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Author Topic: Make Domain Drones less of a pushover past the early game (semi-spoilers)  (Read 4735 times)

MesoTroniK

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Domain Drones are... Boring, they serve their purpose early game but past that? They pose *no* threat at all, even with the mechanic of the more you destroy the more beefed up their defense fleets become it just isn't enough. They are so weak and irrelevant past early game that it becomes a chore and anti-fun to fight them. I suggest simply making the mechanic of where they become stronger the more you kill *far* more pronounced and do it in a way that isn't just increasing the size of their defense fleets.

REDACTED information below, reader beware.
Spoiler
At a high enough level? Give them, *Guardians*.

In addition also give them "repaired" Motherships that replace the normal one. A repaired one would have the large turret visible on the sprite actually working and populated with a weapon. In addition allow them to move in combat (but still static in the campaign layer), I mean if they fixed the large turret could fix the engines too. And to really amp them up? Give them Star Fortress style launched frigate drones on top of the rest of the bits I just spoke of.
[close]


Bam, do all of the above? And now past the early game fighting them actually won't make players wish for an auto-resolve feature heh. Anyways, hoping these suggestions can be mulled over and perhaps happen sometime as I think Domain Drones are actually a detriment to the game past the very first steps in it.

Avanitia

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I do agree, after getting to a point in a run I don't even bother with fighting them unless I really need the cores, nanoforges or maybe supplies when exploring.

And even when fighting them later in run, I'll let AI do the job while I do other outside stuff outside of game (and I do like the combat, manually fight in most encounters).

They could even get more ship types, lack of variety makes them even more boring, but that may be too much.

What about the systems filled with them just like other [REDACTED]? Could provide a bit of challenge mid- or late-game
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goduranus

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I think they should be pushovers later on, because the rewards don't scale. Pushing the scaling higher would mean you have to fight a difficulty battle and lose half of your fleet for a few dozen units of supplies and occasional gamma cores.

Imo as you level up you should move on from low tier enemies and take on more challenging enemies like redacted fleets.

Midnight Kitsune

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I think they should be pushovers later on, because the rewards don't scale. Pushing the scaling higher would mean you have to fight a difficulty battle and lose half of your fleet for a few dozen units of supplies and occasional gamma cores.

Imo as you level up you should move on from low tier enemies and take on more challenging enemies like redacted fleets.
I would rather have both the fights be harder AND the rewards be better. What I would do is have the enemies scale up to a cap, so you don't get massive death fleets guarding a probe while things like a mothership is still a hard fight. Basically the probe and its rewards would only reach level 2, the survey ship level 5, and the mothership would max out (levels are arbitrary, not character or officer levels)
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Thaago

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But currently the domain drones offer the best possible defense: they are so boring I don't bother fighting them! Its genius!
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Midnight Kitsune

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But currently the domain drones offer the best possible defense: they are so boring I don't bother fighting them! Its genius!
So boring that many want an auto resolve option
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Tartiflette

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Maybe the player could find a "code" that can deactivates all small derelicts at some point (inside the mothership?) to entirely skip small battles. Lore-wise it wouldn't affect larger ships and they would keep their ally online in larger battles.
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Gwyvern

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I have not actually encountered the Guardian yet, having such limited time to actually play. But based on what others have said, I get the sense that it is meant to have some sort of narrative relevance.

And an upgraded mothership is a fine idea...for fights that actually contain the mothership.

Rather than potentially detract from the narrative intent behind the guardian, a higher-effort but possibly higher payoff approach would be to have the Derelicts (all the Derelicts) upgrade themselves as the apparent threat to their existence is made known to them.

One two kill a few. Now Derelicts learn about and start using shield modules on all of their ships.

Three four kill some more. Now Derelicts start taking better care of their hulls and defensive plating, structural integrity no longer being a low-priority system as the threat to their existence is elevated beyond the odd micro meteor.

Five six...uh...I don't have a rhyme for this actually. But improve other stats like speed and flux, or improve their selection of weapons, the last two measures didn't stop the player from killing them, so improvements must be made at the cost of efficiency...to protect the mission.

These should ideally come with sprite changes to indicate them to the player, and yes that means even more work. But with the Derelicts as they are now, I'm not sure there's a "quick fix" here that will make them viable and compelling enemies, to bring them up to spec with all the other types of threat the player can face throughout a campaign, a decent effort might be entirely needed.
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Gothars

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I think this will become a non-issue once more exploration content is introduced. Fighting domain drones is only so boring because domain probes are one of the few things you can find during exploration, so you fight them all the time. Trying to upgrade them to a level where they can still challenge a high level player fleet just makes them unbelievable in the role of "ancient relics".
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Avanitia

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I think this will become a non-issue once more exploration content is introduced. Fighting domain drones is only so boring because domain probes are one of the few things you can find during exploration, so you fight them all the time. Trying to upgrade them to a level where they can still challenge a high level player fleet just makes them unbelievable in the role of "ancient relics".

Just because you will have more things to blow up doesn't mean the Domain Drones being boring to fight will change.

And you can actually justify the 'upgrading' or 'waking up' process.
During exploration period and after it, Domain Drones weren't attacked often, so they didn't have to develop countermeasures, but Domain's engineers and scientists expected this to happen at some point.
So they added either a package with instructions what to do in case this scenario happens or they added blocked off pieces of code which are enabled when this scenario happens.
Aforementioned measures can contain special blueprints which are more suited to fighting ships used by the Domain, alongside special weapon packages which are easy and cheap to make, but are dangerous enough to make sure enemy won't come out unscathed.

And about the Mothership - they were mobile in the past, they did have to get here, to the Persean Sector, somehow. They fell into disrepair during that 'sleep' process. So Drones fixing the Motherships in face of a threat which targets them makes sense.

Mission has to be carried out.
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MesoTroniK

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I think this will become a non-issue once more exploration content is introduced. Fighting domain drones is only so boring because domain probes are one of the few things you can find during exploration, so you fight them all the time. Trying to upgrade them to a level where they can still challenge a high level player fleet just makes them unbelievable in the role of "ancient relics".

The Guardian already exists. And even if 100% of my suggestions were implemented as-is? They would be a mid game threat at best, not end game and even then it would be after the player smacks them around for long enough heh.

@Avanitia
Pretty much exactly my thoughts on lore that can explain repaired / upgraded Motherships and Guardians being thrown in etc.


But in the end? Lore hardly matters, gameplay comes first. Lore can be tweaked to fit gameplay. And gameplay that has pathetically weak enemies that have valuable loot is not good. Isn't like a lot of other games where going back to the starting area so to speak gets you loot that is worthless at that point! What Domain Drones drop is always valuable at all levels of the game but fighting them past the very start of it is basically a screensaver. So why not fix this using tools that already exists, like the Guardian, and adding an alternate repaired / upgraded mothership that can move, has the large turret working and launches station style mega drones? That isn't exactly a hard thing to implement either though not quite copy-paste levels of easy like the Guardian.

Alex

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Hmm, there's some potential to use derelicts/derelict systems for later-game things, and I'd rather see how that all shapes up instead of coding up an independent scaling mechanic for them - or whether, indeed, that'd be necessary given other later-game things. E.G. they might still be profitable/useful late-game, but they might become a poor use of your time given other more pressing concerns, for example. Or they might directly tie into something else.
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MesoTroniK

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AI War 3, got it ;)

Suggestion rescinded.

Tei

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Hmm, there's some potential to use derelicts/derelict systems for later-game things, and I'd rather see how that all shapes up instead of coding up an independent scaling mechanic for them - or whether, indeed, that'd be necessary given other later-game things. E.G. they might still be profitable/useful late-game, but they might become a poor use of your time given other more pressing concerns, for example. Or they might directly tie into something else.

Quote
Tie into some else.

What about a quest line where the mothership AIs  become truly sentient, but instead of having hostilty towards humans like the Remnants, they stay loyal because of mission parameters and solely desire to scout out and help rebuild the Domain (cuse you cant be an explorer for the Domain if there isnt a Domain).

This would result the older Domain droneships seeing the newer Remnant AIs as traitorous scum and the next AI War is a literal AI war.

Or something like that. Or maybe have systems where the Motherships are active and they spit out non-Dmodded droneships with sensible loadouts enmasse, with their gimmick is that they are impossibly beefy, well armored,  are constant sources of never ending ballistic barrages and come in numbers not unlike 0.9 pirate swarms but no shields what so ever.
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Vayra

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Hmm, there's some potential to use derelicts/derelict systems for later-game things, and I'd rather see how that all shapes up instead of coding up an independent scaling mechanic for them - or whether, indeed, that'd be necessary given other later-game things. E.G. they might still be profitable/useful late-game, but they might become a poor use of your time given other more pressing concerns, for example. Or they might directly tie into something else.

Quote
Tie into some else.

What about a quest line where the mothership AIs  become truly sentient, but instead of having hostilty towards humans like the Remnants, they stay loyal because of mission parameters and solely desire to scout out and help rebuild the Domain (cuse you cant be an explorer for the Domain if there isnt a Domain).

This would result the older Domain droneships seeing the newer Remnant AIs as traitorous scum and the next AI War is a literal AI war.

Or something like that. Or maybe have systems where the Motherships are active and they spit out non-Dmodded droneships with sensible loadouts enmasse, with their gimmick is that they are impossibly beefy, well armored,  are constant sources of never ending ballistic barrages and come in numbers not unlike 0.9 pirate swarms but no shields what so ever.


Sounds complicated... you better get started on it!  ;)
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Kadur Remnant: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6649
Vayra's Sector: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16058
Vayra's Ship Pack: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16059

im gonna push jangala into the sun i swear to god im gonna do it