EMP is potentially devastating, as in abandon game now devastating.



The problem is the only real counter to emp is redundancy but here is the issue there:



Later levels where EMP is more likely to appear dust is rare therefore you need to encourage spawning to try to farm dust, therefore you may have multiple areas of monsters smaller areas of modules (just enough to defeat them) But because of the way room lighting works, if you lose one of these choke points, it isn't like you can just place it somewhere else, the layouts are too constricted for that and the whole point of this tactic is to farm the dust that would allow you to deal with this in the first place.



Now granted I havn't seen this happen early level, usually I have a lot of rooms opened, so maybe the answer to this is just exit the level, but I have no reason to believe you can't get game ending luck and get hit by an early emp that just removes all your defenses before you have a chance to establish a level strategy.



Herein lies my concern that emp maybe too rough. There is -nothing- you can do about it except work around the rooms (I've often had multiple emp'd rooms before).



I think EMP needs another counter measure because otherwise it's like having system shock from nethack (yes a rogue classic but also a terrible design idea, who wants a random you just die event?) EMP seems to have the potential of being that random you just die event.

Have a look at this suggestion here:

/#/dungeon-of-the-endless/forum/47-game-design/thread/17772-emp-shielding-device

It may be an idea you wish to support

It would be nice if you could destroy the modules and rebuild them, getting around the EMP at the cost of a bunch of industry.