[SHIP] The Marauders

[UltraMantis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4a3FrXVn4Q&feature=youtu.be

here ya go

Glad you really enjoyed that.

[Ginger Dragon]

Wow! These ships really are difficult. Probably not the best mods to start off with after taking a week long break from the game , but hey It was still incredibly fun, and the mod is VERY well made!

Here's the playthrough I did. I started out with the Magma, then decided to play the IceLord. Both runs ended in Catastrophe, but I'll be uploading an easy mode run of the ships tomorrow.

[UltraMantis]

Wow! These ships really are difficult. Probably not the best mods to start off with after taking a week long break from the game , but hey It was still incredibly fun, and the mod is VERY well made!

Thanks very much.

Here's the playthrough I did. I started out with the Magma, then decided to play the IceLord. Both runs ended in Catastrophe...

They usually do. Yeah, they usually do...

[BKT]

So I try this one out for a bit:—

- Ion ship look nice and is way too strong.
- Fire ship is cute— unusable, but cute.

You don't really get the point of Fire build;— why playing a fire-orient ship if you can't get a nice view on the enemy being burned alive, which is what made it fun to play in the first place?

[BrenTenkage]

So I try this one out for a bit:—

- Ion ship look nice and is way too strong.
- Fire ship is cute— unusable, but cute.

You don't really get the point of Fire build;— why playing a fire-orient ship if you can't get a nice view on the enemy being burned alive, which is what made it fun to play in the first place?

*Grins like the evil pyro he is* You are after my own heart

[UltraMantis]

- Ion ship look nice and is way too strong.

Sure it is, in sector 1. By sector 4 it isn't nearly as strong. And if you keep the weapon loadout by the end it loses steam badly. One other thing that can bit it in the ass is the randomness of items in stores. You have no idea if you can easily find a decent pair of weapons, or how long you can last with the current ones.

- Fire ship is cute— unusable, but cute.

Not sure what you mean by unusable. It's not going to be easy but you absolutely can get killed by the rebel flagship. This is confirmed 100%

You don't really get the point of Fire build;— why playing a fire-orient ship if you can't get a nice view on the enemy being burned alive, which is what made it fun to play in the first place?

Here's my thoughs on designing a ship. Make an ideal loadout, one that is logical or fitting. Then nerf the ship. Remove things from it. Don't have it start with all toys, otherwise what's a player to do during the game?

Sure the Magma would kick more ass out of the blocks with a Pre-Igniter, Stealth Weapons and a Repair Arm or Reloader. But what would you hope to find in stores then? What would you upgrade? How would it fit a ship themed to be weapons-heavy but poor in power and auxilliary systems, if it had better cloaking, scanners or the like? The only reason engines are as upgraded as they are, is to give you a chance to run like fuck. But to do so, you have to depower weapons first.
You also don't start with a teleporter, precisely to make it a decision when to buy one, or wheter to buy it at all. Early on you can capture ships by burning the crew, but eventually you'd want to ditch those weapons as they will not be effective enough. On the other hand if you nab just one more Rock crewman, you can burn and board like a demon.

Finally, the scanner. Yes we all want to watch ships burn, but here you have to spend hard earned scrap on it. Or make do without and use the telepathic abilities of the Slug. That's why he's there.
There's no reason the ship needs to start with a level 2 scanner, and the upgrade is cheap if you really want it.

[BKT]

Going to finishing the Ion ship playthrough now after I took break. But here's something before I'll go do that:

- Fire ship has all of the major weaknesses from those 'specialized' ships— limited gameplay style, 3 weapon slot and the fragility from Stealth ship, and the fact that some certain kind of enemy is very difficult, if not downright impossible, to kill, like in Boarding ships, plus the need for good luck, rather than good tactics, to get it off the ground, which is a thrait inherent in both ships ... Yet it has none of its strong point— It lack speed, reliability, or the power from Stealth ship, nor does it has a Solid defense like Boarding ships.

... And it has no Scanner, or even a Sensor.

- On the other hand, the Ion ship has many of the good point of many certain type of specialized ship, yet none of its major weaknesses— it does has its weak point, but these are minor and it's easy to fix later in the game with very little cost.

[UltraMantis]

- Fire ship has all of the major weaknesses from those 'specialized' ships-

Reliability is a problem. Usually around sector 4 or 5. Beyond that point any beacon could be the last. Other gimped ships force the player to go through a phase before resolving the problem (most obvious parallel being the lack of shields), but in this case you're expected to go all the way with the crippling injury. It's not even a question of "Will you make it?" but rather "How far will you go?"

Speed... early game you either run away, or try to take out enemy weapons with the Impact Cannon. Even with lvl1 cloak, one or two volleys do it before you can switch to fire weapons. If you manage to board with Rockmen on top of this, you need no engines for combat for a long time.

Magma is all offense and no defense. It's very strong against early non-AI ships, but lacks the punch later on, unless you kit it out with nice gear (Impact+Pike+Stealth weapons aug would be a dream). It's been designed to be very challenging every step of the way.


The standalone Weapons Pack is now available for download!

It contains all the weapons so other modders can include and modify them for their mods. Patching in the weapons pack makes stores sell the weapons although they are quite rare so you wont see them all the time.

You are not supposed to use this together with the Marauders mod, since the weapons are not meant to be sold in stores for that. "Not supposed to" doesn't mean you can't if that's the way you like it

[BKT]

How can it be 'all offense' when it can't even destroy a shieldless AI ship— I mean... ALL ships in vanilla can do it, even the one without any gun whatsoever... That's embarrassing!

... Seriously though, the ship is too much of a crapshoot even when compared it to something like Stealth_B (which despite its relatively random nature, still involve a lot of planing and good tactical decision) or Engi_B (which is a fun little ship and is actually pretty good, but 3 weapon slot kinda suck..)— So, it was meant to be super duper strong in one jump (which I disagree, but I'll take your word for it) but absolutely rubbish and worthless on the next (which you seem to agree) and then having the crew throw up a big bonfire party in an asteroid field at the next jump, and the goal is to repeat the cycle as long as possible without anything to manage, any tactics (beside the "restart and pray" tactic) to employ, or dilemma that need to go through, etc etc ...

And again: there really is no point to use fire as a main weapon if you can't see the BURN it does; it's a slow, cumbersome and indirect way to do damage, but satisfy as hell to watch, and that's why people even use it at all.

I'm sorry for this rant of mine, but I really had high hopes for it to actually be a legit fire ship this time... But I guess it really is impossible to actually make a fire-oriented ship (apart from the somewhat fire-oriented Rock_B) without it being too OP or having to resorts to a crapshoot kind of gameplay as a way to "balance" it like so many mod out there...


That aside, got 5500 on the Ion ship run that I wasn't even intended to play it to the end!

[UltraMantis]

How can it be 'all offense' when it can't even destroy a shieldless AI ship— I mean... ALL ships in vanilla can do it, even the one without any gun whatsoever... That's embarrassing!

Well since it has 0 defense, it has to be all offense by default
And both ships have only non-hull damaging weapons, which is why they can't destroy AI ships. They can still be dealt some punishment (ions+breach missile; burst sysdamage cannon) to avoid taking damage, but you have to leave them be and take no prize scrap. Basilisk becomes a super-strong ship eventually but early on it can't even damage AI ships (unless you have a lvl2 tele and then you have to stop the FTL recharge while your Mantis are meleeing the enemy weapons bay), and is utterly screwed against a Zoltan supershield. So advantage Magma in that one case.
I would not say it's super-duper strong except in cases where the enemy has no effective way of dealing with fires (no Engi, no Rocks, no repair drones). Such enemies are weak because they will focus on putting out fires in the shields rather than weapons, and there's you targeting multiple rooms on each strike giving them a real hell without any fear of retaliation.

Magma is my 2nd attempt at designing a playable shieldless ship and 3rd attemp at a ship with limited weapon slots. The older ones are the Imperial Interdictor which has 2 weapons but 4 drones (and shields mind you), and the other one is the ancient dreadnaught mod, which i will paint and release some day... That one has only 1 weapon slot (a superweapon), virtually no systems at all and needs 250 scrap before a shield can be powered up. It does have 90 HP though, and if the player manages to turn things around and repair back to at least half health, the end game is pretty much a guaranteed win but early on it's very hit and miss. So much hit n miss that you can actually lose after one jump. Sadly it's a bit boring to play because it's very limited.

From my experience, fire weapons are useless against AI and the Zoltan supershield, and are very poor against Engi crews and repair drones. They only work well if the fires can spread out of control, which is very hard to balance. I have to say that i did not aim to create a balanced fire ship, but a ship with strong starting weapons that have to be discarded because they have downsides (no hull damage being the main reason). In addition to that, Magma is a gimped, utterly shieldless ship prone to fires (ironically), asteroids, boarding, beams!!, drones... actually pretty much everything is extra dangerous. It really badly needs several weapons and especially augs before it can even break even on the balance scale. So you're limited both by slots and the rng.

I'm glad to have your thoughts and rants. I'm slightly worried that i'm defending my mod too much. One thing that i find slightly bizzare is that i completely suck at playing the IceLord, yet have no problem kicking asses in the early sectors when playing the Magma. To me it feels realy strong in the beginning, despite the numerous disadvantages. What gets me are those damn AI ships with massive evasion that appear in later sectors. Or damage accumulates to the point where it's impossible to survive a fight and no stores are in sight.