Subset Games Forum

It's just a little thing - but I'd dearly love to trade the S.Bomb/Laser I starting combo for the following:

a solitary Laser II (no missile weapon)
2 weapon-systems power slots
the 3rd weapon-system slot costing extra
the 1st power upgrade costing extra

My reasoning is thus:

in the last 4 games attempted with the Gila Monster, I've run into an early impassé that begins when dealing specifically with early-game shielded AI ships. It generally ends up that I run out of missiles quite rapidly, and a basic Laser I is quite literally useless against a shielded anything unless you're in an asteroid field (and you're incredibly patient). Attacking non-AI ships after this is only successful if they don't have a med-bay, as I cannot bring disabling fire to bear on my enemies med-bays. So I end up running from fight to fight in the desperate hope I can find a store, and when I do find one I can't afford anything, because I've made no scrap through running from fight to fight. Trés frustrating.

The setup proffered above would still force you to power down your teleporter to use your weapons systems until you can afford the extra power, to preserve balance in the early game.

I'd love to hear players/developer's thoughts on this

Quite unneccesary. You are supposed to use the bomb to disable the medbay or shields.

Yes, the bomb easily deals with both of these problems. It's a great weapon.

Additionally, upgrading the teleporter to level 2 allows mantis to survive boarding an AI ship, allowing you to disable their shields with boarders before destroying it with the laser weapon.

Also, it fares better against automated ships than the two ship layouts that start with no weapons at all. With the mantis b cruiser it is possible to destroy automated ships using the damage from the boarding drone taking out systems, but it takes a very long time for that to happen, especially with the layouts with no doors between the rooms (if the drone hits a systemless room on one of those you can't do anything at all.) And with the crystal b ship, you have no choice but to jump away from automated ships unless you want to sacrifice crew members.