The Iocrym (beware of spoilers!)

[Fossaman]

So, I've made it to the heretic system. This version, so far, has been a good difficulty level, I think. I haven't had too many problems; my main concerns were lack of anywhere but the Teratons to sell stuff (they are just too dang creepy for me to want to go anywhere near them! I wanted to hunt them down and kill them all!) in the very late game, and the fact that half the CSCs I encountered drifted at least one system width out of the system by the time I had the system clean.

Now, I have a problem. I haven't found any QACs this game. All I have is a Kytryn Blaster and a heavy ion blaster.

This doesn't cut it. I've got a Taikon 220 (or whatever...it's level ten and has 220 hit points), an ICX, a Hyperion, and a Megadrive. I can survive indefinitely as long as I dodge out of the way every thirty seconds or so, but keeping a constant stream of hits with either weapon is both impossible due to the new repeller, and insufficient to take down the shields anyway.

So, I'm just going to consider myself victorious, and petition for the iocrym to be weaker. Making stronger weapons more readily available would unbalance the game, I think, so that's not an option.

The Iocrym cocoon goes from 100% damage for Antimatter weapons down to 33% with plasma and positron. It seems like this is a bit extreme; it pretty much sets a cutoff for what weapon types you need to use to take it down.

After some experimentation, I've found that it IS possible to kill the Iocrym with my loadout if the cocoon's plasma damage is set to 100%. It would probably be doable at 75% or so. But that would still be insanely tough.

I don't see any problems with the armor assuming one has plasma or better; shields could use some toning down, though.

[Yugi]

Lol! First we want it stronger, now we want it weaker. When will we make up our minds!?

I'm all for making shields, holochroal armor and the Iocrym a bit weaker.

[hookoa]

The numbers on the Iocrym are rediculous. I mean c'mon armor that has




MAYBE SPOILER
MAYBE SPOILER
MAYBE SPOILER



1200hp and a shield with 350ish hp? add to that resistance to most implemented damage types? That's one tough cookie.

[SparcMan]

In my opinion, rather than making the Iocrym more resistant, it should be made more dangerous. I mean, maybe it only takes 20 or so shots from a level 8 or 9 weapon to kill it, but anything but hit and run tactics are potentially lethal (making it challenging, but not absurd). Even as it was in .96a, I though that taking it down was rather tedious. My recommendations in addition/support of Fossaman's:
* Reduce the recovery of the shields and armor repair (hit and run is impossible with a crazy regeneration rate)
* Maybe reduce the health of shields and/or armor
* Reduce the range of some or most of it's weapons (so you can get away and "lick your wounds" more easily)
* Increase the damage of some of it's weapons

[george moromisato]

In 0.97 I beefed up all high-level armor. I basically calculated HP/ton for all armor types and made sure that the numbers made sense. I.e., high-level armor should (generally) have greater HP/ton. Capital ship armor should have the same HP/ton as equivalent gunship armor, but it should just be heavier.

With that logic, I calculated that the Iocrym armor should have more HP given its mass and its level.

I probably need to give the Iocrym lower level armor and/or shields.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

In 0.97 I beefed up all high-level armor. I basically calculated HP/ton for all armor types and made sure that the numbers made sense. I.e., high-level armor should (generally) have greater HP/ton. Capital ship armor should have the same HP/ton as equivalent gunship armor, but it should just be heavier.

With that logic, I calculated that the Iocrym armor should have more HP given its mass and its level.

I probably need to give the Iocrym lower level armor and/or shields.

I think it should have high level armor and shields, but make them vulnerable to a few more damage types. Some of the more exotic damage types would be good to encourage people to try different weapons. Maybe you could have it randomly generate a weakness to one particular damage type from the lesser-used ones and make it slightly less resistant than it currently is to everything else so if you can somehow manage to pound on it with a high powered weapon of any type, you should wear it down eventually. I also like the idea of making it more dangerous to fight it.