Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

Ideas / Re: Balance Overhaul

« on: October 15, 2020, 09:34:19 PM »

*I crack my knuckles and descend into the fray*

# Shinies
I think that players shouldn't be incentivised to hold onto their shinies until the last possible moment. I would like to see shinies getting used more often and earlier. I'm not sure how to best go about this other than through item storage nerfs, but it's something I'll always be a proponent of. I never want to be hurt by seeing a certain stream where a firepult is hauled from mats to -1/C and never get used. Maybe more master thieves could show up earlier in the game so people would want to use their shinies asap? uwu.

Pay merchants on -7 to hold onto your items and give them back to you on -1? :thonk:

# Item Storage
> One major point in no_stack's favour is that it frees up slots for other utils
I'm in the small camp with moist and juicy capacitors charged for <no_stack>, even though I know there are some big glaring flaws. Quite frankly, I find storage units to be boring items. I would much rather be trying to pretend to be player 2 and try to make builds off of the floor rather than trying to hoard 50 items. If buffing storage units and giving them <no_stack> makes the game too easy, make the world generally harder to compensate?
I feel like whatever the final nerf to storage ends up being, I would like to see a notable exception made for RIF. I feel like RIF existing breaks all the normal storage meta so it should get an appropriate special treatment. But I know that's worth.

If you disregard all of that, though, the biggest takeaway I want to throw into storage units is that *storage unit coverage and integrity is whack*. It just feels so weird to manage storage unit health... They are so tanky that it feels like they might as well not break at all. I don't know if that's a good thing; tbh I'd be fine if storage units got shot off more often and were harder to come by. Maybe that could be your hcp nerf, since you don't find those naturally in the complex.

I'd like to propose re: an earlier discussion; I'd be interested to see each level of overweight get exponentially worse than the last, maybe with an exception for wheels. Yes, I'm looking for a way to bully treads users.
underweight bonus bad.
don't listen to anything mtf says he's anti-botnet.

Thoughts on storage nerfs:
Just to add my two cents; I feel like on flight, storage is already reasonably balanced.

This feels true for hover as well. I think storage being well-balanced is proportional to how much you care about being overweight.

I think hcp. storage should be removed.

In any case:

reducing overall storage capacity should be a goal

# Matter and Energy Storage
I think that energy storage is insanely overpowered right now. I think it would be fine if you couldn't extract energy from batteries on the ground, but swapping wells in remains an issue (realistically they won't get shot off).

# Cave-ins
MTF's digless stealth run changed my mind on this. I think digging can be nerfed further if necessary. Dig nerf good.

# Legs
I'm excited to see what the leg change is going to be. I hope they are renamed to thighs.

# Sterilization
Sterilization is a good and fun thing. I like that it exists and I don't think it should be changed.
> This creates the dilemma that score no longer functions as an abstract indicator of combat strength, and thus loses its original meaning.
Since when was score supposed to be explicitly a measure of combat strength? People get score for all sorts of weird stunts.

# Metafield
To be honest, I never *personally* considered metafield to be that great. I mean, it's okay, but nothing to lose my mind over. But if it really shatters a build type entirely if it gets a slight nerf, like burnout, completely shatters a build archetype, that might be indicative of a deeper underlying problem.

# Traps

No current plans to make full trapper builds viable as their own sustainable thing

Is this a challenge?

# S7

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think this map is a lot of fun! It's probably my second favorite one in the game, behind Factory. Lootwise, I agree that it'd probably be fine if SR couldn't replicate AAs, but I don't think it's a necessary change and tbh it would be super annoying to discover that through trial and error. I'd like to see a few more people beat extended without going to S7 before I'm convinced that S7 artifacts aren't necessary for it though. GJ no offense but you are kind of an exceptionally good player.

# Alert

  - Alert changes
   - Gain alert when spotted by a robot, not on killing it
    - Gain alert for reinforcement squads on dispatch
    - Gain alert for investigation squads only on spot
    - No repeated alert gain for the same squad
    - Promotes true stealth
    - Gives non-combat builds more to worry about
    - Removes disincentive to blast robots that have seen you already

This is good but probably needs some workshopping.

Quick addition about the alert thing: No one seems to have noticed, or at least not pointed it out that I've seen/recall, but you currently gain alert from being partial spotted. That's always been a thing (but you probably wouldn't notice that in particular unless you also had RIF).

I literally have never noticed this wtf.

# Hacking
Okay these are good enough I wanna go through them one by one.

1) Nerf botnet values, as 6% is rather high.

I think botnet is fine as is.

2) Nerf operator network values, this is much more likely to have a relatively larger impact on faster builds.

I will cry if you do this.

3) Manual hacks currently have an offensive penalty to them, what is it, -15% per security level? Perhaps they could have a defensive penalty too.

I think the main issue with this is that defensive hacking % is otherwise constant so it'd be a weird exception to the system.

4) Nerf the offensive and defensive values on hackware. 10 is a nice and round starting value but probably not the smallest viable value for being desirable, the fact that you can kill an Operator for a regular hacking suite feels very powerful for stacking hackware equipped or in inventory.

Ehhhh I think they're fine.

5) Magnify the penalty for pulling schematics that are prototypes, and possibly be more strict about making high-value items prototypes, lrn. sensor array comes to mind.

I'd take this a step further. Remove direct hacking schematics. I hate scroll of wish mechanics.

# Closing thoughts

But we can talk about crazy things without committing to them.

Yeah, and I'm really down with the idea somebody mentioned of scattershotting out builds and forcing playtests to see which are best. Like what MTF did with dig nerf. Sadly, the issue is I feel like we're all too stubborn to change our mind based on playtesting... I know I am. None of you will ever be able to tell me Hype EM is bad.

I recently lost a game on stream where there was a Researcher guarding the door to the S7 cache... I was on treads and didn't have enough hacking to open the door. I tried to use FLK to assimilate the researcher, and it missed. It had a 95% chance PLUS the 10% targeting bonus (which I know doesn't get added on), and yet I still missed...

LMFAOOOOOO~ nerd

What if you didn't get scanned instantly?

Uh... This actually wouldn't be terrible. I think people would be just as terrified of researchers, so there'd be the same level of fun, but you leave in that "cave-in" style incentive for emergency manuvers.

Cogmind is explicitly designed for even horrendous part loss and misplay to be recoverable into a win, which for a roguelike is probably too forgiving, but certainly runs should still be loseable.

Nahhh I think it's fine for a roguelike to have 1shot protection

I have always felt that there are too many lower/upper cave maps and they should be compressed to a single (hopefully more challenging floor).

I agree! But I think changing the way caves plays is also on *the list*

Before I go here are my two dreams:
1. I think you shouldn't be able to see the mass of unidentified parts until you attach them.
2. Garrisons should always loop and RIF should in turn be nerfed later in the game to offset the snowball. As it stands I feel kind of bad getting no loops my whole run orz even though I know that's a rare misfortune.

Writing posts on the forms is so exhausting holy sh!t. I forget I'm surrounded by like, 40 year olds with attention spans when I'm in the Discord chat and I can go full feral rat mode.

2

Strategies / Re: Chronowheel Uses *Spoilery*

« on: September 30, 2020, 09:03:59 PM »

Another relevant option, for the sake of completeness: You can do a 1000 damage vortex explosion (distributed across 10 chunks) of vortex damage in about a 16-ish tile radius by using SR on it. I don't know if there are any practical uses for that, but I suspect it might be relevant to some corner cases.

3

Ideas / Re: Dealing with the Hackware Snowball Effect

« on: January 06, 2017, 07:27:21 PM »

Another option would be to cause datajacks to lose durability on use.

I only recently considered serious attempts into hacking, and I've always considered it a matter of the machine network and hostile manipulation first and foremost. When I first considered datajacks, I didn't look at it as a "combat situation option" hardly at all; instead, I saw "ally making machine." Given the extra amount of information and map control I had due to hacking the machine network, I saw allies as a sort of extension to that specific metagame. They could be used as distractions, scouts, room cleaners, escape options, sentries, so on and so forth; at the very least, it was quite different from the firepower I would consider them in combat builds.
The problem I ran into with datajacks, though, was that it was nearly impossible to reliably use them early on. As I practiced hacking builds more, I would favor melee weapons over datajacks in nearly every case. After reading the Discord chat, though, I saw that datajacks seemed to be entirely ignored in every instance other than late game snowballing. In my understanding, they are entirely unappealing to players without detailed knowledge of the snowballing process, yet a game breaking one-size-fits-all strategy for those who do. Perhaps this could stand to be leveled out.

Hacking builds already have access to a reasonable strategic combat option: regular weapons. Datajacks don't need to be kept as a sustainable source of power; on the sliding scale of short term verses long term, it would seem out of place if they were. If the emphasis was taken off of their relevance as a weapon and shifted towards something which becomes more important in the information game, the hacking snowball problem could be solved without sacrificing the novelty of the build. And best of all, machine hacking (which in my experience is spot on  ) would remain unscathed by the re-balancing!

As far as details go, datajacks could take a number of forms. What makes sense most intuitively to me is a more reasonable chance of hacking success with a very limited number of uses. This would force players to decide whether or not an encounter warrants their "emergency" datajack, for one, which would turn their use into a tactic rather than a strategy. Furthermore, it would provide fledgling hackers (Perhaps -8 onwards) with additional tactical options. A valuable "charge" could be used on an excavator, or it could be saved for an emergency. Cogmind could make an attempt to assimilate an isolated Warden to provide limited security or escape options. And finally, late in the game, an assimilation-based attack on research would be impossible to pull off regardless of hacking suite snowballing, returning those floors to a more reasonable balance. This could prove a far more engaging experience for hackers than the late game steamroll.

Another element of robot hacking is the varying difficulty between robots. A serf, for instance, serves an entirely different purpose than an administrator, and a hunter serves a different purpose than a warden. To stop the weaker robots from being devalued, perhaps more difficult robots could require more durability instead of being more difficult to hack. This would provide more options for Cogmind while balancing every robot assimilation decision it (they?) makes: Four serfs could be argued to be just as valuable as one warden.

Hackware could interface with a limited-use datajack in an interesting way too. System shields could catch up to their more popular brethren, hacking suites, by allowing additional uses of datajacks. Allowing this would also emphasize their relevance to hacking in particular over other types of builds.

The biggest problem I see with this sort of implementation is that it would go against Cogmind's limited-consumables approach. If datajacks were turned into expendable candies to be stockpiled while being readily available, that could cause tedium issues of its own. Still, it would be less tedious to manage datajacks than hackware. I could imagine the frustrating hackware-fabricating rat race continuing even if they started to lose durability over time.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

All of this being said, there's a lot of spoilers involved with the hacking metagame which alter my perception of it a bit. While I've found some unauthorized hacks, like Decoy and Overload, there are many more I'm staying away from until I discover them in the game. Botnet, detonate, and the one that acts like a sensor array are all very good examples of seemingly important hacks which don't show up in my games. (I'll find the buggers ANY DAY NOW  ) Likewise, the lore provides a great deal of insight into the information game. The most valuable thing I took away from Warlord, for instance, wasn't the trojans but the description of squad dispatches and garrison functionality. There also may be more to hacking that I don't even know of. While a lot of this doesn't have to do directly with robot hacking, that's my background as far as that entire aspect of the game is concerned. Perhaps the current state of datajacks make more sense given some spoiler knowledge. And besides, the machine network and robot hacking are closely related, since they come from the same build archetype.

Disclaimer: I haven't... Well... Won, per say. I still have a lot of the game to figure out. My perception of the "way things work" is likely a bit distorted, is all: My current understanding can only get me as far as -1.

4

Fixed Bugs & Non-Bugs / Re: Unusable Weapon Slot

« on: December 11, 2016, 11:13:48 AM »

     Yes, I remember flailing about at a repair station on a prior floor. I believe it was materials three, right after coming out of storage. During storage, I'd acquired a hoard of pristine bipedal allies all at once. I was perpetually suspicious of the game's generosity, so I tried to get most of them killed off before they "betrayed" me, but a couple of them made it out of the branch, one missing a weapon. At that point, I figured I might as well keep them around, but I couldn't figure out what the unarmed one would be useful for other than decoy duty. But before I could apply him to that, I stumbled across a repair station. I'd always seen the "refit" option available there, but I never knew what it did; I'm still very new to the game. My best guess was that it was used to repair allied robots, so I hit the command a bunch of times. I ended up getting locked out (I really wanted to restore my ally), but I got some notification about this "backup laser 1: thing and a ~30 second timer. Knowing I would probably die if I stayed, I ran off, and that was the last of the matter I heard of. My allies died shortly afterwards.
    At no point do I remember possessing or interacting with the weapon. I never equipped it, and it never showed up in my inventory. I never noticed it taking damage.
    I don't know what a mechanic is or how one might have "given" it to me, but if the repair station didn't, perhaps that could have been the source.
    However, there is a point which I think may have caused the peculiarity. In storage, I stumbled across a beautiful pristine prototype guided EMP launcher weapon which I carried around with me until just recently in the save file, when I botched the repair hack (Detailed in my last post). I still had this, and only this, equipped for the floor after storage and the first floor of factory. At least, that's what I recall. Now, I don't know exactly what refit does, but if it "gives" me this item by directly equipping it to my weapon slot, then perhaps it didn't recognize that the EMP launcher took up two slots? That could cause a conflict, if the repair station saw that I had only one weapon equipped but I had two available slots, without recognizing that the weapon was two slots "wide".
    That would also explain why this hasn't come up before, since most people would consciously realize that a refit would be useless without an open slot. I didn't know what refits did (I still don't really), so I didn't make the connection that it would be a waste of a hack. Multi-slot weapons also seem quite rare, which would also cause it not to have come up (The EMP launcher was the only one I've ever seen, and that was a prototype on a branch).

5

Fixed Bugs & Non-Bugs / Unusable Weapon Slot

« on: December 10, 2016, 04:30:35 PM »

My Cogmind spent one evolution point on weapons, bringing the total available slots to three. I had formerly been equipping a prototype two-slot guided EMP launcher weapon. When I clicked on the button to attach a single slot weapon (Gauss canon) from my inventory, the message "no free slot". This was also the case with dragging and using ctrl+number. I could still reassign the EMP weapon, and it would take up the new slot, but attempting to then attach the Gauss Canon resulted in the same error. Assuming this was behavior related to the EMP weapon, I continued playing briefly, and eventually lost the weapon to a failed repair hack. However, upon replacing my weapons, I could only ever equip two (single slot) at a time, regardless of their arrangement. I gave up after a couple of different equipment permutations; although I had three slots available, only two could be used at any given time. At every point, I had plenty of matter and energy.
The error persists upon reloading the game.
I couldn't find any information in the manual or online which would suggest this to be intended behavior. If it is, though, then the "no free slot" error is misleading.

I am running Cogmind on Arch Linux using Wine. Transferring the save file to a clean installation on a machine running Windows 10 did not solve the problem.