Shrike's Mines & Missiles ++

A place to discuss mods in development and concepts for new mods.
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Derakon
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I already gave this feedback in IRC, but for posterity: the endgame laser guys are mostly pretty decent, but I don't really enjoy fighting them. The capships in particular throw out such a massive weight of lightspeed projectiles that the only effective tactic I've found is to invoke Domina Defend and get in close. Otherwise my projectiles end up getting destroyed long before they can deal damage. The ships and stations are also noticeably more twitchy than most others in the lategame, attacking you from long range (again, with hard-to-avoid lightspeed projectiles). And lasers do great against shields, less well against armor...which means a) your externally-mounted gear is liable to be damaged, and b) you're at risk of getting EMPed, which just sucks no matter when it happens.

But the real kick in the pants is that they don't have any decent loot! Stealth armor isn't very good for the player, and the fancy laser weapons are also not useful if you can't quad-wield them like the capships do. They don't even use level-5+ fuel! So after putting in a lot of effort and dealing with aggravating enemy tactics, your reward is just some vendor trash and the fact that you've cleaned up the system a bit. Which for some reason doesn't stop more fleets from spawning into the system to go on patrol and interrupt you while you're fighting more profitable/interesting enemies.

I'd suggest giving them a higher-level fuel type (pteracnium, probably) even though the ship specs don't really call for it. They should also have some kind of "characteristic" loot, like how Sung have longzhu orbs and Ventari have ion resistance coating barrels. Ideally something that players are likely to find useful. High-tier ammo boxes, patch spiders, armor patch kits, ion/thermo enhancers, a crystal that temporarily gives your shields 600% laser resist...maybe not ion/thermo enhancers, that'd be too good. Basically something the player can be glad to see when they're looting the remains of a LOTOR station.
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AssumedPseudonym
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Derakon wrote:
Thu Mar 02, 2017 2:15 am
They should also have some kind of "characteristic" loot, like how Sung have longzhu orbs and Ventari have ion resistance coating barrels.
 In before the decon barrels on Karves. Those kinda don’t really count anymore at that point in the game.
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Derakon
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Possible bug: Positron Lancers use the old default gun image on dock screens. I guess they should use something like the positron cannon graphic instead?
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Song
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The LOTOR loot is mostly placeholder stuff I rushed in to have something when that faction went live. There's a few things in there right now that I consider fine (credit ROMs, NAMI heavy ammo, a few rare guns), but mostly I agree the risk/reward is out of whack. The real problem is that interaction values (and shot HP) have awful defaults....and there's honestly not that much I can do about it. It needs George to set up some sort of automated thing.

...alternatively, you can just use beam weapons, but those are a bit limited as well.

@AssumedPseudonym: Decon gel isn't a reward. It's a necessity given that I'm slowly adding more decent armors that lack radiation-immunity. Given the Karve has a fairly wide availability and requires a fairly aggressive strategy to kill safely, I needed to encourage that by making killing the ship leave you able to survive contamination.


And finally, yes, there's various issues with weapon icons. Mostly because I made weapons before they got icons, and didn't upgrade them to use the new graphics. I'll work on fixing that.
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Song
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With dropbox killing off the method I use to host my mods, I'm looking for a replacement. Anyone got any convenient solutions?
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Latheos
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Shrike wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2017 5:34 am
With dropbox killing off the method I use to host my mods, I'm looking for a replacement. Anyone got any convenient solutions?
I'm fond of GitHub. I use it for my mods for 7 Days to Die, and expect I'd probably use it for Transcendence, if I ever get around to figuring out how mods work here.
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 If you have a DeviantArt account, sta.sh is a viable option. It’s where I put things when I need an online storage method.

 That said, Xelerus does still work; it’s just very picky. It’s grown to dislike apostrophes, odd Unicode characters, and probably a few other things that don’t readily come to mind. The ampersand in the zip file’s name might cause issues, for example. Try naming the file ShrikesMinesAndMissilesPlusPlus.zip and upload it with a description of “Standby.” If that works, you can put in a proper description later, or even just put a link to the thread that says something like:
AssumedPseudonym (on behalf of Shrike) supposedly wrote: https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6669

See forum thread for details. There are a lot of details. So many details. Seriously. Xelerus would weep if I tried to list them all here, so go read them there. Everyone will be happier that way. Especially Xelerus.
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Song
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Ok, I'll hook up the lightning rod and try getting xelerus to work.



In feature news, I repaired some damage done to game balance via experimental changes I never bothered to revert. Tripoli-class destroyers will no longer chase you down with X-ray lasers and murder you instantly at extreme range with basic bushido lasers.
Though if you get close you may regret doing do.
Though if you get close you may regret doing do.
NewTripoli.png (298 KiB) Viewed 12236 times

Instead, they now pack four secondary particle beam weapons and a pair of IMP9 rocket launchers (one on each side) as primary weapons. This makes the ship a powerful support vehicle while not being overly dangerous to a levelled player unless you're stupid enough to get too close to the rocket launchers. The IMP9 has been changed to a fixed-fire weapon (all ships using it have gained omni-slots for it but playerships running the next patch will notice the change), and they're set up as primary weapons. The Tripoli can only ever fire one launcher at a time at a single target....but the AI is actually smart enough to (probably accidentally) do some neat tricks with these. If you're attacking a Tripoli from the front, or being chased by one, expect it to wiggle and send a spread of ten rockets at once, covering a wide area and making dodging a little harder. The main thing with the IMP9 is not to get hit at point-blank range. Taking all five rockets will do a lot of damage to virtually anything.

In future versions I'll try getting some level-based ammunition sorted. Right now, it's most likely to turn up with the weaker, longer-ranged cartridge. This means it can hit you more often, but isn't all that powerful. At some point I'll be adding some thermo ammo for the IMP9, so that will open up some possibilities.

I'm avoiding giving it the NAMI launcher back because 1: I'm aiming for all-EI setups on the marauders where possible and 2: I don't like the NAMI and consider it a bit OP when used against the player.

I've also added an extra device slot to the Scorpion-class gunship so it can reliably carry an enhancement device or a drive while running a side-mount build. To encourage the use of side-mounts (and also the multi-slot tinker weapons if you want to forgo a shield, cargo hold or enhancement device) I've added the 'EI' flag to tinker weapons built from EI components. I'll also be adding some more in soon, likely based around particle weaponry (quadruple particle beam weapon, particle sidemount, etc). These won't be easy to craft, but they'll add some utility to the Tinkers post-St.K's beyond "craft a dual Mark I or Mark III now and then".


Testing of the Sotho has gone fairly well. I'm satisfied with how it handles for now. It's particularly good with niche weapons like the Sunflare cannon.

I've also been testing my revisions to Arco Vaugn. I think he works out quite well, although weaker starting ships may have issues.
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Song
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Shrike's Mines and Missiles is now too big for xelerus.

I'm looking into alternatives, but it'll delay public releases until I've got a solution.


Today's changes:

-IMP9 went back to a low ROF
-Increased spread on IMP9 (12 degrees, from 8)
-increased lifetime of J400 rocket cartridge slightly
-Two new cartridges for the IMP9: radiation (illegal) and tritium (military). Both types are used on the Skeid.
-Reduced rate of fire on Tripoli
-Reduced internal HP on Tripoli (250HP, George? Really?)
-Tweaked the scorpion playership a little
-Added radiation vulnerability to the following armors: Gusoku, Carbide carapace, quadrocarbide, hexacarbide, octocarbide*
-Increased cost of VSA Mark III and IV armors
-Hoplite armor is now much lighter
-Increased HP total on Massive Phalanx armor, reduced mass on lighter Phalanx sets.
-A few other minor tweaks.


*Ahahahaha! Hahahahahaha!......um...yeah, I'm aware this will be Very Popular, but I need my radiation weapons to be capable of doing something in the lategame.
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erwgd
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There's an exploit with the Voss Und Szell stations: they buy consumables at a 50% markup but sell them at a 20% markup. This means you can sell some rice, buy it back then sell it back to them again for profit!
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AssumedPseudonym
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 I’m not entirely sure I agree with making Gusoku armor radiation-vulnerable. Actually, the more I think about it, the more strongly I disagree. It’s already one of the worst Level VII armors, and now it’s been nerfed? I can understand carbide carapace being radiation-vulnerable if Taikon’s quadro/hexa/octo carbide armors are — just handwave it as a carbide limitation — but Gusoku needed the opposite of a nerf. It was already the least likely to be bought armor in the game according to a scientific study that I’m totally not just making up, and now there’s even less incentive to buy it. Let it keep its radiation immunity, take the Military tag back off of it, and now it’s an armor that actually has a viable niche in the market.
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Song
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AssumedPseudonym wrote:
Sat Mar 18, 2017 1:25 am
 I’m not entirely sure I agree with making Gusoku armor radiation-vulnerable. Actually, the more I think about it, the more strongly I disagree. It’s already one of the worst Level VII armors, and now it’s been nerfed? I can understand carbide carapace being radiation-vulnerable if Taikon’s quadro/hexa/octo carbide armors are — just handwave it as a carbide limitation — but Gusoku needed the opposite of a nerf. It was already the least likely to be bought armor in the game according to a scientific study that I’m totally not just making up, and now there’s even less incentive to buy it. Let it keep its radiation immunity, take the Military tag back off of it, and now it’s an armor that actually has a viable niche in the market.
You're assuming that's the only change I've made. But yes, I do agree it needs to lose the military tag. I've also given it a bit of a HP boost and the complete bonus attribute.
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 We talked about this on IRC, but I’ll post the gist of my argument here in case anyone else feels the urge to chime in. It sounds like you’re trying to make Gusoku into “carbide carapace lite.” I don’t know if that’s the right way to go about it, especially not with Gusoku. I still think that just dropping the military tag off of Gusoku and leaving it otherwise untouched would be all the fix it needs. For making it a lighter carbide carapace version, you would need to: Give it the HPBonus (which you did); give it baseline resistances like regular carbide carapace; make it radiation-vulnerable to match regular carbide carapace (which you also did); and remove the repairLevel. At that point, you’d be just as well off putting in my suggested fix to Gusoku and making a new armor altogether for carbide light carapace.
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Song
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Having set aside carbide and gusoku for now (since armor rebalance has started anyway)...

I'm working on the Drekkar again. I did a test to swap it over to Theseus lasers, and it works. A bit too well, in fact. I'll be steadily nerfing it now. It has fewer guns (8 of a single type, rather than 13 of mixed types), but they're more powerful. I've also put IMP9 waist-mounts on it so it can handle armored targets. Now it just needs a fire-rate nerf. Currently a Drekkar can burn through level 5 or 6 armor in a few seconds using only the guns, so even though it's designed as an anti-gunship platform it needs a little toning down.
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