Post by Desc440 on Oct 2, 2020 8:55:30 GMT -5
Microchips: a review
Effects (A) chips
• Freezer, Lockdowner and Suppressor: These are the top chips to have right now. They work even better when combined with weapons that already cause Lockdown or Freezing. A minor gripe: it really takes many high-quality chips to get the effects to trigger quickly enough to matter on some guns. For example, I can’t get Lockdown to trigger quickly enough with my lazerhose Fenrir with 3 T2 Lockdowner chips for it to be worth it.
• Acid Sprayer and Defence Mitigator: I suspect these chips will be pretty useful but since gun drones are pretty rare right now, it’s hard to tell for sure.
• Control Resistor: Like Anticontrol, but in chip form. I suspect that as more and more people get into drones, these will become pretty useful to counter Freezer, Lockdowner and Suppressor. A question, perhaps: if you stack enough of these, can you become 100% immune to effects?
• Anti-Acid: Too narrow in effect for my taste. Granted, Wasps are a thing now, but nevertheless, I think these chips would need to do more for me to be interested in them. My suggestion: make these anti-corrosion, anti-Defence Mitigation and anti-Freezing extra damage chips – rename them Armour Hardeners or something.
• Battery Microchip: Certainly useful, but I personally don’t like the fact that not only are you sacrificing an Effects slot to fit it but you ALSO have to spend PCs for it. My preference is to just try to live with lower battery capacity if at all possible.
Attack (B) chips:
• Modulative Intensifier: If you have vast stockpiles of PCs and don’t mind burning through them, these chips are VERY powerful – in effect, turning any Active Module into an ersatz Deathmark (or turning Deathmark into Deathmark Mk 2). As I don’t fall into the category of people who can spend their PCs willy-nilly, these chips have little to offer me.
• Raging Intensifier: While Battleborn may pale in comparison to other modules generally speaking, this chip does give them a lot more oomph. Just stack as many of these as you can on a drone designed for a bot with BB and watch the feathers fly! Probably not the best chip but not the worst either.
• Struggling Intensifier: Similar to the Battleborn chip but designed for the ubiquitous Last Stand. I actually like this LESS than the Raging Intensifier as Last Stand only lasts for 4.5 seconds, that’s not even 25% of the duration of BB! I think this shoud last AT LEAST 10 seconds.
• Inciting and Unimpeded Intensifier: These are absolutely great – with the caveat that your bot have 3 leveled Anticontrols on it. That way, not only do you gain extra damage output every time someone tries to debuff you (which is set to only happen more frequently when more people start using Effect chips) but you also never have to actually suffer the debuffs at all!
• Inhibited, Resurgent and Thermic Intensifier: Like the above two, but worse since they only work if you suffered the ill-effects of debuff while gaining the extra damage.
Defence (C) chips:
• Recurrent Emergency Defender: Gives a pretty chunky boost to your bot’s Defence Points when its durability falls below 30%. Hey… you know what else triggers when you hit 30% HP? LAST STAND! So this is a ghetto pseudo-Last Stand in microchip form, but actually much much worse. Pretty bad, overall.
• Recurrent Forewarning Defender: Like the above but both better and worse. Better because it doesn’t conflict with Last Stand. Worse because it doesn’t boost your Defence Points much. Give these a pass, imo.
• Revitalizing Defender: Boosts your Defence Points after using healing mods. Strictly worse than Modulative Intensifier, imo.
• Arctic, Debilitating, Impaired and Inhibited Defender: If all these chips were combined into one, it would be pretty good. As it stands, you just need to give up too many slots and Power for them to be worthwhile.
Repair (D) chips:
• Phasing Repairer: If you use PS a lot, this isn’t the worst chip to use… but it’s still not exactly great. Again, Modulative Intensifier just seems better overall.
• Recurrent Crashing Repairer: These come in two varieties. The first is a fixed amount of HP and the second is a percentage of HP. Which is best depends on the bot’s health pool. This chip is not too bad, really – especially when fighting enemy bots sporting a burst damage build.
• Recurrent In-trouble Repairer: Similar to the Crashing repairer above, but with a much lower threshold for activation (70k damage over 5 seconds vs 100k over 3 seconds). On the flipside, the amount of received repair is also MUCH lower. For a bot with a very large healthpool, like the Invader, this can be quite solid.
• Recurrent Emergency Repairer: This chip has the same problem the Recurrent Emergency Defender does – it is completely negated by Last Stand. So potentially ok for a bot without said Last Stand, but how many Champ League hangars do you see without them?
• Recurrent Reconstructive Repairer: This is a good chip for a bot running Repair/Advanced Repair Unit, but it is GODLY on Tyr and Mender.
Arms Controller (AC) chips:
• Don’t really have experience with these yet, so it’s hard to say how good these will be in practice, but generally speaking, more firepower is always good.
Effects (A) chips
• Freezer, Lockdowner and Suppressor: These are the top chips to have right now. They work even better when combined with weapons that already cause Lockdown or Freezing. A minor gripe: it really takes many high-quality chips to get the effects to trigger quickly enough to matter on some guns. For example, I can’t get Lockdown to trigger quickly enough with my lazerhose Fenrir with 3 T2 Lockdowner chips for it to be worth it.
• Acid Sprayer and Defence Mitigator: I suspect these chips will be pretty useful but since gun drones are pretty rare right now, it’s hard to tell for sure.
• Control Resistor: Like Anticontrol, but in chip form. I suspect that as more and more people get into drones, these will become pretty useful to counter Freezer, Lockdowner and Suppressor. A question, perhaps: if you stack enough of these, can you become 100% immune to effects?
• Anti-Acid: Too narrow in effect for my taste. Granted, Wasps are a thing now, but nevertheless, I think these chips would need to do more for me to be interested in them. My suggestion: make these anti-corrosion, anti-Defence Mitigation and anti-Freezing extra damage chips – rename them Armour Hardeners or something.
• Battery Microchip: Certainly useful, but I personally don’t like the fact that not only are you sacrificing an Effects slot to fit it but you ALSO have to spend PCs for it. My preference is to just try to live with lower battery capacity if at all possible.
Attack (B) chips:
• Modulative Intensifier: If you have vast stockpiles of PCs and don’t mind burning through them, these chips are VERY powerful – in effect, turning any Active Module into an ersatz Deathmark (or turning Deathmark into Deathmark Mk 2). As I don’t fall into the category of people who can spend their PCs willy-nilly, these chips have little to offer me.
• Raging Intensifier: While Battleborn may pale in comparison to other modules generally speaking, this chip does give them a lot more oomph. Just stack as many of these as you can on a drone designed for a bot with BB and watch the feathers fly! Probably not the best chip but not the worst either.
• Struggling Intensifier: Similar to the Battleborn chip but designed for the ubiquitous Last Stand. I actually like this LESS than the Raging Intensifier as Last Stand only lasts for 4.5 seconds, that’s not even 25% of the duration of BB! I think this shoud last AT LEAST 10 seconds.
• Inciting and Unimpeded Intensifier: These are absolutely great – with the caveat that your bot have 3 leveled Anticontrols on it. That way, not only do you gain extra damage output every time someone tries to debuff you (which is set to only happen more frequently when more people start using Effect chips) but you also never have to actually suffer the debuffs at all!
• Inhibited, Resurgent and Thermic Intensifier: Like the above two, but worse since they only work if you suffered the ill-effects of debuff while gaining the extra damage.
Defence (C) chips:
• Recurrent Emergency Defender: Gives a pretty chunky boost to your bot’s Defence Points when its durability falls below 30%. Hey… you know what else triggers when you hit 30% HP? LAST STAND! So this is a ghetto pseudo-Last Stand in microchip form, but actually much much worse. Pretty bad, overall.
• Recurrent Forewarning Defender: Like the above but both better and worse. Better because it doesn’t conflict with Last Stand. Worse because it doesn’t boost your Defence Points much. Give these a pass, imo.
• Revitalizing Defender: Boosts your Defence Points after using healing mods. Strictly worse than Modulative Intensifier, imo.
• Arctic, Debilitating, Impaired and Inhibited Defender: If all these chips were combined into one, it would be pretty good. As it stands, you just need to give up too many slots and Power for them to be worthwhile.
Repair (D) chips:
• Phasing Repairer: If you use PS a lot, this isn’t the worst chip to use… but it’s still not exactly great. Again, Modulative Intensifier just seems better overall.
• Recurrent Crashing Repairer: These come in two varieties. The first is a fixed amount of HP and the second is a percentage of HP. Which is best depends on the bot’s health pool. This chip is not too bad, really – especially when fighting enemy bots sporting a burst damage build.
• Recurrent In-trouble Repairer: Similar to the Crashing repairer above, but with a much lower threshold for activation (70k damage over 5 seconds vs 100k over 3 seconds). On the flipside, the amount of received repair is also MUCH lower. For a bot with a very large healthpool, like the Invader, this can be quite solid.
• Recurrent Emergency Repairer: This chip has the same problem the Recurrent Emergency Defender does – it is completely negated by Last Stand. So potentially ok for a bot without said Last Stand, but how many Champ League hangars do you see without them?
• Recurrent Reconstructive Repairer: This is a good chip for a bot running Repair/Advanced Repair Unit, but it is GODLY on Tyr and Mender.
Arms Controller (AC) chips:
• Don’t really have experience with these yet, so it’s hard to say how good these will be in practice, but generally speaking, more firepower is always good.
