I hacked the location of the exit, but the stairs weren't shown on the edge of the screen like other hacks, such as machine locations or worker bot locations. Is there a particular device I need equipped to enable this, or do exits not show up like that?They should appear for a short time at the edge of the screen, or wherever they are, after you're done hacking, but as zxc says after that you'll have to press '4' to get them back, yes. (Or hover over the Scan window if you're using the mouse.)
What is the relationship between me and my allies? I have gathered a group of non-controllable allies and they don't block my movement, they seem to be able to fire their weapons without hitting one another or me, yet my own volleys will hit them.No they'll "gladly" accidentally hit you or each other ;). You just got lucky or didn't see it yet. Non-controllable allied bots are full allies in every sense except that you cannot give them orders. They'll even follow you into new areas via stairs if close enough to your point of exit (the auto-highlighted area). Depending on the circumstances under which you meet them they may or may not follow you across a map, though--that's handled on a case-by-case basis.
Sometimes when I am not flying and I am in a 1-wide corridor, non-flying worker bots seem to travel past me. Sometimes they will turn back the way they came, however. What is happening here?There's a chance they were wandering in one direction and reached their destination (which may very well be in the middle of a corridor), then decide on a new destination that was back the other way. Non-combat bots are just wandering around looking for stuff to do, so if there's no task that fits their role they may appear to be doing nothing meaningful. Because they aren't :P. The change in their direction doesn't have anything to do with you, unless you were shooting at them. (And non-combat bots are allowed to pass you to avoid creating annoying bottlenecks.)
No they'll "gladly" accidentally hit you or each other ;). You just got lucky or didn't see it yet.Are they as trigger happy as me, or will they prefer line-of-sight? With so many rockets flying around, I assumed they were firing through each other.
(And non-combat bots are allowed to pass you to avoid creating annoying bottlenecks.)Thanks for the explanation.
Are they as trigger happy as me, or will they prefer line-of-sight? With so many rockets flying around, I assumed they were firing through each other.Haha, they'll only ever take a shot when they have LOS, but just like you and everyone else they may not have the greatest chance to hit depending on the circumstances! So stray shots are equally blind in this case. In fact, in my opinion taking stray shots (from all sides) into account is a pretty important part of strategy regarding tactical positioning when its time to line up to attack, or defend.
Another question: when using manual input at a terminal, I can scroll through every command I have ever input. Is there a way to delete these commands? Some commands are not so useful, and I have also some typos.Hm, not currently, no. It wouldn't be impossible to add a special command for that. I've already used up a lot of the special keys for that mode, actually. Like you'd think the Delete key would be appropriate and intuitive, but both that and Ctrl-Delete already do something while typing, as do Escape/Enter/Backspace/Ctrl-Backspace/Arrows/Ctrl-Arrows/Home/End... You can see I'm a fan of hotkey-based text editing :P
I have some questions about item stats.
What does "delay" mean on some guns. Does that add to total length of time a volley takes?
On power sources, what does cooldown period mean? I see shorter is better, but why?
Probably related, why do light engines produce more power than not light engines? Why would I ever not use light engines unless I was absolutely loaded down with lasers?
What is burnout on flight units?
Probably related, why do light engines produce more power than not light engines? Why would I ever not use light engines unless I was absolutely loaded down with lasers?
I thought volley time was related to how many guns you were firing, not what type of gun. Are you saying that the actual firing of the weapon is delayed until later in your turn?
I believe two factors influence your firing time - volley size, the delay for each gun in the volley. I'm just saying firing two guns with a high delay will take longer than firing two guns with a lower delay.
As for the fire delay, the tooltip is something like, 'delay on firing weapon' but that didn't tell me what it actually did.Hm, the popup text I see is "This is a direct modifier to the time it takes to fire the weapon. Some weapons are inherently faster or slower to fire." And it's shown as a positive or negative number, so I thought it would be pretty understandable as is, but maybe not if you're coming at it from a position of not yet knowing about volley/firing times? You think the description should be somehow more explicit? I'd like to leave the long explanations to the manual.
I don't think there was anything about that in the manual.It's described in the "Combat" section of the manual, under "Volley" (the first subsection), and also gets a mention in the previous section on "Time."
Mediocre Utilities Update
Thermal converter/generator => needs massive boost in usefulness.Yep, this and others, like Quarantine tested.
Power from matter (matter filter?) => impractical, boost or remove entirely...Situational. It's saved me before, and just recently another player shared a similar story. That's a hell of a lot of power for a small mass.
Particle charger => the coverage is way too high, the item is typically gone after 3 fights.These are way too effective to allow them to also have low coverage, at least when combined with a large array of energy weapons.
Cloaking generator / manoeuvering thrusters => decent for a stealth build, but almost useless for a combat build due to the bad integrity/coverage ratio. Doesn't need fixing if it's intended only for use by stealth builds or to boost hunters.Right, intended that way.
Shield => needs more integrity to be worthwhile.Not sure which item you're referring to. There are many types of shields.
Armor => it'd be nice to have some with higher integrity and lower coverage.That's an interesting idea... though I can see stacking them with certain builds being extremely effective. Could be tough to balance in.
Force field => that one has serious balance issues. I plan on writing an analysis on combat sometimes in the future. I'll address the shortcomings in details there. In a nutshell, there is usually no reason to equip 3 reactors unless you plan on using force fields, and force fields are rare enough that on average you lose in evolving a third power slot.I think they're okay because shields are massively effective parts. They protect everything extremely well, and some even protect your allies as well as allow your allies to protect you. The alternative which may be more effective from a numbers standpoint is your go-to strategy of stacking inventory filled with parts and/or huge-integrity items. But sometimes it's a case of finding X and using X to survive (even if it's not as effective as Y), not "I'm going to build this perfect death machine every time I play." A good number of winning combat builds use better force fields combined with extremely large batteries.
Melee analysis suite => melee is underpowered (intentionally, from what you've said). This thing doesn't quite close the gap. Useful in enemy hands, but not to the player.Disagree. Melee is going to generally be underpowered for heavy combat builds compared to what you can do with a sizeable array of good weapons (intentionally, to differentiate the combat style), but it serves its own niche, and having a better chance of hitting with your one really powerful weapon (which can generally core robots of the same rating in a single hit) is quite effective.
Not sure which item you're referring to. There are many types of shields.
That matter -> energy converter might be sweet toggled on with force fields perhaps...
I feel like either movement parts need to have a weight value assigned when they are turned off or armour needs more integrity then it has.
That matter -> energy converter might be sweet toggled on with force fields perhaps...
While I've have saved my life with melee weapons in desperate situations, there's no way to direct their damage to the core, so most hits appear to do nothing while I'm busy being shot up.Piercing weapons treat target cores as having 33% higher coverage than usual. Other than that, it's true that you have to get to the target's core for the nice damage to really have an impact, which is why you want as high of an initial hit chance as possible.
As for armor, I'm not the most advanced player, so maybe this is off base, but plating doesn't seem to be as good as just getting extra movement slots. Plating has more coverage generally, but it also generates heat, weighs a ton, and often takes multiple slots. Whereas, like an armored leg or some treads turned off take no energy, produce no heat, have no weight, even if you are flying around, have surprisingly high integrity, are extremely common, and will often save your life if your other means of travel get shot off. I feel like either movement parts need to have a weight value assigned when they are turned off or armour needs more integrity then it has.Yep, this has changed significantly since the early game, when armor had much more integrity compared to propulsion. The heavier forms of propulsion got a massive integrity boost, but that was without concern for how players might stack them as an alternative form of protection. Part of the reason they are somewhat less effective in that role, at least in terms of protecting parts, is that armor still has higher coverage. Some further tweaking is probably important here to keep this from being abused (yes, I do it a bit, too :P), but forcing propulsion mass to kick in when inactive, while perfectly logical, removes a lot of potential strategies and will also end up wasting a lot more slots for part of the game.
And I'll add one item to the list. The remote datajack seems to take a stupendous amount of matter to function. I'm sure this must be from some previous balance change, but every time I seek to use it I run out of matter within a couple fights, having maybe hacked a robot or two.It's been that way from the beginning, because a really good hacker could (theoretically) practically own a floor via remote robot hacks. That number could still very well be tweaked, though, and likely will be. The reason it hasn't yet is because robot hacking is still only gradually becoming a viable strategy, due to other changes that have been occurring over previous versions.
Yep, It won't be enough to run a shield for very long on its own, just a more efficient power source. But I'll definitely be examining those numbers and how they relate to shields. It would be nice if you could willingly use a huge matter stash to produce a ton of power in short order to support a shield very well.QuoteThat matter -> energy converter might be sweet toggled on with force fields perhaps...Nope...still got drained with that fusion compressor turned on against a single sentry. 20 energy/turn isn't enough.
That said, note that the utility already doesn't work to produce energy if you're already at full storage, and that effect is checked after all of your other power generation kicks in.
Yup, there is, and it is already in the advanced control menu :P