If it's higher than level 10 it can't be installed in human space and there's precedent for scripting the destruction of a weapon. It's done to make sure you always have to take the Qianlong to the Huari to get it repaired. It could be done to keep the first disintegration weapon out of player hands.JohnBWatson wrote:A short range, ammoless disintegrate weapon might be a bit overpowered for something that that can be obtained at the edge of Human space, where nothing's immune. I'm not certain about how the spread might look, but the idea of 6 turrets would work just as well.I don't think the spread would look good. I'd go with six single firing point fracture cannon variants on the six pillars of the gazebo shape with probably a 180 degree arc each and 1/3 the damage of your proposed IM-90-like variant. That would give the same single target damage which is all that matters and look a lot better. Or put the disintegrator in the short range slot. Or not have a short range slot.
No it's not. It's a tracking weapon that does piddly damage because it spends all its design budget on the disintegration and tracking effects. Giving the player 1 time immunity wouldn't help. A new player still wouldn't know disintegration was a thing until disintegrated and it would still be before even seeing the ship that killed him. Fighting the Iocrym right now is exactly the sort of long range slugging match you don't want it to be.JohnBWatson wrote:Nothing has been said to convince me that the quantumsphere is or within reason can be anything more than an annoying gotcha. Tradition isn't a good enough reason to keep a reference to Star Trek the Motionless Picture around when it's not helping gameplay.
It's a tracking weapon that can deal heavy damage at range and moves slow enough that it can be avoided. If we don't have something like that, I don't see how we can get a ranged fight that's more exciting than simply tanking some other longranged weapon while hammering away with your own. The disintegrate property may be a bit much, though I'm confident that giving the player a 1 time immunity would be enough to nullify that.
Being able to separate them is a bonus I think. They add almost nothing to the fight except duration and annoyance and I'd just as soon get rid of them, but at least it should be possible to get rid of them for the second or third stage of the fight.JohnBWatson wrote:All at once deployment allows the player to just get them launched, run away, then wipe them out without the ICS's fire support. The game's present mechanic for deploying them is indeed quite annoying and not really challenging, but I think that if we replace "deploy 3 whenever shield drops, even if it just came back up" with "try to maintain 3 drones active by launching up to 3 every few minutes whenever shields are down", the 'cheapness' of the addition of drones becomes much less of a problem. At the very least, it'd feel like the ICS is playing by some logical constraints and make destroying the Sentinels in the ICS fight feel less pointless due to the fact that it'll take some time to restock them.I think the carrier deployment on shield drop thing may also be more annoying than challenging. I'd prefer a finite supply launched all at once. I also think they need to have their armament rethought as well. They're not fast enough to bring their guns to bear against other ships, but changing their speed might mess up the intercept difficulty of the anti-station strikes.
There are ways around the luring issue. For instance setting them to patrol relative to the ICS should work.
Actually, what about putting a station like the Ares ask you to kill in orbit around the planet and having it spawn the sentinels? Then it would be the ICS you had to lure to split them up and whatever changes are made it will have some sort of ability to shoot back at long range.
I think I missed it.JohnBWatson wrote:I did list a possible armament change for the Sentinels, what do you think of it?
Ah. A tractor adds nothing to the first stage and self destruct makes farming them for ROMs even more punitive than it is already. Since it's nearly impossible to save stations and most of the research missions involve tons of travel distance that's not good. Most players are probably going to have to farm ROMs at least their first time in Heretic. I think the AI will use omnis on targets of opportunity when on a task, but a nondamaging omni-tractor won't accomplish anything. I'm not sure what self-repair is supposed to add either.