Their stats:
- Class 1A, 3A, 5A, 7A controllers have a base hack time of 18s, 16s, 13s, 11s; the hack time increases gradually towards 2.3x this value within a class as rating is decreased towards E.
- The maximum of active limpets at the same time depends on the rating of the module (E = B > C > D = A). For example, a class 7 module may launch 18, 12, 15, 18, 12 limpets with increasing rating.
- Their power usage varies with class and rating, similar to the other types of controllers. Their weight is consistent with all other types of limpet modules (even if coriolis.io and edshipyard.com STILL haven't fixed that information...). Their maximum range scales continuously with class and rating. Pricing is irrelevant.
- Limpet hack time is proportional to relative hull health of the ship it is attached to. 5% hull equals 5% hack time.
- A successful hack of a single limpet causes a cargo spill; there seems to be a correlation between high rating and a high amount of cargo per spill, however, a spill of 10 or more (though not much more) is rare.
Their current problems:
1. They do not scale with the cargo hold of their victim or user. An Imperial Cutter will as happily lose 10 tons of cargo from a single spill of its 792t cargo hold as would a Hauler with its measly 22t.
2. Attaching multiple limpets in short succession is pointless since successful hacks while a cargo spill is still in progress are without any effect. 5 successful hacks shortly following one hack which triggered a cargo spill is the same as launching only that initial limpet. This significantly cuts the usefulness of a hatch breaker, especially one "better" than 1A, up to rendering it completely useless.
3. Due to the excruciatingly slow way in which cargo trickles out of the cargo hatch, plus the hack time:
- They're pointless to use against targets that can go very high speeds (any ship). If you were to disable some Clipper trader's drives, that trader might be drifting at 400m/s in a direction with no way to stop it. If you were to successfully cause a cargo spill, the cargo will be trickling out for roughly as many seconds as amount of cargo drops out. That may be 8t of Gold for 8 seconds, during which all hack attempts are nil.
- Say you damaged the hull of the Clipper slightly and your hack time is 10s. That would equate to 18s for a single cargo spill.
- There is an 8km hard limit on cargo existence in interdiction instances. Any cargo that is not within 8km within any player will despawn instantly. There is no time for another hack attempt, since the old cargo will start going out of range of existence.
- That leaves you with 8t of gold for ~10min of work. And then you have to pick up the cargo, which will be single canisters strewn across kilometres. How amazingly engaging and rewarding for any ship that is larger than a Cobra. And no, collector drones do not work at high speeds, partly because they won't be able to catch most of the cargo before they go out of range of your ship and partly because they will immediately cause the cargo to explode when it comes in contact with your ship.
4. They have major problems catching up with fast moving targets, even if the user is going a comparable speed as their victim when deploying the limpet.
5. Spinning (rolling) targets may well not have any limpets attached at all, since the limpet will be unable to attach itself a lot of the time.
More implications of their current "design" include:
- their low reward for a long hack time makes pirating in space with police extremely unrewarding, since you will not have much time to pick up cargo, even if you manage to completely stop a ship by disabling its power plant.
- they are pointless to use on players that aren't worse than bots. It is impossible to get any reasonable amount of cargo out of a player once he's stuck floating at high speed in a direction (3). Starting voice communication and getting your grandmother to ask that person to drop cargo is a more effective measure.
- a class 1 beam laser turret is more efficient at extracting cargo from a completely stopped ship than hatch breakers.
Ways to massively improve this part of the game, which seems to be balanced around pirates in cobras (judging by the horrendous hatch breakers and no way to stop a ship with disabled drives, thus giving the impression of about 10t of cargo being a great reward for a small ship), obviously include:
- changing the amount of cargo dropped by a spill to something like max(8, 30%) (8t or 30% of cargo, whichever is higher)
- changing the way cargo leaves the cargo hatch to groups of canisters (4, 8 at once) and allow extension of cargo spill through hack attempts while one is in progress, adding full duration on top of the currently expiring one
- increasing their speed and allowing them to pass through ships
A developer response with concrete content other than "It's on the list" would be highly desirable.
