As they stand, the luminous have been reduced to a pest of the late game; harmless to the player, but an extreme danger to friendly stations and ships due to the stations and cscs having only one damage type, thus allowing the luminous to use resistant shields.
however, luminous hardware is generally pretty worthless to the player.
the cubes are only worth it if one has a cpu with which to use them. the blasters make some nice cash, but are obsolete and rarely drop intact. the armor is thin and has rather useless resitances, as oracus harass, domina wrath and shatter all overpower the armor anyways, not to mention its only level six. their shields too are completely worthless both to the player and on the market.
the luminous need to be rethought. they sure have a whole lot of flavor potential, and id hate to see that go to waste.
some things to consider in remaking the luminous include;
1)better loot, probably via having better hardware.
2)a shield or shields that could be potentially useful to the player, probably filling unique niche roles. some ideas include autovariable adaptive speed regen shields or resitance shields, though the latter might prove to be more difficult to balance. same goes for the armor... im too sleepy to come up with ideas for that just now though.
3)a custom weapon or weapons set. maybe the weapons could adapt like the current shields do (true weapon addaption would be too hard to implement).
Rethinking the luminous
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Arisaya
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A little update on this:
I like how basic luminous armature was dropped in level, which made it lootable early on (it's really useful pre-st.k's, as it has 100HP, and +300% vs. laser and kinetic, so 400HP effective vs. those two), so that's a step in the right direction.
I like how basic luminous armature was dropped in level, which made it lootable early on (it's really useful pre-st.k's, as it has 100HP, and +300% vs. laser and kinetic, so 400HP effective vs. those two), so that's a step in the right direction.
(shpOrder gPlayership 'barrelRoll)
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It'd need an armor equivelent of the weapon <ondamageshields> to test how well a weapon is doing. Count the damage each drone is doing and produce more of (but not exclusively) the weapons belonging to the drones doing the most damage.
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Arisaya
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We still don't have an armor ondamageshield equivalent?(shpOrder gPlayership 'barrelRoll)
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I would like to see the Luminous take full advantage of our new event handlers and use some complex tactics when fighting enemies rather than simply blast away and hope it has the proper shield and weapon.
Perhaps the drones are hunting for equipment and send out small packs of drones to attack helpless ships, disassemble their prey and take it back to the assembler. Every so often the Assembler will spawn a luminous hero, with random (good) equipment that the drones have scavenged. The heros lead a pack of drones to an enemy station and try to kill it. If they do, it becomes an assembler.
The cubes and quantum CPU need to be rethought entirely.
The cubes don't have a big enough impact on play to justify using the CPU and losing a deviceSlot. I feel it should follow targeting and autopilot and be an 'unlocked' ability. A cube (of nanites) that reprogram the ship's comp into a quantum computer. We could then create a wide array of cubes to mimic what the roms accomplish and make them mutually exlusive. Once you have upgraded to a quantum CPU, normal roms no longer work. We could then limit the effectiveness of roms to only affect lower level equipment and have cubes take over to upgrade higher level equipment. We could even merge the field crystal functions into cube functions to possibly help with balancing those.
Anyways, just a thought...
Perhaps the drones are hunting for equipment and send out small packs of drones to attack helpless ships, disassemble their prey and take it back to the assembler. Every so often the Assembler will spawn a luminous hero, with random (good) equipment that the drones have scavenged. The heros lead a pack of drones to an enemy station and try to kill it. If they do, it becomes an assembler.
The cubes and quantum CPU need to be rethought entirely.
The cubes don't have a big enough impact on play to justify using the CPU and losing a deviceSlot. I feel it should follow targeting and autopilot and be an 'unlocked' ability. A cube (of nanites) that reprogram the ship's comp into a quantum computer. We could then create a wide array of cubes to mimic what the roms accomplish and make them mutually exlusive. Once you have upgraded to a quantum CPU, normal roms no longer work. We could then limit the effectiveness of roms to only affect lower level equipment and have cubes take over to upgrade higher level equipment. We could even merge the field crystal functions into cube functions to possibly help with balancing those.
Anyways, just a thought...
Coming soon: The Syrtian War adventure mod!
A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
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Arisaya
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The intelligent behavior idea is something I am planning on attempting to script with my luminous commanders and probes.
The probes go in, and check enemy weaknessses and damage types, and then the commander can send in appropriate forces. If the enemy is weak enough, it will simply send in lightly armored, unshielded pods to avoid wasting resources.
The probes go in, and check enemy weaknessses and damage types, and then the commander can send in appropriate forces. If the enemy is weak enough, it will simply send in lightly armored, unshielded pods to avoid wasting resources.
(shpOrder gPlayership 'barrelRoll)
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Arisaya
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^^ They've got the items to be the easiest to prototype the scripts on. The others will get it, if it turns out it works alright. If it doesn't, then it can get scrapped.
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I disagree. A robot does not have decision making skills that are comparable to a human's, but it can also react long before the human brain can. Since Luminous is destructive, I expect that decision making skills are quite unnecessary. It takes a human to cooperate and identify threats and non threats, but all Luminous does is shoot anything that moves (Luminous ships would be equipped with beacons that identify them, perhaps the player could steal one and make himself look friendly to the Luminous?).Atarlost wrote:The luminous should be the last ones to recieve intelligent behavior. They're an AI and nobody expects intelligence from AIs. The other factions are supposedly actual people so they should get intelligent behavior first.
[schilcote] It doesn't have to be good, it just has to not be "wow is that the only thing you could think of" bad
Personally, given the color scheme of the Luminous AI structures and ships, I'm always reminded of the two System Shock games and their main antagonist, the artificial intelligence S.H.O.D.A.N. - which is ... quite intelligent, completely devoid of ethics, utterly delusional and simply evil.Atarlost wrote:The luminous should be the last ones to recieve intelligent behavior. They're an AI and nobody expects intelligence from AIs.