George wrote:
8. Finally, one more question: what are some of your favorite/cool items that you would like to use, but cannot because they are underpowered?
I wanted to add this:
Stealth armor.
Even at the highest value, stations can still detect you, is this intentional? I would be more inclined to sacrifice some durability for stealth if it worked but especially with the new shields, they are more suicidal than ever. I'm not sure how stealth on enemies would work, although that could get really nasty. Maybe leave that out...
Coming soon: The Syrtian War adventure mod! A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
Someone recently asked my opinion on the MAG launcher, which lead me to actually look closely at it.
It needs help. Badly. The ranges are absolutely pitiful, especially the ostensably basebusting siege mag. For a a specialized anti-station weapon low missilespeed is acceptable, but not low range. It needs on the order of 650 lifetime for its current speed to be a useful basebuster and at its current speed can never be a useful antiship weapon against anything faster than a CSC.
The High Flux MAG also has a particularly poor missilespeed of 20, and the others manage a mere 30, lower than the much maligned RC1/2 AK505 Ballista. To use in concert with other weapons it needs a speed close enough to theirs that the gap between when shots fired at the same time hit the target is around a tenth of a second. Pairing a missilespeed 30 MAG with a even a missilespeed 40 cannon the aim points against a moderately fast tangentally moving target are too far apart to effectively use together. I've used them on AI ships with typical projectile weapons and they don't do well. The cluster MAG makes up for missing widely by having a huge fragmentation radius, but the others don't work so well.
8b: some weapons aren't underpowered, but are useless because ammo availability is poor. The NAMI Heavy launcher is nearly impossible to get ammo for. Late game the basic NAMI runs into the same problem even though the highest level ammo for it is still viable. The Kytryn launcher is the worst, though, never having more projectiles available than I can count on my fingers. Without using binary. At least NAMI heavy missiles and XM900s should be available in large or possibly unlimited quantities from CSCs if your rank is high enough because the commonwealth fleet uses them and therefore must have them available. The Teraton fabricators, since they are completely undocumented in game and have a tendancy to eat the PC should not be required to use any weapons.
Just to add to that, I was the one who asked Atarlost about the MAG launcher and I agree with just about everything he says about it. The new shield buster MAG currently won't get much play due to shield nerfing and to it not really matching the niche of other mags, which is base busting and area damage.
As for question 8:
I'd also like to see Broadswords get more screen time, possibly via a dedicated ammo box.
The Penitent cannon could also stand to see some attention, since it's gone from being an Iocrym-killer to possibly the most unloved weapon in the game. The AI can't hit anything with it and damage-wise it's about on par with level 2 weapons despite requiring 20MW.
I would like to use the superconducting shield generator but I can never find coils for sale. Would it make sense for them to be sold at armor dealers?
There isn't really any good reason to use XMH armor since it can't be repaired easily and stats-wise it's not competitive with armors that cost similar amounts. It used to seem good it because it was level II and you could get it up to +50% with carbon-weavers, but now that you can also do that with level III armors, it's lost some of the appeal.
Retroactive wrote:The Penitent cannon could also stand to see some attention, since it's gone from being an Iocrym-killer to possibly the most unloved weapon in the game. The AI can't hit anything with it and damage-wise it's about on par with level 2 weapons despite requiring 20MW.
Yeah, Penitent ships are like hornets, only without the speed. The most annoying thing about them is that they leave wrecks that get in the way when I'm trying to crack the shrine. Most of the time I hardly acknowledge that they're there.
Last Cause Of Death: Destroyed by Karl Svalbard's last Lucifer missile, right after I blew him up. And the crowd cheers.
Considering the penitents show up just before ranx and ventari they should have comparable equipment.
Assuming the player has average level equipment, the absolution cannon will do only 10 damage per second on average. It only does have the damage of the slam cannon (also level 4). The Atonements have KM500s and are equally annoying and harmless at that point of the game. The only real danger posed by any of them is the harass power of the stations. (Which would be an excellent candidate for a modified tractor beam! )
Coming soon: The Syrtian War adventure mod! A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
Location: Somewhere in the Frontier on a Hycrotan station, working on new ships.
rule of thumb; annoying=bad for fun
anyways, the ares plasma cannon could use some love. it has abysmal net dps due to its very bad fire rate, and thus really would be more of a level ix weapon, but in poweruse, its 500mw makes it inviable and that power use is much more fitting of a level xi weapon, not x, and certainly not ix or viii, which is where it stands damagewise atm.
then comes the gaian cannon; its so bad it has the one use that marks a useless weapon; rins. first off, the power consumption at 350mw is ridiculous for something that has such finite shots, 8, i think. then its damage is basically a thermo version of the ares plasma cannon i just mentioned. then again comes the finite shots thing.
the penitent cannon also needs love, as was mentioned above, and as i have campaigned for in the past.
also, i would love to use autons, but... (goes into same autons are too weak argument hes used since the beginning of time.)
feel free to use the stuff from the auton mod that alterecco and i are working on. well, it is mostly his code, as im just doing graphics, but ill be balancing them too once all the code is done, and he said it would be great if you used the stuff in vanilla t.
The APC does less damage than the fusionfire against most enemies. With 0.99 shields. It does less damage than the level 9 kytryn blaster across the board.
Location: Somewhere in the Frontier on a Hycrotan station, working on new ships.
Atarlost wrote:The APC does less damage than the fusionfire against most enemies. With 0.99 shields. It does less damage than the level 9 kytryn blaster across the board.
Never did the calculations, but... that's substantially worse than I thought...
Because this weapon is used on the phobos, to prevent making the phobos too powerful, once this weapon gets buffed, I think that simply turning down the fire rate adjustment and slapping on a few extra turrets should do the trick!
Slapping on extra turrets to compensate for a changed firerateadj is a very bad move because they're capacitor weapons and the capacitor refresh rate is independant of firerateadj. Until firerateadj gets high enough that they can fire continuously it has no effect at all on the total damage output of the turrets. Slowing down the turrets in a way makes them more dangerous because the period of vulnerability in which they don't fire is shorter.
To weaken the phobos you ironically want to reduce its firerateadj, making it easier to dodge its most effective weapons.
I reduced the firerateadj to 10 (even with the playership), reduced the firerate of the plasma cannon to 60, increased the missilespeed to 75 and the lifetime to 80 and gave it +/-10 degrees of swivel. That made the plasma cannon its most effective weapon. Which is as it should be since it appears to be built around it.
)
or you can... not get blown up?