Tackle Drone Launcher balance

[chemical_art]

Bottom line : full mk I-IV caps of single bonus ship is enough to take out all the uncarried ai ships , thats bit much.

Keith didn't just use the bonus ships, he was using the bonus ship along side the triangle ships.

The tdl alone did not stop any of the test waves.

I could think of a few ships that could, given enough preparation and slowing effects.

[TechSY730]

Bottom line : full mk I-IV caps of single bonus ship is enough to take out all the uncarried ai ships , thats bit much.

It wasn't exactly clear in the OP, but Keith had other ships helping out. It wasn't just a single bonus type. (EDIT: Ninja'd on this point)


Also, shame on you Keith, for not including a control group to compare against. (which in this case, would be either only triangle ships or some other bonus ship type generally considered "balanced")

[chemical_art]

This test does lack starships that normally would come with a wave (at least, I saw no mention).

For example, how would the tests go if there were 2 or 3 raid starships thrown in?

(Starships would help highlight a weakness of tdl in that they can't be tractored)

[TechSY730]

Wait, in the tests, when you say 2000 fighters, did you mean exactly 2000 fighters, or around that many? If it was exactly 2000, how did you pull that off? The "warp in the clowns" cheat uses the size parameter as a "sizing scale", not as an absolute count, meaning you will quite often get something only somewhat near what you gave it.
Also, did that wave include starships? If not, how did you pull off a wave that excluded starships?

Should this be just considered "I'm a developer, I can make it do whatever the flip I want" category, and is something we users can't do with cheats alone (short of save file editing)?

[keith.lamothe]

I could have done these in a more rigorous fashion to give more informative results, but I can see that even the information from the tests that were done just doesn't communicate consistently when presented in this fashion, so I'll just see what people think when they see it in action

But if you think it's substantially over- or under- powered in the next version or later it would be good to submit a test-case save where they're succeeding (or failing) in a situation you think they should not.


@TechSY730: I used the warp in the clowns cheat, but the number given with the test is the number that showed up (- the leading three fighters that popped out first), not the number I put in with the cheat.