I don't think they have to have a neutron blaster. They are worth exponentially more in loot than the effort it takes to kill them, and to get the threat level in balance with the rest of the current UT, they basically have to fall apart before they can put up a fight against anything. Like I said before, being quickly and easily killed by a stock playership is undesirable for an enemy that'll be showing up into the late Outer Realm, and makes little sense for something that's supposed to be jumping the player because it thinks he's an easy target.PM wrote:If Wind Slavers need stronger defenses, give them more armor segments. Combined with .30c speed, neutron blasters, and spawned as packs, they will destroy unprepared or underleveled playerships quickly.
That said, I think the best solution here is to buff their armor to a level where they aren't killed instantly, decrease the rate and quantity at which they spawn in encounters, and lower the number of them guarding minor stations. This would make farming them less overpowered, let the player not wonder how the Sung isn't bankrupt from using them, and keep them relevant in combat for as long as they need to be. They're effectively the Sung's only long ranged defensive option, and right now that makes their citadels far too easy to kill for the loot they provide.
Fleeing doesn't need to be an easy solution for every fight, especially considering how easy it is to lure an enemy into a station's attack range. While Transcendence isn't supposed to be as hard as nethack, there should be genuine danger if a player is in the Outer Realm in a Wolfen with advanced reactive and a dual laser.I view Wind Slavers a greater threat than Steel Slavers because no playership can outrun Wind Slavers when they are encountered. If Wind Slavers catch the player in the open, the player must win that encounter quickly or die. Wind Slavers do not need to be resilient.
Random patrols, especially, should not be something that can be trivially fled from. Their entire Raison D'être is as a skill/equipment gate that maintains the necessity of improving one's skill and equipment even when the player isn't actively destroying enemy stations. Making them trivial to escape(unless they have long ranged weapons like the Tundra and Chasm encounters, and can actually get a few shots off at the player before he's out of range) just results in a player careening around the system with a horde of non - threatening random encounters following him. This is funny in Eridani, with the enemies that aren't supposed to be a threat, when this happens with factions that are supposed to prey on civilian ships roughly as fast as the player, it's a bit depressing.