Mercenary Manhunter [SHIP] [WEAPON]

[stylesrj]

Well, I did a video run of the ship. Awesome work but maybe the lasers need some sort of Shield Piercing ability at the start, because you can't rely on the Artemis and chances are you'll only find single-shot weapons in the run.
Automated ships are an issue as well but well they were like that for the Mantis B and Crystal B, so why complain too much about that when Vanilla can screw you over?


https://youtu.be/4dU72Uyfauw

[SentryJumper]

I did a run of this ship and everything was going really well until the flagship decided to start fires in everywhere that mattered

It does feel like the anti-bio lasers are a bit on the OP side, maybe tone them down a bit, as once shields are down it's really easy and quick to kill all the crew. compare this with the anti-bio beam which does a max of 60 damage per crew member per swipe (not counting crew members that like to change their mind and run towards the beam for whatever reason). here you can kill most of the crewmembers in that time.

I was a little worried about the balance, but having tested the 60 damage lasers I think any adjustments will be on things other than crew damage; for some reason they seemed dramatically less effective, possibly because the missile and one 75dmg laser can kill a human by themselves and a 60dmg one can't.

some other things I noticed about the weapon:
you can find them in stores which means their rarity isn't 0. not sure if intentional

It is intentional; once I have a few more mods done I plan to release all the weapons as a separate pack.

they have no "tip" when you hover over them in the inventory screen. for example, "tip_laser" (damaging laser weapons) have this:
"Tip: Each laser shot will be blocked by a single shield bubble, regardless of the laser's damage."

maybe you want to make something so that there is a UI box instead of nothing? it doesn't have to be a tip, it could be lore.

Will be fixed momentarily. I will probably just note that they can't take down any layers of shields.

I just realised that the ship has only one weapon to take out automated ships and chances are it'll only take out one of them and then you'll be out of missiles and have to run from those fights...
And the game will only spawn automated ship encounters from then on in, thus making the primary weapons worthless.

Auto ships are actually the main reason I had the lasers do system damage (apart from the fact that they're meant to be modified burst lasers); once the missile takes down the shield the lasers can shut down everything else, leaving you to either destroy it with missiles or run away without taking much damage.[/quote]

Well, I did a video run of the ship. Awesome work but maybe the lasers need some sort of Shield Piercing ability at the start, because you can't rely on the Artemis and chances are you'll only find single-shot weapons in the run.
Automated ships are an issue as well but well they were like that for the Mantis B and Crystal B, so why complain too much about that when Vanilla can screw you over?

Splendid! Link added to main post. And I use the mantis B as a measuring post for pretty much any anti-crew ship, so that was my thinking as well.

[mr_easy_money]

I was a little worried about the balance, but having tested the 60 damage lasers I think any adjustments will be on things other than crew damage; for some reason they seemed dramatically less effective, possibly because the missile and one 75dmg laser can kill a human by themselves and a 60dmg one can't.

wait but the lasers fire two shots of 75 crew damage, so they can kill anything in one charge (except for possibly an anti-personnel drone). I will admit though after watching stylesrj's run on Captain's Edition that the lasers looked fine in terms of overall balance. I think I might just have gotten lucky enough to find stuff to kill auto-ships as that seems like the biggest problem along with getting through shields.

I'm not sure if I said this, but with comparison to the Slug A again, this ship doesn't start with a damaging weapon like dual lasers. if you overuse the missile weapon then you run out and can't attack something, and at the same time if you switch off to a non-damaging weapon then you can't kill auto-ships.


I noticed a very small detail too on something else.

the start beacon event has the choices "Continue" instead of "Continue...". Though it is a small detail, there is the hint that something has been changed -- it's probably better if it looks like the regular start beacon and then by surprise there's an event.

[Gencool]

75 personnel damage seems really high, especially considering it'l instantly hit all enemies in the same room - the Biobeam does 60 damage to a single target, assuming it can hit.

Maybe drop it to 25 pers per shot, but with 3 shots? That way it's got a chance to kill a weak crew member in one volley, and is very good vs systems.

[mr_easy_money]

Maybe drop it to 25 pers per shot, but with 3 shots?

you mean 30 pers damage per shot, right? crew damage can only be changed in increments of 15

[SentryJumper]

75 personnel damage seems really high, especially considering it'l instantly hit all enemies in the same room - the Biobeam does 60 damage to a single target, assuming it can hit.

Maybe drop it to 25 pers per shot, but with 3 shots? That way it's got a chance to kill a weak crew member in one volley, and is very good vs systems.

It would work (as mr_easy_money says, at 30) but I fear it might shift the ship away from the intended theme, and if you did try to play it the same way it could wind up being underpowered. Might be an interesting idea for another ship, actually, but with a slightly different playstyle. Type B, maybe?

[Gencool]

Ok, here's a thought; replace one laser with a High-Intensity BioBeam; the beam does 75 pers-damage with a 10 sec cooldown, but only has a length of, say, 2-4 pixels.

Then the second laser gets replaced with a Concussion Laser - this does 1 standard, 6 seconds stun, but only 15 pers damage. Ideally it can also charge for two shots (use Laser Charger as a base, or maybe pick up a three-charger from CE/SMPK).

So now the weapons act as a one-two punch; send the laser(s) in to stun the crew/wipe the shields, then use the high-precision beam to kill them.
Feels way more assassin-y this way, and it's a fairly unique playstyle, as well as retaining some ship damage capability.

[SentryJumper]

Ok, here's a thought; replace one laser with a High-Intensity BioBeam; the beam does 75 pers-damage with a 10 sec cooldown, but only has a length of, say, 2-4 pixels.

Then the second laser gets replaced with a Concussion Laser - this does 1 standard, 6 seconds stun, but only 15 pers damage. Ideally it can also charge for two shots (use Laser Charger as a base, or maybe pick up a three-charger from CE/SMPK).

So now the weapons act as a one-two punch; send the laser(s) in to stun the crew/wipe the shields, then use the high-precision beam to kill them.
Feels way more assassin-y this way, and it's a fairly unique playstyle, as well as retaining some ship damage capability.

That's a fantastic idea... and different enough from the current loadout that (again) I think it warrants a type B. Which is literally in the works as of this post.