Thank you for showing us a great approach to the game.
Thanks to Better Pilot, all the characters have become more attractive.
By the way, are you planning to make an uncapper?
I think that the only effective way to deal with NG+ enemies with 10x health is to focus on the body in "Guide" or "Duel", but I thought that removing the status level and experience point cap (level 50 → 255, experience point 9999 → 99999, etc.) would be a further attempt at playing.
I hope you will be interested.
This text was created by machine translation, so I hope it is not rude.
FRONT MISSION 1st is my favorite game. Thank you for releasing various mods.
Nothing rude about your text, my friend, all cool!
Thank you for your feedback! But I never really thought about removing the limits of the game. Could be an interesting idea, I will check the possibility as soon as I can!
Nice, add some flavor to the game. I love front mission 1st but It's so bare bones to the point where most of the equipment is useless and there's basically 1 best build the dual machine gun with a shoulder rocket.
The melee skill changes are pretty huge, have you tested it for balance? It seems pretty extreme, though I guess compared to how much damage speed switch machine guns do its probably an equalizer more than anything else? Though I guess adding speed to single shot weapons buffs those quite a bit too, the ziege rifle probably doing insane damage with up to 4 shots, adding a bonus to flamethrower is cool too though I wonder how overpowered that scaling bonus would be. I think it would have been better to add that function to switch so that you could have viable switch flamethrowers as a build maybe, like because of it being set up on speed you need a standard full short build with switch and speed and duel for flamethrowers to be any good compared to the rest, they should hit at least as hard as a buffed melee attack unless it comes with some sort of an effect like an acid affect to make it a good opener shot with follow up attackers stronger, or maybe a stun or smoke effect or something that reduces its ability to function due to "flamethrower heat", something to make it worth taking and not just trying to compete in damage and coming short every time. You might have added something similar to shotguns imo to make them stand out a bit from regular rifles, it's kind of bad design in general in the vanilla game that rifles and shotguns do the same thing though I remember distinctly remedied in fm4. Kind of hard to come up with things considering the simplicity of the fm1 combat system. The bottom line is most short characters are better off taking a machine gun + long range rifle/bazooka with duel>switch>speed in that order or aquisition, so characters who have limited slots or skill access would only forgoe that order if they don't have the access like the only time it's better to take speed over switch is if you're running 1 short+1 melee setup which is strictly inferior so it would be more likely your characters skill access is wonky and you chose to run with it.
I guess your changes would add more value to speed relative to switch but it's still gonna be always better to go both if you can, and the changes to melee make it better to take all 3 skills for all the damage potential, making meihua want to forgo guide and go full melee with her 3 skill slots. The damage might be way overkill though since they stack up so high with skill level and character level. You might consider capping the extra shots at 2 for rifles and 1 or 2 for shotguns since 4 shots each sounds kind of much, and to compensate for balance you can add in a partial flamethrower mechanic to give them bonus damage so you get a mix between extra damage and extra shots. That's probably semantic and not so much worth the effort to implement but it would add for variety, just not a fan of the idea of running a rifle+shotgun combo and have them both machine gunning. I guess ultimately multi shot weapons will always be ideal for a damage spread past the early game so a miss hurts less and so that you are haven't less damage go to waste if you are getting overkill with no duel.
It's probably hard if not impossible to code something that gives an incentive to use 1 weapon rather than 2. It would be cool to have an incentive melee+flamethrower build of some sort, just anything to encourage the player changing up the formula of building every character the same.
Either way your changes are very interesting and I am looking forward to a playthrough with it soon to see how it feels, thank you for the hard work. Is it possible to run on a current game or does it need to be a new game?
Would also love to see some of the characters you get have their available skills cleaned up though that might be much more work if not impossible in comparison. It's kinda memes how many of them either don't have the slots or the access to be useful characters though it makes sense that only your 5 core that are all trained military personnel to have perfect skill access. Molly being a perfect example, 4 skill slots, no guide, can only get 2 short skills, can only get 2 melee skills, so by default forced into getting dual+switch or double+first/stun, possibly dual+first+stun and run like machine gun+fist which is gonna be pretty bad on damage and stun inconsistent to begin with in my experience since it can break the turn you apply it. if she even had access to speed so she could have a single short weapon with duel would make all the difference to feel like a character with a theme otherwise you're sort of bottled into a limited build and on top of it your long range is gonna be hitting random parts, so you end up with the same build as everyone else either double fists or double guns with a rocket launcher on the shoulder and less effective with all of them. I think porunga was the worst offender with 5 skill slots, has 4 skills to choose from but can only actually get 3 of them on his skill sheet and forced into a speed without duel and first+stun otherwise stun/first+double and no guns and no guide. It's borderline useless compared to most other characters you get. You never need those latter characters anyway since most missions you cap at I think 9 units per mission minus the final one? Mei hua's 3 skill limit with a melee one already pre picked gutting her from either being a perfect short weapon specialist on top of having to choose between all of the melee skills or giving up first or stun if you want guide. It's always forcing you to make lousy choices I guess to simulate how a lot of your pilots aren't trained military so will not be as good as the ones who are, it's just very obvious that it was done sloppily with porunga being the standout example of why does he even have 5 slots available if he can only get 3 skills. Gentz as well while you get him in the late game so he isn't too relevant it's just so cringe that he can only learn 1 skill. I used to just stick him in a gavel or one of those mobile weapons with a machine gun with speed and that would be the only good I could find with him, otherwise guide and long range weapons.
Thank you for your input, I really appreciate the ideas, specially the one about another function to the Flamethrower instead of raw damage.
When making this mod I had two points in mind:
Making Long and Melee more on par with Short;
Making Short single-shot weapons as viable as multi-shot weapons;
Indeed, balancing in this game is a problem and I wonder how all this will function when they release the multiplayer update (I hope they don't obfuscate the code because that would mess up any future work on the current mods). Funnily enough, the true damage to Flamethrowers was a last minute change because the game doesn't treat visible projectiles very well specially with the Switch skill. Trying to add more shots to a Flamethrower freezes the game, and since I was already adding true damage to melee, it was the first thing available to replace. So reducing enemy armor with a Flamethrower would be a nice replacement, and maybe I will implement it if the next update doesn't kill these mods off.
About individual character skills, I strongly agree with all points. Most characters feel useless in the OCU campaign, something they fixed in the UCS. So, the ability to replace skills or at least have more liberty with them is something I thought for this mod, however I am very time limited and not very experienced with Unity modding (this is actually my first modded game). Instead I thought of just trying to find whatever holds skill/character information and giving everyone the same 5 slots + no initial skill setup. Trying to find that was the last thing I was trying to do for this mod before having my schedule full.
And since they announced the next updated, I've been holding off to updating any of the mods I've put up to not potentially waste any work. Hopefully they release it soon, everything works as intended and I can potentially update everything with new features.
Edit: Almost forgot to answer your question (Even though it's been months since you asked). Yes, you can install mid playthrough. In fact I only tested in an already running save game to avoid having to go through the first mission.
5 comments
Thanks to Better Pilot, all the characters have become more attractive.
By the way, are you planning to make an uncapper?
I think that the only effective way to deal with NG+ enemies with 10x health is to focus on the body in "Guide" or "Duel", but I thought that removing the status level and experience point cap (level 50 → 255, experience point 9999 → 99999, etc.) would be a further attempt at playing.
I hope you will be interested.
This text was created by machine translation, so I hope it is not rude.
FRONT MISSION 1st is my favorite game. Thank you for releasing various mods.
Thank you for your feedback! But I never really thought about removing the limits of the game. Could be an interesting idea, I will check the possibility as soon as I can!
I'm so glad you're interested.
Whether or not it's possible, I'd like to thank you for considering my idea.
The melee skill changes are pretty huge, have you tested it for balance? It seems pretty extreme, though I guess compared to how much damage speed switch machine guns do its probably an equalizer more than anything else? Though I guess adding speed to single shot weapons buffs those quite a bit too, the ziege rifle probably doing insane damage with up to 4 shots, adding a bonus to flamethrower is cool too though I wonder how overpowered that scaling bonus would be. I think it would have been better to add that function to switch so that you could have viable switch flamethrowers as a build maybe, like because of it being set up on speed you need a standard full short build with switch and speed and duel for flamethrowers to be any good compared to the rest, they should hit at least as hard as a buffed melee attack unless it comes with some sort of an effect like an acid affect to make it a good opener shot with follow up attackers stronger, or maybe a stun or smoke effect or something that reduces its ability to function due to "flamethrower heat", something to make it worth taking and not just trying to compete in damage and coming short every time. You might have added something similar to shotguns imo to make them stand out a bit from regular rifles, it's kind of bad design in general in the vanilla game that rifles and shotguns do the same thing though I remember distinctly remedied in fm4. Kind of hard to come up with things considering the simplicity of the fm1 combat system. The bottom line is most short characters are better off taking a machine gun + long range rifle/bazooka with duel>switch>speed in that order or aquisition, so characters who have limited slots or skill access would only forgoe that order if they don't have the access like the only time it's better to take speed over switch is if you're running 1 short+1 melee setup which is strictly inferior so it would be more likely your characters skill access is wonky and you chose to run with it.
I guess your changes would add more value to speed relative to switch but it's still gonna be always better to go both if you can, and the changes to melee make it better to take all 3 skills for all the damage potential, making meihua want to forgo guide and go full melee with her 3 skill slots. The damage might be way overkill though since they stack up so high with skill level and character level. You might consider capping the extra shots at 2 for rifles and 1 or 2 for shotguns since 4 shots each sounds kind of much, and to compensate for balance you can add in a partial flamethrower mechanic to give them bonus damage so you get a mix between extra damage and extra shots. That's probably semantic and not so much worth the effort to implement but it would add for variety, just not a fan of the idea of running a rifle+shotgun combo and have them both machine gunning. I guess ultimately multi shot weapons will always be ideal for a damage spread past the early game so a miss hurts less and so that you are haven't less damage go to waste if you are getting overkill with no duel.
It's probably hard if not impossible to code something that gives an incentive to use 1 weapon rather than 2. It would be cool to have an incentive melee+flamethrower build of some sort, just anything to encourage the player changing up the formula of building every character the same.
Either way your changes are very interesting and I am looking forward to a playthrough with it soon to see how it feels, thank you for the hard work. Is it possible to run on a current game or does it need to be a new game?
Would also love to see some of the characters you get have their available skills cleaned up though that might be much more work if not impossible in comparison. It's kinda memes how many of them either don't have the slots or the access to be useful characters though it makes sense that only your 5 core that are all trained military personnel to have perfect skill access. Molly being a perfect example, 4 skill slots, no guide, can only get 2 short skills, can only get 2 melee skills, so by default forced into getting dual+switch or double+first/stun, possibly dual+first+stun and run like machine gun+fist which is gonna be pretty bad on damage and stun inconsistent to begin with in my experience since it can break the turn you apply it. if she even had access to speed so she could have a single short weapon with duel would make all the difference to feel like a character with a theme otherwise you're sort of bottled into a limited build and on top of it your long range is gonna be hitting random parts, so you end up with the same build as everyone else either double fists or double guns with a rocket launcher on the shoulder and less effective with all of them. I think porunga was the worst offender with 5 skill slots, has 4 skills to choose from but can only actually get 3 of them on his skill sheet and forced into a speed without duel and first+stun otherwise stun/first+double and no guns and no guide. It's borderline useless compared to most other characters you get. You never need those latter characters anyway since most missions you cap at I think 9 units per mission minus the final one? Mei hua's 3 skill limit with a melee one already pre picked gutting her from either being a perfect short weapon specialist on top of having to choose between all of the melee skills or giving up first or stun if you want guide. It's always forcing you to make lousy choices I guess to simulate how a lot of your pilots aren't trained military so will not be as good as the ones who are, it's just very obvious that it was done sloppily with porunga being the standout example of why does he even have 5 slots available if he can only get 3 skills. Gentz as well while you get him in the late game so he isn't too relevant it's just so cringe that he can only learn 1 skill. I used to just stick him in a gavel or one of those mobile weapons with a machine gun with speed and that would be the only good I could find with him, otherwise guide and long range weapons.
When making this mod I had two points in mind:
Indeed, balancing in this game is a problem and I wonder how all this will function when they release the multiplayer update (I hope they don't obfuscate the code because that would mess up any future work on the current mods).
Funnily enough, the true damage to Flamethrowers was a last minute change because the game doesn't treat visible projectiles very well specially with the Switch skill. Trying to add more shots to a Flamethrower freezes the game, and since I was already adding true damage to melee, it was the first thing available to replace. So reducing enemy armor with a Flamethrower would be a nice replacement, and maybe I will implement it if the next update doesn't kill these mods off.
About individual character skills, I strongly agree with all points. Most characters feel useless in the OCU campaign, something they fixed in the UCS. So, the ability to replace skills or at least have more liberty with them is something I thought for this mod, however I am very time limited and not very experienced with Unity modding (this is actually my first modded game). Instead I thought of just trying to find whatever holds skill/character information and giving everyone the same 5 slots + no initial skill setup. Trying to find that was the last thing I was trying to do for this mod before having my schedule full.
And since they announced the next updated, I've been holding off to updating any of the mods I've put up to not potentially waste any work. Hopefully they release it soon, everything works as intended and I can potentially update everything with new features.
Edit: Almost forgot to answer your question (Even though it's been months since you asked). Yes, you can install mid playthrough. In fact I only tested in an already running save game to avoid having to go through the first mission.