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1

Ideas / Re: Balance Overhaul

« on: September 28, 2020, 03:27:29 AM »

I understand RIF can be further changed to accommodate it, but:

1. Unless RIF needs to be rebalanced again, changing / tweaking RIF playstyle because we "have to change/nerf the storage" seems just like more work that might be unnecessary. And it's not just RIF becoming somewhat more constrained, most game plans would lose flexibility to some extent.

2. When I mean flexibility I wasn't talking about giving combinations of different storage units being used. The flexibility I had in mind is the ability to adapt to RNG, which the storage gives alongside with "more health/replacements", also gives you more space for long term planning. This also includes the latter point about storage vs utility choices since mid-game.

Added bits of thoughts:

It feels like the underlying issue is mainly that overweight penalties are too easily ignored. I think the following statement is true:

Currently, unless you are playing flight or hover, no one would ever play a Cogmind run without overweight.

Players will be willingly and happily incur Ox2 on themselves and sometimes even more, on treads and legs. I think there used to be people who advocates even if you are on treads, playing without overweight can be good, because you are just moving that much faster. But when the benefits of carrying more items, and wearing the heaviest armor is almost always more beneficial to your survival in the long run, you kinda would never do it the other way.

So I feels like it's more useful to tackle how to disincentives overweight overall. I don't know how well it would work, but something could be like:

a. making overweight stage steps smaller. for example for every 50% of your current mass support, you get one level of overweight, instead of 100%.

b. making overweight level 2+ progressively harsher than level 1, so you would never try to go Ox2+ under normal circumstances.

c. like what zxc said, the simplest change could be just making storage units double their current mass.

d. (regardless of a/b/c) treads overweight penalty needs to be doubled or something to that effect, given treads can too easily take on Ox1 no matter what.

e. and if we still want to categorize wheels as "THE overweight prop", we can buff wheel base mass support by just a little. In conjunction with option a/b/c, I think it's still possible for wheels to be somewhat good when hitting Ox2+, but even then you can't hoard 40 items with faster than 200 speed like before.

Just some thoughts to throw out there!

2

Ideas / Re: Balance Overhaul

« on: September 27, 2020, 11:36:17 PM »

Just trying to voice some thoughts too, after reading some of the discord patron discussion and this threads, about general storage adjustment:

I wonder what storage change might mean for builds like RIF?
Because of the basic game mechanics, storage change invariably almost change everything else too.
Like can you run an effective RIF build with just 20 storage? (Hcp +16 and innate 4)
Or does changes like this simply kills flexibility in certain builds. (while you ONLY provides a bit more flexibility over early game in material due to a couple more util slots because of no_stack, and this small benefits never comes into play for the rest of the game anywhere)

I like the more treads (and maybe even wheels) overweight penalty proposal more, and it already directly impacts the dynamics when it comes to storage.
You probably don't want to nerf that and nerf storage at the same time.

Also like Tone said on discord, multiple storage slot already incur a penalty with regard to wasted util slots, and people do get punished by it -
it's an interesting emergent behavior / gameplay dynamic to consider and learn about; making storage no_stack simply removes this 100%.
If we simply want to disincentives hoarding, we toggle to least impactful variable wrt. hoarding:
1. mass support / overweight penalty for various props (mainly treads and maybe wheels)
2. the mass of those storage units themselves - not the capacity.

And I still wonder if there's enough merit wrt. "making storage no_stack so that early game util slots gets more use"
or if ex-item hoarding is an issue... maybe just change the storage or item spawn(spawn rate, drop rate, etc) for exiles map?

3

Strategies / The testing of intercept squad timer after DC (beta 8.1)

« on: June 04, 2019, 08:38:03 AM »

Since this topic has been discussed a few times over the cogmind-spoiler / redacted channels at the roguelike discord, and also having tried DC + visiting secret L myself, I am just curious how intercept squad's timer works. It's plenty obvious that it not the same with extermination at all.

So I resorted to save scumming to do the tests. Here's how I set it up:

• As a combat build, get sufficient amount of flight units with you before heading for DM.
• Might need some luck, since at DM you need to smack DM and then survive or defeat the 4 enhanced grunts. It's totally doable with EM launchers + EM cannons as combat build though. Can opt to save scum here first.
• Save scum at the end of proximity caves, where you are about to go back to Factory.

For these particular tests, I figured there's no need, or not even suitable to reproduce the exact actions when I was about to go back to Factory. So like based on how I strip or attach parts to prepare for the actual test after spawning in Factory, I just don't care if I have the exact same parts, or head back at the exact turn counter, taking the exact evolution, etc. Since this knowledge will not be useful at all when you are playing normally.

The Actual Test: Near the spawning point in Factory -6 or -5, find a quiet room, and move back and forth, counting the turns and the step count that I make. Make comparsions between a flight build and a grounded combat build. Also make a control test where I do not move at all in that quiet room, only passing turns, and see what happens.

The Result:

I did 2 sets of crude calculations first (not counting steps one by one, but get a rough number by looking at how many turns does it take for intercept to show up, and then multiplies by how many steps I can move per turn); after zxc tipped me off with his own test conclusions back when beta 3 or 4, I then made a precise counting of how many movement keystrokes I hit after heading into Factory -- here's the conclusion that I reached (also zxc's conclusion) --

• The way how the intercept squads can pinpoint LRC-V3 seems to be solely based on your movements, nothing else seems to matter much (propulsion used, alert, weapon firing, etc), and then your luck when entering a map where you can be tracked.
• You can get unlucky and move as little as 250 tiles and get sent intercept squads. But if you are lucky, that can be as high as ~500 tile movements or so.

What this means:

• I don't think flight has a distinctive advantage when doing DC runs or other situation where you might be facing trackers as I previously thought. Even more so, if you can't out-fly the trackers, you will actually be better off using ground propulsion when facing trackers, because if you get unlucky, you'll get sent at least 1 intercept squad before you can reach an exit as efficiently as possible. (This also implies hover is the worst for combating trackers -- they cannot possibly out-fly trackers in any way, and they can get disabled just as easy like flight)
• During tests, I found leg combat builds at as low as -6, with good weapons and/or some targeting + at point blank range, can kill ONE tracker without too much trouble. I tried 3 times and 2 out of 3 I was able to get linked autogun and in turn obliterate the one following CProg. But CProg always drops nothing and then you'll be pretty corrupted even though it's very possible to keep your combat build more or less intact. So fighting CProg is still very not ideal anyhow.
• As pointed out by Maiker, Drones might mean something here -- you need to cut down unnecessary steps for exploration as much as you can.

True TL;DR:

The intercept squad after DC is not based on timer but steps taken. The magic number seems to be a range between 250 ~ 500 or so. Can be even lower or somewhat higher. Combat build for data run might not be a bad idea. Prepare the DM enhanced grunt fight like how you prepare for z-imprinter, pack a few armor, at least 1 backup power, a few EM launchers and a few EM cannons. Drones might be useful.