RELEASED FrackinUniverse 6.4.3

so much for that ocean fix then. hm. It's a hard-knock fix.


basically, found out why oceans generate all wonky and am fixing it. Downside is any already generated ocean/toxic/magma will be broken. Not much I can do to avoid it if I make this fix. But, I'll give a two-week warning before implementing it so people can deal with their universes.

even after lowering their spawn insanely? wtf CF. Why are flyers so broken for spawning?

 

that's not how to treat sayter.
what ever.

​

 

I've always been blunt and direct. No point in sugar coating things. You were annoying people, I simply stated it. It stopped. Everyone wins.

 

@sayter (unlike a game developer) provides a FREE SERVICE, free of charge. He doesn't have to be a corporate mouthpiece, nor does he need to worship the mighty dollar.

He does what he does because he loves the game, and because he wants to make the game better in his own way, and he enjoys our thanks, our praises, and our participation.

It might seem as a shock to some people who are used to dealing with the ever-so-polite games developers who have to be nice to the customers, but we're not customers. We don't pay to access FU's content. Therefore, he doesn't have to be nice to us. WE should be the ones being nice to the guy who has poured thousands of hours into this project for no tangible gain on his own part.

 

I was jus mentioning my ideas... Is that a crime?
By ur words. I think it is.
Wow

 

Sorry I came off as annoyed/snarky/unappreciative in my last post ( I'm very bad at communicating)
But I do not have frackin races installed, and am in an unexplored planet but the issue persists.

 

what armor and EPP are you wearing, and to what planet type? we need to know what you're wearing to what planet to know what's actually happening.

EDIT: also bug with masteroid-selector (and other bugs): https://pastebin.com/nu49Ynk5
looks like at least part of the issue is that the masteroid-selector is using a lua file that either doesn't exist, or was at a different address than the one that was given to the monstertype.

 

No , its not a crime.

Getting pissy with me and constantly badgering me with every little thing, however, is annoying. I was simply pointing it out.

 

Ran into a PGI on an Avian Flying Pyramid:

Code:

[18:56:55.498] [Error] Could not instantiate item '[rareshotgun, 1, {}]'. (LuaException) Error code 2, [string "/items/buildscripts/abilities.lua"]:30: attempt to index a nil value (field 'ability')
stack traceback:
   [C]: in metamethod '__index'
   [string "/items/buildscripts/abilities.lua"]:30: in global 'addAbility'
   [string "/items/buildscripts/abilities.lua"]:59: in global 'setupAbility'
   [string "/items/buildscripts/buildweapon.lua"]:41: in function <[string "/items/buildscripts/buildweapon.lua"]:7>

Dungeon name: "flyingpyramid". It was on one of those tool shelf things.

 

i dont suppose you got the bit *above* that where it mentioned the weapon ID? "commonrocketlauncher" or whatnot? always does, in my experience. thats really what i need.

 

I'll check....

oh wow. There's a LOT of errors earlier in the log... but not related to the pyramid. And no, it doesn't mention the gun. Oh wait. It does. The error says "rareshotgun"?

And here's the whole log (because there's a LOT of errors in here, I was looking through the Collections prior to going to the pyramid).

https://pastebin.com/aY2PLsGJ

 

Something is definitely broken in status effects. For example:
-Gas protection on any set and X-Gas do not protect from most enviromental gasses and poisonous atmosphere.
-There are two low tier sets that are supposed to protect against cold. The bear suit, despite being slightly stronger, does not protect against cold enviroments and SAIL refers to them as "Deadly Cold", while the planet description indicates regular "Cold". The other one, wolf themed, does reliably protect against cold on that same planet.

It's either the scripts or the descriptions.

 

Probably not the place for it, but an idea pitch for a minimod to Sayter:

Frackin Harder (And alternate) Main Quest.

Sometimes it feels the CF Main quest is a bit too easy even in vanilla, let alone with what Frackin (and other mods, such as XS Mechs) brings to the table. Frackin has moved somewhat in this direction (especially with the poptop mom), but I don't think it goes far enough especially with the others.

So here are my propositions for the Main Quest missions:

(General):

• Increased enemy spawns.
• (theoretical) some way to advance the main quest besides the boring "scan shit" busywork questline? Like say you have to build some sort of Frackin object? Or even better, you have to have tier objects (like in previous iterations).

Erchius Mine:

• Moontants are increased back to Giraffe level of power. As in, they can actually kill the miners if you're not fast enough to intervene. This encourages you to take along better equipment and/or crew members and not just run behind the miners whenever enemies show up.
• Miners are weaker and have weaker weapons and lower health. They're miners, not USCM soldiers. "combating weird aliens" was not part of their contract.
• The Mutated Miner enemies are tougher (they have more armor, higher attack, and slightly more health).
  • However, if you beat it straight up rather than luring it to the miners, you can flip a switch in the room it came from rather than have to run all the way back into the miner bunk bed room.
• The Mission checkpoint is moved to the micro room with the Mutated Miner rather than being in the storage room next to the miners.
• The laser weapon used to defeat the Erchius Horror is reduced to 1/3rd effectiveness. Meaning you have to hit it 9 times rather than 3 with just it alone. This encourages you to attack it conventionally to speed things along (using other methods to destroy it is still as effective as it is now).
  
  
• To compensate for all of this, you can repair your ship partially via SAIL like in the beta. You will not be able to go to other star systems, but you will be able to move around in your star system. This should open up a few more options for weapons and armors. Also, the shops will be open right off the bat rather than having to slog through this mission to open them up.

Ceremonial Hunting Caverns

• Slightly higher health and armor on floran hunters.
• Floran Hunters sometimes wield Frackin weapons.
• Dinosaurs be here.
• To add to the challenge (and encourage mutations in the prey,) the Caverns are irradiated, so rad-protection is a must-have now.
• Miniboss on the lower route?

The Great Pagoda

• More Cultists with increased health. No more rooms with nothing in them.
• They're not the only ones there either. Cultists serving another dark god are also looking for the artifact and can be seen attacking the Occulus cultists in certain places. They're rare, though.

The Great Sovereign Temple

• The Cultists at the end are removed. Instead, they're put somewhere in the middle and they're fighting a vault guardian Miniboss. Left to their own devices they'll inevitably lose.
• More traps with different kinds of hazards.

Miniknog Stronghold

• More Miniknog soldier spawns. Miniknog soldiers also use Frackin weapons have better armor and health.
• Super Mutant Miniboss.

The Baron's Keep

• Cultists possess Frackin Weapons and better armor and health. They also possess (rather low end) mechs instead of catapults. Why is it that all this time they've been seen with rather high end guns and spaceships, yet suddenly they're down to bows and regular swords and catapults?
• Bone Dragon increased health and armor.
  
• Asra Nox attacks you properly after defeating it instead of running off like a little sissy.

Human Nature:

• An added quest between Baron's Keep and Heart of the Ruin. Esther no longer conveniently has the human artifact. Instead, the USCM stole it just before the earth's destruction, and Esther's located it on a massive space station that now serves as a home to what remains of the USCM.
• It starts out as a mech fight (requires a mech) in space where you have to fight off USCM drones in order to reach the station.
• Unfortunately when you get there, you're not the only one that showed up to the party. The Occasus ande Shoggoth cults has also come to collect, and now it's a four way slog between you, the USCM remnants, the Occasus, and Shoggoth cults.
• To make things worse, there is now a radiation leak in the reactor, meaning you'll have to bring heavy rad protection. Not to mention both cults have filled the station with pockets of insanity-inducing gas, so you'll have to bring insanity protection. Oh, and breath protection of course.
• All sides have the very best armor and weapons their factions can provide. And there's a lot of them.
  
• Asra Nox at the end of the battle confronts you with a Mech (Decked out with an Occasus cult body and high end weapons.) She gives a long winded speech as usual, but then she's interrupted by a loud noise behind her. Turns out the Shoggoth cult has one last trick up their sleeve: they've summoned a champion of their dark god (a massive demon). Asra Nox offers to give you the artifact if you help her deal with it. If she's still alive by the time the Shoggoth is destroyed though, she'll turn on you and you'll have to eliminate her mech.

Heart of the Ruin:

• You'll have to bring status protection with you right from the get-go. Insanity protection for starters. Acid and shadow protection for second, etc.
• More mobs.
• Asra Nox battle is no longer a simple knockoff of the original battle. She's decked out in better armor this time, traded her Sol Katana for an Aetherium Katana (which is like her sol katana married with an Aetherium Broadsword. It's attack operates like a mix between the two as well). Her Distortion sphere will leave bombs behind to dodge, and instead of stopping to rest she'll then pull out a polaris and use its secondary attack.
• More armor and health for Ruin. Maybe more attacks? Dunno what though.

And of course the two optional quests.

Dreadwing:

• Penguins have better pistols, etc. His spawns are actually a thread rather than just an annoyance.
• increase fire rate on Dreadwing's ship.
• Better reward for completing it.

Shocktrooper:

• Changed battle arena. You now spawn inside the arena rather than outside it.
• The quest is now a mech battle rather than a regular fight (appropriate since it's given by Dr. Akaggy now. Honestly, I'm surprised CF didn't do this right off the bat), so you're required to have a working mech.
• Shocktrooper will spawn drones that can be destroyed for energy.
• Shocktrooper's attack hits much harder (as is appropriate for a mech battle)
• Vastly increased health and armor (again, appropriate for a mech battle)

 

1: not a bug. this is intended interaction so that easily obtained gas masks are not able to mitigate late-game effects without other things present. However, in a coming update this is being changed for a select few effects. Gas masks fully work on 99% of the gasses in FU, save for poison gas. And again, intended.

2 - not a bug either. they do in fact do what they are meant to do. their descriptions are simply not fully accurate.

Therefore, let's hold off on making claims that things are "definitely broken" when we know nothing about how or why I coded them. Thanks.



edit:
{stat = "iceStatusImmunity", amount = 1},
{stat = "grit", amount = 0.2},
{stat = "biomecoldImmunity", amount = 1}


from the bear armor. As promised, immune to cold. Just like the armor claims. But not Deadly Cold. The armor never claims to offer immunity to Deadly Cold. But this is oldschool and things are changed now:


"label" : "+7.5 to 22.5% Crit Chance with Hammers/Axes. Immune: Cold. 15% Ice Resistance",

that part *there* is inaccurate. it should be adding the resistance too, but that isnt listed in the main set info nor in the effect. Otherwise everything appears fine.


The issue you are reporting is more related to how the effects are applied. Because they have no natural Resistance stat, they are left in the dust. I'll address that. They simply need resistance added.

 

Nope. Sorry, but this will *never* be my focus with FU. I absolutely HATE hardcore and uber-hard gameplay and will never be adding it to my mod. I have no interest whatsoever in this. Any edits I make to storyline will not be made simply to make things harder. Barking up the wrong tree here.

Besides, I have very little desire to edit the core lua files to make the majority of changes you suggest. Too much potential for breaking things.


Now, that said, I have no objection to challenge (clearly). But inflating difficulty where it wasn't intended, no. This isn't Terraria and shouldn't ever be all about combat

 

While I don't want the game to be all about combat to like terraria is, I do agree with some when they say this game could afford to be harder since enemies have well telegraphed attacks and whatnot. As long as there is rule consistency and the iteration times are short I'm honestly fine with higher difficulty settings. As for what I think should not be increased:

Health: Enemies with more health just last longer, in fact I think games in which higher difficulties which increase health are what give higher difficulties a bad name and the feelings of "Artificial difficulty". Especially when the increased health indirectly nerfs specific playstyles.
Enemy core abilities: Enemies that are changed to much can sometimes feel cheesed.
Rewards: The real reason a player should want to play on a higher difficulty is the challenge, not some 'uber item'. Terraria's biggest mistake was adding awesome items to it's expert mode, beyond also the huge health increases.

Basically I'd look up "When difficult is fun":

Basically a higher difficulty should reward a player with a sense of accomplishment rather than just uber items, and if a player loses they should feel like they could have done better.

Things which I think can change in a higher setting: Enemy damage(everything) and spawn frequency(for common enemies, not the mini-bosses we already have). I'd increase damage more than I'd increase spawn frequency(frequency would be better only partly increased, like say 25%). I'd also give specific enemy types roles based around things like key weaknesses.

How I'd handle an increased difficulty:

Spawn rate increases in dark spots and on higher terrain(increasing difficulty through positioning challenges).
Respawning of random bandits and random bandit spawns(I find it kind of dull that I never get evil npc's to deal with around any base of mine).
Damage increase by 50%-100%(less margin for error)
Enemy aggression and increased mobility: Enemies jumping slightly higher over terrain would make it harder to avoid and snipe them. Humanoids on higher tier planets get double-jumping.
Enemy intelligence: Enemies vulnerable to sniping move away or into cover. Humanoid enemies duck into caves rather than mindlessly standing in the open and attempting to ambush.

Basically makes it so the player has to pay attention more and think ahead a bit more, use the zoom feature more and play smarter.

 

And why exactly do we need increased difficulty?

I think SB's current difficulty is just fine IMO. *shrugs*

Not everybody is a Dark Souls pro, nor should everybody have to be, to be able to play SB. SB is not a combat-heavy game; it's focus is on exploration and FU's focus is on science, gathering materials, unlocking things, and adding new places for you to explore and enjoy.

While there is some challenge to be found in SB/FU, it was never the main focus of SB, nor FU. Therefore, trying to shoehorn extra difficulty in that will just frustrate players of lesser skill who just want to build things, who just want to explore, or who just enjoy unlocking things and experimenting (you know, the whole core concept behind FU?).

I think last thing we need to be doing is frustrating players.

In fact, I think some of FU's content is already on the border of what I enjoy. Some of the gear checks are just ridiculous (might as well not touch any of the custom missions until you're wearing at least War Angel IMO), like I tried one of the custom missions earlier today, and sheesh. It claims its a Tier 6 mission, but the stupid birds in there spam ice arrows which slow you and they hit for 45 damage a pop while I'm wearing Pyreite Armor. Needless to say, there wasn't any way I was doing that anytime soon.

 

Everyone always refers to dark souls, and actually what I think of is like games like the original deus ex: Multiple solutions to problems, you can save anywhere but what applies to you applies to the badguys the same. It's more you just need to be tactical and think a little once in a while. On deus ex you could be killed instantly but you could do the same to the badguys, but dying wasn't frustrating: you just learned from the mistake and loaded the earlier quicksave .

It doesn't have to be shoehorned in it could be a separate module though, is what I think when I think about an increased difficulty. And again, I wouldn't want things like increased health of enemies, just things like slight spawn rate increases, modest damage increases. Like I can kill enemies with good equipment in 2-3 hits no problem and they die fast to swords, duel pistols, rockets ect. When they die fast like that an increase in damage simply means i have to avoid mistakes more. Which is where positioning changes and an increase in enemy numbers+aggression comes into play: keep the player alert a bit in places.

But the person pointing it out: It can be a separate module for those who want a challenge. Of course with such a difficulty module I'd recommend a casual character rather then a "normal" character. I mean not everyone uses frackin races(which I think actually adds difficulty sliders as it is, with it's occasional bug(*cough glitch food on glitch cough*) or poorly thought out racial bonuses/penalties(apex OP energy bonuses, night-time penalties for florans, making specific race need a higher % element for some planets ect), not everyone would need the difficulty module.

 

Edit: And after I read his post, christ man. And this is coming from someone who likes harder settings.

Sounds like your trying to make punishing gameplay rather than challenging gameplay. Making players bring very, very specific things out of order, like requiring rad protection for the second mission. Or insanity for the ruin fight. Not to mention I notice the dreaded "Increase the health" which is always a huge no-no; it just frustrates players.

Or making the player bring a lot of differing protections in some encounters which rail-roads the player into very, very, veerrrry specific equipment configurations(the ruin fight you suggest is something I'd never do if I had to protect vs both insanity, shadow, AND acid all at once, you may as well make it so I have only one set of armor I get to use that I necessarily don't like using).

The player should have a wide array of options to approach every encounter, not a severe hard limit on them. Thats what gives hard games a bad name.


Another Edit:
So, what are ideas I don't mind as much? Adding new enemies here and there isn't a bad idea. Heck, even adding new features to a mission isn't bad as long as it's subtle. Starcraft 2 and zero hour for example and creep-spread exclusive to hard didn't actually change the game 'that' much on hard/brutal, as it was still a defense mission.

Bad Ideas in more detail: Forcing people to spawn in arena's with no chance to scan ahead at it. Your forcing the player to lose before he can win, thats an auto fail and a good way to frustrate players.
Rewards exclusive for fighting on the higher difficulty: This forces more casual players to feel they HAVE to play on the higher setting. This is a game-breaker for many for fallout 4 and terraria and actually a lot of games.
Fundamentally changed experience exclusive on higher setting: Your changing the missions to much on these higher difficulty ideas. Even starcraft 2 doesn't change the core of the missions 'that' severely.

Ultimately, your trying to make it hard for the sake of it rather than making a proper challenge. Your trying to "beat the player".

 

This sounds like an interesting change to the game. I look forward to the mod you'll be able to make from this.