Capsule Launcher Module (Modular Equipment)

[BlakeMW]

The Problem

When playing on higher biter settings, you quickly hit a wall when it comes to personal combat. Here is one example, the global capsule cooldown is ~1s, so you can throw 1 capsule a second and no more. A distractor capsule can absorb 6 big worm spits. A big worm spits every 2s which means that distractor capsules can neutralize the DPS of 12 big worms, this is a hard and fast limit, you simply cannot spam them out any faster. Nests with significantly more than 12 big worms simply cannot be dealt with by distractor and destroyer capsules because you run out of ways to soak up the damage.

In contrast, with a bunch of Personal Roboports in your armor you can simply throw more laser turrets at the biters and melt them off the map. The power of a laser-turret offensive scales with your assembly capacity and electricity grid, if you can afford to construct a thousand laser turrets, and have the electricity grid to support them, you can throw them all down to fight it out with mega-swarms of biters. Not so with capsules, where you have the almost arbitrary limit of 1/s. Building capsules scales with your factory; the ability to deploy them is very much capped.

Suggestion: Capsule Launcher Module.

The Capsule Launcher would be an armor module which increases the rate you can throw capsules and possibly also increases the robot follower count, the range you can throw capsules, or the area in which robots engage enemies around you.

Example Properties:

• +100% Capsule Deployment Rate (with one module, you can throw 2 capsules per second, with 5 modules you could throw 6 capsules per second)
• +10 Robot Follower Count
• +20% Robot Engagement Area

With a bunch of these puppies in your armor you could lay down the hurt even on the highest biter settings, the cost in terms of capsules would be horrendous which is exactly why it would be an awesome option for the proud owner of a end-game factory.

[slindenau]

Hi, i made the following mod: viewtopic.php?f=97&t=24545

It takes this concept a bit further, by fully automating the deployment of destroyer drones (capsules).
I added power armor equipment for balancing reasons, but it could be used in the future to influence (automatic) deploy rate.
Has one issue i'd really like to see fixed, about usage in multiplayer. But works 100% as intended in singleplayer.

You can discuss any suggestions/additions you would like to see to the mod in the linked thread .