Suggestion: Lower range or cyber attacks

[hookoa]

I suggest that the range of the cyber shields down attack be lowered. I find Sung Citadels (in nebulae especially) to be near invincible with their new turret border and long range earth slaver attacks.

In my latest game, I couldn't even find the earth slaver on my lrs and by the time I finally did find it, target it, and kill it, my carbide carapace was nearly tinfoil-carapace and two more earth slavers had come in for reinforcement.

Worst yet is that the earth slavers never strayed out of range of the Sung Citadel meaning that any attempt to fight them must be done with no shields and usually a dozen particle weapons targeting you.

</rant>

[kay.py]

Really? I find pretty much every station on the game is pretty trivially taken out with a long range weapon and some patience. There's pretty much no resistance given until the station is destroyed if you stay a reasonable distance away...

[hookoa]

Not necessarily. The freighter only allows two weapons. This means that you'd have to devote one weapon to long range WMD for station killing. In the case of Sung fortresses, particle weapons can travel about 85 ls or so. Still fairly long range. Also, Sung fortresses can be difficult with their protective barricades. They necessitate a WMD weapon because the station explosion will punch through most shields if you try to sit over it.

So maybe howitzer and an akan600 for shooting down wind slavers?

Maybe it should be difficult and I should have to come back to beat them. I dunno.

[Psycholis]

a mark iii is basically the highest non-military howitzer and it's good against citadels. with a semi abundance of hexagene boosters, it's possible to get it to fusionfire levels without the thermo damage. the type of damage doesn't seem to play as much importance for station busting. the fusionfire still has a much higher potential for station destroying though and they show up fairly early, not too far into ares space (or should anyway with your rng)

[Atarlost]

Not necessarily. The freighter only allows two weapons. This means that you'd have to devote one weapon to long range WMD for station killing. In the case of Sung fortresses, particle weapons can travel about 85 ls or so. Still fairly long range. Also, Sung fortresses can be difficult with their protective barricades. They necessitate a WMD weapon because the station explosion will punch through most shields if you try to sit over it.

So maybe howitzer and an akan600 for shooting down wind slavers?

Maybe it should be difficult and I should have to come back to beat them. I dunno.

What else would you devote your second weapon to? That region's too dangerous to waste it on a mining weapon and with a speed loader an optimized howitzer has firerate competative with some of the slower skirmish weapons. You could use missiles, but those are just another long range WMD except the strelkas and mags.

Of course if you're using an Akan you don't really need anything else as long as your ammo holds out. They're WMD2 with a 120 ls range.

I suppose you could use a "poor man's howitzer" but the katana is capable of shooting through the barriers on a Sung fortress until they become wrecks and there are enough of them to kill the station inside before you run out. There are also north and south gaps where you can kill it with a lancer. Either a lancer or katana can do the same long range bombardment trick as a howitzer, if slower. The howitzer is preferred because sung and dwarg both resist particle.

[hookoa]

Okay, good points on the howitzer, Akan 600 does not do well as a WMD. It takes hundreds of shells to punch through the barricades to the fortress.

I still think the cyberattack is too long range though. I've had sung citadels at the edge of my lrs, and no earth slavers in sight and I still got hit with the shieldsdown attack. If I cant even target the earth slaver, I have no clue where to go to stop it.

[Amilir]

The citadel itself has ShieldsDown, no need for earth slavers. Also, it looks like the attack only has a range of 30, so getting hit at that distance would be a bug. Was there a nebula the earth slaver could be hiding in within 30 ls? Maybe an arrow pointing to the origin of the attack when you detect it would make more sense?

Code: Select all

<ItemType UNID="&itCyberDeckLowerShields;"
			name=				"CyberDeck lower shields"
			virtual=			"true"
			level=				"6"
			>

		<CyberDeckDevice
				range=			"30"
				attackChance=	"20"
				aiLevel=		"6"
				program=		"ShieldsDown"
				programName=	"Shi3ldsDown 3.1.5"
				/>

	</ItemType>

[hookoa]

Wasn't in a nebula. (Actually, deleted nebula's out of this game for testing). I was hitting the station at 90ls with no other ships on the lrs except for a couple wind slavers orbiting me. When shields went down, I flew toward the station and eventually found an Earth slaver about another 30ls past it.

[Amilir]

I had the same thing happen when I tested it. I'd bet that cyber attacks have a bugged range limit, that as long as you're targeted you can be hit by them.