(hope you can mix and match compatible challenges):Absolutely! Only outright incompatible options (if there even end up being any) wouldn't be allowed at the same time.
* Every time you are spotted, a squad is dispatched
* No items from enemies (reverse of Scavenger)
Maybe a mode where your parts cannot be destroyed? I know this totally ruins the balance and a can't think of a good drawback to balance it out, but it might be a good "super easy casual mode". I guess maybe this kinda direction is gonna be covered in the difficulty levels you are implementing? (I think I heard something about easy mode parts having much more integrity)
Melee only
Guarded (no patrols, but all exits have impressive defenses) (riffing on ideas from Dark below)
* All main complex maps (Materials, Factory, Research, Access) have only one exit. And that exit is always at the most opposite side of the map!
I prefer modifiers that are not strictly handicaps, but rather make you play differently.While yes these are handicaps, they do make you play differently, fairly significantly so with the two cases already given! That's certainly how I intend for them to be.
Now, with that said, if you do want these to be strictly handicaps meant to challenge the best players, then at least have them give score boosts?
Part Deterioration:Because Cogmind's item destruction game is just not serious enough for some people ;). That mode would definitely be pretty hard in your base suggestion, but making the effect random and somewhat less often could definitely be interesting.
Simple Hacker: No indirect or manual hacking of any kind.
Fragile Parts: All parts are destroyed on removal, mimicking the standard behavior of processors.
Sticky Parts: No parts can be removed or swapped out manually, and must be destroyed to free their slot(s).
Trapped: All non-garrison 0b10-controlled maps that have any traps multiply that number by 5. Also a +20% to trigger traps.
Haha, yeah and I play without doing too much hacking myself... but the scoring for this challenge also reflects that--you don't get many points for this at the beginning and it scales up exponentially with depth ;). No hacking exit locations, no trojans, and no Zion.Simple Hacker: No indirect or manual hacking of any kind.
That doesn't really sound much of a challenge. It's something that even beginners can do without realizing. ;D
This is one of the things I was thinking--you might really have to think about the future before attaching anything which has low coverage!Sticky Parts: No parts can be removed or swapped out manually, and must be destroyed to free their slot(s).
Now that's a real challenge. Trying to get rid of mediocre processors will be a lot of fun. ;D
For sure, this is not necessarily a huge "challenge" but more like facilitating a different way to play :P. Could be a really fun mode for a number of reasons.Trapped: All non-garrison 0b10-controlled maps that have any traps multiply that number by 5. Also a +20% to trigger traps.
WOAH, this is more like a huge BUFF to trapper build! I would totally try this out! :D
Regeneration / Integrity Siphon
Equipped parts slowly regenerate (faster with higher alert) (this would give negative score bonus) (mutually exclusive with all other challenges)
Short Circuit: Random attached parts are randomly disabled for a while every so often.
Exiles?!Is this in the wrong thread? Feels like you meant to put this in a certain other thread :P
Exiled derelicts... causing mayhem and giving zionites a bad rep.
GJ, you're still the gold standard when it comes to difficulty, but even Rogue really shouldn't be balanced against your ability because then almost no one would ever win xDAlternatively add this stuff to roguelike mode so that the hardest difficulty of the game has some actual challenge and excitement now that even treads have an easy time dealing with the complex.
Seems like to make this one more interesting there should be a kill requirement. Like say you have to take out at least X enemies before exits are accessible, or something like that.Yeah, that could be good. Some small amount that disincentivizes the type of fast build that doesn't really trigger dispatches, in practice I think those builds will just launcher a few patrols and combat builds that quickly encounter the branch they want can just stand there and wait, but a small amount of necessary killing can contribute the right kind of flavor for this type of run.
almost no one would ever winSo I think Cogmind has a fairly pronounced skill floor relative to its actual difficulty, specifically learning the game is very complex but once you're no longer in unfamiliar territory it's not that difficult to be consistently unstoppable, I'd say typically this has applied to around or more than half of the people in the top 5 of the leaderboards. I suppose I can understand that hushed Exterminations would be extremely tilting to people still in the learning stages, but have you considered a difficulty above roguelike to e.g. target players abusing the static aspects of the game? Abuse here doesn't even have to be as specific as say, Damper Plating and EMDS, just knowing exactly what the map-typical mobs have and how good it is makes it very hard for the complex to break you in any seed, like the game changes when you know that e.g. Flak Guns have nutty DPS relative to their depth but Helical Railguns don't, that adv. target analyzer is notably better than adv. core analyzer, that Hvy. Autocannons exist, that Adv. Phase Shifter is aight but Imp. ain't, that Q Guards are chumps and have nice loot... not asking for flak gun or target analyzer nerfs, btw, though maybe Q being the easiest branch in the game just ain't right. The introduction of locate prototypes has made this even more pronounced and part of me misses the times when at least Testing felt potentially scary, or scarier than the average main floor Research.
The combat balancing was mainly to bring it closer to flight capabilities (even though it's pretty much impossible to totally catch up in that regard...)And if you'd like some feedback on that, regardless of what the specific hierarchy is I would consider flight, hover and treads to share tier-1 prop status at this point. If players are still struggling with treads then I think that's just similar to when players don't yet know how to properly
Hey GJ, sounds interesting! Also... very scary? :P
Although harder, I guess this sorta limits the tactical nature of the game, eh? I mean the various forms of intel, including what's coming for you "at some point" (because even then you really may not have an idea of whether it'll be sooner or later), are important for keeping the game more about planning for possibilities, and in this case you simply know fewer of them, are more... in the dark.
Anyway, just thinking through it to help brainstorm ideas for names and further expansion of the mechanics.
So I think Cogmind has a fairly pronounced skill floor relative to its actual difficulty, specifically learning the game is very complex but once you're no longer in unfamiliar territory it's not that difficult to be consistently unstoppable, I'd say typically this has applied to around or more than half of the people in the top 5 of the leaderboards.By "above roguelike" I take it you meant above Rogue, and yep, I have been considering that occasionally! There would actually be some nontrivial technical problems there, but yeah it would kinda be nice in some ways since it's true that winning becomes relatively easy once you really know what you're doing.
And if you'd like some feedback on that, regardless of what the specific hierarchy is I would consider flight, hover and treads to share tier-1 prop status at this point.Thanks for the confirmation, I agree! As you say though, treads still have their difficult areas and are more challenging, but when they're played the best they can be, they do shine well.
Also if you're wondering how to counteract the playerbase's inevitable complaints about how there's no reason to play legs despite the fact that the prop is still pretty good (looks worse with Hcp existing though), then I'd like to suggest upping the max range of ramming to 200 to truly incentivize the kick build when adv. force boosters are found, what could go wrong? <--- Unbiased player who never abused this mechanic.Hahahahaha xD
That said, in doing this it could theoretically make the extended late game far too hard for almost anyone to complete due to attrition...)I'm inclined to believe this isn't very likely to happen, w.r.t. great players harder 0b10 is probably mostly just going to make main floors more exciting. Many branches offer the possibility for a complete rebuild into something rather good from scratch and this isn't often taken advantage of due to it not being necessary. The design of -1 is such that you can often punch your way to the endgame with the straightest possible route and/or there's some limit to how nightmarish it can be even when you have alert issues. There are also good/great items to acquire in Command and if core integrity becomes clearly the main issue then Core Shieldings do exist and are kind of readily available. The main thing to worry about is probably alert being nightmarish in S7 for slow combat, to some extent this doesn't even need to be possible as the map isn't outright necessary for ++ though you'd like it to be possible sometimes if you're running an impressive control+combat hybrid. And I guess S7 being harder to control would give you reasons to actually plant a node there which I haven't been doing due to all them sec-1 terminals.
I dunno if the playerbase still scoffs at RIF but any claim that the RIF choice itself is too weakFor sure not the case these days. Many people rely on it now as part of major strategies, even into extended. According to the latest stats (https://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=205.msg8949#msg8949), 14.6% of winners had RIF installed in Beta 8.
I'd like to put out the notion that every run being reliably winnable has some anti-synergy with designing around rebuilds from scratch or very little being explicitly possible, in the sense that the more emphasis there is on the former the less likely the latter is to ever happen.Right though I think this also depends on whether you're insistent on getting a particular type of win, because when I think "reliable" I'm thinking it was designed such that you can generally bail out of a given target and go for an easier win if your goal is just "to win in some way." After all, the basic win is so much easier than the others, and sticking to common effective strategies and possibly with support from a branch or two you can probably fairly easily win via Access, even rebuilding from scratch some times along the way. The design goal of allowing for significant rebuilding is not meant to apply once you're headed into extended or doing any of the more challenging endings. In this way I think they're separate concerns.
though I'm sure fast builds still abuse sensors like crazy even with jamming, I probably still hold the position that that has more to do with fast speeds being inherently abusive rather than sensors themselves.I agree, sensors are more supplementary here, and quite useful while not being absolutely essential because speed alone can deal with most trouble. This is still something we talk about on the Discord (even very recently), ways to counteract speed without throwing off all the balance. New content/mechanics, right? :P
Haha that indeed sounds like the threads are being crossed :P
Why stop at those--at that point why not just make everything fly!
flying Behemoths!But that's the first thing I thought of!!!
SuperPatrolsHaha, you know, this would cause a serious hit to FPS--big slowdown and stuttering on large maps!
I see.QuoteSuperPatrolsHaha, you know, this would cause a serious hit to FPS--big slowdown and stuttering on large maps!
Part of the initial reason the game was designed around patrols (and non-busy bots in general) moving at a slower pace (tweaked per class) is because having everyone move at full speed is just way too much pathfinding.
Blinded: Cogmind's visual radius is set to 1, but everything else, including audio, infowar modules, etc, are unaffected. Considering the improvements to infowar in update 11, this could potentially be much more of an interesting challenge than it would've been otherwise. Then again, I can't exactly know for certain without testing it, but it definitely seems like an interesting concept to meYeah I've thought of a low-vision one a few times before, although not quite from an infowar-reliant aspect. Seems like it'd essentially play out more or less like sniping with infowar and penetrating weapons, a style that already exists, just... constantly :P