[Goober5000]

There has been a fair amount of negative feedback over the difficulty of this mission ever since it was released.  And just recently, someone on the wiki said "Out of the STR missions, this is the most maddening".  So, I would like to open discussion as to how the mission could be made more forgiving.

I would suspect that this could be done simply by either a) moving the Basilisks a little farther away, or b) giving them fewer/different missiles.  Does anyone have any drop-in suggestions for either?

Keep in mind that I designed the mission with the intention that there would be a decent risk of losing the escape pods if you dawdled.  Unfortunately, I seem to have misjudged "decent risk" as "frustratingly tricky risk" for most players.  For that I intend to make amends.

(I should also note that Galemp once attempted to lessen the difficulty by moving the Basilisks farther away, and I reverted his modification without saying anything. )

[MatthTheGeek]

Give furies to the basilisks instead of hornets. Retail AI sucks with dumbfires.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I recommend swaping the hornets for some other missile that is less powerful and/or has a smaller range.

[Goober5000]

Brahma wing currently uses Hornets.  Can someone try swapping them with Hornet#Weaks?

[QuantumDelta]

Several suggestions;
If you want to do it while retaining a sense of tension, do it the BP way; armour the pods somewhat.
If you want to do it the lazy way; change the missiles and hope it's enough.
If you want to do it the proper way; change the distance the basilisks spawn at to ~400-600 meters beyond the missiles max AI range and make them all spawn in a pattern along the flightpath rather than distance to pod (which is what I assume it uses now to get the random spawn points?)

[Goober5000]

I've changed the secondary banks from Hornet/Hornet to Hornet#Weak/Interceptor#Weak.  This presents a moderate threat against the pods, even as much as to knock them down a bit in hull strength, but it doesn't insta-kill them.  Hopefully this will satisfy everyone.

The rebalanced mission will be available in the next ST:R release, whenever that is... or earlier, if I can be persuaded to release it by itself.

[QuantumDelta]

It's annoying, but doable, even on insane with FuryAI so it's not that bad 

[Mastadon]

There has been a fair amount of negative feedback over the difficulty of this mission ever since it was released.  And just recently, someone on the wiki said "Out of the STR missions, this is the most maddening".  So, I would like to open discussion as to how the mission could be made more forgiving.

I would suspect that this could be done simply by either a) moving the Basilisks a little farther away, or b) giving them fewer/different missiles.  Does anyone have any drop-in suggestions for either?

Keep in mind that I designed the mission with the intention that there would be a decent risk of losing the escape pods if you dawdled.  Unfortunately, I seem to have misjudged "decent risk" as "frustratingly tricky risk" for most players.  For that I intend to make amends.

(I should also note that Galemp once attempted to lessen the difficulty by moving the Basilisks farther away, and I reverted his modification without saying anything. )

How about simply giving the escape pods more hitpoints...say, enough to withstand two or three vollies of full-powered swarm missiles? After all, the GTSC Einstein was a covert GTI vessel after all, so it could canoically make sense for their escape pods to be sturdier than standard escape pods...

[Goober5000]

Because I don't really like the special hitpoints feature... and anyway, it wouldn't fix the issue on retail.

[MatthTheGeek]

Wair what.

Special hitpoints isn't a retail feature ?

[Goober5000]

Nope.  It's a SCP feature that I added.  I sometimes regret adding it, because it's a fairly ugly addition to the code, and it has a lot of potential for abuse.

[MatthTheGeek]

Woa. That must have been a while ago.

And yeah, I see what you mean. It's more elegant nowadays to use armor tables instead.

[mjn.mixael]

More elegant? Hardly. All the player sees is HP dropping more slowly or more quickly regardless of whether it's done with armor or special hits. Armor tables simply add the ability to differentiate between more weapons.. which we already had to some extent.

I can think of more than a few cases where special hits is much more desirable than armor. But more importantly, I'm glad that Goober can't remove special hits just because he thinks a few people might abuse it. (What a horrid reason to dislike a code feature... just like my lens flares rant. Someone, somewhere will always abuse any given feature. That's their own fault.)

[bigchunk1]

An extra 500 meters from the path of the escape pods is probably the best way to do it. You want to give the player time to react to the threat otherwise it's luck based moreso than strategy/skill based. However if QD can beat it on insane with a strong degree of difficulty as is, it's probably good. Provided that he's not anticipating the deployment points.


MASHA - Modders Against Special Hitpoints Abuse

Mission Statement: To take measures towards the complete removal of special hitpoints from FRED on the off chance someone might use the feature for unpleasent purposes. Those noobs ought to do everything using armor tables, even especially for individual ships and special cases.

Anyone want to join?