Topic: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview (Read 5473 times)

Kyzrati · « **on:** December 24, 2015, 08:46:29 PM »

Edit: As of Alpha 6, all of these changes have been added to the game. This thread has been locked and further discussion can be continued in the Alpha 6 Discussion thread, if necessary.

For the end of the year let's try something a little different!

As per our original discussion (there are 3-4 other threads that touched upon it as well), I've rebalanced all the propulsion, done a little testing, and I think overall the new state of things is a big improvement. Overall the mechanics are a bit simpler, there shouldn't be any more oddities, and some strategies might change.

So rather than wait for Alpha 6, if you'd like to try out the new and improved propulsion mechanics you can do this now by modifying your copy of Alpha 5c!

All you need to do is download this experimental patch (3 MB) and copy the contents over your current installation.

Here's the experimental build changelog compared to Alpha 5c:

* MOD: Many propulsion stat values reworked!
* MOD: Simplified propulsion mechanics and all known calculation oddities at very high speeds and overweight situations ironed out
* MOD: Ground-based propulsion (wheels/legs/treads) no longer slows with each additional module
* MOD: Airborne propulsion (hover/flight) no longer has a per-part limit on max speed (is type-based)
* MOD: As a side effect of propulsion changes, most hostiles slightly slower
* MOD: Wheels have an advantage now, but still suffer from low integrity
* MOD: Backup Propulsion I/III/VII nerfed
* MOD: Tread recoil dampening effect reduced to 1 per active tread slot
* FIX: Crash when an assimilated Spotter explored to the edge of the known map [zill]

Any scores uploaded from this build won't go to the high scores list, but I'll have the record sheets for reference if need be. Saves are not compatible. Seeds are. Also, the game will tell you your version is wrong/old, but you can just ignore that.

The idea is that you'll now have to work for speed (no low-propulsion slot fast movers), and at the same time won't be penalized much for having a heavy ground-based build. With heavier/combat builds the overweight threshold is a lot more meaningful than it was because there is no speed penalty until you pass it! Overall heavy Cogminds will be moving faster now, and almost all other robots in the world got a little slower (among them the biggest change was your most common foe, Grunts, which are now 20% slower!).

Any feedback is appreciated!

zxc · « **Reply #1 on:** December 24, 2015, 11:31:24 PM »

I like the sound of this!

Kyzrati · « **Reply #2 on:** December 24, 2015, 11:40:23 PM »

I knew you would, since it includes one of your primary suggestions

. My guess is that this will once again make the game somewhat easier, especially for more experienced players. And even inexperienced players will benefit because wheels no longer totally suck

(and overall everything's a little less complicated without sacrificing too much of the system's original flexibility).

Happylisk · « **Reply #3 on:** December 26, 2015, 11:04:51 AM »

I am 100% in favor of all of this. Gimme treads til I'm dead.

Decker · « **Reply #4 on:** December 27, 2015, 11:09:53 AM »

I conducted a scientific experiment to test the balance: goof around and see what happens. I went looking for trouble, found it, but my luck held, so I covered a lot of ground on different propulsion types.

My build was 2 power sources, 3 storage units, 2 heat sinks, 2 extra utilities for misc goodies, and 4 weapons. You know what the rest is.

I wanted to reconsider the matter of armor and force fields in light of the propulsion changes. Joke on me: I found in total one armor and 1 force field across Research and Access. My weapon loadout didn't leave any armor from enemy bots. Instead I used different processors, and just wore things like energy wells when I had nothing better.

I used wheels in Material. They are ubiquitous by destroying workers, and provide a speed between 80 and 100. There's no food clock on Materials so it's not really useful, but it's a viable fallback. Some wheels lift as much as 16. I also used them to patch holes throughout the game. They're harder to mine at higher levels as they tend to get destroyed. They have high coverage and low integrity (centrium wheels only have 100 integrity), so they serve to absorb 2-3 hits and reduce the alert level.

I found a bunch of Improved VTOL in Storage, exited through Recycling and sailed to the second floor of Research on this propulsion. That's exceptional. Flight in general is not really doable for a combat bot, due to the low support and high overweight penalty. Improved VTOL is two notches above the rest, though.

I wanted to go on legs when I lost my VTOLs but I had to use what I found, which is a pack of hover units I got from fallen programmers. Those things were nerfed (10 speed slower), but my takeaway is that they are still useful to have around. Four of them lifts a midweight combat bot on speed 85. It's significantly better than the competition. Plus, they still allow me to survive wastes (barely), although I can feel there is a sinister mind conniving to finally nail me in those so-called traps.

I came very close to dying when I entered a garrison on Access. I had to disperse a crowd of pests and terminators with liberal use of a Ragnarok launcher at point blank. That left me entirely without propulsion. I crawled to leftover flight units and legs, and eventually got back on 8 legs. No venom and fangs, though.

5-6 legs have no problem lifting a midweight bot. Regular legs have speed 120, biometal have speed 110, so my effective speed was somewhere between those two values. That makes retreating under fire a viable but costly option. The impact on the food clock is tolerable but not ideal; it's better to use hover units if possible.

What about treads? Well, they still make good armor. Forget about mobility with those things. At speed 160, they are dog slow. The recoil bonus is spot on.

I spent over 4000 turns on Access, with 3388 influence at the end. I couldn't find the exit. I went on legs exclusively, and wore treads for armor. I died on my feet due to core attrition, with most of my parts. Two targeting computers make a difference.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Overall I think propulsion is balanced. The only thing I would change is to make legs and treads 10 speed faster. They seem to be a little too sluggish currently.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #5 on:** December 27, 2015, 08:27:43 PM »

Excellent, thanks for going through that and reporting back. Very good run.

Flight is certainly not viable for prolonged combat--that's the stealth approach; and treads are for less flexible super heavy combat builds since they can support plenty more non-propulsion slots than you're using with your mobile combat setups.

Legs have a slightly slower base speed than they did before, but only because you'd always be even slower than that when (inevitably) using multiple legs, so in practice they've gotten a good bit faster. I'd consider giving them a -10 later on if we need some way to slightly improve Cogmind's mid-range combat mobility, though I think it's probably good enough for now.

Other opinions and experiences welcome

Sherlockkat · « **Reply #6 on:** December 30, 2015, 05:47:11 AM »

I didn't do a full on propulsion test but I can make comments on a very specific playstyle with legs(6 prop, 2 power sources, 3 weapons).

I played quite a few runs with the experimental prop build and must say that legs feel super viable without the postive mod/extra stat . I run a cookie-cutter combat build and started most runs by evolving 2 propulsion slots first and going legs. I must say that this supports the early game storage units really well. I was able to support about 3 hcp units and lrg storage unit in the late game with no problems while remaining agile with about 6 propulsion slots.

Another thing that I noticed is that legs being a propulsion option frees up a lot of inventory space. You don't have to hoard legs, as opposed to hover units, as they are ubiquitous. You also don't have to hoard armor as legs soak up a decent amount of damage (can see the wisdom in decker's playstyle). The only other utility that is really essential is heat sink and they are commonplace. As such, my inventory was filled up with weapons and maybe a couple of power sources for back up.

Most of my runs ended in -4 and one of them in -3. I am fairly certain that this playstyle would be even more viable once the hacking/processor changes come in. Having 6 propulsion slots provides a lot of pseudo-armor and increases the life-span of fairly high integrity items like weapons and storage units quite well. But, the low integrity support utilities like targeting comps, analyzers and sensor arrays don't benefit that much without actual armor and get blown off. As such, it is hard to extract value out of the remaining slots as nothing stays there for long and you end up filling it up with low impact utilities. So, I think the hacking and coverage changes should push this build over the top as it supplies the necessary control and combat tools which is required to make this build works.

As it stands, I love the propulsion changes.

. Here is the scoresheet of my last attempt if you want to get a better sense of my playstyle.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I am going to be taking a break from playing cogmind for a while in order to work on my thesis. I probably wont' play until mid Feb (maybe lurk around the forums though). I have been having super fun with this game for a while now. Keep up the good work and all the best

!!

Kyzrati · « **Reply #7 on:** December 30, 2015, 06:46:33 AM »

Thanks for the run, Sherlockkat.

Pretty well-rounded build, and interesting that you immediately start with all that extra propulsion, though I can see how it ensures you a much less risky passage (in the early floors where core integrity is more precious) by standing in as makeshift protection.

I'm mostly a leg Cogmind, and my testing experience was similar to yours. I'm also wondering what kind of take speed winners will have on this.

Man, you guys go crazy on the storage

(Really makes me want to get the large inventory management UI in place, but I've had to put that off for now until a decision is made about what to do for a possible condensed UI mode.)

Good luck and see you when you get back!

Sherlockkat · « **Reply #8 on:** December 30, 2015, 02:01:20 PM »

Quote

Pretty well-rounded build, and interesting that you immediately start with all that extra propulsion, though I can see how it ensures you a much less risky passage (in the early floors where core integrity is more precious) by standing in as makeshift protection.

I don't have much use for any other slots in the early game. Materials isn't threatening enough to invest in weapons. None of the early game utilities are very exciting. I can put the propulsion slots to immediate use and as you pointed out, they soak up good deal of damage. They also enables my hoarding addiction in the early game by increasing weight capacity

.

Quote

Man, you guys go crazy on the storage

My current working theory is that "well-rounded builds require larger inventories". For eg, When you have 10 weapon slots and you lose a weapon, that represents a 10% drop in fire power. If you have 3 weapon slots and you lose a weapon, that is a 33% drop. In that case, you need to be really efficient when it comes to replacing parts in order to avoid serious performance deterioration. This calls for a well-stocked inventory. Meanwhile, a cogmind with 10 weapon slots doesn't have to fret about weapon loss that much as its damage output isn't suffering that much. So, it can get away with under investing on storage. I haven't thought this through completely, but it feels right. I dunno... $:-\$

zxc · « **Reply #9 on:** December 30, 2015, 11:40:27 PM »

The problem is that for a single slot, nothing much can compare to the utility of granting another 10 spare parts in your inventory.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #10 on:** December 31, 2015, 12:13:52 AM »

That's a good way to put it, both of you.

Maybe all storage should be multi-slot items

. Realistically, yes, and it would solve much of the balance issues there as well, though I don't really want to do that because multi-slot is saved for a small subset of parts rather than commonly used ones.

I wonder if under the rebalanced propulsion mechanics in this build, where being overweight is an even clearer threshold than before, if I shouldn't just further increase the mass of larger units disproportionally. I know you argued against this before, zxc. I don't want to completely nerf the ability to carry more, just try to find a better balance.

However, it's hard to gauge because there's also the case that the current situation reflects the way in which many of you prefer to play, carrying large inventories to have spares whenever necessary, even though it's not entirely necessary since limiting yourself to a single storage unit (my strategy) means you can focus on boosting your capabilities with utilities, which allow parts to survive confrontations more frequently, either through superior defense or superior offense.

I also can't say that increased mass would necessarily have a huge impact, because it would just encourage Decker's propulsion focused strategy with which heavier Storage doesn't mean much, and making it heavy enough to matter in that situation would probably put it outside the reach of even regular builds.

Does anyone see a need to fix anything about this?* It might just be a case of preferences.

*Aside from the need for a large inventory management system, which I've mentioned we'll get eventually, though for now we have sorting and the new automated system to help out.

zxc · « **Reply #11 on:** December 31, 2015, 12:20:28 AM »

The most obvious nerf to storage to me seems to be the one you proposed one time: removing HCP storage units. This reduces the slot efficiency of storage units but doesn't mess with the balance of the remaining ones.

Storage Rebalancing Ideas Thread?

Kyzrati · « **Reply #12 on:** December 31, 2015, 01:10:28 AM »

Quote from: zxc on December 31, 2015, 12:20:28 AM

Storage Rebalancing Ideas Thread?

We already have one!

And that proposal was actually yours

. I have had that one listed as a possibility under my notes for this topic ever since you mentioned it, and think it's a rather good one.

That topic in general is one of a couple of "unfinished threads" where I never really felt the conversation came to a satisfactory conclusion, but partially because I wasn't yet in a position to confirm a solution. It's even been sitting in my inbox bookmarked for later attention (in addition to being on my TODO list, where almost everything we talk about here goes). It was another of the "ran out of time for Alpha 5 maybe Alpha 6" things.

zxc · « **Reply #13 on:** December 31, 2015, 01:22:53 AM »

I know I've been an advocate of that option but I'm sure I originally took the idea off you somewhere... before that...

Sherlockkat · « **Reply #14 on:** December 31, 2015, 02:54:38 PM »

I can get behind removing Hcp Storage units. Another approach might be nerfing their integrity slightly. Storage is so durable that they might as well be a permanent fixture to your core. I might worry a lil bit about putting all my eggs in the storage basket if they are bit more fragile. As it stands, they take quite a bit of pounding.

I personally feel the right way to nerf storage is to actually buff other utilities. So, I am inclined to wait until the hacking changes are in before making up my mind on this. I am really interested in the relation between low coverage of the processors and their life span. If I can get the combat utilities to last for a floor or two in a controlled combat environment, that would be great. This would dramatically improve their value relative to the storage units and we might start ditching them in favor of immediate combat efficiency. As it stands, I don't care what gets blown off as long as I can replace it and combat utils are not easily replaced.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #15 on:** December 31, 2015, 08:41:07 PM »

Storage Unit integrity is extremely high compared to other items because it's very annoying to lose them. That combined with their unusually low coverage means they last a long while. So they're intentionally designed to be more or less a permanent fixture, while still not being absolutely permanent so you may have to occasionally deal with loss (but usually not more than once or twice in a good run). Note that unlike other parts, Storage Units are also immune to many negative effects like critical strikes, severing, Saboteur attacks, etc. The loss of Storage for a build/strategy that relies on it can mean the sudden end of a run if it happens too often, so I like it the way it is. (Note that it has gradually evolved to its current state--in early Alpha it was a more "normal" part and was a source of many problems.)

I do believe the changes to processors will have a significant positive impact on their longevity, which is good because increasing their capabilities is not going to happen

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Author Topic: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview (Read 5473 times)

Kyzrati

Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview

zxc

Re: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview

Kyzrati

Re: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview

Happylisk

Re: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview

Decker

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Kyzrati

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Sherlockkat

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Kyzrati

Re: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview

Sherlockkat

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zxc

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Kyzrati

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zxc

Re: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview

Kyzrati

Re: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview

zxc

Re: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview

Sherlockkat

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Kyzrati

Re: Propulsion Rebalancing: Experimental / Alpha 6 Feature Preview