Weapon Pre-igniter augmentation should be debuffed?

[SushaBrancaleone]

I wanted to discuss on what has been recently added to this thread (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=989), however, it is locked so:

Anyho, from personal experience and from finding that other people feel the same way, I believe that the Weapon Pre-igniter augmentation should be debuffed. It is FAR too powerful with absolutely no downsides. I find that all my battles are far too easy now, and if I wanted easy, I would not have bought this amazing game ;P.

i personally dont feel that way, but i dont make much use of the pre-igniter.
Atm i feel boarding is the most proficient way of beating the game. This is so much true, that once you unlock certain ships (crystal ship B namely) there is no reason to not use boarding as your primary strategy to beat the game.
Why?
well, if you plan to use boarding as your main strategy and lets say take the crystal ship B, you already have a teleporter, stealth and 3 crystal men and you dont really need much more to beat the game. You dont depend on random finds, and anything you find you can sell or use. You can focus on bringing your shields up asap, and getting a defence drone. Ive reached sector 8 with 500 unspent scrap this way.

if you'r planning to "shoot down your enemies" whichever ship you choose, you WILL depend on your finds/drops, and will have to restart your game more often to get a decent chance at the boss. anything that boosts range is welcome atm imo.

[Madhax]

It's quite powerful, sure. It's also by far the most expensive augmentation to purchase, rarely found randomly, only effective with certain weapon setups, and has no use past the opening of a fight. Seems balanced to me.

[ThePsuedoMonkey]

The only time I found it useful enough to purchase was after I found a burst mk3 and lost everyone except my pilot due to something silly that I did, but I had to put off upgrading shields or engines past 4 bars (in favor of weapons) until sector 7. That said, it is absolutely deadly if you combine it with cloaking.

[Fangz]

I agree with Madhax. The WPI is rare and expensive. It should not be debuffed or made more expensive because it can be a good augmentation to offset the lack of decent weaponry (let's be honest, sometimes you just can't find a good weapon combo or the store offers them at just the wrong time)

Atm i feel boarding is the most proficient way of beating the game. This is so much true, that once you unlock certain ships (crystal ship B namely) there is no reason to not use boarding as your primary strategy to beat the game.

I agree. The same would apply to Mantis B.

However,
1) ships that are not heavily boarding oriented (i.e, have a 2-pad crew tp instead of 4-pad tp) require decent weapon support at some point.
2) Idk about the Crystal B (didn't unlock it yet D:), but the Mantis B (4-pad) has a really gruesome start. Enemies with med bay will take forever to be destroyed, and forget about auto-scouts at least in the first two sectors. Plus, if you don't happen to find Def. Drones asap (which is a possibility) you will be in some serious trouble. So there is a cost to it, which is a really awkward start.
3) The bad thing is that once you get past the awkward start and you get your ship in shape with upgrades and crew the game stops posing a threat to you. That's how I feel about the Mantis B, which is heavily boarding oriented. For that reason I enjoy different styles of gameplay, like weapons only, mix of boarding and weapons or even a drone oriented run. Each ship has its own charm.

[UltraMantis]

Is the pre-igniter really that strong? There's allways a chance of bumping into one of those "Mother of God it has SIX shields and 13 glaives + BurstMk47million, ITS NOT FAIR, CURSE YOU JUSTIN AND MATT" type of ships.

When you get very very lucky, then you can feel overpowered but there is no guarantee that every run will be like that. And if you ever run out of challenges, play without shields or pause. And suffer

[Agent_L]

and forget about auto-scouts at least in the first two sectors.

I can't believe how everybody keeps thinking of AI ships as unboardable. In fact, they are EASIEST ones to board, as there's no one to oppose you. You just keep cycling your crew in and out their weapon bay with lvl2 teleporter, the AI keeps repairing it, you keep damaging it to red (taking 1 hull every time) and when it's at 1 hull left, you send it the drone to finish it.
AI ship is best thing Mantis B player can encounter early, because it's basically free combat XP.
I'm not even talking about crystal folks - with their 125 hlt and 50% suffocation resist it's too easy to be any fun.

Back to topic - yeah, preigniter is one shot and configuration dependent (preiginited ion blast 2, anyone?). Not overpowered at all.
OFC 4x Burst Laser 2 + WPI is powerful, but that's only as powerful as your weapons.

Is the pre-igniter really that strong? There's allways a chance of bumping into one of those "Mother of God it has SIX shields and 13 glaives + BurstMk47million, ITS NOT FAIR, CURSE YOU JUSTIN AND MATT" type of ships.

And then you got boarded by 6 Manti : )

[mqstout]

My plays with both configurations of the Zoltan ships I won with the WPI. In the one, I had WPI with Pegasus Missiles, Halberd Beam and one of the smaller lasers that shoots more than once. It did pretty darned well, even against the boss.

Also, WPI is one of the things that is most hurt by Ion Storms. If I have it and I'm going into a nebula, I make sure to depower my shields before I go into it, to keep my weapons from being auto-selected as the systems turned off.

[SushaBrancaleone]

and forget about auto-scouts at least in the first two sectors.

I can't believe how everybody keeps thinking of AI ships as unboardable. In fact, they are EASIEST ones to board, as there's no one to oppose you. You just keep cycling your crew in and out their weapon bay with lvl2 teleporter, the AI keeps repairing it, you keep damaging it to red (taking 1 hull every time) and when it's at 1 hull left, you send it the drone to finish it.
AI ship is best thing Mantis B player can encounter early, because it's basically free combat XP.
I'm not even talking about crystal folks - with their 125 hlt and 50% suffocation resist it's too easy to be any fun.
)

hey can u explain this better?
When i encounter AI ships with crystal ship B i send 2 crew to destroy the enemy weapons and then wait for the ftl to be ready.
SO what u are saying is that if you destroy every system repeatedly the enemy AI ship will die?

I see 2 problems with this
1) dont u risk that AI scout ships can FTL away with your crew on board (solution is target engine first?)
2) MORE IMPORTANTLY, wouldn't killing the ship require you to sacrifice 1 crew?

so is it really worth all that risk and to lose all that time in the 1st sectors against AI ships for the small rewards u get at the beginning?

Im not trying to trash your argument I just dont fully understand how you do it i assume?

oh another thing.

I only board AI with crystal men due to their 50% suffocation resist, i've tried rockmen and have seen them die before the teleporter is ready to call them back in (often still at lvl 1 before sector 3 as i prefer to focus on shields and drone bay). I assume this is even more true with mantis since they dont have 150hp. the solution you mention is to upgrade the teleporter asap. BUt, is it worth it, considering that u can just wait to find any weapon instead and use that to kill AI and zoltan ships?

tbh i dont upgrade teleporter and med bay even when my main strategy is boarding and usually manage to get to sector 8 with 200-300 extra scrap this way. I know many boarders prefer to upgrade teleporter and med bays, but i dont find it necessary and prefer to have the strongest defence possible for the boss fights (btw never use 2 def drones, they often target the same shots/missiles). The reason is that besides the boss, all other fights are rather easy: board weapons room, click lockdown, destroy weapons, let crew inn, use lockdown and can take your time killing the crew without taking any damage. The only weaknesses are against ships that use offensive drones or have a boarding party (cos it makes it longer to kill the crew). I regularly manage to reach the boss this way (normal) and manage to kill most ships within the firsts teleport (using lockdown properly) even in sector 7 so i dont see any need to upgrade said systems.

dont get me wrong angent-L i dont want to trash your argument nor to start a feud between u and me, Im merely trying to understand if im doing it wrong or if i can provide some advice? would you care to share your thoughts on the subject? (hands over the peace pipe)

[Agent_L]

I see 2 problems with this
1) dont u risk that AI scout ships can FTL away with your crew on board (solution is target engine first?)

It won't jump away unless the event tells you it's powering up its FTL. It's usually not worth boarding then.

2) MORE IMPORTANTLY, wouldn't killing the ship require you to sacrifice 1 crew?

Yes. OR a boarding drone, which Mantis B conveniently starts with.

Rockmen can survive recharge of teleporter lvl1 and all other 100 hlt can last long enough for the lvl2. Get ready to pause as soon as TP cools down: mantis are down to 9 hlt which leaves them little more than a second. I'm not able to click that fast reliably to get them back without pausing (Starcraft pros can laugh at me all they want).

[SushaBrancaleone]

ah! the boarding drone. but that costs 3 energy and a boarding bay. ofc if mantis ship is already equipped.
Im just to addicted to lockdown to do boarding without