Motion Sensor Feels Useless

[Cobra]

The motion sensor doesn't detect every enemey, and all to often it won't scan over 75% of a wreck I'm exploring. I find that usually my only option after a few rooms is to abandon the wreck, or take literally blind risks to see if a room does not have an enemy.

The blind risks aren't fun, they don't reward you for strategy or wise decision making. Opening a door to a swarm which then immedieatlly kills every drone in the room takes the fun out of things. I know that the dev felt the motion detector was too "easy" to use, but damn I'm tired of getting killed by mobs I can't detect.

[DPrime123]

I have always found that there is more often than not a solution, even if that solution is parking a gatling gun at the door, or sending in a probe etc. Just be careful, don't bunch your drones up, close doors behind you. A lot of the time it is guess work but if you use all the upgrades and abilities at your disposal it should be an educated guess.
Of cause there are those times your wrong :D and you just have a bad day, and yes sometimes the only safe option is to bug out.

[Sanctume]

The blind risks is the reward just to see if there's loot in that room.
But as you said, safely retreating is a valid tactic.
But eventually, you have to choose to blindly risk, or end the game because of no fuel.

But when motion detect adjacent rooms wtih doors, it's useful.

[Lyneralia]

I find myself simply relying on remote power, reroute power and ship survey as my ship upgrades (first ship on a new run was a four-slot Score!) and then using a terminal to route all enemies I can find into rooms with defense turrets, but when I get swarms and slime i can't do anything but leave... it's often not fun and after a near-death experience with an inconclusive motion detection and a swarm, I am always very... cautious I guess? but yea, it's possible to play the game without motion working at all, you just have to rely on defense turrets and gatling modules...

[AntiBlueQuirk]

My last game, I actually gave up motion sensors completely. (It errored out, so I had to get creative.) I equipped a drone with stealth and he did all my recon for me. I'd usually quarantine him in the second safe room, and let him explore from there. Once I had all the intel I needed, (and enemies kited and whatnot), the other drones would move in. Remote/reroute power helped a lot.

Stealth doesn't work on slimes though. Figured that out really recently. :)

[Cobra]

I have just gotten my first drone with the Gatling, haven't tested it. Defense turrets and such are amazing, but only if you have the interface module, which I'll be damned if I've not had to go without one forever. It's a rogue-like, so I guess at some level I need to simply accept the difficulty, but dang sometimes it feels like blind luck. Not a fan of blind luck.

[Cobra]

This game I didn't even get a motion sensor, so yeah. Hard. Lost my one drone with the sensor module as I sent him in to drop a sensor into a room... something organic in there that just wiped him out before I knew it.

So far the only enemy I like is the mechanical shooting ones. They aren't instant death and you can run and use strategy. The swarms and bigger organics, never survived an encounter with one if they caught me by surprise. I don't think I've seen slimes yet.. but they make me paranoid.

[AntiBlueQuirk]

Another trick I've found is "quick-cycling" doors. The semicolon ";" lets you chain commands together, i.e. "d3;d3" will open, then immediately close door 3. If a drone is pushed up against said door, it will open, then refuse to close because the drone is too close. However, it will then be in the "trying to close" state, so as soon as the drone moves, it will close. So if you decide you don't like what is on the other side, just back up, and the door will (usually) close before anything gets through.

Quick-cycling also works on airlocks, to minimize exposure time. (Though the microsecond of vacuum can still do damage and sucks all the loot out of the room.)

[Cobra]

I've ran into the problem where the door won't close because they insta kill the drone, then they swarm past into whatever room he was in. :/ Super tricky! Good game, I like it. But it stresses me the hell out.

[DoubleK]

I use Motion all the time and it's useful for me at least when trapping aliens in rooms. Turn on Motion, open a door that is the only place the alien can go (and where I want to trap them) and wait til the line turns green before closing the door. Then swoop in and gather everything up. Only had a few doors knocked down but those aliens were super powerful and seemed to knock my drones down in one hit, so I wasn't surprised. Haven't gotten a gatling yet but man I can't wait to dispense justice with it.

[Cobra]

That is the best use for motions, I agree, setting up airlock traps or trying to move them to new rooms. It's just frustrating how often they can't read a room at all.

[Sanctume]

how does Reroute Power work?


And how to use Gattling? and vs whtat?

What enemy does sonic work against?

[Cobra]

Sonic doesn't seem to work at all... it just flashes then stops. *shrug* If it stayed on while moving or something like stealth, that could be sweet.

Reroute power is a ship upgrade, if you have generators running it can let you route power manually to other rooms that are touching powered rooms up to the generator's power limit. Very handy, especially if it's paired with the remote power ship upgrade.

[DPrime123]

Originally posted by Sanctume:

how does Reroute Power work?


And how to use Gattling? and vs whtat?

What enemy does sonic work against?

sonic is good for organic enemies, slime doesn't like it and saves your gatling bullets. Gatling works on the sentry drones well, and just about anything ells but you can get overwhelmed with multiple swarms combined into a super swarm, and slimes just eat up the bullets so not overly economical.

to re-rout the power you first turn off the power then move it along a route you chose but you need to always be touching another powered room.

.e.g. generator in r2

reroutepower r2 (turns off current power)

reroutepower r2 r3 r4 r5 (turns on power and routes along designated path (r3 r4 r5)

Reroutepower r2 (turns off current power again if you require)

[[CAMSO] Caswal]

I don't really sure motion. Perhaps I have had too many bad random generations, but it feels like it doesn't work on 1/2-2/3rds of the rooms. I've had a room with 4 doors out, and none scan with motion. Then it is total pot luck.

@JP Does each room individually randomize whether the motion scan works on it or not. Or does the ship have a 5 rooms motion works, 2 rooms motion doesn't? Or is it a totally different mechanic?

[Blu C Fox]

Originally posted by Cobra:

Sonic doesn't seem to work at all... it just flashes then stops. *shrug* If it stayed on while moving or something like stealth, that could be sweet.

I don't think any weapon currently works while moving though. Personally I consider Sonic like... basically an area denial weapon for one room. I like to set it on my generator/interface drone.


As far as motion, I thought it was useless for awhile, but now I'm more and more and more finding it useful in different ways. One trick I learned is that if you activate a motion upgrade on a drone in your shuttle you can move it from airlock to airlock and scan a whole bunch of rooms very safely. Granted it doesn't always work, but it can.

Likewise, if I notice that 2 rooms are next to eachother and I only have signal to 1 of them, I open the door behind them and wait a bit (possibly doing something else). Generally if something is in there it will eventually wander into the room I can scan. I can then either trap it there, or let it go back and know that there is a threat present.

And don't forget you can always kill baddies by throwing them out an airlock.