Subset Games Forum

Re: Auto Lasers. I prefer to replace them with weapons with more shots. Though I see the two times I won with the Red Tail (I guess I haven't played it that much in CE), I still had the starting two Auto Lasers Mk I and the Old Laser (last time added Titan Missile Battery and Auto Reloader; time before added Heavy Ion Mk III). I feel like I don't have the best luck getting weapons. I don't see other ships that were using an Auto Laser at the end.

See sleepy? You should try boosting autolasers. Currently, the mkI is useless without other lasers and can't do the shield-digging combo:, and the mkII is just unviable with its power requirement. They're the worst weapons of their respective power bar class;, also without blue options. A Burst mkI is bette than a single auto mkI unless you have another auto mkI.

Try doing what I said. After all;, by taking avriius auto-reloaders you're missing on precios combat augs and trade good rewards.

Sleeper Service said plainly they were meant to be used with other weapons, not strictly one laser to rule them all. Two Auto Laser MK1s with a gold gunner and just 1 auto-reloader aug is enough to power bore through any sheilds you would happen to come across in this game. An Auto MK2 with the same deal can keep shields from coming back up once you have them down, and even worse, drill the enemy to death once the shields are fully down by beating their engine room (because dodge is boss) mercilessly every 2 seconds (or less, if that hax triple reloader aug setup comes into it, in which case it would be about 1.1 seconds). Multiply that by however many ALs you get your hands on (and it has been documented that getting them is rather easy, when you use non-vanilla ships that starts with them).

Come now, you have to know how powerful this is. The only enemy of an AL2 is Evasion. And if that's a problem, hit their engines. At 1 laser blast per second-and-some-change, the law of averages is way on your side. If you crank that to 3 seconds base, then gold it down to 1.5 (give or take), then triple reloader it (and I have seen screen caps of exactly this loadout in this thread), you're pumping out 4 laser blasts per 3 seconds. Four shots in three seconds. One gun. In a less than perfect world with just gold and one ARL aug, that is still roughly a shot per second.

Apply these sorts of time buffs to all lasers mentioned, and you end up having to cut time for most other weapons, too, just to keep them relevant. I certainly wouldn't bother with a flail beam given this level of laser spam, unless I didn't have any other options at all (last starbase shop before the final fight kind of no options).

Etc.

Again, credit to Vhati's editor for letting me crunch these numbers with in-game testing, too.

And an Ion Blast 2 with a single automatic reloader beats any shields. It's not that Auto Laser can be powerboosted, it's that without an automated reloader their usefulness is heavily limited.

True enough. I suppose a compensation would be lowering an AL2's power cost by 1, but lowering the charge time on it would make it really OP. As it is, it can already keep shields down forever, and pound an engine room into a useless crater without an ARL aug. The fire rate is nutty just with a gold gunner: ~2 second shot cycle. AL1's have an ~4 second shot cycle with gold, which is where the AL2 starts, and that's already really good for a support weapon. I crunched the numbers on how powerful they'd be with a charge time buff above.

Then again, an Ion Blast 2 does Ion Damage. So it gets a leg up on keeping things shut down, like it is supposed to. That is the only thing Ion has going for it after all. Make something else equally as good, and doing real damage, and Ion wouldn't see much use anymore if people had a choice. Fast real damage that can keep up with disable damage renders disable damage suboptimal. Everyone would go with the FOOS.

Lowering AL2's power cost isn't a solution: that would make it exactly the same as sMPK's AL1 except for price and rarity, and I can confirm you that, sMPK's AL1 isn't OP at all.

To start with, you're giving too much importance to the possibility of getting multiple autoreloaders. Maybe it's just the 10 extra scrap they cost in sMKP (rarity is still 2, though I can't say if the specific per-sector type rarity has been altered), but you don't simply get more than one, if any. Sure someone, on one occasion, got three and three AL1s, but that's the RNG for you.

As it is, a 4s is just as good at keeping shields down as a laser blaster (or dual laser mkII or whatever it's called, the one with 8s). Since there's no other weapon with a shorter cooldown than 8s besides the 1-damage single missile and the new repeating beam (which we'll get at later), CE's AL2 consumes one more power yet offers practically no advantages over the laser blaster when facing enemies with more than one shield, unless there's drones involved.

In the same vein, at 6s the AL1 is worse than a laser burst I, which is supposed (and intended) to be the worst 2-power weapon, and at 5s it would still be like the dual laser (mkI or old) but with one more power.

Just ran into an event that gave me the option to fight a cruiser to delay the rebel fleet in Sector 1. I destroyed the cruiser, but it said I had to jump before more rebel ships from the fleet attacked, but the fleet was 3 jumps back and delayed for quite some time, and I only got 1 fuel for my efforts. I'd assume that the cruiser event text was from a fleet encounter and not a regular event

Kierany9 wrote:Just ran into an event that gave me the option to fight a cruiser to delay the rebel fleet in Sector 1. I destroyed the cruiser, but it said I had to jump before more rebel ships from the fleet attacked, but the fleet was 3 jumps back and delayed for quite some time, and I only got 1 fuel for my efforts. I'd assume that the cruiser event text was from a fleet encounter and not a regular event

IIRC, the "It would be best to escape ASAP, but destroying a cruiser might scare the rebels" text shown just before engaging battle is shared between fleet and non-fleet cruiser fights. However, you're right in that you should get non-fleet rewards on non-fleet fights, moreover with cruisers usually offering you to spend another turn for extra rewards. Was there a fleet background, and if so, do you remember reading anything like you having jumped into a whole squadron?

Mr. Mister wrote:

Kierany9 wrote:Just ran into an event that gave me the option to fight a cruiser to delay the rebel fleet in Sector 1. I destroyed the cruiser, but it said I had to jump before more rebel ships from the fleet attacked, but the fleet was 3 jumps back and delayed for quite some time, and I only got 1 fuel for my efforts. I'd assume that the cruiser event text was from a fleet encounter and not a regular event

IIRC, the "It would be best to escape ASAP, but destroying a cruiser might scare the rebels" text shown just before engaging battle is shared between fleet and non-fleet cruiser fights. However, you're right in that you should get non-fleet rewards on non-fleet fights, moreover with cruisers usually offering you to spend another turn for extra rewards. Was there a fleet background, and if so, do you remember reading anything like you having jumped into a whole squadron?

No fleet background, no whole squadron.

^ got this same problem before.

But the fleet was more then 6 jumps away (went through the nebula in that sector) in sector 1, Got me kinda pissed I got all that damage and lost that ammo just for 1 fuel.