Subset Games Forum

A lot of people have complained that the Engi B ship is one of the hardest ships to play. Those who find success with it typically repurpose it into a 'functional' ship. To me, I like the CONCEPT of a droneship, but they imolemented it poorly. The reason is because look at the Mantis B. While it sucks vs droneships and Zoltan shields, it has enough tools to work its strengths: 2 shield layers, 4 man teleporter, all basic systems (minus weapons) and a boarding drone.

Engi B should be comparable. Here's my idea:

Shields:2 Engine:1 Weapon:1 Drone:4 Helm:2 Door:2 No Sensors No Medbay 2 weapon slots (with ion blast equipped) 4 drone slots (with beam drone, anti personnel drone, and system repair drone).

4 drone slots would make it a true droneship. Enhanced doors and autopilot would allow the lone Engi to handle boarders or multiple damage. Ion paired with beam drone would carve up early ships.

this seems like a legitimately good idea- except it should be 1 1/2 shield, so you only have to upgrade once to get lvl 2 shields, because beam drones don't miss and have a chance of doing 2 damage, and you have an ion weapon to keep the shields down. Someone, mod, naow

As clarification, it would have 1 shield bubble (2 power) but giving it another one wouldn't hurt. And a Drone Recovery arm from the start!

Max power to Drones ASAP, let boarders choke to death, fires blow out, use your weapon slots for Ion weapons and let the drones do the work, all with just 1 engi

It's not so much drone ship as drone crew. That concept at least works just fine for me. The execution of the drones works quite well too, the 3 drones it starts with maintain and secure the ship admirably.

It's everything else that is a problem. The weapons both do 2 damage (though one of them does ion damage), but since each is a single shot, you can only deal with 1 shield level, and their low rate of fire makes disabling incoming fire difficult, and I have been screwed more times than I care to remember by a missile hitting weapons when I can't afford to lose either gun ever. If you don't luck out and find a weapon by the third sector you might as well restart. Changing either of the weapons to a faster firing weapon, or one that fires multiple shots would improve things a lot.

The other problem is engines. You can't man the engines, so you're down on your evade already, to only have one engine bar only serves to doubly screw you. It can't dodge for crap, and when you run into a foe with 2 shields you can't break, or a bunch of missiles you are never going to dodge, your jump drive charges too slowly.

I say swap the heavy ion for an ion blast, of the heavy laser for a burst laser, then give it 2 more engine bars, and the Vortex might be a pretty decent ship.

I agree, the droneship concept is pretty cool, but the Engi B is just terrible to play. And since no one else has fixed it yet, I decided to make a mod for it myself.

I ended up making 2 ships, both loosely based on ideas from the forums (well, mostly from this thread). One is a rebalanced version of the Engi b, the other is a 4-drone ship specialising in onboard drones.

You can find the mod here, let me know what you think.