I thought of an NPC that is a replica of your ship, exact stats. To see if you can take what you dish out.
(Only exact stats, current % buffs on your ship are not included. Permanent % are included)

Replica
Standard Extremely Rare (Matched) (to prevent multiple uses/encounters for high rank players)
The Lazuli have developed cloaked probes to spy on very powerful ships. With the data gathered, they build replicas of the ships. Without your knowledge, a probe has gathered data of your ship and the Lazuli have made a replica to replace you.

Hull: Same as your stats
Shield: Same as your stats
Attack: Same as your stats
Defense: Same as your stats
Ability: Contain - Small chance to contain all harmful effects on itself.
Disable Reward: Captured Replica + 125 EXP (+ x Dark Badges [% chance]) {x is the number}

Captured Replica (Artifact)
When in use, you will be controlling the "replica" ship with exact stats of your own ship. You may attack in PvP, NPC, Planet invasion, Base Combat.
While in use, you cannot use/activate/do the following: Artifacts (to yourself), Repair Ship, Guard Planets, Build Modules on ship.
The shields of the replica will NOT recharge.
When hull reaches "0", your are reverted to your own ship.
(Your real ship cannot be targeted. If the real ship is guarding a planet when the replica is in use, the ship will automatically unguard)

Any thoughts? (Overpowered, unbalanced, great, don't know)

what's the point of the replica artifact outside of the effect of maybe 1 cage+1 repair nano?


in any case a fully matched ship is bad
for one thing... ppl can kill it in one shot by intentionally lowering def, hull and shield(it is questionable wether it would be worth the effort considering the total repair cost that will eventually incur, but can happen)
and for another... i don't think it's fair for a tin can to have the same ability in killing a ship, or even better due to lack of hull etc, than a nicely built ship...

i won't be really against mirroring attack value.... but everything else seems like an invition to abuse or something

There are multiple things to counter this.
For one, a one hit on this ship would also mean a one hit on your own ship, which defeats the whole purpose of saving a nano.

Another thing would be for it's defense and attack to match your defense and attack at the moment it spawns. (Thinking about the game mechanics, I don't think that would work though)

some ppl care more about energy than artifact or cr....

Would the replica ship have it's own energy supply, and if yes would it be full energy, or the exact amount of energy you had when using the artifact?

I seem to have neglected the potential for a 27/1 Xp/nrg ratio.

There should be a way to make this work

overpowered, you literally 2x your stats. you think the gap between he high levels and you are big now, now double that.

Thats not what he's saying , it fights instead of you , so it's pointless not overpowered.

Well if it comes with it's own full energy supply and takes hits for you it could double as a shield restorer/repair nano/energy cube (OR let's just say it's a ruddy tri-matrix to make things simple), so no point from however you want to look at it.

That right there is one major reason why you would NEVER see something like this happen. Dan's shown recently a definite anti-autorank attitude if you haven't noticed.

After some thought, here is an alternative plan of this:
the NPC will match whatever you have as you fight it(or rather its stat will be locked after ur first shot). But the spawned replica will ALSO have the exact same amount of stats as the NPC u killed.

This way, if you make the replica cheesy to kill by removing ur own ship's stuff, the replica spawned by the artifact will also be pretty useless.

The replica cannot be repaired(can't use nano drone) and will go poof when it dies. It cannot do missions but have an infinite supply of energy for whatever other purpose(yes, it can hack/raid endlessly... if you got enough TM but that will get ppl to attack you and kill the replica so~). It will NOT grand exp for any action it performs, but all other stuff(badge, resource etc) will be given as normal

In this way, all this thing will give u is a tiny burst of exp if you kill it the "easy" way and pretty useless otherwise. Considering how rare this would be, it shouldn't tip the scales too much.
On the other hand, if you kill it the hard way, it would do you a lot of service when you do spawn it.

Would be much harder to code this way thou~ but it's the only way it can be balanced IMO(or something like this, harder to kill=more reward)

Yes, I have noticed this. This was apparent by the introduction of Styrll Assassins.

Perhaps change the xp bonus to a mere 10 or 20?

i like this as an idea, but i would have an xp drop of closer to 300 because for me, my ship would be damn tough and just have say 10-20 dark badges dropped at the end of it.
+1

"your gun says replica, my gun says Desert Eagle .50"

Sounds good, an infite killing machine if you load it up with defense, hull, shield, and some attack, and forever harass lower ranks for red badges while taking only 1 damage per return shot.


I love how this would troll people. Think about it:


You spend 9005 energy to take out your ship, say....2k attack and 5k defense with 5k hull and 2k shields

You have that same replica! But now you harass enemy ships with only 4k attack and 2k defense! You get many red badges! It would be an easy way to get red badges quickly due to infinite energy.

it goes poof when that 5k hull and 2k shield goes poof... and cannot repaired in anyway
although it might be better to make the replica unable to regen shield, although it hardly matters cause that would just make it extremely slow
the intention is that the replica will take all the debuff/damage instead of your ship until it dies, so it certainly won't last indefintely

With a captured replica of your ship fighting for you, sounds to me like you want to turn PvP into part proxy battles