He's been a victim of balance changes and thus some things need changing:

-Either make the armor genuinely immune to laser/kinetics and delete it on death, ir change mission text to just mention resistance. Given that Arco's historical job was to teach the player about damage resistance, this could be reworked to do it more effectively.

-Remove the chance for KM500s. A player in a stock or near-stock ship with no targeting ROM can be dead or nearly dead by the time they're in range to lob a non-targeted KM500 of their own at him. The KM500 should probbly be introduced to the player as an enemy weapon by the charon frigate.

-Go over the other setups, make sure they're not too weak or powerful.

the_shrike 11 Feb 2016:

As an addendum to this, having slept on it a bit....the real problem with Arco that needs to be addressed is consistancy. With some setups, he's been an absolute joke. On others, he's incredibly lethal. There should be *some* randomness...but not that much. Also, rebalances to weapons means he should be reviewed anyway.

johnbwatson 11 Feb 2016:

Adding to this, he can still be lased to death from beyond weapon range. Tossing some extra range onto the various heavy Centauri guns should fix this, and make them a bit more useful too.

For missiles, giving him a handful of starbursts and some longbows should be good enough. The stilettos aren't unbeatable or anything, but they do, as you mentioned, create a very wide gap between the setups he can spawn with.

the_shrike 11 Feb 2016:

That's the thing. If he's got the KM500 you are going to be engaged long before you can shoot back. If he doesn't...he's usually pretty simple.

megas 12 Feb 2016:

Before 1.7 alpha, Arco was completely immune to light recoilless cannon and other kinetics that fired low damage shots. Now, he can be damaged and killed by them thanks to stochastic damage adjustment.

I agree that Arco should not have KM500 missiles, as long as access to targeting program is not guaranteed.

assumedpseudonym 22 Feb 2016:

 Copypasta from my post in “The great big balance alteration suggestion thread for 1.7” (https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7419&p=66283#p66283) a ways back:

Arco Vaughn. Either he is severely underpowered or severely overpowered. There seems to be no middle of the road with him. If he doesn’t have missiles, it’s entirely possible to take him out in a stock EI500, or even a Sapphire if your aim is good or lucky enough. He’s even easier if you’ve completed the Benedictine tutorial and have the SmartCannon. If he does have missile, though, he can be a pain to take down even if you are using the missiles you got at Raisu, especially if you’re still using an otherwise stock setup, and it can be even worse if you haven’t found a targeting ROM (since he can target you from off-screen, but not vice versa).
 Suggestions? Setting him up with an <OnSystemObjAttacked> to negate any damage done from laser or kinetic weapons is one idea; another is to give him properly immunize him against laser and kinetic damage and make sure his armor can’t fall into the player’s hands (which would let them basically coast most of the way to St. Kat’s) by removing it in <OnDestroy>. Balancing either of those options against taking away his chance at having missiles (I know it’s only a 25% chance, but still) and maybe giving him an A-class deflector screen and a CLAW could make him a credible challenge without overwhelming (or underwhelming) new players.

george moromisato 21 Jun 2016:

I've made some changes in 1.7 Alpha 2, which I believe help:

  • All variants get a missile launcher with either KM100s or fragmentation missiles (no chance of KM500s).
  • All variants get shields, but the ones with CLAW cannon get A-class shield (instead of Class II).