Obstruction removal kit

[Song]

With pteravores and now the neuroplague pods in Eternity port, there are quite a few timed-death weapons out there that use overlays. The neuroplague pod is particularly nasty, as unless you're carrying an autodoc there is always a chance it will kill you, as pods can penetrate any shield at or below level 10. The problem is that there's only one way to remove these usually: find a station with a drydock. This can mean running across an entire system, and given that it only takes one hit to ensure a kill on the player for much of the game....that's not very fair. It'd be useful if as well as this you could remove "obstructions" (Ie: Bad Things) with a single-use item.

Maybe something about as rare as a medium or heavy repair kit, with only 1 or 2 counts of it every time it turns up, with about the same price. One use will remove all the obstructions on your armor, with a low failure chance (possibly tied to armor repair skill?)

In addition, the existing "organic solvent" barrel could be altered so that it also has a medium (50-70% chance) to remove the obstructions on your ship/the armor segment it's used on (I'm not sure how these overlays react with segments), at the cost of hitpoints. Degenerative nanites could also remove obstructions at a 100% rate, but at the cost of....well...showring your ship in degenerative nanites. (I'd add radioactive waste as a possibility, but most armors at this point are immune to it anyway. Besides, it would make less sense).

Edit: From discussing this on IRC: having patcher arms and spiders remove these obstructions over time would also make sense.
Edit2: Also making these weapons work on NPCs as well as the player would be really neat. I feel sad every time I bait an NPC into the path of a neuroplague pod and it promptly shrugs off the 100% fatal weapon of mass destruction. They don't have to work all the time, but they should work a large percentage of the time.

[george moromisato]

This is a great idea, particularly the organic acid idea. Perhaps also some armors should be immune or resistant to this (e.g., meteorsteel).

I'm always looking for intuitive uses for items. For example, it seems intuitive that applying organic acid to a pteravore or plague pod should have some effect. If you can think of other cases like this, I'd love to hear it.

[Song]

It's quite hard for other cases, because it's really because the neuroplague pods are so new, and so insanely powerful, that trying to think of how to get around the problematic balancing of such an unusual weapon led me on quite an interesting path:

The 100% killchance without cures makes perfect sense for what is effectively a weapon of mass destruction. And while the in-universe mechanics are questionable, the reason for having such absurdly high shield penetration is also fair enough: the taubeam cannon simply cannot penetrate mid to late game shields like the Invincible (kudos for the Star Wars reference on the advanced taubeam, BTW). The main problem with it is that in order to balance those low damage, high DPS guns, it has to either smash shields, or ignore them. Since it is a specialised weapon, shieldbust makes no sense, so it ignores them. And ignoring them means that when hit, you either die, or have to flee the fight immediately and backtrack a system or so to an armor repair station to have the thing cleaned off the hull. This is made harder by the fact that that launcher has a pretty good rate of fire and is reasonably accurate. Fighting swarms of resurrectors at present basically requires the use of the hacking abilities....which fortunately are also a bit unbalanced right nowl. You can wipe out an entire convoy of resurrectors by paralysing them with your first hack, then hacking the reactor on the destroyer to blow up everything on the second hack. But regardless....because the launcher cannot have its shield penetration nerfed without either 1. Making the faction unable to get through shields or 2. Requiring another gun and making the launcher a gimmick, the balance solution had to fall into active countermeasures. ICX devices are an option, but bugged. Medical items work, but apart from autodocs they're not infallible....and they're a bit inflexible. The trick then is to prevent long backtracking to a repair base for that armor-cleaning, allowing the player to finish the fight and then worry about the neuroplague (unless they're running a low DPS setup, but they probably deserve it for rushing into a fight in that case). Armor repairs already have this in the form of repair kits, so mirroring it in a decontamination kit/bug zapper thing makes logical sense.

....and at that point it's basically trying to think back to old adventure game puzzles and NetHack stuff (keeping in mind that my experience with that game is mostly from reading the wiki. My own adventures ended with me beating a bugbear to death with a cursed rusty tin-opener, then running into a wall and dying, then never getting around to trying it again), then thinking of all the hilarious improvised ways that a desperate pilot could remove something, but at a cost. Organic acid damage should be buffed if you use it for parasite/pod removal, as well. It makes sense in-universe because the thing has bored through the armor already....so there's more surface area to damage compared with a normal use. From a mechanics standpoint, it means that there is an actual downside..especially if the "proper" kits are quite rare. Can't make the neuroplague no threat at all, obviously.

I'll be looking at some of the other Eternity Port stuff soon as well to see if anything comes to mind...particularly hacking, which at present is absurdly good (give me the CDM shard over the hyperintelligent thing in the galactic core any day) with little to no downside after the early game. EP has some extremely innovative new stuff, which raises new balancing and gameplay questions which are fun to approach. One thing I can think of: If we've upgraded the CDM shard with a quantum CPU, the shard should be able to run programs for it. Currently you have to install another one to be able to do that. It should probably also boost the power consumption as well..... but in that case we'd probably need to be able to ask the shard AI to turn off the processors if we need the extra power.

Edit: In terms of immunity....anything that is regenerating should probably be resistant to penetration, probably via reduced penetration speed. V300, Duralloy, that sort of thing. The novaya repairer should also slow down the effect. Ultra-dense materials such as depleted uranium, transuranic elements, or neutronium should also have immunity or very high resistance. Maybe even some of the carbides and Diamond lattice as well maybe, since they are ultra-hard materials. Any armor that is energised (looking at you, Rasiermesser powered armors) should have a percentage chance to remove the parasite every few ticks: it's consuming a lot of power, and a parasite boring through it going to hit something energetic unless it gets very lucky, and when it does it's probably going to be toasted. Same idea as for patch spiders and repair arms: rather than slowing it down (like density, HP and regen), it's removing or killing the thing in the first place.

[TVR]

The best way to remove overlays is to get another ship to shoot them off, preferably with a laser or mass driver.

Try it with the Svalbard, those pteravores can be shot off once the shields are down.

[Song]

The best way to remove overlays is to get another ship to shoot them off, preferably with a laser or mass driver.

Try it with the Svalbard, those pteravores can be shot off once the shields are down.

1: This only works on OTHER ships. The playership is much harder to save this way (unless you carry autons specifically for this purpose)
2: This doesn't work on neuroplague pods because those things penetrate shields, which then protect the overlay (I think). Admittedly, neuroplague pods currently don't damage NPCs at all...but I'm about 90% certain that this is either a bug, or an incomplete mechanic.


Shooting them off an NPC is a fair mechanic. Having to arrange to have them shot off your own armor should be an absolute last resort, if you can't use the actual removal mechanics.

[JohnBWatson]

1: This only works on OTHER ships. The playership is much harder to save this way (unless you carry autons specifically for this purpose)

Ah, yes. Disable shields. Order auton to attack derelict station. Stand between station and auton.

Of course, I agree there should be a more practical way of doing this, at the very least an option in dock services. The organic acid would also be an excellent solution to this problem.

[Song]

1: This only works on OTHER ships. The playership is much harder to save this way (unless you carry autons specifically for this purpose)

Ah, yes. Disable shields. Order auton to attack derelict station. Stand between station and auton.

Of course, I agree there should be a more practical way of doing this, at the very least an option in dock services. The organic acid would also be an excellent solution to this problem.

Oh, it's already a dock services thing. It's just not always obvious that you can do it, and it's only doable if there's a convenient station right there. I'm more suggesting the quick "AAAAH GET IT OFF ME" kit, and the "AAAAAH GET IT OFF GET IT OFF ARRRRRH" desperate countermeasures (Eg. Pouring acid on yourself to get rid of a bug. ). It's not really necessary now (although it will definitely help with neuroplague), it will definitely be required when/if more of these overlay weapons turn up.

[TVR]

C'mon, be more creative, there are so many ways to remove a pteravore or other overlay at the moment. In the spirit of a roguelike, I've tested all of the following to work:

1. Crate bomb (8 XM900s per crate, might need more than one crate, 10 M5s works everytime)
2. Asteroid ejecta (Fire a howitzer or high WMD weapon at an asteroid or wreck, catching the shower of ejecta)
3. Iocrym manipulator shots (Position the offending pteravore between the ship and the shot)

Be sure to disable shields first, though. Will create a guide for this.

[Song]

C'mon, be more creative, there are so many ways to remove a pteravore or other overlay at the moment. In the spirit of a roguelike, I've tested all of the following to work:

1. Crate bomb (8 XM900s per crate, might need more than one crate, 10 M5s works everytime)
2. Asteroid ejecta (Fire a howitzer or high WMD weapon at an asteroid or wreck, catching the shower of ejecta)
3. Iocrym manipulator shots (Position the offending pteravore between the ship and the shot)

Be sure to disable shields first, though. Will create a guide for this.

This is also a known thing. That does not remove the need for an item.