The current system is more flexible and eases you into the slower speed effect :/. I don't really want the support limits to feel like hard limits, which they don't for now, and that's why everyone's happy to let them go over a bit (but make no mistake, doing so is still detrimental to your chances of survival!I agree. However, this new system need not feel like a hard limit. My point is that by making treads be a fixed speed while under support limit and variable while over support limit, you essentially have a choice: carry less stuff but move faster; or carry everything you want but move slower. Right now you pretty much move slowly no matter how much you are carrying when you have treads. If I'm carrying everything I want, it doesn't make much difference whether my move delay is 200 or 250. However, if I'm going to carry according to my support limit, I'd expect something like 150 or 175 move delay.
What I mean by the jump is, for example, if you're using three full-loaded treads @ 150 speed, then go overweight by just a tiny bit, suddenly your speed is 195 (or 225 if we raise the mod!), rather than being 150 > 165 > 180 > 195 as you add the extra treads, which give you the ability to carry significantly more.
Legs might be better than you give them credit for...
I agree with K that you're probably undervaluing legs. In one of my runs I used legs for research and found the ability to reposition without taking 6 shots to the face to be very handy.
I also want to being experimenting with a melee build. My napkin theorycrafting makes me think that a melee build needs legs in order to be able to move more at less at pace with grunts and hunters while still being able to wield the melee weapon and wear soem armor. With a pure melee build you'd save on matter and energy, which gives you more room to play with forcefields, swapping, and fabrication. Throw on some sensors so you never fight in the open, and you might have something. Slashing weapons for most enemies to lop off their weapons, piercing weapons for sentries and behemoths to deal with their hides.
Surely for a melee build you'd go with flight. I would build it very similar to my stealth builds except without some stealthy utilities and instead more armour + maybe force field + melee analysis suites. Use a piercing weapon and the speed of flight to reach enemies quickly or reposition in narrow hallways for every engagement. I'm going to try it myself. I already use melee weapons for my stealth builds, but the difference is I don't seek out enemies to kill, but instead just prey upon civilian robots.
if you're already going flight why go out of your way to kill enemies, when you can fly past/around them?If you're playing Cogmind why go combat at all when you can stealth/speed past things?
It's possible that pure melee is just suboptimal in every situation, and it's meant to be used situationally.I doubt it but it might require very specific tactics (like treating all combat situations like a SpBe and all enemies like centaurs).
Going back to treads vs. legs: one small positive for legs is that they have less than a 100% chance of triggering traps. So there's that.Really stretching for possible benefits I see :P
In a game with things like black hole launchers, yeah it's not a surprise that running around exclusively hitting people with a stick (even a plasma stick) is not optimal.Among the Derelicts there are whispers of objects still held in Quarantine...
None of this is a problem of course. In a game with things like black hole launchers, yeah it's not a surprise that running around exclusively hitting people with a stick (even a plasma stick) is not optimal. It'd be cool all the same to ascend with a melee build as a challenge run.
I agree that flight especially has some weird things happening with it, though don't quite understand the system you describe, or how moving two to three times as fast is a "marginal benefit." Maybe I'm misunderstanding something there?I meant marginal as in the benefit for each additional unit. You get 5 extra moves in a turn for a third prototype flight unit, while your second flight unit gives you significantly less. In terms of proportions, a 3rd flight unit doubles your speed while the 2nd flight unit increases it by 50%.
Regarding wheels, their worthlessness is intentional. This is brought up from time to time because it's not necessarily obvious, but from a design standpoint the idea is that wheels are easy to obtain (only maintenance bots use them) and useful only as a last resort. Giving them 0 penalty could be an option, though, depending on what adjustments are made to the rest of the system.Ah, okay. I thought from their presence in the scrapyard that they were supposed to be a worthy alternative to your other propulsion choices, but it does make sense for them to kind of suck relative to the other systems. I do think I found prototype wheels once, but I never made use of them.
I do think I found prototype wheels once, but I never made use of them.Ah that's right, there is one type of prototype wheel that no robot variants actually use. It's just got a lot more integrity than other wheels and supports a good bit more, but is still sub-par compared to other propulsion (it's made of a special material that appears in the late-game).
I like how the current flight units stack right now, though I am open to changes. What I don't like, however, is that the best flight units are actually the lowest rated ones. Imp. Flight Units are the best ones I've seen, with the most energy/heat efficiency and 10 move delay for equipped just three of them. This means that it's actually rather important to get the Imp. Flight Unit schematic early on so you can make more of them later, when more of them become impossible to find.Yep, that one has been on the list for the next version update since you brought it up. I'll look into addressing it with the other propulsion tweaks--the changes will be broader than just that one.
One thing that I think is strange about flight units is that often in stealth runs the higher level flight units are just flat out worse for you than the low tier flight units. Since most people support their mass with weight redistribution units anyways, the support of the flight units doesn't really matter, and the speed remains the same no matter what tier of flight unit you look at. The higher tier flight units also take more energy and produce more heat than low tier ones, so I tend to just try and stick to using basic flight units in my run. I don't know if there's a way to fix this without making speed builds completely broken though, so there's that.I believe there is some room to make low-tier flight worse, but the main problem comes from the goal of trying to keep most propulsion units of the same type with the same base speed. The system can get even more confusing if those values are allowed to vary. The idea is that different values are averaged together, but it gets pretty complicated once you add in other features like overloading. Part of the complication comes from internal factors, not necessarily from a player's point of view, since the game can do all the heavy lifting. I'll work on it.
@Adraius: Supporting mid-range speeds will start to look more appealing when treads get slower.Dammit. =P Okay. Is that a thing that's definitely happening? If so, what form is it likely going to take?
Those two were discussed at some point in the tournament thread.@Adraius: Supporting mid-range speeds will start to look more appealing when treads get slower.Dammit. =P Okay. Is that a thing that's definitely happening? If so, what form is it likely going to take?
Actually, is there a list of broad changes that have been discussed and will likely be appearing anywhere? (or can I get a brief summary, pretty please?) Ex. I've heard of an EM resistance increase and Thermal vulnerability for Programmers, but I can't find where that originated.
By the way, currently hover units are a much greater strain on energy and heat than flight units, because of their slow movement compared to flight.But this is also highly dependent on how much you're moving. By comparison I believe flight gets a lot more costly when you're constantly zipping around.
The whole cost while idle is kind of weird in practice. You're better off turning off your propulsion units whenever you are stationary. Which ends up being a lot of micro for frequently little reward, but definitely worth it if you're fighting for extended periods of time. You can't really eliminate them, though, or pack them into movement, because some propulsion units give you combat bonuses while active. It's awkward.It is awkward from a min-maxing point of view, though I think it would be equally awkward without that mechanic, for different reasons including the one you mention. The addition of a single hotkey to disable and re-enable all propulsion at once would probably make micromanagement much less of an issue, yeah? This was a suggestion from zxc I want to add for Alpha 4. (Also another key to do the same for weapons.)
Also - I feel like overweighted hover units might actually be surprisingly useful for a combat build. You can load up to 2x capacity and still be under 100 speed all the time, and 3x capacity is comparable to having 3 weighted legs. The only drawback is durability, but otherwise they're comparable / possibly even better than legs in some aspects. Plus, since you're overweighting yourself, you can toss on Weight Redistributors and get double mileage out of them, ignoring the fact that weight redistributors tend to explode. Things start getting really ridiculous if you can snab prototypes with -10 per slot and 30 penalty, because then you can go to like triple overweight and still be moving faster than any walking robot while *probably* carrying more than them.This is what I've found, too. Hovering can be really effective at combat, but not so good (due to low integrity) that you'd want to stick around for long battles. I think it works pretty well where it is right now, but maybe not a lot of players are using it (?).
Storage units could be worked on. I think maybe splitting up where you find them would help - right now you find all storage units in -10 because they're all rating 1. More efficient (in terms of weight) would be nice for some lower capacity ones (since they're kind of neglected), but 16m/8inventory seems like a good one slot compromise for the ultra-heavy builds.I've addressed this in a new thread dedicated to Storage Units (http://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=289.0).
The key (and overall change) I want most of all is still the item swap mode. I'm sure any keyboard player can immediately see the benefit of it. And for a game that is all about inventory management, having the most commonly used function (swapping items) require two modifiers as well as a special order (equipped item, then inventory item) is just too much.The whole cost while idle is kind of weird in practice. You're better off turning off your propulsion units whenever you are stationary. Which ends up being a lot of micro for frequently little reward, but definitely worth it if you're fighting for extended periods of time. You can't really eliminate them, though, or pack them into movement, because some propulsion units give you combat bonuses while active. It's awkward.It is awkward from a min-maxing point of view, though I think it would be equally awkward without that mechanic, for different reasons including the one you mention. The addition of a single hotkey to disable and re-enable all propulsion at once would probably make micromanagement much less of an issue, yeah? This was a suggestion from zxc I want to add for Alpha 4. (Also another key to do the same for weapons.)