While kiting is an issue for several enemies, it's especially apparent for Iocrym Sentinels, which are the final enemy encountered aside from the ICS and a potential source of a full set of endgame equipment. They move very slowly and have only short range weapons, making it very easy to destroy them just by drifting away from them at a constant speed and shooting towards them as they pursue, which is rather anticlimactic for the last few battles of the game and the first encounter with an alien race.

This also creates a bit of a balance issue, given that an underleveled player can gem/rush to Heretic and farm them this way, either looting and using their equipment or sell it for vast amounts of currency, effectively skipping most of the game with minimal difficulty.

This can be seen in action around 1:04 in the most recent stream(though George seems to prefer fighting fairly). (http://www.twitch.tv/kronosaurproductions/v/52185389)

Possible solutions:

1. Reequip them to focus on combat at long range rather than short range.

2. Give the Sentinels a Domina power that has a minimum effective range, becoming more of a threat as the target moves farther away(up to around 100ls).

3. Increasing their speed is the simplest way to solve this, though it may make defending the stations too difficult. Increasing the delay between warnings and attacks could alleviate that.

4. Give them a 'speed boost' ability that they use when their target is nearby but not yet in range. This is more complex than 3, but doesn't cause any balance issues and creates a fun new mechanic.

the_shrike on 3/5/2016 9:26 PM:
I think the iocrym are fine as-is. They're a short-ranged enemy with extreme power, but a weakness. Their purpose is to make the ICS fight harder (which they do, although they're hampered by their AI), and to smash stations. It's not to be a good all-round combatant. If anything they're somewhat too powerful for the friendly stations in the system, making getting the quests very hard indeed.

A *slight* engine boost ability might work out, but may end with them being an enemy you can't run away from effectively. And that's generally a bad way to penalise under-levelled players reaching heretic for the first time. Another option is to increase the effective range of the fracture and Avalanche cannons from ~10ls to ~20ls.

....Of course, both this and the suggestion above are partly based on 1.6 balance.

It also take quite a lot of skill to rush to heretic. Speedrunning should not be penalised.

Fundamentally though, the problem is not with the Iocrym. It's an AI issue where AI will happily be kited, and react poorly to long range combat. It would be better to enhance the AI than make the ships even more powerful.

xephyr on 3/6/2016 2:11 AM:
General consensus from what I understand is that they're working as intended - the sentinel's job is to be a station buster, not a dogfighter.

johnbwatson on 3/6/2016 2:50 AM:
"I think the iocrym are fine as-is. They're a short-ranged enemy with extreme power, but a weakness. Their purpose is to make the ICS fight harder (which they do, although they're hampered by their AI), and to smash stations. It's not to be a good all-round combatant. If anything they're somewhat too powerful for the friendly stations in the system, making getting the quests very hard indeed."

If the Sentinels aren't meant to attack the player, the ships that spawn to attack the player directly(and guard stations) should be of a different ship class, which is another solution. Being able to defeat an enemy with vastly better equipment than you just by holding down a single key isn't a good mechanic. Being able to beat the game more quickly and easily than normal by doing so a few times is a bug, not a feature.

"A *slight* engine boost ability might work out, but may end with them being an enemy you can't run away from effectively. And that's generally a bad way to penalise under-levelled players reaching heretic for the first time. Another option is to increase the effective range of the fracture and Avalanche cannons from ~10ls to ~20ls."

Sentinels only attack the player after all friendly stations are destroyed, so it's nearly impossible for anyone to get into a fight with them without knowing exceedingly well what they're up against, and having plenty of time to gate out and prepare. They're probably the most polite enemy in the game in that sense.

I'm not sure that we're interpreting "engine boost" the same way. In most games, an engine boost is an ability that significantly increases speed for a short time, with a cooldown long enough that the effect on overall speed is negligable. In effect, it makes kiting less trivial without making escape impossible.

Effectively, the Sentinel AI for using it would be coded as such:

if (Target is within my weapon range):
--- turn towards target
--- thrust forward
--- fire if pointing at target
else if (I am within target's weapon range)
--- if (boost ready)
--- --- turn towards target
--- --- use boost if pointing towards target
--- else
--- --- turn away from target
--- --- randomly turn 0 - 10 degrees from path every few seconds to avoid enemy fire
--- --- thrust forward
else
--- if (I am faster than target)
--- --- turn towards target
--- --- thrust forward
--- else
--- --- turn towards target if boost is expected to be ready by the time target's weapon range is entered, taking its current velocity into account, turning away from target otherwise

There's a flash game called "Luftrauser" that demonstrates a similar boost system pretty elegantly with the first enemy encountered - they can outrun the player for a short time, but their effective speed is still lower. Thus, they remain a threat and are not exploitable, but can still be escaped from or avoided.

"Fundamentally though, the problem is not with the Iocrym. It's an AI issue where AI will happily be kited, and react poorly to long range combat. It would be better to enhance the AI than make the ships even more powerful."

This is mathematically untrue. There is no set of AI instructions that would allow a stock Iocrym Sentinel prevent a stock Wolfen with, say, an Ion Blaster, from killing it without taking any damage.

"It also take quite a lot of skill to rush to heretic. Speedrunning should not be penalised."

Reaching Heretic early just requires blowing up a Penitent station and looting a gem a third of the way through the game. I've never played a game where I hadn't done that by Sanctuary, at most.

Speedrunning should not be penalized, but it should not be gamebreaking either. As it is, it's trivial to beat the game by buying the first weapon that can hurt the things, loot the best equipment in the game from them without ever even being shot at, and then face the final boss with no handicaps at all.

Edit
the_shrike on 3/6/2016 3:55 AM:
Reaching heretic is easy. *Beating* heretic in a speedrun is very difficult. Again: Speedrunning should not be penalised, or used as a basis for balance changes. It's not a common way to play, and doesn't hurt the game.

I think Xephyr has the important point: These are not designed as space-superiority vehicles. They enforce a quarantine and smash stations when it looks like they're being used to breach the quarantine.

Also you can end up fighting sentinels in your first mission if you've saved the Antarctica and then immediately take the Ares mission.

megas on 3/6/2016 4:17 AM:
Player who knows what he can do can reliably obtain enhanced megadrive for top speed of .33c if he wants to. There is no way to prevent the player from kiting Iocrym sentinels unless their speed is raised to match the Hornet or they gain teleportation.

xephyr on 3/6/2016 4:19 AM:
There's several other points I should bring up -

-Farming sentinels isn't the easiest or most effective way of farming in endgame - if you're worried about people rushing right to endgame, the easiest tactic is to wait for Gaians to get killed off by the Ringers.

-Having the sentinels being different than any other encounter in game is intended, they're supposed to feel alien because, well, they're aliens

-Iocrym equipment is definitely not the best equipment in-game.

johnbwatson on 3/6/2016 8:01 AM:
"Reaching heretic is easy. *Beating* heretic in a speedrun is very difficult. Again: Speedrunning should not be penalised, or used as a basis for balance changes. It's not a common way to play, and doesn't hurt the game."

I'm not trying to kill speedrunning - the person that mentioned taking it into account when balancing was you. That said, from what I understand, farming Iocrym isn't even the fastest way to beat the game(that'd be jumping to late game and trying to find a dead Terraformer, unless I'm mistaken), just the easiest(because no effort is required past grabbing the gem, which would be done in a normal playthrough anyways).

Again, sentinels are almost the last thing a player fights in the game, and it's nearly impossible for someone to get attacked out of nowhere by them. There's no reason to keep an extremely obvious(took me a few kills to figure out that they even had weapons at all, I was wondering how they managed to kill all of those stations) exploit that removes any chance of the player being hit by them in the game.

"Also you can end up fighting sentinels in your first mission if you've saved the Antarctica and then immediately take the Ares mission."

In addition to the fact that jumping to any other late game system and deciding to take a mission to kill something can be expected to be dangerous, anyone capable of killing 4 Aquilas would have no trouble killing a bunch of Iocrym Sentinels without the use of kiting(or, failing that, running away from them, given that they're just station guards, and won't pursue).

"Player who knows what he can do can reliably obtain enhanced megadrive for top speed of .33c if he wants to. There is no way to prevent the player from kiting Iocrym sentinels unless their speed is raised to match the Hornet or they gain teleportation."

Longer ranged weapons can prevent anything from being kited, which was one of the possibilities I listed. Use of something like the jumpdrive would also work, in a similar manner to how a speed - enhancing ability would.

"-Farming sentinels isn't the easiest or most effective way of farming in endgame - if you're worried about people rushing right to endgame, the easiest tactic is to wait for Gaians to get killed off by the Ringers."

Rushing forward and searching for lucky wrecks isn't an exploit, it's a playstyle. It's fun, challenging, and it carries its own set of risks - it's definitely possible to encounter something that can hurt you while looking for a wreck. Moreover, it makes logical sense - factions fight each other, so of course there's going to be weaponry to salvage. It doesn't make sense that an alien species trying to enforce a quarantine is going to guard its sole presence in the system with ships that are mathematically incapable of hurting almost any human ship in existence.

I do say that Gaians should be a bit smarter about trying to make friends with Ringer Shipyards, though. It's a shame to never encounter one that isn't dead.

"Having the sentinels being different than any other encounter in game is intended, they're supposed to feel alien because, well, they're aliens"

They should certainly feel alien, but that doesn't mean they should be incapable of fighting back. I think the best way to explain this is a metaphor with evolution - there are many different ways an organism can function, but all of them allow it to survive. Similarly, an alien race could have a vastly different approach to warfare, but it would not exist for very long if said approach did not work, similarly to how a species that cannot reproduce and has a lifespan of three hours would not last particularly long.

"Iocrym equipment is definitely not the best equipment in-game"

Eh, it can be sold to buy any equipment you want from the Teratons, which will even take the armor.

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Ignoring all of the small and not - particularly - relevant details, this comes down to the fact that there's an enemy whose sole role in combat is to take a lot of damage without shooting back, and it rarely shows up with any support at all. Even if there were no balance issues with looting it, a fight that consists of holding down the spacebar for twenty seconds isn't any fun, and it's certainly not a very suitable experience for the first encounter with an alien race that the entire game has been building up to brilliantly .

Edit
xephyr on 3/6/2016 5:51 PM:
You're misunderstanding the role of the sentinels - they are NOT built for ship-to-ship combat. Their role is to destroy the research stations, which they do very effectively.