Whoa, that's a fast win, zxc. It's hard to do a direct comparison with the difficulty of Alpha 1, since some things have gotten harder (traps, speed bug fixed) and some easier (smaller squad sizes and lower Programmer frequency).
My money's on a turncount speedrun being tougher in this version than Alpha 1. However, in that run I didn't get a programmer squad sent after me even once all game. I guess it was because I was speeding through the levels and not wasting time.
Yep, when you're racing that fast, they don't have enough time to react.
...hm, now that you mention it, on closer examination the distribution mechanics do make that combination somewhat likely. It wasn't intentional, but I like it
You're a bastard. I hope you know that.
Requirement #1 for being a roguelike dev
I'm on eight wins now and counting (five during this challenge). I'm collecting them now! One question: does turns passed consider 1 action = 1 turn, or 100 time = 1 turn?
Ha, you are on quite a roll now. Turns passed is game turns, yes; not actions. (If it were the latter I'd definitely use that term. I will be adding Action Counts to the score sheet for the next release.)
Also, how does move speed interact with breaking stasis? Do you break out of stasis 10x faster at 10 move delay than you do with 100 move delay? Or are breaking attempts all the same length of time regardless of propulsion?
An attempt is an action that takes 1 full turn regardless of your propulsion.
Edit: The scoreboard never updates when you want it to. I really want to know whether my last run improved on 1.08. Also, these are fantastically odd scores. I wonder if you did something like score = (1000 / turns) + (3000 / core damage taken) + (highscore / 20000) etc. with a bunch of factors like that.
Edit2: Yay. 2.02 score. So it seems the best escape algorithm loves low turn counts.
I honestly didn't have enough data when coming up with the formula for Best Escapes--too few previous wins! Still, it works out fine because the aim was to emphasize turn count to make sure speed/stealth runs could have their place on the leaderboards since they'll obviously get beat out by score. Destruction still plays an important role, though, so if you can wreak more havoc
and get out faster you'd have a better escape rating. I would definitely redo the entire formula in the future if applicable to some event.
I'm not in the top 3 for Against All Odds though, which I find strange because I managed to escape with this peak setup (and even this is inflated because I couldn't move with the launcher equipped, and other than the sensors my utilities were mostly useless.
A few of the achievements, including that one, are slightly more easily taken by less experienced players who manage to reach the mid-game by barely scraping by. I wouldn't call carrying a Vortex Chain Reactor and Point Singularity Launcher "barely scraping by"
. There are players out there who are barely playing with prototypes, much less some of the most awesome gear you can find!
Also the chainsword seems pathetically weak - maybe I just got unlucky with a ton of rolls but it compared unfavourably with stuff like katanas)
Musta just been unlucky, since it's a direct upgrade. (Also the slower/longer attack animation might make it feel a little weaker, whereas you can get repeated slashes off and see results more quickly in real time with a Katana.)
Edit3: Also you can see here that this *4 rating flight unit is worse in every way compared to the *3 flight unit (I guess maybe the max integrity is better - that is the only explanation):
I'll look into that one.