Please remove the enrage mechanic

[Weps]

I wasn't around much before the start of the Thargoid war so I can't claim to know a lot about Thargoid mechanics - but I feel that the enrage mechanic is completely out of place in the current context. It might have made sense when Thargoid combat was more akin to "lone submarine hunts in the vastness of space" but not when interceptors are deployed as regular troops in a classical fixed CZ conflict. I assume the main purpose behind the mechanic was to prevent the player from cheesing the encounter; well in the context of CZ combat getting an interceptor enraged simply becomes a U-LOSE moment.

Here are some arguments:

• AXCZ scenarios are hardly balanced. For the same intensity level: sometimes you get only Cyclopes and its a breeze, sometimes you get Medusas up the wazoo and they wipe the floor with all human NPCs - sensor screen full red. At this point the question is, who is going to get enraged first, the Medusa or the player?
• Interceptors enrage without player input. No difference between PCs and NPCs and all that.... I don't actually know if this is intended, but I've seen NPCs enrage an interceptor just by exerting but not actually taking out the first heart. How can the player even control the CZ in this case?
• AXCZ will often stretch out over long distances. Not unusual for one or two Anacondas to pull an interceptor away from the fight a few kms out of sensor range, and just have their dance before the player can react. All while the enrage timer is ticking.
• You can't de-enrage (can you?). In all the guides I read, an enraged interceptor is equivalent to a lost encounter. In the context of a whole CZ scenario, for a player to lose all progress on a timer of a few minutes is just too punishing and bad design.
• AXCZ scenarios are hectic. Now I know what you are going to say... git gud. But think about how this compares at the lowest skill level. Take a 1v1 encounter with a Cyclops - it's reasonable to expect the player to keep an eye on the clock. Now take the lowest skill level CZ (low intensity): the player still has to juggle with endless waves of scouts (I don't know, I think the number of waves fixed, but they do come one after the other without delay), scout snowballing, multiple interceptors, staggered shutdown fields, or just fields fired due to different phases, multiple leftover caustic clouds, making sure you don't get aggroed by the whole CZ.. etc.

I think that if scenarios can be designed to suppress certain interceptor mechanics (e.g. no swarm in surface CZs), then this would fall in the same category and be achievable technically. Just disable the enrage mechanic for CZs. For all other encounters (e.g. signal sources in Alerts, hyperdictions etc.) you can keep it on.

 

[Kissamies]

Well, I think the method we have for dealing with the swarm is outdated for AXCZ anyway. Flaks were fine when it was a single CMDR or a wing vs an Interceptor and its swarm, but the CZ is too fluid and mutable for that weapon in the hands of an average player. I tend to just ignore the swarm and hope it goes after some NPC. If one does stick to me, I will engage it and try to at least whittle it down. Just feels pointless because there's soon to be another to replace it. Either from the same interceptor or another. With the lower level Interceptors it feels more efficient to just eliminate the source ASAP.

 

[Kira Goto]

You can't de-enrage (can you?). In all the guides I read, an enraged interceptor is equivalent to a lost encounter.

The only way to in a solo fight is through heart destruction, and the repeated deployment of swarms all going insta-kamikaze with their missiles makes that quite difficult. But it doesn’t mean ‘game over’ immediately… though, you may not want to try tanking a full Thargon swarm.

In an AX CZ, however - the interceptor destroying a target will reset its ‘enrage’ state, as I found with a Medusa a few months ago… when I saw its entire swarm dunk itself into some NPC, and kill it. Then it continued to act as if it was not enraged.

And I personally ditched flak launchers for CZs eventually, because they’re just not all that worth it. Too unpredictable if the swarm decides to go for you or something else.

(I found it much more annoying that the NPCs constantly would agitate the swarm in a space CZ and make it send missiles my way before I even had a chance to engage an interceptor.)

 

[Weps]

In an AX CZ, however - the interceptor destroying a target will reset its ‘enrage’ state, as I found with a Medusa a few months ago… when I saw its entire swarm dunk itself into some NPC, and kill it. Then it continued to act as if it was not enraged.

I could have sworn I saw the exact opposite: a swarm take out an NPC, then do the same to me 1 minute later after I approached it's interceptor. But I'll listen to your experience on this matter - after all it could be that I had misinterpreted the second missile attack as an enraged one vs. a regular one (as I was most likely not full health and didn't really spend the time at that moment to count blips on the sensors...).

But the enrage state reset would be a game changer. so I'll pay attention in my next fights.

 

[SlickPBW]

Another suggestion to make the game easier.