RELEASED FrackinUniverse 6.4.3

probably has to do with that lndzana. or something along those lines, anyhow.

if anyone else has the issue i will mention it to them.



As for next foals for FU :

tidying up the general features, tightening the user experience and generally Quality of Life work. Features will be tossed in there too, but I have a more important thing to do:

reworking the entire damned progression, including stations and the like. Which is a very complex task. When I have more concrete decisions, ill be posting about them here on this board, not on steam, for feedback. You guys have been here the longest and know the mod the most...therefore your feedback is inherently more well-informed.

firstly, im thinking on ways to use the "addon" style upgrade you do to the late-tier anvil to create more interesting labs, in a modular way. And the general Upgrade feature added in1.0 as well.

This will probably mean melding some stations together, moving some things to vanilla tables, and expanding greatly on others, or at least revamping how they are utilized.

i would also like to find a viable way to rework food/produce and the buffs in FU. The decay on foods and no-stack screws it all up. Which likely means stacking will be re-added. We shall see, though

 

About progression:
I'm finding that with FU I often end up with a complete set of Densinium Armor before I get Durasteel Armor (and more recently, before I even got a full set of Tungsten). After that, I usually don't bother with anything other an Densinium unless it's of a legitimately higher tier or I need a kind of protection that the Densinium set doesn't - which is to say, not many things. Mostly acid/poison protection, really.
Most of the items in the Clothing Station or whatever it's called are underpowered by the time you get the means to make them.
I often wonder why all these Lunarium items even exist. They're so weak that by the time you can get them, you've already got RNG items that are way better by comparison. Or vanilla items. The armor has such a low defense value that the extra regen hardly makes up for it.
The Armory has a lot of weapons in it, but I find that, once again, I already have better RNG weapons. Most of these I just don't bother with, or I make them then forget about them later. Or I'll make them just so that I can keep their cool looks while slapping an RNG weapon's stats on it using the Weapon Infuser mod.

Mutavisk... god, why Mutavisk? I get the quest for this so early, and I get Densinium Armor before I even bother getting the Gene Design Lab. Then the only reason I even have the Mutavisk is for all those armors that I couldn't make before, except that they're already outclassed by Densinium for the most part. So I just hope there's some kind of late-game use for the Mutavisk...
Then, after getting the Mutavisk quest, I get the Nanofabricator quest. Huh? I could totally have made that thing before getting the Mutavisk. I was rocking two Solar Arrays powering all these neat machines before I got this Mutavisk. I just didn't bother because I... just hadn't bothered getting to it yet. Yeah.

...also, side note: even though the mining lasers have a two-handed holding style, they're actually one-handed. This makes anything you hold in the off-hand invisible, including melee swooshes. And sometimes, if you hold it in the right hand, the laser will come from the center of the player instead of the end of the gun, allowing you to mine at close-range. Of course, you can also dual-wield mining lasers for double the mining force, which is pretty darn great. Oh, and did I mention how they ignore the added block strength of ores?

 

How are you getting Densinium Armor so early? Doesn't Densinium require other stuff other than just plain Densinium, like Quantum Processors IIRC?

I'd love to know how you get Densinium before Tungsten, seeing as you get Tungsten before you even leave the first system you're in, unless you're purposefully skipping stuff......

Chitin Armor is about the same as Vanilla Titanium Armor and it requires only a little Resin, Carapaces, and Leather all of which you can get on your very first planet.

Crystalline Moons are actually rather low-level and early in the game. Again, you're skipping content or doing it out of order. You only need Breath Protection on Crystalline Moons.

So you use another mod that makes weapons better and complain that FU's weapons are bad? lol?

Mutavisk Armor is a great early-game armor if you don't skip straight to Densinium.

I'm still wondering how you get Densinium so early... and perhaps we should add something like Advanced Alloy to Densinium Armor to push it further into the progression.

Again, you're doing things out of order. Usually I get Mutavisk Armor before the first solar panel.

That's probably just an activeitem oversight, the mining laser is supposed to be 2H IIRC.

EDIT: Dude, it does take Quantum Processors (which require Protocite Bars) just as I thought it did, along with almost 20 diamonds, and a LOT of Static Cells. And you're claiming you get this "Before Tungsten"?

 

Oh, I don't know...

I find the Shard Field to be one of my favorite weapons, and yet it's fairly low level...

Then again, I also find that weapon damage is more or less dependant on your armor rather than the weapon itself like it was back in the koala days.

 

It's kinda-sorta both weapon and armor... I mean if you compare two broadswords, one does 14 and the other does 25 damage (assuming same speed and not taking the secondary into account)... there's going to be an even bigger jump when you put on a 600% armor, lol.

 

Yeah, there's some difference...
Point is, it's not nearly as big of a difference now on the weapon side as it used to be.

As I said before though, shard field is still one of my fav weapons. Here's to hoping for more inventive weapons like it that don't just follow the beaten vanilla weapon path. (And more staffs... seriously we really need more staffs in the game)

 

I do agree that a lot of the armory weapons are vastly inferior before/as you get titanium. The only one I saw that looked worthwhile to make was the reef sword (at 24 damage), making it comparable to a hammer at high-end tungsten/lower end titanium RNG weapons.

 

After looking at the materials and stuff about Densinium Armor.... starting to think it needs a healthy nerf...

Perhaps....

1). The protections should be EPP/Vanilla rather than FU protections
2). Perhaps make it in-line with Violium Armor

War Angel armor is appropriate because you need just about every material FU has to offer to make the stuff (Xithricite, Densinium, and other high end stuff) but Densinium? Yeah for just a little protocite and some mob farming... I think it's a bit too powerful.

 

I agree on nerfing armors. This has been the case for a bit, and I've been working on things in FR as experiments for the eventual overhaul. Wee're also likely to get set-bonuses in, so the armor effects only apply with full suits , etc

but yes, densinium does need a bit of a nerfaroo. It got a mild one recently, but not so much to the resistances it offers.

as for densinium before tungsten....had to have skipped things, or adminned it in simply based on what he needs to make it...or he was among the benefactors of the previously broken ore spawns that have since been drastically reduced, considering how rare densinium is again

however, it is also extremely clear he only judged weapons based on DPS, as so many do, despite the *wealth* of other things they offer, He likely tried 3 and moved on. No big deal, but kind of beats the purpose. If thats how he has fun,though, thats his business

Progression does need more fine tuning, and thats coming in the pipe anyhow

 

Any chance of the overhaul including more defensive items for labs/settlements built on hostile planets.

I would link my drone concept again, but do not want to spam it.


also have some things to report.

AI with weapons, wondering wasteland planets so I can gain a high amount of anti grav liquid for cheep(working on a project with it) I noticed that the bandits and looters can some times spawn with weapons they have no clue how to use, example one of the flamethrower like weapons it has a meleeish range but the NPC's with it will fire it at a range doing nothing. Another thing is the blood or liquide gun no clue what it is called they always aim short if you have one aimed at you it will miss, this is the same for most lobbed weapons as well.

Secondly no clue if this is the mod, or my combo's of mobs, but land generation is strange, the disjoint between FU areas and vanilla is just to high, especially when you go from something like a barren area to a FU junk pile or what ever, where the generation goes to space of this disjointed almost corrupted landscape
(though I get corpuption ore there so guessing that is intentional)


I also have a suggestion if doing a overhaul: please revamp the intro to the science place, make it more quest based where it starts out as an ill funded lab that you help bring back to power, also though I hate to say this, limit its access and access to FU crafts until after the moon mission.

suggestion idea story


science needs you
gained from: human scientist in outpost after fuel quest.
info: the scientist hands you a pamphlet requesting help from all to rebuild a defunct science lab. the pamphlet has teleporter cordinates on it.
to complete: use ship or 2 stop tele shop to access the lab.


the lab at start.
info: area start has the player crossing the bridge to find a scientist, near a door with a few others standing outside, here you get the first quest which is to build a peace of lab equipment for when they get the doors open. implied that others are being told to do the same, reward is the miner.



side suggestion: add robotics labs and tech, please.

 

Did you not read the post I pretty much *just* made that states that I;m not really adding more content at the moment and am instead focusing on fleshing out what is there first? I am not currently looking for suggestions, though I appreciate the thought put to them.

The science lab thing is something I've meant to do for some time but it is not a small amount of work. It requires several instances/dungeons rather than one, first of all. This is problematic , as it tosses extra versions of the effectively same thing, to their mission menu.


land generation is largely out of my hands, save for specific places where a subbiome is just not the right type to mesh (sea vs land , for instance). Starbound combines them however it wants based on terrain generation otherwise. And the same stark contrast happens often in vanilla as well.

as for the npcs and weapons, im aware that some of them confuse the npcs. The lobbing issue is a game issue, not an FU issue. Every single monster that lobs, aims for your feet. Thus, they miss a lot.

 

sorry, about that. I tend to overthink everything and not really think about if I should post something I just do.

 

I never said I got it "Before Tungsten". I just said that I got it before I bothered with a full set of Tungsten Armor. I got plenty of tungsten, just didn't need the extra protection and thus didn't bother. I got the Densinium and Diamonds from a metallic moon, and crystalline moons are rare enough that it's totally possible to skip them entirely. For the static cells I just made them at the Biochemistry Lab or whatever that's called - very cheap: 2 Algae, 2 Hydrogen, 2 DNA Sample apiece. As for the processors, I got a little Zerchesium, slapped on a Hoplite Helmet, and rushed to a Proto World. Then it's just a lot of silicon and a little tungsten and copper for the rest.

I didn't use things that make weapons stronger. RNG weapons are vanilla random weapons. Maybe I just like taking my chances hopping straight to Dangerous or Extreme level planets as soon as I get a decent ranged weapon. In fact, a good amount of the weapons in there do look good - just not the earlier ones, since I just never was at the point where I had those resources at that point in the game where they would be useful (lunarium, for instance...).

So yes, I suppose I do end up skipping things too much. Pardon my leet skillz at being able to survive on a Metallic Moon and a Proto World while still having iron greaves.

 

Don't blame FU's equipment for being "bad" if you're going to skip half of the progression, and grab endgame gear.

In fact, you can do the same exact thing if you go to an Extreme Eden as soon as you get FTL/fuel, build a house, slap a couple wooden crates and get a colony deed from Frogg's. You'll get a merchant who is 99% sure to have a Violium/Aegisalt/Ferozium-tier armor. Build up some pixels and voila. Get one or two more merchants to move in, and you might get a full suit and a weapon chest will give you a weapon or three to start out with! In fact you might even get a travelling merchant to drop by with another piece of the set, even.

But then again... you're skipping content and then complaining that FU content is in bad progression.

I think the only point you managed to make is that Densinium is indeed in need -- and headed for -- a major nerf. And I agree with that: 3 Protocite and a few Densinium should not bypass all but acid/poison hazards AND give you amazing defense and damage, lol. And Sayter agrees.

Here's my suggestion to you: Try NOT skipping content and then see what the progression looks like.

 

the thing is in starbound it is hard to skip content do to the EPP's progression. the FU stuff doesn't have that limiter.

Not blaming the mod, but quite frankly I have skipped stuff with out realzing it do to the way STARBOUND does progression and FU not having the same limiters.

 

you can rush through content and still try other things out in the process...that was more the point I was making. I certainly was not trying to belittle you in the way you may have assumed I was.

Anyhow, no big deal. And yes, planet RNG is one of the benefits *and* flaws of SB, but especially with FU. So many more biomes means a crapload of possible worlds. Sometimes you get a killer world right in your starting system (less so now that I rearranged that). If I could ensure that specific worlds appeared in specific places in the way I would want...I would. But I can't. Ain't possible in the way you'd hope.

So instead , each biome offers something in terms of a resource, and that resource creates numerous things. Most of those things remain useful for a long while, save for armor which has clear tiering. Weapons scale with armor bonuses and the like. A weapon that is decent in tier 2 will therefore remain decent in tier 6 so long as you have the appropriate tier armor. Some weapons simply work *better* than others.
With FU weapons, ive gone through them each numerous times to tweak as I go and have tried to make most of them do at least something that others don't. This way the player can create a weapon they know nothing about and be pleasantly surprised. Sometimes , dissapointed if the weapon is not whta they hoped. It works out quite well in the end since this means more experimentation to those that want to do it.

Over 100 weapons in the mod, and I guarantee you that at the majority are balanced to vanilla standards (since i used identical formulas for damage). RNG weapons are just that : random. Sometimes you roll high. The FU weapons draw from a fixed value, but that value is always within the range that the RNG weapons pull from, and sometimes above by a fair margin (mostly on slow fire weapons, which sem to benefit the most from the damage formula)

give more a try

 

u

ummm...yes it does. About 15 additional limiters , in fact. Without ample resistance you get butchered.

no, i think the bigger issue is armors with a too-wide array of resistances. its time to clean house.

 

Well, to be fair... it IS possible to get limited quantities of some resources you're not meant to get. I've seen Proto sub-biomes (not in 1.0, but I did see one in Nightly Pre-1.0) where the plants will give you small bits of protocite, and Densinium seems to me, while it is rare but if you can just find a lower-level planet that has some, lets you skip a LOT of stuff.

But yes, most of it is the armor problem, like Densinium. Vanilla SB gates everything behind the EPPs, while we give a lot more leeway to pick where you go first.

Also.....

Why is it so difficult to find armor that protects against black slime? Usually my answer to a Penumbra World is "Bring lots of mutavisk bandages", lol.

 

ah, my problem may be the fact I use this along with the mech mod.(aka I need to play right before talking)

yeah the armors can be OP as all get out if you have the right one.


ALSO BUG to report

lava and poison, as they tend to change what blocks are they sort of break in the vanilla story missions this is most noticible in the floran mission where about a third of the traps are disabled do to the dirt becoming waste and the poison vanishing.


Also I landed on some planet with ground that burned, my way to beat it, I had over 10k dirt from mining out my colony. there was no enemy life on the planet(think that was a bug).

 

@warbrand2 : a bit more info needed.... what kind of planet, etc.

Tabula Rasa planets indeed have no enemies, but there shouldn't be anything burning the ground on those.