Subset Games Forum

Russian Rockman wrote:This will not happen, but I just thought it worth mentioning. After thinking about it it would actually be kind of cool if swarm missiles had the AOE targeting affect and fired multiple projectiles at once because then they would only "partially" be shot down by defense drones and that would make sense. Actually that is one thing we do not have, an AOE missile weapon. A "flak" gun that pierces shields. Actually wouldn't a flak Crystal weapon be pretty interesting?

Having the swarms as true AoE weapons creates some limitations on how their damage is handled. With multiple projectiles there is less room for small damage and the damage of the Ogre for example could simply not be replicated this way. IMO area targeting missiles won't look that great if they have very few projectiles, so I don't think that reworking the low tier swarms would even be an improvement. Event the titan would just have four projectiles and their unique damage reduction to systems could no longer be applied. There already is the Missile Flak that pretty much behaves exactly like what you suggested by the way. Did you play with that so far?

On the other changing swarms to BURST type might even out their rarity better. So that might be helpfull, but damage and projectiles would remain the same.

rannl wrote: Flak guns seem like an interesting concept. But keeping in mind that they should be 0 damaging weapons, and that they take up a weapon slot, maybe they can be 0 power weapons? Think of it as sacrificing a weapon slot in order to get a chance to negate defense drones.

0 power weapons would be cool, but unfortunately they behave strangely from my testing. Like for some unknown reason they may continuously display the firing animation, but never actually shoot.

However! 0 power drones are entirely possible and work just fine. I think "flawless" 0 power anti-personnel and system repair drones would be really neat. At least in IL if nothing else.

And thank you Glad someone likes my ideas within the ramblings. That means a lot coming from you rannl. I really like this game! Guess because I'm a real sci-fi nerd.

Sleeper Service wrote: Having the swarms as true AoE weapons creates some limitations on how their damage is handled. With multiple projectiles there is less room for small damage and the damage of the Ogre for example could simply not be replicated this way. IMO area targeting missiles won't look that great if they have very few projectiles, so I don't think that reworking the low tier swarms would even be an improvement. Event the titan would just have four projectiles and their unique damage reduction to systems could no longer be applied. There already is the Missile Flak that pretty much behaves exactly like what you suggested by the way. Did you play with that so far?

On the other changing swarms to BURST type might even out their rarity better. So that might be helpfull, but damage and projectiles would remain the same.

I have not come across the scatter missile flak actually. I did finally find an adaptive beam though and it was sweet!

I'm still trying to understand how BURST weapons work. I guess drones only shoot down the "big" pieces of scrap that actually deal damage, and they never fire on the "fake" projectiles. I thought that because of the "fake" projectiles you could create some interesting "scattering" effect for the scatter missiles. But couldn't you even just have a single "real" projectile among all the fake ones. The amount of real projectiles would just separate the different tiers of scatter missiles apart, as it would be harder for defense drones to shoot down all the missiles of the more advanced ones, which is the whole point. I just find it weird now that scatter missiles are essentially less practical than the generic multiple shot missile launchers. You have a better chance of getting one pert python shot through by firing two missiles than you do of getting damage through with a scatter missile that essentially fires a hundred little missiles.

IF, the scatter missiles were made AOE though, then they should still be able to only hit one room. That way they'd still be different from the actual flak type scatter missile that Sleeper already made.


It is really hard to gauge how enemy's generate their weapons. I imagine Sleeper has the best grasp on this though, considering this mod adds so many freaking weapons and isn't actually "imbalanced". If you think you could, Sleeper, I would really like to see you write a guide on adding new weapons to the enemy lists.

Russian Rockman wrote:I thought that because of the "fake" projectiles you could create some interesting "scattering" effect for the scatter missiles. But couldn't you even just have a single "real" projectile among all the fake ones.

I don't think that can work, because fake projectiles are not effected by weapon properties as far as I can tell. They would always act as no-damage shield depletion pallets, which is not desirable for a missile launcher. I have not tested that in detail, but from all I can tell they work like that.

Russian Rockman wrote: I just find it weird now that scatter missiles are essentially less practical than the generic multiple shot missile launchers. You have a better chance of getting one pert python shot through by firing two missiles than you do of getting damage through with a scatter missile that essentially fires a hundred little missiles.

They are meant to be not as good as a single, high payload warhead - A lot of small missiles that can not do concentrated damage, but ablate a lot of hull armor. Getting a few missiles through probably does not matter as a they can not do any significant damage on their own. The general rule of thumb in the design of swarm missiles always was that there has to be last six mini missiles impacting at the same point in order to have them deal any damage. I kind of stuck with that and even the Missile Flak fires swarms of six, a lot of them. It really just depends on how you see the weapon.

Single room area targeting would be possible, but that would just widdle down the contrast between burst and swarm missiles. And again, low damage with reduced system damage is not really possible with multiple but ultimately few projectiles.

I don't think fake projectiles even damage shields. Mainly because a flak I that fires 3 shots and a bunch of other fake projectiles can never get through more 3 shields on its own. They may be hardcoded to not go through shields which would then look a bit weird thought that only some missiles are getting through. But yeah, maybe you should test that out.

Two quick little things.

1. The Augment Internal Effector is missing the ability to disable Clone bays (Using the Medbay option won't disable it, did check).
2. Earlier it was mentioned that the Engi Repair ship not having its own access to its own medbay was intentional, my question is why does it even have a medbay in the first place then?

VoidInsanity wrote: The Augment Internal Effector is missing the ability to disable Clone bays (Using the Medbay option won't disable it, did check).

Ah right, I'll take care of that.

VoidInsanity wrote:Earlier it was mentioned that the Engi Repair ship not having its own access to its own medbay was intentional, my question is why does it even have a medbay in the first place then?

To allow Engi Med-Bot Dispersal to function.

Russian Rockman wrote: However! 0 power drones are entirely possible and work just fine. I think "flawless" 0 power anti-personnel and system repair drones would be really neat. At least in IL if nothing else.

And thank you Glad someone likes my ideas within the ramblings. That means a lot coming from you rannl. I really like this game! Guess because I'm a real sci-fi nerd.

Your welcome RR. I think CE owes a lot to your ideas.
0 power internal drones sounds like a fun concept. I wonder if it means that whenever a ship drone is destroyed, a new one is automatically activated after the destruction cool down. This is potentially a downside effect which seems like a good balance for the 0 power. Besides, thinking of the vortex and the extremely rough start it has, two 0 power internal drones seem like a natural thing (and in the theme of the ship).

rannl wrote:

Russian Rockman wrote: However! 0 power drones are entirely possible and work just fine. I think "flawless" 0 power anti-personnel and system repair drones would be really neat. At least in IL if nothing else.

And thank you Glad someone likes my ideas within the ramblings. That means a lot coming from you rannl. I really like this game! Guess because I'm a real sci-fi nerd.

Your welcome RR. I think CE owes a lot to your ideas.
0 power internal drones sounds like a fun concept. I wonder if it means that whenever a ship drone is destroyed, a new one is automatically activated after the destruction cool down. This is potentially a downside effect which seems like a good balance for the 0 power. Besides, thinking of the vortex and the extremely rough start it has, two 0 power internal drones seem like a natural thing (and in the theme of the ship).

That was exactly what I was thinking. Then the drones could actually be considered more a part of your crew since they wouldn't cost power to actually use. Since CE has different varieties of those drones already I thought this would be a good idea. There is currently no difference between the regular drones and "second hand" drones so this could resolve that.

I don't understand why there can't be multiple varieties if the ion intruder drone and the shield drone, I'll have to test that, but I'll take Sleeper's word that this does not work.

By the way I have to thank Sleeper for inspiring me with this mod to start modding. I originally just wanted to make a custom ship at first and then I found out there was way more stuff that was actually possible. I want to try and find out what new is possible with AE like I did with FTL before AE. I just don't have hardly any time lately.



So is the Internal Effector only available from a special quest now? After using hacking I do see why the Internal Effector is a bit obsolete, but it's still cool. It just needs to not be as good as hacking.

It has a chance of failure so that makes it less reliable. And it does not do things like lock down doors and lacks some special abilities like being able to make the enemy med-bay actually damage crew, and the ability to lock down doors.

But it permanently disables some systems for the entire fight. It also does not use up drone parts and cannot be blocked by defense drones. And used in conjunction with hacking you could really mess with the enemy.

I don't know, it was awesome before AE, and I was sad to see it go, but now after actually playing CE I see why Sleeper removed it.

I don't think the Vortex has so much of a hard start in CE, but I like the idea of enabling zero power drones in EL.

Russian Rockman wrote:So is the Internal Effector only available from a special quest now? After using hacking I do see why the Internal Effector is a bit obsolete, but it's still cool.

Yeah, Slug B also still has it.

While on the subject of hacking I understand all the scripted augments just disable the system? If so isn't the Augment that "pollutes the O2 supply" a little bit disingenuous? Secondly is it possible to reverse the effects of Augments like the Slug Repair Gel or the Fire Suppression system to create offensive versions that cause ships to slowly crumble or catch fire over time? Call it Microwave weaponry or something.