Subset Games Forum

S'up sleepy. Gonna comment on something here.

1-shot 1-damage lasers. I've been playing CE both with and without sMPK, and I've gotta say something.

In CE, the Auto-Lasers MkI and MkII have 6s and 4s cooldowns. They're not bad, but they're only good to when supported by other weapons (and in the case of the MkII, its monstruous power requirement doesn't make it very worth it).
sMPK acknowledges this and reduces their cooldowns to 4s and 3s. What does this mean? It means that, with a green-level gunner, two Auto Lasers MkI are just, juuuuuuust enough to sneak a shot past two shield bubbles every two volleys, provided you hit all four times. Unless the enemy has repair drones or a great crew, they shouldn't be able to repair that one damage in less than those two volleys.

If you have a yellow-level gunner, you can do it even if the enemy is manning shields.

Moreover, it's not two bubbles alone: you can technically get past any amount of shields with enough time, as long as you don't miss. A neat option against stations and satellites.

Auto Lasers MkII can do it faster and more reliably (can afford to miss some shot in the process), which makes the their power demand have a payoff.

So yeah, you should consider changing Auto Lasers' cooldowns to those in sMPK. If you're not sure, use sMPK along with its modified CE-sMPK alternative starting ships' setup and pick the Red Tail, which is now armed with only two Auto Lasers MkI. It's a lot of fun.


This would bring me to another point though: Defense Lasers.

If you buff Auto-Lasers' to those of sMPK, then you have more room to play with Defense Lasers. Currently, there's the Old Laser and the Defense Laser MkI, both at 10s, and the Defense Laser MkII, at 8s (correct me if I'm wrong).

You could leave the Old Laser at 10s and bring the DLmkI to 8s, and the DLmkII to 6s. Now that would be interesting, wouldn't it? If you don't want 1-power lasers that low though, you could instead drop the DLmkII to 7s and the DLmkI to 8 or 9 seconds. I don't think there's any weapon at 7s too, which means it has the potential to synch with any other weapon every few volleys.

The possibility of getting one or more Automatic Reloaders (a pretty common aug) was also taken into account when balancing the Auto Lasers. They can already be pretty powerful with a trained gunner and a single reloader. If their cooldown would be decreased further . As you mentioned, they are designed to be used in conjunction with other weapons.

I had an encounter with a Mil. Artillery Frigate, killed the crew by boarding, but was still being fired upon by some burst weapon while I was healing/repairing. What's up with that? Fortunately, I took no damage.

Sleeper Service wrote:The possibility of getting one or more Automatic Reloaders (a pretty common aug) was also taken into account when balancing the Auto Lasers. They can already be pretty powerful with a trained gunner and a single reloader. If their cooldown would be decreased further . As you mentioned, they are designed to be used in conjunction with other weapons.

But Automatic Reloaders make everything better. A single Automatic Reloader with the old Ion Blast 2 is extremely powerful. Lowering the cooldowns would simply put the Auto Lasers in line with that level of power potential. And while you can argue that as they are now Auto Lasers are useful, it's very hard to get a loadout that can benefit from an Auto Laser MkII. You might want to consider lowing the power requirement on that weapon.

Really wish there was some good way that FTL kept track of how much various weapons/drones/augs were used (and in what loadout). Especially tied to win ratios.

Oh well, a man can dream.

Or a man can mod. Maybe someone can cook a tracker up? If it cannot be done in-game, it can likely be done third-party. The profile manager I use tracks damn near everything, so it makes a great tool for data gathering when testing mods. If this can be done, then what you ask could just as likely be done. Maybe not as part of CE, but still....

It would be a bit dependent on reading the savefile, I would think. And the savefile only exists if you save and quit. So the data just wouldn't be there for most of the game. You'd have to do some serious hacking of the executable to extract that information during game.

jep wrote:It would be a bit dependent on reading the savefile, I would think. And the savefile only exists if you save and quit. So the data just wouldn't be there for most of the game. You'd have to do some serious hacking of the executable to extract that information during game.

Well, if you knew what to look for, you could probably tap into the executable and read the relevant data in real time. Alternatively, you could try telling the computer to output the entire contents of its RAM, but you'd have no way of figuring out what's what, and I'm not even sure you can actually do that - I'm just using what understanding of computers I have and filling in the gaps with logic here.

Oh yeah, you COULD do it, no doubt. I once played with modding the original XCOM, in which people wrote custom routines and injected them all over the place. It just takes a LOT of work to get to the point where you can understand how all the compiled code actually does its thing.

Hello, I've been using this mod for quite some time and it is awesome. Just wanted to say that the asteroid pirate outpost is bugged, when it is supposed to charge weapons it doesn't do anything and it says it is in natural state, thanks.