Subset Games Forum

With more stuff in stores, I'm going to have to save up more scrap than I usually do.

I wonder if BP&B will still work with AE.

Mr. Mister wrote:Slug C, with that yellow, looks like a highway mechanic/emergency vehicle. You ain't gonna hide very well with that colour.

Space is vast. Even if a ship were reflective silver, it'd still be hard to spot visually. Other sensors would pick it up sooner.

Couple spelling/usage things:

'The Engi ... has drawn up some concepts for a "battery systems*" .... - system

"A Rebel drone, completely frozen, drifts near this beacon. ... should be hardly effected* by the low radiation levels and temperatures..." - hardly be affected

I guess you're right, ammo and drone manufacturer can stay.

LOL, it's a slug Taxi!!!

I think separating the CE: AE weapons from the other weapons is a good idea. I hope you can also make some very unique new weapons using the new mechanics.

Hey, since there are one weapons that stun your crew, if they don't have hazards that stun your crew already you could create a dummy weapon for a hazard that randomly stuns your crew. That would be a frustrating one. Also, since they have the weapons that "warm up" after a certain time you could have hazards that get perpetually worse the longer you stay in them. Any other ideas?

Hazards that are based on dummy weapons are very limited by the fact that you can damage the enemy weapon system. "Warm up" hazards and continues bombardments are not really possible this way. But the new things possible with weapons definitely seems pretty cool. I already made concepts for an Adaptive Beam that analyses the enemy defenses and gains damage with each shot. There will also be Light Flashbang Drones that stun your crew, they should be annoying enough.

Oh yeah, I forgot. It's really annoying that you can't have the dummy weapons also affect the enemy ship. Perhaps though you could have a husk and boarding event during a hazard like this. That would be super annoying, but then the hazard would affect enemies as well. I've always thought about what would happen if your ship lost artificial gravity or inertial dampeners. Maybe this could be some sort of hazard that does that. Maybe then this could also explain why the enemy's ship is fine(?) in a situation different than a boarding one?

Also, I've always liked the idea of the ion beam, but so far is hasn't been possible. It may be that the ion stunner type weapons will allow such a beam in AE. Right now though something that is possible is a beam that does extra system damage. I think that would work similarly to an ion beam because it would disable ships. Maybe it could even do no hull damage. Sounds like something perfect for a Zoltan ship and then you could keep the name "Baton Beam".

EDIT: More realizations about the AE regarding the Clone Bay:

• Hacking someone's Clone Bay will really screw them over, not being able to heal their crew and all.
• Also, this kind of situation will make healing bombs MUCH more useful than they already are because a Clone Bay ship would actually be able to heal its crew. Imagine Slug B with Clone Bay!
• How will Engi Med-Bot Dispersal work? That sounds like an amazing combo with the Clone Bay.
• When facing an enemy ship with a Clone Bay drawn out Clone vs Clone battles will be possible. Probably the center bring the actual clone Bay in an attempt to deactivate the opponent's. (I see now why the upgrades could be useful)
• Enemy ships with a Clone Bay may further nerf normal boarding pretty well. But the AE (especially in conjunction with CE) will offer and encourage killing crew in alternative ways, which sounds great.
• A genuine "only boarding" ship is actually possible now because you can actually suicide your crew!!! All you need is a way to get through their Zoltan Shield. Where's our Mantis teleporting tech augment for that?
• I wonder if it would be at all possible to even put a Clone Bay and Medbay together on a custom player ship?
• OMG! I totally see a practical use for the Red Shirt skin in CEPM! I want to Clone an army of Red Shirts but keep my normal crew alive!

One last thing about something I would personally like. Perhaps you could rename the Clone Bay and/or change its description a little bit to something indicating that it is an advanced Medbay which uses partial cloning to rebuild and revive your crew even in recent death. Let's assume you teleport their corpse back to your ship. The system is designed specifically for this so it only has a limited ability to actively heal your crew normally. But partial cloning still allows you to heal a bit each jump.

Then you could keep the Clone Lab augment and use it to create whole new crew members, but maybe give it a slight chance of failure. The failure being one of your crew thinks it is a crime against nature to use your Clone Bay to create an entire living organism and mutinies.

I'm not saying that you need to do all that just to keep the Clone Bay augment. That's just how I will be picturing the Clone Bay functionality personally.

EDIT: RANDOM QUESTION TIME!!!! Why are the mantis ships named after reptiles? They're not reptiles, they're insects. And how do they even know what a Gila Monster is anyway? (Ahh maybe it is the Federations fault for renaming the ship that).

Hey Sleeper, maybe something you could work on is changing the colors of the Effectors and their UI warnings to Purple instead of Blue. I know that the Effectors are different from the Hacking system and I think they should definitely be kept in CE:AE, but thy are more hacking than ion so J think they should probably get some purple to reflect that and just to add a bit more variety.

Yeah, that could be done. They would also be more visible that way...

I'm not so sure... I mean, they're ion weapons after all.

Well, lore-wise, they're not They just use ion damage type to *technically* provide their effect on gameplay. Also, you will still get your systems ion'ed/blinking blue after attack, so I don't think that there is a problem with changing their warnings to red/purple.

Small (as there was no update for some time) bug jar, of course latest version:

1. Bounty hunter's Auto-terminator cloaks immediately when fight start, despite event text that it just de-cloaked. Am I mistaken, or before, you've found a way to delay its cloaking, and it was working as intended?

2. Station "filled with hundreds repair drones" doesn't allow to break truce, if they surrender. Generally, I understand balance-wise limiting of breaking truces, but in this special case, "prize" from surrender is 3 hull damage repair (equivalent of 6 scrap till sector 3, 9 scrap till sector 6, 12 later), so I don't think that allowing to screw them over as slugs (or risk doing so as other ships) would be unbalancing at all. Not to mention that they're stationary station, after all, so seems like prime target for breaking truces.

3. There is boarding event "close to sun", that gives reward. Hoever, there is other, more dangerous variant of this event, where (fire-resistant) rocks teleports to our sun-flared ship, that doesn't give any reward at all. I think it wouldn't hurt to make them teleport own supplies too, as they should be even more confident in their chances of hijacking our ship.
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Small suggestion, too: There was a bump to number of missiles produced for same price, by ammo manufacturer. Even before bump, they were producing cheaper than buying in stores, and it sounds ok.

BUT, as a side effect, the 3 drones produced for 24 scrap by drone manufacturer, sounds even more poor than before (and, even before, it was less cost-effective than ammo manufacturer, as drones produced this way cost exactly the same as bought in shops). I really think that drone manuf needs a bump to produce at least 5 drones, it's very sad augment, right now.

/Estel

Has anyone had any joy in the CE Osprey out of interest? I'm finding the starts very rocky indeed unless I luck into a fast weapon. Perhaps, engines are the way to go to prioritise leaving unfavourable situations and also because you're going to eat lots of volleys while the big laser is charging, therefore the value of dodge is high.