Subset Games Forum

how do you kill the Merchant? so hard

The merchant wasn't actually balanced to be reasonably killable - it's a common trope in games to have absurdly overpowered merchants that you'd almost never want to actually take on. Plenty of people have done it before though in the discord, you'll definitely want cloaking and a massive shot count to get past his shields. If you do kill him though, he drops a TON of scrap, resources, and items as well as a special laser weapon.

After many Multiverse runs (40+ hours) on Normal difficulty across various ships, I have some feedback regarding the current balance, specifically regarding cloaking.

Cloaking is extremely strong for the player. Most of the time you can fire off an entire barrage, if not more, at the enemy before they can even begin to try to retaliate. This can give you massive, immediate advantages, such as:

1. Disabling/damaging the enemy's weapons system, Increasing the time the enemy is unable to retaliate even further, which lets you build up more weapon charge & recharge cloak to do it all over again.
2. Disabling/damaging the enemy's shields system, allowing your next barrage to be even more devastating, while potentially receiving more return fire. This is even more nasty if you have a quick-charging weapon to constantly lay down fire once the shields are down, to ensure they stay down.

Of course, these are only two big advantages that immediately come to mind. Cloaking can you free time to board the enemy without having to worry about your own ship, make repairs, take away crew from systems to fight off boarders, etc.

On top of all this, for just 45 scrap and 3(?) missiles, you can install an internal augment at any empty beacon that lets you fire your weapons without disrupting the cloak. This combined with an upgraded cloaking system lets you potentially get multiple volleys off on the enemy before they can even react, get any chain guns worked up, etc. In addition, you could now utilize your cloak a lot more effectively as an "evade" button against enemy missiles/barrages, since it will not interfere with your attack timings.

With that said, whenever I find Cloaking available at a shop and have enough to purchase it, the rest of the run almost always becomes much easier, if not a guaranteed victory. I've noticed it's quite common as well. I can safely ignore it at the beginning if I see it, and almost definitely encounter it again later at another shop when I have more scrap.

I think the 150 scrap price is fine, but I would suggest making it much rarer in shops. On top of that, I think the internal augment cost should be much higher as well. Perhaps 110 scrap like Hacking's defense drone disabling internal augment? I'd say it rivals that in usefulness, if not surpasses it. 45 scrap and a few missiles is dirt cheap for how strong it is. Maybe it should be an external augment too?

Anyway, that's just my two cents. As always, thanks for the awesome mod

Cloaking is pretty powerful, yeah. Making it rarer doesn't actually work, unfortunately (systems have a rarity value in the code, but it has no effect beyond 0 making them unfindable and 1+ making them just as common as any other system).
Immediate thing would just be to up the price, 160 (maybe 175? it's a bit high) doesn't seem too extreme. I've thought of making cloak 4/5 special upgrades (or at least 5) similar to teleporter and clonebay level 4, and locking you out of getting cloaking fire alongside them. I don't think I want to make cloak fire quite as expensive as defense scrambler, but I can certainly increase it's price a bit.

The special upgrades vs getting locked out of the internal augment seems like a good idea! That's a shame about the rarity though. I wonder if that's something the Hyperspace team could possibly implement in the future.

who is the killer in the Sherlock Holmes segment?

I've unlocked most of the ships now, but Tuco C is eluding me. How do I find the Casino? I played one run through with slip scanner and never saw it.

The Casino refers to Sky-Drifter, the big yacht you unlock Tuco A at (assuming you unlocked Tuco A from the quest, though its possible you got it through the alt unlock with the prototype cruisers and have no idea what Im referring to).
The start event is found at the Black Market (hostile unique sector), where you find an inn that you can drink at. This event will give you a quest after a certain number of drinks (I dont remember the exact number) to go to the casino when you overhear the location of Tuco.

I did unlock Tuco A from the quest. Then I won with that and unlocked Tuco B. Now for Tuco C the hint says "Help out Sky-Drifter casino using Tuco's Cruiser Type B to unlock this ship." Is Black Market guaranteed to appear when playing with Tuco B? Is it a red sector on the map? Do I have to go drink at the inn again?

Black Market is not guaranteed to spawn at any time - because of this, along with many other more RNG based type C unlocks, alt unlocks for them all are being added in the next update, but that'll be a bit longer than usual. For now, yes, it appears as red on the map, and you will have to drink at the inn.