- In the playthrough today (1.9 Beta 2), the Quantumsphere disintegrator could pass through planets and stargates. That's probably not intentional.
- Make sure that appropriate beam weapons (e.g., Morana archcannon) can still hit the sphere. In general, almost any shot should be able to hit it (since it is so large).
- Consider making the max speed of the quantumsphere slower. Slow enough that (e.g.) a Wolfen (and maybe a Freyr) can out-run it. Perhaps the sphere slows down when it has to change direction.
- Consider reducing hit damage. If a player has disintegration-immune armor, the quantumsphere should not be nearly as deadly.
Point 1: It actually /was/ intentional. It was changed to prevent camping on the planet near the stargate. I don't think it's a good mechanic though.
Point 2: It used to only have a 1 pixel hitbox. Definitely worth tweaking to make sure.
Point 3: The range is so high that outrunning it isn't a good idea. Being able to out-turn it would work. The combination of good agility and acceleration is extremely dangerous on a missile.
Point 4: Yup yup yup. This gun is excellently balanced for Part II, but is extremely over-capable for endgame Part I playerships. Especially since one of the easiest armors to get for disintegration immunity is Light Iocrym armor....which is vulnerable to antimatter.
Light Iocrym armor is barely good enough. Quantumsphere does too much damage to it. In one of my more recent games, I got around the quantumspheres by saturating the area with S3 Medusa missiles.
I've made the following changes in 1.9 Beta 3:
- Fixed it so Quantumsphere does not pass through planets. This turned out to be caused by the friendly fire changes that made neutrals count as friends. [Note: the camping on planets prevention was made to pteravores.]
- The interaction changes in 1.9 Beta 2 caused beams to never interact with Quantumspheres. I changed this so that Quantumspheres always interact. [Made the same change to pteravores and neuroplague.]
- I slightly lowered the speed and maneuverability of Quantumsphere, which will allow fast ships to dodge better.
- I slightly reduced the damage caused to allow disintegration-immune armor to have a small advantage.