From my testing that night, medium fires do 2 damage every 1 second, with a half life of 30 seconds. When attacking my base, there was a 25 fire limit, any parasites launched after the limit disappeared. So, the max DPS you're gonna get from medium fires is 50. That's before damage augs are added (which did affect the damage the parasites were doing).

RoF skills and augs are less effective than damage skills and augs with parasites... It's actually somewhat of a penalty, since I still pay the _elec_ costs for firing a parasite, but only 60% of the damage, once I've maxed parasites out on a target.




Not sure if it should have a half life or not, but as long as there's a parasite limit, RoF and MFing are going to suffer a penalty when using parasite weapons.

Parasites have limited, if any, usefulness vs. bases with the current limits.

If limits are necessary (and I can see some reasons why), would it be possible to "upgrade" parasites? For example, if you hit the limit of medium fires on a target, the next parasite that hit spawns a large fire instead of another medium? It might also take several of the medium fire's with it when it increases, if you don't want the DPS increasing... although increased DPS would balance out the limit cap to some extent with RoF.

Example- Generic DOT heat weapon causes 1 small fire with each hit. A light fire does 1 DPS, with a 30second 1/2 life, with a limit of 25 on a ship at any time. when #26 hits, it instead creates 1 medium fire, that does 2 DPS with a 30 second 1/2 life. If one manages to pump out enough fires that you have 25 small fires, 25 medium, then the next hit causes a large fire, which is 4 DPS over 30 second 1/2life. etc. Since the small fires will be going out over the time you're also creating medium, and possible large fires, the increase is finite, but still allows for higher RoF to be useful with parasites.

If the increased DPS is to much, then instead of #26 upgrading to the next level alone, it takes a partner... Ie, parasite #26 takes #25, leaving 24 light fires and one medium fire. This keeps the DPS equal no matter how much RoF one has.

Just a thought.

If the parasite number needs to be finite, then this is definitely something we should do. Obviously for weapons that light large fires, they should either light 75 large fires or be upgraded the same way to fires that can't be obtained by a single parasite.

Meh, I was apparently wrong... doesn't appear to be a limit to parasites... as the 11K ice sludges on my defunct base attest to.