Teleport is OP

[MC3craze]

Honestly, a simple fix could be to have more ships do a FTL jump. That would put the boarding party at serious risk if you leave them for too long. That would also prompt the need for weapons to quickly bring down fleeing enemies, which I think would balance out the gameplay a bit better.

There could be blue options provided for such instances. With a long range scanner installed or an upgraded teleport you could lock on to your abducted crew and hope to save them, though no happy ending is of course guaranteed.

That would help make the FTL jammer more useful, but honestly I don't see a way to make the teleporter less powerful without making significant changes to the teleporter itself. Like a "miss" chance based on evasion, where you can't pull your crew off in an emergency. It could be a good way to make the higher level teleporters better than they are now.

[Kenshkrix]

Honestly, a simple fix could be to have more ships do a FTL jump. That would put the boarding party at serious risk if you leave them for too long. That would also prompt the need for weapons to quickly bring down fleeing enemies, which I think would balance out the gameplay a bit better.

There could be blue options provided for such instances. With a long range scanner installed or an upgraded teleport you could lock on to your abducted crew and hope to save them, though no happy ending is of course guaranteed.

That would help make the FTL jammer more useful, but honestly I don't see a way to make the teleporter less powerful without making significant changes to the teleporter itself. Like a "miss" chance based on evasion, where you can't pull your crew off in an emergency. It could be a good way to make the higher level teleporters better than they are now.

I'd prefer that the "away" have a miss chance, so you don't always hit the room you wanted (Maybe just have it randomly throw your guys, and have no aiming at all until its level 3), versus the "rescue" having a miss chance.

On the defensive side there isn't a lot that can be done, aside from giving every enemy some combination of: 12 crewmembers, mantis pheromones, engi medibot dispersal, zoltan shields, multiple anti-personnel drones, and level 3 door controls.
The obvious problem being that if every enemy gains these things at no cost it turns quickly into "Hard mode".

[BKT]

IMO what made Telepad so OP is that it work incredibly well not only at what it seem to supposed to do, but also on something it shouldn't...

For instance... With Lv.2+ Telepad, any automate ship, particularly the dreaded-once-in-a-blue-moon one with absurd amount of evade+shields that may try to jump away, now become very trivial to fight simply by sending your dudes to destroy the cockpit. This work 100% of the time and can be done instantly right from the beginning of the battle, can be precisely control (unlike drones), use low power, and doesn't cost a darn thing to use— missiles and bombs look absolutely worthless in comparison, and I don't even want to talk about the Bio-beam in this kind of situation...

Sure, you need crew as an 'ammo' in order to use it. But Telepad is unique in that its 'ammo' is reusable and can get stronger the more you reuse it, not to mention that the more you use it, or simply just by having it on your ship, the more free 'ammo' you'll get; sometime you can even get to choose what type of 'ammo' you want! 


And I'm saying this whole thing with the standard 2-slots Telepad in mind, and it's already extremely powerful ... The 4-slots one is not worth discussing since it's meant to be ...  'unique'

[MC3craze]

I'd prefer that the "away" have a miss chance, so you don't always hit the room you wanted (Maybe just have it randomly throw your guys, and have no aiming at all until its level 3), versus the "rescue" having a miss chance.

On the defensive side there isn't a lot that can be done, aside from giving every enemy some combination of: 12 crewmembers, mantis pheromones, engi medibot dispersal, zoltan shields, multiple anti-personnel drones, and level 3 door controls.
The obvious problem being that if every enemy gains these things at no cost it turns quickly into "Hard mode".

The only issue with the "away" having the miss chance is that unless the doors are upgraded, it doesn't really change your effectiveness at boarding. I guess it would make the flagship stronger, (you won't always hit the triple missile launcher.) You could argue the same for the "rescue" having a miss chance, since people already run their guys around the ship until the recharge is finished.

I personally think the teleporter should stay as it is. Boarding should be extremely powerful, otherwise it doesn't feel quite right.

[greetingsfromoslo]

IMO what made Telepad so OP is that it work incredibly well not only at what it seem to supposed to do, but also on something it shouldn't...

I'm completely on board with your analysis. The teleport is undoubtedly the most lucrative investment in the whole game.

[herb0815]

I agree that the Teleport is strong and greatly improves your odds for combat and events. But it also penalise you the most for making mistakes, because you will lose crew members instead of just some hull points. If you ever lost your 2 boarding squads to the artillery beam, because you forgott to turn it of, or to an undetected fire, you know what I´m talking about.

So the Teleporter should be a high risk/high reward thing. I think the best way to "balance" it more, would be to make it more unforgiving. Maybe you should only be able to teleport one of your crew back to your ship per use, making emergency extraction harder. Or make it impossible to teleport your crew back, if the enemy shields are up.

Just my 2 cents.

[Lerxst]

Create a new feature - Mutation: Created by inconsistencies within the teleport technology, that sometimes result in "unintended" side effects. Results in either - all skills halved, HP greatly reduced, speed reduced or death.

Use the same boarding party too many times and one of these things for each of them will almost be a guarantee.

[cicobuff]

Lets see it this way.

2x Human Crew = 80 scrap
1x Teleporter =75 scrap
Level 2 Teleporter Upgrade = 35 scrap

Anyone knows of a weapon that cost 190 scrap?

A burst laser level 3 is 110 and is a gamer winner.
Even a pre igniter is *only* 120.

The suggestion many proposed will make the teleporter totally non-cost effective.

Part of the charm to the game is to make people "figure out" the game. Teleporter is one of the successful path you can take to win the game though it takes ages compared to some weapons combo to take out the boss. So is a burst laser 3 + beam combo. So are other "OP" weapons + preigniter combo.

Don't many people see that the devs had actually almost perfectly balanced the game and offered at the same time many different ways to achieve success?

Just request for mods to nerf the teleporter. Let other new comers enjoy the discovery process.

[BKT]

I thought that no one buy crew to use as their boarding team or actually use the bloody BL3... No..? 

... Nah, just kidding.


That said. There's no need for a mod to do that since a better, easier solution already exists for people who think that telepad is too powerful— don't buy it. I sure did...

[cicobuff]

I do buy mantises for the teleporter sometimes.

I had relied on teleport in the past but after a game with a BL3 + ion blast + beam combo raping the boss really fast, and with a changed approach to weapons in subsequent games, I changed my mind on what is really OP.