Okay, let's break this down.
Firstly, there's many things in your comment that I agree could be changed. Maybe the pulses are too frequent, maybe the push effect should be reduced, maybe I can reduce the number of patrolling fleets... but everything else is off the mark.
Yes to all of these, but see later.
Firstly. If you notice, the patrolling fleets have a tiny sensor radius. You're intended to sneak around them, not fight them. Maybe there's too many - maybe I can adjust it.
Both the Mothership and the Research Base have full endgame fleets defending them: you're not getting away with stealthing through the mobs, so it's a full fleet of large Capitals and they
easily detect you. Added to this, using an interdiction pulse
requires you to slow to impulse power; and if you time it badly, you're now drifting on a vector without the ability to turn for 1+ day. So no, you cannot sneak around them in live play.
I make it very clear in the travel advisory that the interdict must still be charging for it to provide protection. Additionally, it clearly states you must be utop a planet - I'd love to have it work if you're behind, but that's not how the range blocker util works.
This is in no-way clear,
at all. Your own post says "behind", and the player (at least two here) will assume it works like the Neutron star with a "shadow" behind the planet that is safe (i.e. it mirrors a mechanic that is already in-game). Not sure what "advisory" you're referencing here: I found the system due to a "
go here to find a hypershunt tap" generic loot mission, I've not found the actual Story content for this mission that might help me.
Also, you can just ignore those things orbiting the star. I'm not forcing you to go to them.
This is just a fancy of way of saying: "Don't use the mod then".
As for the pulses themselves, I'd love to give them a better graphic, but since I can't, the most I can do is reiterate time and time again (such as in the travel advisory) that you have to time your pulse for the center of the pulse. Unfortunately, this will always be obtuse.
Are you aware that the interdiction pulse
itself is a variable, and depends on fleet composition / sensors etc to determine length and pulse time and cool down? Because of this... if the timings are not overly generous, no-one is going to hit your magic sweet number that works for
your personal test fleet. This is really basic math. My fleet currently has at least 5 ships with High Resolution Sensors, and this changes the math (all numbers in yellow are variables that change according to fleet composition) - and yes, that is a 100% addition to hostile fleet ability to detect (thus "tiny range" = "not so tiny range" now...):
Ultimately, this system is meant to be extremely dangerous, and provoke a sense of uncertainty. It's potential for loot is great, and is one of the biggest sources of omega weapons and colony items in the entire modiverse (discounting nonsense like astral ascension).
The issue with this system is two-fold: all of the above (which is mechanics enactment) and there is a
solution right there in your own mod, but which doesn't work due to placing the system inside the Abyss zone. Your own mod has the structure "
Astronomical Barrier Projector" (rare loot, not sure where I found it, but rare) which explicitly "nullifies CR drain from fleets" and you have a useless worm-hole gen in system (?? seems to be) that can be removed. So instantly, I thought: "
Remove wormhole (I have that tech), make habitat, make shield, this is BRILLIANT design!"... only you can't, because the Abyss is hard-coded to prevent building.
So either tweak it or use the above solution, which would instantly make all of the issues go away and make this a brilliant bit of design work. i.e. make the system spawn at 0,0 (very corners of galaxy) in buildable space and let the player use stuff that is already in your mod to solve it. Job done.
