- Which random mechanic is the most annoying? (item spawns, hostile encounters, miss chance, which parts get hit, branch depths, hacking, etc.)
Definitely item spawns. Especially in certain Research branches. Especially in T. Second is branch depths, specifically Storage depth and S7 depth. Storage is just plain irritating to have on -7 and it's punished reckless play for me a few times. Another RNG mechanic that's irritating is sequential enemy encounters, enemy encounters in bad locations and enemy encounters near garrisons, although this only causes significant damage if my build is either not strong enough or I play the situation wrong. Finally, chute traps. I rarely succumb to chute traps anymore because I don't get cocky and cross areas that could possibly have chute traps, but getting jumpscared by them is still annoying regardless.
It's irritating to have S7 adjunctive to T and not Q because I'm lazy and for some reason I assume that 7 will always be on the same depth as Q. Also, I never get SHELL on combat builds. Ever.
- How much does your success rely on RNG?
Not a huge amount, assuming I'm playing well. The difference RNG makes on my build, if I'm playing well, is the difference between an excellent build and an acceptable one. If I'm not playing well, however, RNG plays a lot more of a part in things. When I'm playing poorly, a bad fight or bad sequence of fights can kill my run.
- How do you plan around randomness?
Use storage, and make sure that you have enough in storage to replace all of the vital parts of your build. Keep at least 1-2 launchers - 2-3 explosive launchers at all times is a must in Factory. Keep a melee weapon for breaking walls and panic situations. Plan assuming worst-case scenarios rather than best-case scenarios - have plans that work regardless of RNG. Have backup plans in case of worst-case scenarios. Keep your tactics flexible. Use your environment, bottleneck, use AOE weapons on clustered enemies. Use explosive machines and traps against your enemies, if you can (and you're sure you can deal with the resulting increase in alert). Position for worst-case situations. Experience helps, too. Once you know the actual potential range of events, you can better plan for them. Strong builds are less affected by RNG, so anything you can do to improve your build strength will also reduce the amount you're affected by bad RNG.
- How well do your builds handle things going wrong?
Depends on the build and current build strength. With 2 or 3 prop builds, you can be extremely durable given a fairly strong build if you haven't yet hit the point of build collapse or imminent build collapse, but you don't have the slots for prop armour to comfortably escape and rebuild if you do, and the utility-heavy playstyle means that you will probably struggle to replace rare utilities that nonetheless contribute importantly to your build power. I've been experimenting with treads lately and have found that they can rebuild extremely easily comparatively. I haven't gotten a handle on brick or light hacker, though, so my runs using those builds don't respond very well to things going wrong.
- What advice would you give to people who find that there is too much RNG in cogmind?
Play more deliberately and thoughtfully. Honestly. Plan before runs - plan during runs. Plan to reduce variance, don't just go with the flow. If you don't know how to do that yet, play more. When you die, review the run to see if you can point at anything that caused the death. This can be hard to do as a new player, since death tends to come fairly late after whatever caused it, but once you have the amount of games under your belt to start drawing connections between cause and effect when it comes to death, it's a very important way of improving your play. Also, a lot of new players underestimate the importance of storage, I know I did. If anyone who doesn't know already is reading this: 1 medium storage is pretty much necessary for any viable flight build. 2 large storage is my minimum for combat, with a preference for 3.
Thanks alot for your answers, GJ. That link was very helpful, too.
About:
It's possible you've met him in a previous version when the Archives terminal lore hadn't yet been added to the game.
I met him on my first run on beta7, the one on the leaderboards. But like I mentioned in my prior post, going 190 on 0x1 treads, time "passes" so fast without you getting somewhere, so when the attack started, I tried to help. But I'm sure you know what happens soon after, meaning there was nothing left to decode anymore.
I put the following in spoiler tags, because it's not related to the current topic, just something I needed to get off my chest:
I really liked the treads combat build, but I got too obsessed with it. Not only take those runs very long (real-time) and I never changed up the props, they literally led to me missing so many essential parts of the game, even though they are kind of secrets. If you had not revealed it here, I would have never gone back on a seed with Zhirov in the archives, because I was sure, well he blows everything up so "fast", what's there to read/decode. Up to this very run I never went stealth/speedy, besides my first attempts on the game. Even though I've seen all branches even on a slow build, I never got to explore much. My main concern almost always was controlling alert, especially late game - think of it as you choose bailing over taking a risk that might end this run, because you already invested 10+ hrs. It's also the main reason why I kept asking for hints/spoilers in almost every single post of mine over the past few weeks, while for myself I got back into a stealth/hacking/running kinda hybrid build whatever. After 250hrs!!! I found some of the OP stuff beyond the -3 and upwards branches for the FIRST time, I had no idea this stuff existed nor did I expect the game to provide items/utilities like that. As one can imagine, this made my life WAY easier and finally helped discovering at least 3 more endings, "only" two missing now. I just can't believe how one can beat the game as a newb in very few runs, but then being so stupid in future ones to explore the actual content of it. Like I said to Kyz the other day - I've been playing the game wrong all along, but this is definitely over. Anyways, thanks a ton for that info, i'll put it to good use :)