PM wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2017 3:47 pm
@ Norgath: That ship sounds like the Ares' Phobos dreadnought.
Manticore has a net defense penalty, either no shield (nano repairer is not good enough) or weak shield, and standard offense at best (same DPS, but off-centered points may be a pain).
Ideas for powering up Manticore:
* Remove -20% hp shield penalty. That way, player can opt out of the Manticore's gimmick if he wants (or needs to if he cannot find proper armor) and be like NPC Manticores.
* Nano repairer adds some +hp%, somewhere between 20% and 50%, to all armor (to compensate for no shield).
* Some offensive boost to all weapons to live it to its brute force description. Maybe swivel, +20% to damage, or faster fireRate.
Yes the Phobos dreadnought's plasma cannon. when I encountered it the first time it was reminiscent of a, of a rogue-like's damage spike. Throughout, most of the damage progression is fairly smooth up to this point. My first reaction is say nerf it but this made me slow down a bit to change my strategy; so not a bad thing imo.
In the past day or two I took the time to make a simple mod that puts the Navoya armor repairer on the market to try on different ships. I put one on the wolfen, as I wanted to see how well it would do with a dast ship, and lucked out on that playthrough with the random equipment mod and started out with light meteor-steel armor! Since this doesn't interfere with armor repairer I figured I would give it a shot and see how far I got before the armor failed on me. This was an exceptional early to mid game setup and is only inferior to heavy Navoya armor. I got so far as regular encounters to penitence shrines. Then there was a (luminous?) cruiser with some sort of seeking weapon that arced past the forward plate (heavy Meteorsteel, lucky me!) twice in a row and blew out my starboard plate. Up to that point I was able avoid a lot of heavy damage through the speed of the ship; as it can out run many of the missiles, as well as pull larger groups apart to whittle down the numbers, all the while regenerating HP.
As for the Manitcore itself, I think that having swivel mounts would be a great addition! It seems to fit with how it works and looks, yeah? I (want to) agree with the removal of the -20% hp shield penalty for the reason you stated, but there may be another answer. The Navoya heavy armor doesn't show up quite when it needs to, but reducing it's level may make it show up too soon for what it offers. Although, Heavy meteor-steel would be a good transition armor in between medium and heavy, if you could ever find it. This week I will try to increase meteor-steel armors in shops to see how the progression goes (mid to late game because light meteor-steel blows everything else out of the water(sector? Space-time?). Once I figure out how to get more than one item to appear at a time.
On a separate note, I like the idea of adding a hull stat and I see in my minds eye, clearly, how to get around the imbalance of early game and the potential it has in Transcendence. Firstly, water...ahhh.
This is effectively adding an additional defense layer, which I like, and can have some interesting effects and attributes; most of which are currently present in the game and some may be developed ITF(unknown--> EMP pulse). This would act like a:
*360% single armor plate
*takes damage IF the plate that would take damage is already at 0 HP(a switch command on collision?--> non-spatial item? takes up a non weapon slot? If I'm correct if armor = 0 then player ship is destroyed. Pseudo fix, switch at armor HP of 1 and if collision condition does not equal hull attribute damage is directed back to original (or other armor plate).
Focusing on the single armor plate aspect; an armor plate can be installed as a hull plate, for proof of concept, and specific hull plate designs can be fleshed out later on. Since it is a single piece, defenses can be more highly focused including:
*Zero HP hulls with damage immunity starting at mid level (4-6) hulls (so that if your armor is depleted you are not taken out by a single stray laser)
*special properties like radiation and EMP immunity for the whole ship
*it can be that one piece of equipment that you reserve for solar energy.
All in all, I think it would be a fun addition to Transcendence and not that difficult to balance.