New ships & outfits for the Unfettered

[Hurleveur]

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Content (Artwork)

Summary

This PR contains the ships and outfits to be added for part 1 of the campaign (#6416), as suggested by @warp-core.
That way we can do any balancing if needed, and it can make the campaign advance more towards mergeable state.

Note: I removed what I don't have the assets or 2x version of, namely the pistol rifle (that is meant as an easter egg) and the license for which @beccabunny should make a new version of eventually (except if he changed his mind), in the meantime it's just meant as a placeholder, or more if I get the 2x version, which I doubt.
Also I only included the generic new ship and outfits, not the new prototypes that are in the campaign.

Also expect a bit of spoilers. The good kind of spoilers.
I'll be adding scenes for seeing the ship in game shortly.

Important: feedback is required and appreciated, this is not the final form of the weapon's stats or the ship's.

Details

Sea scorpion:

This is a medium warships (the Uhai don't have any) meant to be able to field a good amount of pulse, ion, and be an agile harasser.

These new weapons won't be easily accessible for part1; you'll only be able to get a few. Only when the Uhai will get control of Wanderer shipyards will they be able to produce more of these. So they're supposed to punch a bit higher than their tier, as these are highly unstable prototypes that they invested a lot into, and which will be refined later.

New ionic weapons:


These new weapons are meant to be (like all UHai weapons) highly unstable and not very efficient but still devastating. They lack the range of the ion cannon but make up for it with higher dps.

Video showing how the tripulse & ionic work in game.
tripulse&ionic.zip

Tripulse shredder:

Now this is by far my favourite. It is meant to bring new possibilities to ES, with hit and run tactics made possible with its high damage in bursts. The sea scorpion is meant to be able to carry 4 of these, for when the time comes.

Value Detector:

It has come to my attention that the UHai, whilst being depicted as raiders and pillagers, didnt even have a scanner for it. Worst they don't even sell a simple cargo scanner at their homeworld (but that'll be handled by the main campaign)
This outfit is meant to solve that, it tells you the value of the enemy's cargo and also how well defended it is; if taking the ship is an option with its crew. But most importantly it lets you know what kind of energy they're running on so you know if you can disable them and quickly steal that precious cargo before they can get away.

This also adds the Sea Scorpions to the shipyard to be available for buying by anyone, same for the value detector.
It also adds the sea scorpion to fleets.

Testing

Here is a savefile with a sea scorpion that has access to all the new weapons, and the value detector; in the stock or equipped on the ship. It's in Hai space, if you want to test how it works go ahead. I also recommend trying out the "full tracker pod" version for that ship, with its agility it can be quite strong.
Emile Lancer.txt

Artwork Checklist

• I updated the copyright attributions, or decline to claim copyright of any assets produced or modified
• I created a PR to the endless-sky-assets repo with most assets from this PR 59
• I created a PR to the endless-sky-high-dpi repo with the @2x versions of these art assets: {{272}}

[Hurleveur]

I have no experience with doing a campaign so feel free to tell me what I should or should not include here (usages or ship; only the things that are there without the campaign... I have 0 experience)

[Zitchas]

I haven't really dug into running the numbers; but on the surface it looks like an interesting set of things. They add some capabilities, and sounds like the sorts of things that would fit into an Unfettered campaign.

I'm a little concerned they might not shift enough, though. The differences between the ion cannon and the ion blaster are slight, at least numerically. If the intent is to create a blaster style version of the ion cannon, it might need to shift the balance a bit farther.

[Hurleveur]

Later on in the campaign the player will receive the choice to improve one side of the gun, you're right it seems too similar rn, also I'd like to make the turret smth more than just the "double version of the gun that follows enemies" (with, say, a bigger focus on ion values, for example)
But I suck at balancing stuff precisely because of lack of experience so do give any suggestions you may have, currently these stats are not the final ones they're really meant to be a stupidly unstable prototype that'll get refined later.

edit: also the Sea Scorpion feels too weak to me, but idk much about balance as I said
the tripulse shredder feels really good however

[EjoThims]

I'm a little concerned they might not shift enough, though. The differences between the ion cannon and the ion blaster are slight, at least numerically. If the intent is to create a blaster style version of the ion cannon, it might need to shift the balance a bit farther.

Part of it was to try and make sure it wasn't significantly stronger (to avoid being unbalanced or seen as power creep). Even though it -is- meant to be a more modern design than the ancient ion cannon, there's also the large size difference to take into account; they fill different roles/sizes of ships.

[Hurleveur]

I have just made some changes to the ionic weapons after thinking a bit about it (thx Zitchas for the tips).
Now they have more of a role; the Blaster was done first in order to make as many of them fit on a SB as possible, disregarding stability, range, and ion.
Then, when doing the turrets, they had more experience and tried a more stable version of the ion; meaning less damage to the shields and more actual ion.

These weapons should convey that these are prototypes, and that they evolved; I don't like turrets that are just faster shooting guns.

[Hurleveur]

Some updates: soon there will be new visuals for the ionic blaster & turret.
Also I buffed the sea scorpion's shields a bit (+2000) because, even though it is meant to be a very quick and easily produced ships made by UHai, its design was mostly done back in the days of the Korath attacks by the Hai (looking for a ship fast enough to keep the raiders busy with tracker pods until SB arrive)
Otherwise it felt like a really weak medium warship; comparing it to the water bug which is a freighter and has 150 extra cargo, my idea is that they just removed cargo capacity from the original design and added some more shields generators instead (which explains why its the only Hai ship with so "little" cargo, 45)

[Hurleveur]

Two things remain to address, in my opinion: are the ionic strong enough, and should they be made bigger?
I improved the ionic values because you couldn't even power down a ship below your size before you actually disable it first, by what little damage is done. (okay it was Hai so its meant to be resilient to it but batteries just got buffed and ion didn't follow)
I'm going to open a PR to buff the ion cannon in reaction to #6783

[EjoThims]

Ion got the firing interference behavior when batteries got buffed. It doesn't drain as much (relative to new totals), but instead now causes interference even when not completely draining someone.

[Hurleveur]

I added a savefile to test the new weapons & the ship (in which you have a sea scorpion & the different guns).
The ionic blasters/turrets now have improved sprites and sounds for the shots.

Feedback is really needed to know if the weapons are in a good state right now; too weak or too strong, and how the look of them could be improved. I have done all that I can by myself on that end.

[roadrunner56]

One last thing.

[Hurleveur]

Until now there were no Unfettered outfits in the game. Indeed Hai ships dont have much going for them in the description but the Unfettered would be happy to proudly talk about these weapons and ships, and thats the idea I would like of them in the game.
Hai outfits are efficients and they dont really need an introduction, Uhai want to do things differently, their outfits and ships dont have everything written in the stats

Edit: to be clear, I wouldnt mind it being more condensed, or remove some parts of it but I dont want to remove all of it either

[Hurleveur]

I'll include these stories about the weapons etc into the campaign itself, when the time is right

Edit: also I think all feedback is addressed?

[Saugia]

It looks like all feedback from Grey and Anarchist has been addressed and no new changes have been made to require more. Artwork looks good here too. On behalf of this, I'm going to approve this PR. Just be sure to get new sprites for the Ionic Turrets soon, preferably before the Uhai Campaign PR (or for that PR).

[Hurleveur]

Was a small quirk with the size - the high dpi hadnt been updated right, and this one was said to "possibly look blurry" by the game.
That has now been addressed, without a need to change the asset files for the tripulse shredder.

Feedback addressed.

[Saugia]

Since all feedback was addressed for both Anarchist's and Grey's reviews, and this PR has approvals from multiple trusted individuals in each separate branch, I'm approving this PR and moving forward with merging it.