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Author Topic: Complex 0b10 tourism information  (Read 4212 times)

Decker

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Complex 0b10 tourism information
« on: November 30, 2015, 08:10:28 AM »

Welcome to Complex 0b10! We hope you will find much excitement within our facility. For your convenience, we have put together some information to help you get the most out of your visit.


=== Preparing your luggages ===

Many travellers report feeling some anxiety when deciding on what to bring in their travel. With so many useful items and so little space, there are bound to be some agonizing decisions!

To help you in this process, think about what is truly essential in your journey. It's a short list: power, propulsion, weapons, heat sinks, and storage. So long as you have all of those, you're ready and on the bounce!

Now, beyond these essential items there are a few other items that improve your combat effectiveness. Unfortunately, many travellers get waylaid here because some subtle factors ruin their plans that otherwise look good on paper.

For instance, you will find that your lively interactions with the denizens of the facility require you to replace parts often. Recognizing these needs, the management of the facility provides numerous stockpiles for some commonly sought items: power sources, propulsions and weapons. However, the current economic conjecture does not allow the facility to maintain as many stockpiles for the more exotic parts.

Consequently, there is a real risk that you run into a dry spell when trying to replace highly-specialized parts. Some travellers attempt to counter this problem by hoarding the specialized parts they depend on. Not only is this strategy not guaranteed to work, but more importantly, it increases the risk that you run out of essential parts! Just last week, we all had a good chuckle when one fellow traveller hoarded 3 cloaking devices, only to find that all of its remaining power sources got blown up.

We therefore recommend hoarding only exotic parts that significantly decrease the rate at which you need to cycle parts. Armors and force fields are good candidates because they absorb damage. Targetting computers and particle chargers also help by suppressing damage at its source.

By the way, there is a running gag in the facility, led by our R&D people, who design hilariously flawed combat parts and scatter them around the place to confuse unsuspecting tourists. So if you come across things like thermal converters, be aware that the locals are probably laughing behind your back. The Lord helps if you actually go and wear one of those.


=== Choosing what to wear ===

There has been some debate lately as to the garments that the modern combat bot should wear. For some, the rage is all about big, bad, and slow combat bots that shoot everything down with a massive, full-metal-jacket-in-your-face volley. Although this style is certainly alluring, it is not always very practical.

Psychological studies reveal that the locals are highly influenceable by demonstrations of force and will flock to visitors putting up an unusually good show. Being the center of attention is flattering, but you may find that you need a breather after a while.

However, outrunning crowds on tracks or legs will not do, so consider getting airborne when you can. You may find it difficult to lift the mass of your typical combat gear. The trick here is to optimize your parts to achieve both high resilience and high mobility.

Propulsion parts fit both these roles naturally. Armor and force fields are ideal for resilience, alas both are exotic items whose availability is spotty. When supplies dry up, you can cope by wearing commonly-available legs, wheels and tracks which have 80 coverage, high integrity (up to 800!) with no mass, energy or heat requirements.

For mobility, either flying or hover units will do. Hover units have the advantage of requiring less energy/heat upkeep, lift more, have lower overweight penalty and are easier to find. Flying units can jump over crowds. You will need 3-5 units to achieve a speed between 45 to 75, depending on much storage you carry.

If you are worried about not finding enough hover units to cover the loss by attrition, we have good news for you! Upon entering the Factory level, you will automatically be subscribed to our renowned drone-based part delivery service. We will regularly dispatch a pack of drones carrying an ever-increasing amount of power sources, heat sinks, EM weapons and hover units to keep you well supplied in these essential parts, at entirely no cost to you! For your convenience, we will announce when a delivery is under way, but you need not take any particular action. Our drones will find you with a reliability that our customers have come to expect. We recommend using salvage-preserving thermal weapons to rip open the packages.

Thus, don't be afraid to invest liberally in propulsion slots. Up to 10 propulsion parts with 2 weapon slots is perfectly viable! Not convinced? Then consider our comparative analysis of a 4-wide volley versus a 2-wide volley.

Pros:
- +35% more firepower over time.
- May kill an enemy in one volley, denying counter-attack.
- Weapons are high-coverage parts with decent-to-good integrity.

Cons:
- Firepower penalty if not using identical weapons.
- Waste by overkill.
- +35% heat and energy usage over time.
- 2 less slots.
- Increased weight.
- Increased recoil.
- Increased reaction delay.
- Heat surge makes you easier to hit.
- Doubled weapon churn due to doubled coverage.
- Need to equip and carry more weapons.
- Reconverting between damage types take 2x time/matter.
- No benefit for launchers.
- Unsustainable when using overloaded weapons.


Finally, one last tip for your travels. Agile combat bots need not fear chute traps and we highly recommend paying a visit to those lovely, soothing wastes beneath the facility.
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Happylisk

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Re: Complex 0b10 tourism information
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2015, 10:18:34 AM »

Great post, loved your writing style.

I'm very intrigued by your argument in favor of only two weapon slots.  I normally roll with 4 weapon slots (5 by Access), and devote two of them to cannons and the rest to guns (occasionally a 5 gun volley, almost never 4-5 cannons).  Only equipping two powerful weapons, coupled with targeting computers, and having more propulsion seems to have served you well (http://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=342.msg3033#msg3033).  Next seed run I'll cap myself to two weapons and see what happens.

One pro to multiple weapon slots that you didn't mention is multi-slot weapons, which will probably become more abundant as branches open up.

Re parts:  I think the best parts in the game for a combat cogmind (besides the essentials you identified) are force fields and powered armor.  Armor soaks up damage and keeps it from hitting parts you care about - but force fields straight up make the damage vanish at the cost of energy.  With regard to force fields, I find that I can rarely get prolonged use out of them early on without an energy well.  Whenever I find a FF (ideally an improved FF or better), I pocket it and save it until I find a good energy storage device.

Powered armored is even better since the energy drain is way more reasonable due to the 1:1 ratio.  You can typically use them immediately upon finding them without otherwise adjusting your build.  My winning run found a cache of 6 imp. powered armor on factory 5 or 4, which is probably why I won.   

Edit: Tried a 2 gun run today.  I really enjoyed the extra utility slots.  Will experiment some more and post more detailed thoughts. 
« Last Edit: November 30, 2015, 07:32:33 PM by Happylisk »
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Kyzrati

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Re: Complex 0b10 tourism information
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2015, 09:08:59 PM »

That was a good read, Decker :)

Interesting that you'd go for only two weapon slots. I can see it working, though, as long as you control the situations you get into.

There are some other advantages to having more than two weapons, also depending on your play style (like Happylisk, I usually end up with about 4 weapons). For example, lining up enemies and opening up with a full volley can more quickly dispatch multiple enemies at once (bonus points for using penetrating weapons that way), mitigating the amount of overkill. I do this wherever possible. I also tend to intentionally equip weapons of different types, and for some battles will activate and deactivate a subset depending on the target and my current condition and resource usage. It saves a lot of excessive swapping.

While we're talking about it, because it really isn't too economical to bother with 6+ weapon slots, considering especially the fact that you have to sacrifice other slots (utility...) in order to achieve that, I've been thinking of somehow improving the effect of large volleys to make them more viable for some players. Some ideas:
  • Vastly reduce the time cost for larger volleys, making weapons beyond five or some such practically free, as opposed to the current threshold of 10.
  • Consecutively increase the accuracy of later weapons in a volley, explained by the ability to quickly correct for previous inaccuracies.
The second one I just made up real quick now--lots more brainstorming required to look at the possibilities, but the first is something I've considered for a while now.

Edit: Volley costs were reworked in Alpha 5, making large numbers of weapons a viable strategy.
« Last Edit: June 04, 2016, 04:06:52 AM by Kyzrati »
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Brimble

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Re: Complex 0b10 tourism information
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2016, 03:56:19 AM »

Great post, made me laugh. Also, as a newcomer, might have helped me a lot. :)
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Decker

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Re: Complex 0b10 tourism information
« Reply #4 on: June 04, 2016, 07:16:02 AM »

I'm glad you liked it, Brimble. Note that the game has changed significantly since this was written. Fast propulsion is less critical now and bigger weapon loads are much more useful.
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