least considered taking a caravan instead. Tuning the ships via components after flights? Fuel consumption based on mass carried, with X fuel burned per take off? Require a more expensive (in terms of time, too), refined version of chemfuel?

Then again, as I said before, you've basically already won when you've built one. It might be silly to even try to balance this.

right that was my main concern, caravans would become obselete. Id like to think there would be a benefit of encounters at least though when traveling in caravans. I agree that making ships require more resources would also help in that regard. That said ships are a welcome addition. i remember in a16 it took multiple years for me to get my entire colonies resources transfered to another before abandoning. Using muffalo caravans and multiple transport pods.

Just wondering what the tactical use of pods are vs other methods?

[Xubrim]

Transport pods are significantly faster, precise, and can easily deploy multiple small packages into a variety of places. You could, say, start a fight, then drop a brawler on top of each mortar emplacement, or place a pair of colonists with charge rifles up close and personal on the flanks. The degree of control you can exert with transport pods just gets silly, but it is wholly reliant on flanking and flexibility.

Of course, you could do this with exclusively ships, too, but it'd require a rather large and expensive fleet. If (when?) you can afford half a dozen ships, their cannons, the fact you can crush stuff by landing on it, and the ability to use the ship as full cover (500/700 HP, inflammable) undeniably gives them an edge. Probably enough to replace transport pods, too, if we're being honest. I still think that any player willing to do the micro will be able to use transport pods to good effect, though, even if just means keeping a few emergency reserve units on standby.

Outside of combat? Unless all your ships are busy, I can't imagine why you'd want to use transport pods. Loading rebellious prisoners into transport pods and firing them into the sea ice is pretty satisfying, imo.

edit: I don't know how there were missiles like 10 alphas ago, but no one has weaponized transport pods yet. Load it up with a bunch of chemfuel for a napalmesque fireball, or take the warhead out of a rocket launcher to give a pinpoint missile strike?

[faltonico]

-snip-
"right that was my main concern, caravans would become obselete."

Good riddance i'd say.

[Diedel]

I just installed the mod to an existing colony, and now i am geting a black screen with outpost icons other factions.
I still can play, but can't use the world map.
Any way to fix this ?

I had this bug once and a restart fixed it, it did not seem to be caused by a mod, just a glitch.
What other mods are you running?
I just updated and used the previous versions and have never had that issue..

[Canute]

No not a glitch. Its like there is something missing when the world map is opened. Like this invisble pawn/entity at the A16 version.

New colonies are working fine.

[Cpt.Ohu]

No not a glitch. Its like there is something missing when the world map is opened. Like this invisble pawn/entity at the A16 version.

New colonies are working fine.

If new colonies are working fine it's something I  world creation. Probably the info storage device for the Dropships wasn't generated properly on that load.

Regarding balance:if you go into the Defs of the ship, you can modify fuel consumption rate.

Balance is hard and I was mostly concerned with getting it playable. Fuel consumption is tricky to do right, since in theory your Ship on the world map would be circling in the air unless you go down. Will fix that too, so eventually you'll crash.

Regarding the durability of the ship: the standard dropship is meant to be a bulky thing able to withstand some onslaught. Maybe I'll add one-man vessels for an early game option. Refined chemfuel in the Form of Kerosin might be interesting.

[Canute]

I vote for an electrical enigne ! :-))
Add an 10k battery instead of a fuel tank. It maybe don't got the same speed like rocket engine and can't enter orbital flight mode anymore. But for the travel along the surface more then enough.

You can unload minified solarpanels to recharge it, if you strand somewhere.

[PyroFuzz]

This seems like a really cool mod!
I can't wait to see my dropships flying over shooting bullets everywhere!

[Canute]

I can't wait until i see your dropships wreck next to the raider base.
Don't forget to give outpost AA guns by default ! :-)

[Constance68W]

***BUG***

So, I've got my dropships placed at their landing pad...
I loaded in my save this morning to see that when I "select" the dropship.. None of the actions at the bottom of the screen come up?
WHAT HAPPENED?!

This also happens when you select the "set parking/landing zone" icon..

And I also can't deconstruct my dropships.. I had to get the DevConsole up and use the destroy tool, so at least I saved the ChemFuel..

---EDIT---
Going back to 1.32 has fixed this issue.. :/

---EDIT, Pt 2---
The Dropship seems to be duplicating some items in my Pawn's inventory into the cargohold..

[bolbies]

I've never used this mod before so I have a few questions/wanted to point some things out.

1. When I go to load the ship, the game slows to a crawl and allows me to load literally everything on the map. Chunks, corpses, etc. Is this a bug?

2. I can't uninstall the turret once it's on. Obviously not a huge problem since it's the only thing you can put on but, you know...

3. What can I put in the payload section of the weapon systems?

[Cpt.Ohu]

I've never used this mod before so I have a few questions/wanted to point some things out.

1. When I go to load the ship, the game slows to a crawl and allows me to load literally everything on the map. Chunks, corpses, etc. Is this a bug?

2. I can't uninstall the turret once it's on. Obviously not a huge problem since it's the only thing you can put on but, you know...

3. What can I put in the payload section of the weapon systems?

1. That was requested by people who wanted to raid Outposts and take corpses as well.
2. Turrets are still experimental, and the Uninstall isn't correctly implemented yet.
3. As can be read on the first page in FAQ : There is no payload in the release yet, because bombing is not yet working.

@Constance: I'll revise the saving method later on.