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Buff The Furie

Jan 24, 2022 Sid123 link
The Stygian Furie right now is frankly a complete and utter waste of time and credits. Their AI is terrible. Commands are painfully limited. Their speed is so low they can't even be used as escorts for an XC. The list goes on. But the Furie has potential to be a REALLY great thing. Some suggestions which IMO will lead in that direction.

More commands:
Nothing fancy like "Attack my target" or "Protect this particular guy". Just a command to attack the closest hostile instead of just those who have attacked you. This will increase their utility as escorts as with most pirates you are usually half dead by the time you even know you've been attacked. And a command to not attack no matter what. A "Down, boy" kind of thing. And maybe a command to scout ahead and report hostiles and other players one jump ahead.

Higher top speed:
At their current speed, I actually have to stop my XC for them to catch up. They either don't use their turbo or are actually incapable of flying at 160 m/s (which makes no sense considering they are assaults). Please increase their top speed to 180 m/s, and make it such that when you tell them to follow, they engage turbo immediately if the distance is greater than 200 or 150 m.

More variety:
Recently a mission tree beginning with a mission called "Fast Academic Track" iirc was released. This mission tree involved a sort of mind controlled collector and a Helman K-27 Overseer. This is IMO a great idea. Make different kinds of Furies. I was thinking a collector variant based on the Dentek Collector, which does no combaf and can be told only to mine a particular roid, follow you and jettison cargo. And an Overseer bot based on the Helman K-27 Overseer with commands and use similar to that of a Furie. This bot will have lower Armor than the Overseer and will also require a ridiculous amount of resources to produce. And if I'm lucky a transport bot capable only of picking up cargo, following and jettisoning it. And these bots are capable of being repaired with a repair module.

Control:
Instead of the current numerical limit on bots, I was thinking of allowing a riskier but potentially more reward kind of thing. So as you bring more bots under your control (different bots can have different weightage) your control starts weakening. So you'll have bots randomly attacking people, deviating of course or even attacking you. If they attack NPCs or players any standing loss or temporary kill on sight will be on the owner, as they are responsible for the bot. It may also be made possible to upgrade your implants through progressively harder missions.

And make the recall more realistic. They are recalled from Dau to Verasi in one minute. This would require them to travel at speeds greater than that of a Greyhound. This speed is mysteriously absent when they're following you and you have to slow down your XC for them. Also make them larger. For a bot equiped with one gun and decent Armor, being smaller than an Observer just doesn't make sense.

A tradeoff for these buffs will be a significantly harder manufacture, preferably involving sizable numbers of cores, ores and trade items. And the chance of going berserk of course.

These changes will IMO make the Furie and similar bots much more rewarding and useful, while maintaining the balance and not making players dependent on them or being able to use them excessively.
Jan 24, 2022 Whistler link
I don't want to discourage you from making suggestions, but I do want to offer you some feedback to make your suggestions more readable, more likely to be responded to, and more concise.

I know you are trying not to post too many suggestions and thus are trying to group them, but you are grouping disimilar ideas that do not support your opening premise. For instance, this thread begins with the premise of buffing the furie because it is not useful for escorting the XC, but then you go into variants, number limits, realistic recall, etc.. These are all different from the original premise and are different discussions.

I would have pared your suggestion down to the following:

The Stygian Furie is insufficient for escorting an XC due to not being able to keep up and due to its default behavior. I suggest:

More commands:
-Attack the closest hostile instead of just those who have attacked you. This will increase their utility as escorts as with most pirates you are usually half dead by the time you even know you've been attacked.
-A command to not attack no matter what. A "Down, boy" kind of thing.
-A command to scout ahead and report hostiles and other players one jump ahead.

Higher top speed:
-Please increase their top speed to 180 m/s, and make it such that when you tell them to follow, they engage turbo immediately if the distance is greater than 200 or 150 m.
At their current speed, I actually have to stop my XC for them to catch up. They either don't use their turbo or are actually incapable of flying at 160 m/s.
Jan 24, 2022 Sid123 link
Yep that's a very good way of putting it. Thanks. My essential complaint is summed up in your version. The others were just hopes...the speed and command buffs are necessary to give them some utility.

I grouped all these together as making seperate suggestions seemed like it wouldn't have a context.
Jan 25, 2022 death456 link
Sadly no matter how many times you buff/change the furie it's still a bot like any other in VO. Comparable to NPC vultures/military ships in escorts/deneb. The furie just has a different hit box and a lot of burst. A hound will swoop in kill you years before your furies even attempt to get into firing range. I used furies for years and they have came along way then they were before. If you have tons of kits they are super fun to pvp with. There are many more underlying issues then simply change the furie. I am honestly not qualified to even dive into. Furies are nice and simple they defend you they defend themselves. Squadrons are a nice foil to furies with their biggest drawback being only 30mins.

I think for the sake of simplicity it's better to leave furies alone. Incarnate said him self he won't be dealing with them for a while.