"Hive Research" has been, well, re-released. Considerably easier than the old version, which had you hunting Queens. Anyway, it gives access to the Corvus Widowmaker, but those addons are currently configured single-per-ship (18 GridUsage). I may drop that to 16, but the weapon is an experiment intended to be combined with the single-port Centurion Superlight, which is not yet released (probably early this week). I've configured it a little conservative for the moment, expect more tweaking.

If not for the Grid system, however, it would be pretty devastating. At least we have the option of making single-addon ship weapons, now, that aren't quad-usable on a hornet, or some such.

The Superlight will probably also pop up in this Corvus mission tree.

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sooo .. access as in two guns again or permament? The stats of that thing sound pretty nasty

Great! btw, will we get the xmas present boxes cargo again this year? :D

Great stuff, incarnate. One problem I've noticed with the mission: I experimentally /exploded during it, and it updated the mission log to say that the mission was over, but it didn't actually end the mission. I was getting bad lag, so I didn't test whether it dropped the mission if you're actually killed.

The stats on the Corvus Widowmaker are rather impressive. I would like you to drop the grid requirement to at least 17, and make the grid requirement for radar extenders, mineral scanners, and mining beams to 1 each, so that they do not generally interfere with weapon options. This would still limit a single widowmaker to a ship, but leave room for non weapons options, like a decked out prospector ship. Think of an orion hornet with a widowmaker, radar extender, mineral scanner, and a small mining beam. But even this would still preclude a rag with two large mining beams, extender, scanner, and widowmaker. Not that I think we should preclude the rag, but the widowmaker isn't the only weapon in town. There are still plenty of good options for ship layouts.

I know there where lots of complaints about the corvus mission being too hard, but I did not really agree. There should always be some really hard missions available, and the reward does not have to be scaled to the difficulty. No one is required to take a mission. And I suspect that the ones that complain the most, are the same ones that manage to complete every mission in the game, and then complain about there not being enough missions.

I would also suggest you reconsider limiting missions to once per character, as this mostly only slows down new players. Many of the more advanced players can easily and quickly level up as many trial accounts as they want, even in the limited time allowed to trial accounts.

diqr: Interesting, I'll check that. It should handle your death, it has a stage to catch that, but maybe I didn't catch it properly.. or something's wrong with the underlying mechanism.

[UPDATE]: I fixed the mission, I was catching the death but not using it properly. The wonders of picking up and editing a year-old mission. Should be working now.

Roda: yeah, reducing the other items would probably be a good idea, to allow interesting loadouts like that.

Only the baseline mission is intended to be once-per-character. Further missions are meant to give you continued access to the item(s), but not in the usual way. This mission tree, when I first made it, was intended to be an experiment in a kind of "crafting" hack, where basically you could deliver the component "ingredients" and it would make the item for you. I'm still interested in trying that, if only to see how it works.

If people are complaining the mission is too hard.. glad I made it a lot easier than it was previously, heh.

Hmm, so I died not knowning I could only take the mission once, but it didnt abort the mission either, so if I go get these cores will it still be like "Oh Cool, you got my cores" or am I just screwed?

People complained about the difficulty of the original, and now you have toned it down. I did think the original was very difficult, and liked it that way, and wish you had not toned it down at all.

OH Wait a sec

the corvus widowmaker is 400Kg (relatively light compared to to other powerful guns) and your gonna be able to put one on the SUPERLIGHT centurion

sounds like something impossible to hit and with lots of firepower
*Cough*Nerf*Cough*

For god's sake, leave the damn thing alone, it hasnt even been released yet and you already want it to be nerfed?
Besides, theres also the weight of the power cell. Anyway, its low armor and only 1 weapon port, its a good tradeof.
The only thing they should change is the name, SUPERLIGHT sounds like a type of diet food or something.

Btw, how was the original mission different from the one we have now?

You need to procure guardian cores instead of hive queen cores.

I agree the mission is not too hard, if anything it was fine before and now it's easy.
Don't nerf anything until it's been battle tested.
I think the name Superlight is great. It reminds me of the Caterham Super 7 Superlight (Lotus), an extremely light, agile and sporty model.
Suggestion: don't have that ship on the station list at every single station (redded out and before the EC89), just have it at the sations it makes sense to have it at. For ex. at Corvus and maybe XX.
edit: Caterham's Superlight has (or had) the highest power-to-weight ratio of a production sportscar, higher than a Ferrari F430 or a Porsche 911 Turbo. And much cheaper. A small, light sportscar.

Actually, the name kind of came from the Caterham Superlight. Although not really intentionally (as far as I can remember), but I'm a big Lotus fan (and Super 7 fan in particular).

The "Hive Research" mission is just the intro to a tree, I don't think it's critical to make it insanely difficult. I can make further missions in the tree more challenging. Strictly speaking, the baseline mission only gives you two examples of the weapon and no way to get more of them, so there's still plenty of objectives available for future missions.

I also got a lot of flak over how hard it was before, so I figured I would err a bit on the side of caution this time.

Also, the Superlight will probably switch to being only available at Corvus stations, we talked about that in the meeting yesterday.

The Superlight should not be much more impossible to hit than a current IBG or RevC. I did not decrease the ship mass, or increase the maneuvering thrust (although spin torque might be improved). I did give it better turbo drain performance for long-distance travel, and it will accelerate faster under turbo, but it has a lower top speed than the IBG. Anyway, we'll see how it shakes out.

Also, consider the "damage to maneuverability" ratio. Yes, the Superlight with a Widowmaker will (hopefully) be an interesting and formidable combo, but it will have half the firing rate of a duel-N3 IBG, and a little over half the potential damage-per-second. Having only half the number of shots out there also makes it harder to.. hit stuff. I'm hoping to make something different and interesting, but not necessarily devastating or absolutely superior. Something that might require more skill, but might lend itself to certain cirumstances or use-cases.

Tramshed:

If you still have the mission (it shows up as active in your log), I think you should be able to complete it. If you no longer have the mission, and it doesn't show up anymore as something you can take, you're screwed. But, that would be kind of surprising.. dying should end the mission now. And previously, it just would have let the mission continue. Even aborting, you should be able to re-take it. You only receive the Accomplishment (which is invisible in this case) when you actually succeed.

"OH Wait a sec

the corvus widowmaker is 400Kg (relatively light compared to to other powerful guns) and your gonna be able to put one on the SUPERLIGHT centurion

sounds like something impossible to hit and with lots of firepower
*Cough*Nerf*Cough*"

I doubt with one widow maker it'd be any faster than an X1 with one widow maker, and this superlight is made of tin foil too.

Well, as soon as they are both available I'll put a widowmaker on a superlight and fly it at a NW . If you can't hit me in one it needs nerfed , if you kill me its fine .

Ecka

The superlight and the widowmaker are not necessarily the ultimate combination. Just because you can only equip one widowmaker, does not limit it to ship with one port. What about a widowmaker in a x-1? or a rev-c?

The superlight is not that far removed from existing ships. It is inferior to a rev-c in most ways. I doubt the superlight will change the game in any great way.

The Widowmaker is somewhat more interesting. A top fighter with a single top of the line weapon can be very deadly. If fact, this combination is grossly underestimated. Gaven can testify to the lethality of a vult3 equipped with a single n2. A ship like this is lighter than normal, and can dodge and aim very well. The widowmaker could further extend this situation. A valk with a widowmaker could become a very popular loadout.

It sounds to me that its mainly just made to run down ships. Which is exactly the type of thing corvus needs. And thanks Incarnate, Ill go hunt down some cores, can I get them from any guardians, or do I have to get them in the system I took the mission?

If you have some before you take the mission, you can just use those.

Any guardian processor cores will work; even ones you didn't procure directly from the hive yourself -- that is to say, yes, you can pirate the guardian cores from another player to finish a mission assigned by a pirate faction.

The mission editor isn't currently able to specify that the player retrieve items that were not in the player's inventory before the mission started -- if it were, this mission might be a tiny bit harder than it is.

I didn't want that anyway. I think people trading in Guardian Cores is interesting. If I wanted to require it, we would do so (as we do with some Mining stuff).

Update:

I've posted the missions to manufacture more Widowmakers. I intended to post the Superlight mission as well, but that isn't working out quite how I planned, so I have an email in to Andy to see if we can update some of the PCC mission editor data.

I'm pushing to get these missions out so you guys can play them over Thanksgiving and the weekend. I'm pretty tired and haven't had a chance to extensively test, so if you run into problems, let me know. I'll try to get the Superlight posted before the weekend.