Concerns on the cost of the Lunar Affinity - cheaper resurrections for vessels?

[Anomaly963]

Wx's Lunar Vessels are the most expensive followers in the game (and it's not even close). I think this will prevent them from being a competitive option even if some of the current issues are fixed.

Currently, the cost for each vessel includes crafting costs for:

• the chassis itself
• all the circuits you want to use in the vessel
• the spectral transfer module
• all the gear you equip the vessel with

Additionally there is the time investment of gathering, crafting and equipping all of the above, transporting the chassis to a gestalt source (if moonstorms are not active), transporting a 2nd chassis there to install the spectral transfer module, waiting for a gestalt to possess the chassis.

We also have the upkeep cost of keeping the vessel fed, sane and healed (according to other forum users, my tests were too short to confirm they need to be fed and kept sane), in addition to replacing any broken gear.

Finally, there is the opportunity cost of no longer having that chassis for normal use, particularly with the loss of a remote transfer target and an alternative circuit loadout (losing warm standby use is less relevant as the vessel has active circuits, and follows you). This alone is a major cost, taking away from much of what is gained in the rest of the skill tree.

All these costs are repeated for additional vessels, and if a vessel dies, you have to invest more time taking travelling back to a gestalt source (twice) to resurrect it.

With such a prohibitively high cost, I cannot justify using them, potentially even if they receive significant improvements to their combat performance. This is why I propose allowing vessels to be resurrected shortly after death, without the need to capture a new gestalt. This will significantly reduce the cost to continue using an already expensive follower. The resurrection could require simply interacting with the dropped chassis, repairing it with gears, shocking it, etc. There could be a limit to how soon you can resurrect it, and it could resurrect with no charge, if endlessly respawning it in a boss fight is a concern. If such a resurrection option is implemented, we will also need a way to return the chassis to normal use, instead of resurrecting (or perhaps a possessed chassis could still be used normally, with Wx temporarily suppressing the control of the gestalt).

I would also like to see some protection for dropped chassis against being stomped by bosses, even if only for a short time. Removing collision on chassis would also be nice, and probably necessary to avoid cheese methods if they do get protection.

The suggestion by other forum users of allowing the spectral transfer module to capture a gestalt without being installed would also be a viable solution to this problem, though there is still the high cost of the craft. If the spectral transfer module was not consumed when possessing a chassis, and it could contain a gestalt indefinitely, then stockpiling replacement gestalts would probably solve my main problem with the current state of the vessels.

I really hope some answer to the high cost of the lunar vessels is found as this is such a cool idea, and opens up lots of possibilities. I'm really excited to use them, but right now I can't help but worry about how much time it will take to replace them if they die.

[YouKnowWho142]

1 minute ago, Anomaly963 said:

We also have the upkeep cost of keeping the vessel fed, sane and healed (according to other forum users, my tests were too short to confirm they need to be fed and kept sane), in addition to replacing any broken gear.

This is true. They will starve to death naturally, and I believe they will instantly die if their sanity drops too low because it is a gestalt