So, because someone killed Hephaestus on test with ice sludge, it's made me revisit the game mechanics of fertile parasites.

Fertile parasites are those few parasites that reproduce, for example Ice Sludge and Jelly Spit. The recent revamp on parasites did curb fertile parasites a little bit from what they were, but it's still not a stable system. The problem is that half-life's and exterminators both do damage to a parasite stack proportional to the number of parasites in the stack and the fertile parasites reproduce proportionally to the number in the stack (using a Fibonacci sequence as is found in nature.) So if the combined half-life damage plus exterminator damage is more than the value of the health of new parasites creates, then even fertile stacks of parasites tend to get wiped out, but if you can get enough so that they are reproducing faster than the half-life and exterminator can kill them, they will still explode towards a stack of infinite parasites and be able to kill anything.

So, the change I'm making is to replace the proportional growth of fertile parasites with constant growth. For example, I'm making ice sludge reproduce at +1 per second regardless of how many are currently in the stack. This means that you have constant growth balanced against proportional death and if you have no exterminator and a fertile parasite that grows at 1 per second with a half-life of 50 seconds, it will asymptotically approach a total number of 50 and then just sit there. If you throw in an ace pest control, it will asymptotically approach about 3 and just stay there. This seems much more balanced, since nothing can explode to infinity.

The biggest problem with this, though, is that since all the things that kill off parasites are proportional to the number of parasites, it becomes very hard to get rid of the last 1 or 2 left since you don't get enough damage to overcome the constant reproduction. So to combat this problem, I'm also going to add an "aging" factor that will make fertile parasites less fertile over time, but you can refresh the age of the stack at any time by shooting a new parasite. For example, if you hit a base with one ice sludge, it will reproduce at +1 ice sludge per second at first, but maybe after 5 minutes it will be at +1 per 2 seconds, and after 10 minutes it will be at +1 per 4 minutes, and at that point, even an ace pest control can kill it off faster than it can reproduce, and even without any kind of exterminator, the whole stack should die away from the half-life after an hour or so.

So hopefully, these two changes will make the existing fertile parasites non-broken and also allow us to use the fertility tag a bit more to make some fun stuff.

yet another game mechanic that is being changed.


how will seers kill bases now?

EDIT: Nevermind this is pretty stupid, just thought of the many uses.

I like this, but I don't think you should make it +1 as you showed in the example. make it +20 every second so there's a max of 1000 parasites at once.. 50 parasite isn't going to do much damage.

I like the aging thing aswell, which will make the +20 per second not be unkillable with pest controls.

I think the system is fine the way it is, just remember to put pest controllers on your AI boss's.

he isnt suggesting it. he already has it changed

Will you add another fertile parasite or two, then? Hopefully high-end? It's rather silly that the best one is t6, imo. Maybe that can go with these new bosses, or something.

It is currently broken that you can kill any base, AI, or player in the game with a tech 6 weapon if it doesn't have a pest control. One of the main factors of the new parasite system that was implemented recently is that there are 3 kinds of parasites and 3 kinds of matching exterminators, and you have you choose which exterminator to use. If you don't pick the right one, it shouldn't mean that you automatically die to a tech 6 weapon, and also, it's boring if all AI have to have the same type of exterminator or if they are all simply immune to all types of parasite.

Yes, the existing tech 6 fertile parasite won't do much damage with the recent fixes, but it's tech 6 after all, and I very much look forward to adding more, higher tech ones.

Also, it doesn't need to be +50 per second to be more leathal, it can just as easily stay at +1 per second and multiply the damage and health of the parasite by 50.

parasites are fine as it is. it's not that hard to carry an ace pest around.

Thanks I like it

EDIT: Katherine, Tregish, Klestiko -1

As long as new ones are made, i'm all good with it.

Mind fixing flares vs sniper while you're at it? -_^

I disagree with changing this right now. My reason is that there is a lot of content we were promised that has not been made or added to game.

Gunners only have 2 damage types for missiles, you commented once on wanting to add more types of missiles and effects to the game. Nothing has been done on this yet.

Gunners need more variety of weapons, after the nerfs to mining damage they got raped for PVai. Dreads are far less useful for DGing then using a UZ ship, they need to be rebalanced or new ship content added to make capital ships effective. a lion or zebra is way better for many ai.

Snipers are still not quite right, and MF needs tweaking.. that or tweak all the classes a little. PVAI isnt balanced. Stealth is still way less useful then making a visible sniper.

FC needs to be rebalanced since you raped radiation damage they are nowhere near as effective at killing targets as other classes. I think adding more radiation type weapons to give variety and choice would be a good thing.

Paxian capital ships were designed ages ago and promised ages ago but never added to game.

Engineers were promised loads of different tweak factories and gear when that class was designed. Not seen anything added for tweaks. and there is no Tractor 20 so you cannot even use the T20 tweak tractors.

Its all good to talk about interesting ideas. But it gets us nowhere if its never completed or the topic dies and is never revisited. I would have to say redesign pests AFTER all this other stuff is dealt with is a wiser action.

for now just remember to chuck pest controls on stuff.

That is irrelevant. This parasite change was no major project, I believe Jeff has already finished the changes.