Right now when you enter a new area there is a huge ramp of power often skipping several shield/weapon levels. The most obvious is pre and post St. K. pre St. K you have the best stuff equipped in the first system after you get past St. K you can get the commonwealth fortress or find a black market shipyard.
I would like is that a station varies what it can equip by the system level and the station, for example a commonwealth shipyard could equip anything 3/4 times the system level + 3. That way later stations would be more useful than earlier stations even if the same kind. (this can be easily done in a mod)
The other choke point is military equipment one solution is to have illegal versions (that maybe weaker) of those that stations will equip. Then you would have a reason for buying from black market stations. For higher levels (level 7+) you should have more non military shields/weapons that way a person who doesn't want to go illegal and gets unlucky with the fortress can still advance.
equipping that varies by system level
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Betelgeuse
- Fleet Officer
- Posts: 1920
- Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2006 6:31 am
Crying is not a proper retort!
non-military shields: Mammoth 50 -> Trenton ->alien (need military reactor)
non-millitary weapons (VI+): Dual particle beam (VI), Plasma Torch (VI), Mayakev launcher (Green strelkas are VI and are powerful enough to be used to save the antarctica), alien. There may be others, but none come to mind.
I think too many weapons are military. Any really rare weapons shouldn't need a military license, except perhaps rare damage type weapons (Thermo, Plasma, Positron, Antimatter).
non-millitary weapons (VI+): Dual particle beam (VI), Plasma Torch (VI), Mayakev launcher (Green strelkas are VI and are powerful enough to be used to save the antarctica), alien. There may be others, but none come to mind.
I think too many weapons are military. Any really rare weapons shouldn't need a military license, except perhaps rare damage type weapons (Thermo, Plasma, Positron, Antimatter).
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Betelgeuse
- Fleet Officer
- Posts: 1920
- Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2006 6:31 am
Iocrym cocoon is level 13 so nothing can equip it so you can't count that. Trenton ya right now its a joke. Mammoth 50 is a military shield.
Iocrym veil and Jotun deflector are both alien and military.
I will give you that the Dual particle beam is a reasonable non military weapon but by time I find one of those I tend to have several level 7-8 military weapons waiting around to be installed.
Thermo weapons are common
But I am not worried about late game due to the fact that the ringers don't care about the military license. I am more worried about choke points where natural progression of weapons is dramatically changed (such as when you start finding Bushido merchants) this causes weapon levels to get skipped over. (less weapons that people use)
Iocrym veil and Jotun deflector are both alien and military.
I will give you that the Dual particle beam is a reasonable non military weapon but by time I find one of those I tend to have several level 7-8 military weapons waiting around to be installed.
Thermo weapons are common
But I am not worried about late game due to the fact that the ringers don't care about the military license. I am more worried about choke points where natural progression of weapons is dramatically changed (such as when you start finding Bushido merchants) this causes weapon levels to get skipped over. (less weapons that people use)
Crying is not a proper retort!
I am serious about the Trenton. Immunity to particle beam weapons is not trivial. With EMP-immune armor (unfortunately causes cyndocysts to *damage* armor), it can easily last you till you find your first CSC. It requires some system mapping roms and pure running until you find a rin-installing station afterwards, but its doable. This is of course you can get a hold of a Trenton, which is not easy, especially if you use the Ferrian warship mod to reduce Ferrian farming.