Raptor Bane availability seems like it might trivialize the (original) horrors that Mudraptors were prior to their introduction. Maybe nerf the availability/jack up the price at vendors?

That or potentially have the plants yield less fruit or more mutated raptorbane fruits?

I think raptor bane should be acquired by growing the plant, not buying a finished product at vendor. Growing plants is much harder in the mod, because creatures dont give you nearly as much time to do it.

What do you think?

I think buying the finished product could still remain (if for some reason people want to offset the time cost of growing a plant for precious marks instead). Apologies for the lack of clarity in my first comment as well, I felt Raptor bane seeds seemed far too cheap for how valuable they are if a semi-competent crew can manage gardening while fighting off everything else.

Admittedly my experience is from a mostly competent crew and we've managed to stockpile a few syringes worth from gardening alone.

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I believe in some prior posts I saw that staying near the Cold Caverns for missions will eventually result in being too poor to afford fuel but I've found the current cost of fuel and the missions to keep our stockpiles relatively comfortable so far. Not sure how this could be adjusted, perhaps less starting fuel on the sub inventories or a slightly higher hike in fuel rod prices.

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Explosive ammo is great for ripping up mudraptors, and maybe a tad too cheap currently at most stops (averaging 350mks in our current run).

Once again most of my experience is anecdotal to my run and we haven't even reached the Europan Ridge yet so maybe things are just warming up.

This is the feedback I need, because running with just 1 crew isnt enough to gauge balance.

Missions are ridiculous in difficulty. Spawn of 20 raptors on 1% difficulty? Are you serious? Isn't it supposed to be fair, at least? I wonder if it even takes into account the % at all

Oprindeligt skrevet af Freeze:

Missions are ridiculous in difficulty. Spawn of 20 raptors on 1% difficulty? Are you serious? Isn't it supposed to be fair, at least? I wonder if it even takes into account the % at all

I could be mistaken, but I think in ITA the difficulty percentage is overridden. Are you encountering the swarms relatively early on? (Also what sub are you running? I find certain vanilla subs to be more suitable/easier for ITA due to their gun placement and the behaviour of mudraptors in ITA).

Oprindeligt skrevet af RocketLobster:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Freeze:

Missions are ridiculous in difficulty. Spawn of 20 raptors on 1% difficulty? Are you serious? Isn't it supposed to be fair, at least? I wonder if it even takes into account the % at all

I could be mistaken, but I think in ITA the difficulty percentage is overridden. Are you encountering the swarms relatively early on? (Also what sub are you running? I find certain vanilla subs to be more suitable/easier for ITA due to their gun placement and the behaviour of mudraptors in ITA).

Our first run in the game was an encounter with a swarm of raptors already. It was only because of our better-than-average ship that we survived the encounter. Vanilla sub in this mod? Suicide.

I test everything in singleplayer on Dugong and Typhon1.
You will get A LOT of raptors (8 max per event) after 20 minutes in the cold caverns. I dont want players to linger. Get in the caverns, do the mission and get out. Its Europa ffs

If you want me, I can adjust the time. If you seriously want to spend a long time in the level, kill the raptors that spawn at 20, 25 and 30 minute mark, then you should encounter just distance events. If you think I should adjust the time, im open to do that, but I am keeping some sort of feature that punishes players for staying too long in the level.

Then it seems that the mod is bugged. I counted at least 20 raptors. Now that I think about it, it was probably much much more
- It was the first run of the game
- transport the eggs mission (hardcoded number of raptors?)
- better than average ship,
- was trying to speedrun the mission, no staying around (less than 20/25 minutes for sure)
- lost at least 6 boxes of ammo

I'll see about doing a fresh campaign with some of the newer hotfixes. I can say I've encountered around 15 mudraptors at some point in the Cold Caverns (which was a disastrous situation but was eventually handled). Imo though I feel as though mudraptors being a genuine threat is fine, it just requires coordination from the captain and gunnery to keep them away from blindspots and into line of fire. (Not dismissing your claim though, it could be a bug)

I've had limited experience on running the Kastrul in ITA (the bottom airlock/blindspot) proves to be problematic for mudraptor instrusions. But I don't think there's much that can be changed there outside of modifying the sub. The Typhon 2 works pretty well for ITA from my current on going campaign (Aphotic Plateau atm).

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One suggestion I would have is potentially nerfing how severe the hammerheads rock the ship, or in the very least making it that multiple hammerheads don't stunlock you into permanent concussion mode. On a single mission level test with the slider jacked up to 100%, 3 hammerheads essentially kept us off the guns and the command console until we all died of either flooding or just broken everything. This occurred on a rather interesting custom sub though, so admittedly it may just be limited to that sub alone.

1) Raptor count
That behaviour really seems like a bug then. Multiple events had to trigger at the same time. Unfortunately it hasnt happened to me yet, so I'll keep playing and see whatsup.

2) About Kastrull: Kastrul is more than well enough equipped but you have to do advanced sailings on vanilla subs. Placing and strategically activating sonar beacons around your sub can drag monster's attention around. Same as flares. I dont recall if Kastrull has a decoy, but those should be constantly crafted or purchased, even it they arent very cheap. You can also shoot activated sonar beacons in railgun to lure monsters around. Thats how you gotta roll. Also sometimes its best if security is ready to go out, kill monsters real quick and be back within 20 seconds. None of this is required in vanilla, which is quite shame. These are my fav combat things. Also, you should consider doing controled flooding to go down faster in case you want to outmanouver enemies into your gunpoints.

3) I'm eventually going to release a manual for Security that gives some tips and tricks and schematics where to shoot monsters. Basically, doctor should inject the crew with adrenaline to combat the stun. Fighting multiple hammerheads should really require some agro management and preferrably nukes. Single hammerhead is hard enough with its coil resistance (you gotta shoot the tail, but not the fin!) so railgun shell with cheap payload is a safe bet. Physicorium ammo too, of course.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Noted for the Hammerheads/stuns, heard about the Adrenaline but didn't click for me that it would be useful for those kinds of scenarios, thanks!

I feel as though Massive Swarm Missions have a pretty hefty payout compared to how easy they seem vs. a Moloch extermination mission. Good coordination between Gunnery and the Captain allows the sub to slowly lure and pick off the swarm contacts 1 by 1 in calm waters (Cold Caverns). Things definitely got a lot more dicey in the Ridge and Plateau but I never felt they were too troublesome for a generous reward of 9001 marks.

Molochs still feel like the end all be all especially with how severe they can stunlock your crew (without enough adrenaline) and such, so I feel as though the reward of 5000 Marks should be upped a little more (and the massive swarm reward lowered).

Not sure if this is something that can be done within the mod, but having the swarm or moloch missions have lower pay in the earlier biomes (Cold Caverns, early parts of the Europan Ridge), and then have the pay increase later on (later parts of Europan Ridge and Aphotic Plateau) might help balance out the difficulty to reward ratio. Definitely harder in the later biomes to maneuver effectively with the sheer amount of thermal currents at times.

i had the complete opposite experience with swarm vs molochs. Ancient moloch was mostly following Railgunshell+radio beacon and getting nuked from safe distance, while the swarm survived 1 nuke and 10 crawlers attacked 1m of hull together, instantly breached in and ended my run about 2mins after the breach.