Auton Upgradeability?
Fully upgradeable autons would be /awesome/. All that's really needed, as of the Constellation's upgrading, would be allowing us to upgrade their reactors, and possibly add a single device that is now a weapon or shield. Also, knowing the limitations of autons, reactor and armor-limit-wise, would be amazing.
Hmm. In all my many, many, many rants about how to improve autons, I hadn't actually considered reactor upgrades. Which is odd, because that's actually a very good idea.
The problem for players would be finding the reactors....currently most reactors are bought from a dock and immediately installed, which would force the player to repeatedly install and uninstall crappy ones to get enough for the autons. Some form of limit would also be sensible (so you're not running a hyperion on an autosentinel, funny though that would be), but if the availability of reactors can make it viable, some upgrades for power capacity would be pretty nice....my approach in Auton Rework of just upping the power capacity runs into problems of making autons too powerful early-on....
One way to solve this would be to create new items for Corporate Command: Auton reactor upgrades. Make them in 10MW, 20MW, and 30MW flavors, and make them fairly rare (Uncommon or Rare, only found in 1-3 units at a time) and levelled such that you won't find a 20 or 30MW until you're past St.K's. They could also be ordered (with a fairly low max, but given the number of autons a dedicated auton-user will acquire, it should be >1 per post) from trading posts. These would need to be installed by the auton bay (or possibly dealers, if they had a limited supply of them), and would then replace the reactors on the autons (unless they're of lower power than the default reactor, in which case the bay tells us we're a moron and doesn't install it unless we force it), and be unuseable on player ships. The justification is that autons are hyper-optimised for mass, and can't handle the extra mass that shielding imposes on traditional fusion reactors (ignoring the absolutely massive guns we're putting on them of course). Or something like that. Basically make a new McGuffin for players to hoard and use, which is useless for a playership but very handy indeed for autons without risking overpowering them.
Allowing reactor upgrades would probably go a long way to addressing the lack of post-early-game viability for the more common autons.
.....of course, there's also the bugs/annoyingness in AI, how poweruse is handled, lack of any indicator of what limits are, device installation and removal, armor repairs, weapon installation, device installation and removal, price, ICX, the inability to use an item on a device/segment on an auton, and availability. But those are separate issues.
The problem for players would be finding the reactors....currently most reactors are bought from a dock and immediately installed, which would force the player to repeatedly install and uninstall crappy ones to get enough for the autons. Some form of limit would also be sensible (so you're not running a hyperion on an autosentinel, funny though that would be), but if the availability of reactors can make it viable, some upgrades for power capacity would be pretty nice....my approach in Auton Rework of just upping the power capacity runs into problems of making autons too powerful early-on....
One way to solve this would be to create new items for Corporate Command: Auton reactor upgrades. Make them in 10MW, 20MW, and 30MW flavors, and make them fairly rare (Uncommon or Rare, only found in 1-3 units at a time) and levelled such that you won't find a 20 or 30MW until you're past St.K's. They could also be ordered (with a fairly low max, but given the number of autons a dedicated auton-user will acquire, it should be >1 per post) from trading posts. These would need to be installed by the auton bay (or possibly dealers, if they had a limited supply of them), and would then replace the reactors on the autons (unless they're of lower power than the default reactor, in which case the bay tells us we're a moron and doesn't install it unless we force it), and be unuseable on player ships. The justification is that autons are hyper-optimised for mass, and can't handle the extra mass that shielding imposes on traditional fusion reactors (ignoring the absolutely massive guns we're putting on them of course). Or something like that. Basically make a new McGuffin for players to hoard and use, which is useless for a playership but very handy indeed for autons without risking overpowering them.
Allowing reactor upgrades would probably go a long way to addressing the lack of post-early-game viability for the more common autons.
.....of course, there's also the bugs/annoyingness in AI, how poweruse is handled, lack of any indicator of what limits are, device installation and removal, armor repairs, weapon installation, device installation and removal, price, ICX, the inability to use an item on a device/segment on an auton, and availability. But those are separate issues.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
Ship classes already have the field maxReactorPower. It is not used by standard ships (but is used in mods), but it will prevent installation of reactors that exceed maxReactorPower. Autons could be given this field to prevent Hyperion on AutoSentinels.
It would be nice to include reactors as allowable miscellaneous devices for an auton bay to install. I often farm reactors from enemies, and can stockpile many (un)damaged reactors from the spoils. After I find a fabricator, I can easily convert all damaged reactors into undamaged reactors if I cared to.
What would be nice is to let the auton bay give ammo to autons so they can use power efficient ammo munching weapons like SmartCannons.
Also add more refillable charged weapons like the Qianlong archcannon. Qianlong archcannon is the ultimate auton weapon.
EDIT - @ Shrike: In 1.3b2, 300D Defender and its variants have 25 MW, mule has 15 MW, and 1M (and /i) have 45 MW.
It would be nice to include reactors as allowable miscellaneous devices for an auton bay to install. I often farm reactors from enemies, and can stockpile many (un)damaged reactors from the spoils. After I find a fabricator, I can easily convert all damaged reactors into undamaged reactors if I cared to.
What would be nice is to let the auton bay give ammo to autons so they can use power efficient ammo munching weapons like SmartCannons.
Also add more refillable charged weapons like the Qianlong archcannon. Qianlong archcannon is the ultimate auton weapon.
EDIT - @ Shrike: In 1.3b2, 300D Defender and its variants have 25 MW, mule has 15 MW, and 1M (and /i) have 45 MW.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!
Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!
Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
Awesomesauce. I can tick that off my list of persistant gripes.PM wrote: EDIT - @ Shrike: In 1.3b2, 300D Defender and its variants have 25 MW, mule has 15 MW, and 1M (and /i) have 45 MW.
I'm also agreed on the subject of ammo weapons.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.