Enemies that need rebalancing

[Aury]

Oh, I think we forgot to cover the ventari who are too large of a difficulty spike for when they do appear.

I had carbide & a hanzo (and some crummy 20MW shield), and I saw one a couple systems post sanctuary and it nearly kicked my butt (if the RNG hadn't suddenly decided to love me and plop a CSC in the direction I was fleeing)

[Atarlost]

I think device damage is just a bad mechanic in that it's strongly biased against the player. The AI isn't effected because it usually only has to fight one fight (against the player) The player has to deal with the damaged device until it can be replaced.

One fix short of removing device damage entirely would be to make some device damage resistant armor device damage immune. Then the reliably lootable heavy sung armor would do the job. Right now the only way to get protection without quite a bit of luck is to order it from a trading post. Resistance less than 100% to device damage is useless because so many shots are fired over so many encounters that even a small chance of damage adds up to near certainty.

Regarding the Gaians the fix is to fix the AI. It won't fire non-tracking ,non-beam weapons at maximum range. Fix that and give it more ammo (possibly regenerating like Sapiens stations) and those thermo cannons stop sucking. I've tried playing around with the perception stat in the past and it doesn't seem to help.

Fixing this would also be a small boost to the xenophobes since they'd use their howitzers more.

[Ttech]

The AI could be a bit different, though not completely on topic it could use a random suicide run ship once in a while.

[Aury]

And if you get unlucky enough that the ICS decides to ram you?

[Song]

And if you get unlucky enough that the ICS decides to ram you?

Then you die. *Obviously*

at least, if you're slower than it is.

[Atarlost]

And if you get unlucky enough that the ICS decides to ram you?

Then you die. *Obviously*

at least, if you're slower than it is.

The ICS is so slow it'd have trouble ramming a planet if orbits were implemented.

[Jeoshua]

The ICS is so slow it'd have trouble ramming a planet if orbits were implemented.

Which should be... but then I digress from the topic

[Aury]

The importance being...? (To clarify, what I mean is that I see it being a large amount of gimmicky scripting to create what would amount to be a rather trivial gain. I mean, we have an orbit command already to make the NPC ships look like they are orbiting)

[Song]

*anyway.....to get back on topic*

So in a sort of sumary of what's been said:

Ventari need tweaking to make them less "OMG NOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!" like (or fixing device damage needs to become WAAAAY easier). Although I personally think that they're almost balanced as is, as they are amazingly useful in terms of loot and it's really only the device damage that makes them as evil as they are.

Himal could do with the bollide blaster getting a range buff via a lifetime increase. And possibly a loot change to give them small amounts of higher-value stuff.


Gaians...well....just need their stuff to work.. Also a buff to the Demo cannon, and possibly something that doesn't require ammo (or a means of recharging their demo cannons when they are installed on a gaian ship)

Personally, I'd love to see them have a different armor as well...as while there are similarities, they aint Xenophobes....it also makes them immune to a few too many things. Some kind of massively heavy armor that has enough HP to soak up damage, rather than rely on imunities and resistance like Worldship Plate.


Xenophobes are mostly OK, apart from the known bug with the Ark that's apparently fixed in 1.03. It's just fixing the defender, either as a carrier, or by giving it standoff.
They could also benefit by having the opportunity/ability to use their howitzers more effectively.

Death Drug Cartel start out at a good tricky difficulty level, but get weak quickly, and towards the end are laughably weak. We have not yet discussed this, and thus don't yet have any ideas.

Abbasid are laughably weak, thanks to the well-known gripe about how terrible the Laser Cannon Array is. The old idea of making the LCA an IM weapon might help, but again, we have not discussed possible fixes yet.
This could be left until the Official Extension about the Abbasids is started.

(Also, does anyone else find heliotropes somewhat underwhelming? Sunflare cannons sound so amazingly lethal in their descriptions, but are actually anything but. They're also annoyingly rare in my recent games, but that's unrelated. It's also been an amazingly long time since I got blinded by a blinder cannon.....)

[Vizth]

Not sure about the rest of this but i was thinking, replace device damage with disruption where it gets offlined or acts unreliably for a period of time?

This would help against particularly deadly enemies, or leave the player in deep if they're on the receiving end.

[Shifter55]

Gaians...well....just need their stuff to work.. Also a buff to the Demo cannon, and possibly something that doesn't require ammo (or a means of recharging their demo cannons when they are installed on a gaian ship)

Seconding this, Gaian Demo-Ships cease to be a joke when they actually fire. The problem with the Demo-cannon could probably be fixed by making it require ammo that would be unfeasible for anything smaller than a worldship to carry (maybe 1 ton for each shell?) to discourage player usage, plus it would allow it to be replenished in a similar way to the thermo cannons.

[Song]

making it an ammo weapon of any kind would discourage the player. Most people I talk to on IRC avoid ammo-requiring weapons (except launchers) like the plague.

[Atarlost]

It's not meant for player use anyways though.

And people only avoid ammo using weapons because they can't count on being able to replenish their supply. That makes a slot used on an ammo weapon a waste once the ammo runs out. The only playership that ever has a weapon slot to spare doesn't have the cargo capacity for ammo.

That's a flaw on the player end, not the enemy end.

[Aury]

It's not meant for player use anyways though.

And people only avoid ammo using weapons because they can't count on being able to replenish their supply. That makes a slot used on an ammo weapon a waste once the ammo runs out. The only playership that ever has a weapon slot to spare doesn't have the cargo capacity for ammo.

That's a flaw on the player end, not the enemy end.

More of a general balance problem really (lack of lootable ammo for certain weapons, or ammo is lootable, but unfortunatly later in the game - IE, you can buy a thermo cannon by st.k's, but no ammo for quite some time.. and by the time ammo does show up, you can loot ammoless weapons.)

[Androgeos]

To add on to that (maybe), the ammunition that you tend to trip over a lot are for weapons that are extremely weak compared to the ones found near Heretic. Biggest offender is the Raisermesser SmartCannon, and apart from its tracking abilities, it's not that useful as a weapon near the end.