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[Pimski]

Today I finished my first run wherein I encountered sterilisation. These runs take quite a while, and the time I can play is a bit limited, so I had hoped that one run would teach me everything I needed to know about sterilisation, and allow me to form a well-rounded opinion. Because of several misplays on my part, combined with less than stellar luck, I feel like my last run wasn't the perfect example I had hoped it would be. Nevertheless, I think it's still worthwhile to state my opinions about this new mechanic here. I would like to add the disclaimer that this opinion may be subject to change upon further experimentation.


First of all, the positive parts. The main motivation for the implementation of sterilisation, in my understanding, was to prevent infinite robot farming. In this regard the system is undeniably succesful. The fact that it stops any and all types of robot spawns puts a very strict limit on the possible number of robots that can be slain in a single map. It does this in a way that is unlikely to affect newer players' experience negatively, and it clearly communicates to the player what is happening. The player is given ample time to sort out their parts and leave. In fact, there is so much time that, on flight at least, the very existence of the heat aspect of sterilisation felt completely irrelevant.


Then, the negative parts. There are multiple angles to consider here, but I will stick with looking from the viewpoint of score, as I think it allows me to most concisely get across my point.

The point of the current competitive scoring system is to allow players to compare runs to one another, and to their own previous runs, and to gain an abstract measure of the quality of those runs. There are multiple ways of defining this abstract quality, but in cogmind, I would like to think that it is primarily meant to convey the strength of the player's build and overall strategy, with a specific focus on their combative abilities. Since it is difficult to measure something as abstract as 'combat strength', we take the easiest approach; the more bots you kill, the stronger you apparently were. Though this system has its disadvantages, it works surprisingly well for most run-of-the-mill runs. That is, until we start looking at the very extreme cases.

Under the new sterilisation mechanic, it can occur that a cogmind that still has ample combative strength is unable to get more score, simply because there is nothing left to use its combative strength against. This creates the dilemma that score no longer functions as an abstract indicator of combat strength, and thus loses its original meaning.

This effect disproportionally impacts some types of builds over others. Since the limit is per floor rather than overall, builds that delay their combative ability for later benefits are affected far more than builds that rely solely on combat throughout the entire game. This upsets the balance that exists between these types of builds. Because of this, one of the primary functions of score (comparing score with other players) becomes skewed, because it starts to depend heavily on playstyle.

In essence, the new sterilisation mechanics seeks to solve the issue of the lack of challenge that existed in relatively easily farming access forever, by completely removing the challenge in the first place. As the ambient heat feels completely irrelevant, I think I can safely say it does nothing to replace this challenge with another. Above all else, to me this simply feels Not Fun. One of the most rewarding aspects of cogmind is that you are always able to challenge yourself to perform better than on your last run. Sterilisation seems to discourage this. I would like to have my scores as an abstract measure to compare myself to, to gauge my own improvement at the game. And while I feel like I can always improve still, I suspect my score will not grow with this improvement anymore, because of the soft cap that is sterilisation. This is extremely frustrating.


Remarks:
I realise that my entire argument hinges on the fact that it is possible to engage sterilisation and still do extended, and then have core and parts to spare yet. While I am completely convinced that this is perfectly feasible, my current lack of having done so makes my argument less credible. I'll do my best to demonstrate my point as soon as time permits it.

Another remark is that, as will be clear from my explanation above, the negative effects of sterilisation are likely to only affect a very minor subgroup of players. In fact, I would not be very surprised to find out that I am the only one that thinks this way. I can hardly ask the mechanics of the entire game to be adjusted to suit my tastes. However, I still feel there is some value in sharing my candid opinion in a structured manner, so as to at least allow for meaningful discussion of the topic.

Signed,
Someone with apparently too much time on their hands (Ye gods, I should have stuck with discord.)

[Tone]

Have we talked about Zio. Metafield Generator in this thread yet?  Its effect is extremely powerful -- quite possibly the strongest item in the game for certain builds? -- especially for how early you get it and how easy it is to protect for the entire game.  It's strength combined with its longevity is very out of place alongside the balanced design of most other utilities. It takes the fastest propulsion in the game, and makes it twice as fast.  I propose to either nerf the speed bonus or to increase the coverage, mass, energy/heat cost to make it more difficult to use.  I wonder if having it double the energy and heat costs of your propulsion along with its speed would feel more balanced; it would still be incredibly strong but the downsides would be more in line with the upsides.  Maybe its coverage should be increased to 50-80 to bring it into the range of other powerful utilities like force fields and phase shifters (note that it still has more integrity than these utilities and isn't a combat utility so it would still last far longer overall).  Or keep the coverage lowish but also reduce the integrity so it wouldn't survive so many hits (putting pressure on the build to use armor or shielding), similar to some of the other zio. parts like their weapons.

For reference, zio. metafield generator doubles flight and hover speed, and has 3 mass, 100 integrity, 8 coverage, 20 energy upkeep, 0 heat upkeep.  The only other devices that come close to its integrity/coverage ratio are coolant injectors (which deplete their own integrity on use). 
(Actually, *that's* and interesting idea: what if the ZMG essentially "overloaded" your propulsion, and either your propulsion or the ZMG itself took damage over time similar to current overload effects?)

[zxc]

Though if it gets implemented I would strongly prefer it if the recent melee digging nerfs were reverted.

Yes, the idea is to get rid of the move/attack based chance to cave-in. Then it's back to simple digging for 1-2 tile walls.

If it's purely time-based chance to cave-in for dirt, there might be an issue with incentivising ranged weapons to dig out a long path before flying across. Melee would be dumb because to dig further, you need to expose yourself for the duration of the attack, and repeat that for the course of your tunnel.

One solution to that might be to make cave-in chance not flat, but increase over time. E.g. 5% chance per turn, increasing at a rate of 1% per additional turn.

Have we talked about Zio. Metafield Generator in this thread yet?

I think I've only used it once, or maybe not at all. It does seem a bit broken. I think solutions based on adjusting integrity or coverage feel kinda bad. What about making the energy upkeep insane, so that it's about giving speed with slot efficiency, not speed with slot efficiency and energy and heat efficiency? Or perhaps it can generate heaps of heat. Heat should be used way more by the game mechanics (more on this later).

[zxc]

Some new suggestions and brainstorming I've been doing, mostly my own ideas but some are rehashing discord convos. I realise some of these suggestions are huge reworks and therefore unlikely to be implemented, but don't see anything wrong with brainstorming and posting here.

- More machinery with real effects
  - Machines that confuse sensing
  - Machines that confuse tracking (allows you to juke bots)
  - Machines that cause corruption
  - Target specific machines with terminal hacks to rewire them or disable
  - Machines that contribute matter to fabrication network
  - Machines that aid tracking abilities of extermination squads
  - Machines that facilitate the hauler transport network (disabling it removes TNC distress call ability)
  - Machines that cause heat
  - Machines that interfere with combat targeting
  - Some machines that allow terminal hacks while operating and inhibit the hacks if disabled
  - Other machines that inhibit terminal hacks while operating and allow the hacks when disabled
- More static defenses
  - Turrets which are immobile and tanky
    - Hack, destroy, or avoid
    - Different types based on items
      - Energy mantle turret provides shielding for nearby allies
      - Visual processing turret provides enhanced vision for nearby allies
    - Don't show on sensors
    - RIF interactions
      - RIF ability to be ignored by / allied
      - Turret couplers?
- Transmission jammers to not require LOS to target
  - It was changed to require LOS to nerf cheese that can be nerfed in other ways
  - Instead, within-squad communication can be non-jammable
  - This results in more consistent and predictable jamming
- Sensors to change to heat sensors
  - Bots have different heat baseline levels
  - Sensor determines range, signal interpreter determines heat threshold for detection
  - Provide heat sensors to other bots to detect Cogmind with the same mechanic - hunters?
  - Meaningful penalty to running hot and good incentive to use cryofiber webs
- Alternative sensor change
  - Sensors merged with signal interpreters as a processor
  - Sensors made short range like Imp Sensor Array
  - Nerfs sensor range, stops swap tedium, protects sensors via low coverage
- Heat made into a much more persistent and in-depth threat
  - Reduce all sources of heat dissipation so heat buildup in combat is unavoidable
  - Increase heat thresholds for effects
  - More heat thresholds for effect severity
  - Larger effect of heat on accuracy over the course of a fight
  - Reducing dissipation buffs heat shielding
  - More variable ambient heat levels (caves negative heat?)
- More depth to terminal hacking
  - Change machine hacking trace mechanics
    - Lower detection chance
    - Getting a trace started will dispatch an investigation squad X turns from now
    - Trace progress contributes to squad dispatch accuracy
    - Effects: more squads on the map if you keep getting traced, less automatic hacking up to the limit
  - Hack to tunnel through other terminals to protect your location
  - Target a quadrant of the map before deploying a hack to access data records
    - Instead of access(main/branch) providing simple map-wide results, search targeted areas
  - More 'hacker-like' feel to hacking
  - More interactions with other machines
    - Hack terminals to redirect matter to fabricators or unlock fabricators?
  - Operators remotely detect hacking attempts at their terminals
- 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
  - Alert contributes to enemy density (alert X = X squads added to floor per Y turns)
  - Alert floor to reduce effectiveness of alert purging?
  - Alert purge replaced with reduced alert gain for next X turns?
  - Assaults to not have uber-tracking, but dispatched to an area instead
    - Reduces death spiral a bit
    - Promotes moving from a battlefield
    - Still operates as a clock but with more nuance
  - Recall(extermination) replaced with redirects
  - Extermination tracking ability gets stronger with proximity?
  - Extermination as the anti-hacker version of assault squads?
  - Extermination squad tracking changed to high, finite turns like 250
    - ECM will have a new use
    - Redirects can delay them and eat into their tracking time
- Flight overhaul
  - Current slower flight units merged with hover as the 'fast-end' of the hover spectrum
  - New flight units start at around 20 base speed -2 modifier
  - Less support, more fragile
  - Purely stealth the same way that treads are purely combat
  - Removal of 10 speed soft cap, instead all prop is limited to -1 modifier past 10 speed
  - 11 flight units to hit 5 speed (significant resource costs limit power of 5 speed builds)
  - Increased evasion from speed
- Materials changes
  - Higher enemy density, patrols, around outskirts, as well as the better item caches
  - Provides mats its own flavour and allows for more stealth while also being easier for new players
  - Gradually expanding map like scrapyard?
- Metafield
  - Needs more disadvantages
  - Energy/heat upkeep?
  - Integrity decay?
    - New stat for items? Exile loot? Vortex items?
- Mass support utils
  - Subvert disadvantages of fastest prop types
  - Tread on the purpose of prop slots
  - Probably could be safely removed
- Guns
  - Lower coverage to make them less like 'cannons but bad'
  - Lower resource costs as well?
  - Promotes more weapon slots and gunslinging, especially non-KI crit

[GJ]

The notion of what score is supposed to represent has always seemed somewhat wishy-washy, I'd like to put out a half-serious suggestion that the condition of the first and second + should be worth 100k and a million in bonus score, with the latter having such extremely difficult design as to be nigh impossible, ideally ++ wins would occur 0-1 times per version of Beta, emphasis on the zero. Competing for score would be a whole lot more interesting and fun than it currently is. This would also reduce the average length of a run, extended endgame feels relatively worse if a player has to go through the full gamut all the time due to failure being highly unlikely (see my ~9 ++ wins in 10.1 already, with a few runs intentionally discarding ++ to look at the new endings). Ultimately dying is the best thing that can happen to players of roguelikes, maximum fun and all that, winning sucks a bit when it's common.

metafield

To an extent metafield feels fine to me because it's prop overloading without the nuisance, you kinda get what you would "otherwise" except the way it plays out is more fun, including the part where you kill Z-Imprinter. And in general fast feels more inherently broken than faster. The suggestions here are potentially interesting though, the one about doubling both downsides and upsides, and how it could be a util that e.g. turns cmb. hover (what you would use, i.e. max integrity) into overloaded prop, would change the identity of the item and how you want to play it.

  - Machines that cause corruption

This is probably bad because of the possibility of not carrying backup modules because you expect to stay at 0% corruption (at least for a while), getting bumped to 1% because you got close to a machine probably doesn't feel good, neither does equipping something before going past the machine.

- Alternative sensor change
  - Sensors merged with signal interpreters as a processor
  - Sensors made short range like Imp Sensor Array
  - Nerfs sensor range, stops swap tedium, protects sensors via low coverage

Sensors having a close-to-medium-range identity is something I like, optics for longer hallways. It's currently a bit silly how Exp. Sensors (26) are how you want to leverage Helical Railguns (26), not Spectral Analyzers (16+8 = 24).

- Mass support utils
  - Subvert disadvantages of fastest prop types
  - Tread on the purpose of prop slots
  - Probably could be safely removed

but muh core hover with mass utils strats, they don't tread on the purpose of prop slots when your prop slots are treads for armor
They are also somewhat nice in-inventory items in general, when you need more support than your prop slots afford. And very relevant on wheels at the moment.

- Guns
  - Lower coverage to make them less like 'cannons but bad'
  - Lower resource costs as well?
  - Promotes more weapon slots and gunslinging, especially non-KI crit

While I kinda miss Com. Railguns and Coilguns, and they were more satisfying than Com. Mass Drivers are... a general change to guns probably isn't warranted. Gunslinging with 3-5 weapons at once is already enabled by the frequency of kinetic guns (Sentries, Hunters, etc.) and while the coverage is a part of what blocks even more weapons than that from being a great build, the idea of 3-5w gunsling is partially to have your weapons serve as integrity that you pick up from the ground. You want some distribution between engines, treads, and guns getting shot or you're wasting all of those items when they drop. Thermal gunsling is not competitive due to a combination of thermal gun integrity, heat, and qcap being good on the better thermal guns like Dispersion Rifle. It's fairly satisfying that grunts actually lose their weapons quickly if you keep missing core, means you don't always need to EM them.

[Kyzrati]

So yeah MTF's run was definitely more of a challenge/extreme take on the digless thing, and one-tile digs end up being plenty good enough for most stealth while W-E-W is less essential (but obviously helpful for completely avoiding almost anything), though I do not think it's essential to ensure that single-tile digs get even more common due to layouts.

edit: I remembered that the dig change also removes cave-in for walls. This could be used tactically and would definitely be a buff for combat. I picture more 'interesting' scenarios involving builders. Some potential for cheese involving penetrating weapons though.

Attacking from inside walls should still cause them to cave in.

I encouraged others to post but they aren't doing it. We had a short talk on discord about the (not new) idea of making caves one single large map instead of the two normal size ones now. A lot of people were fans (me, Sherlock, Raine, Tone). It's not a balance issue but it could definitely be fun.

That approach has as many drawbacks as advantages, and there are good reasons caves are sized as they currently are. Among them are that it forces a certain pace of progression while also offering a return-to-0b10 option at approximately the half-way point, and that current cave sizes make it easier to add and control content without causing too much chaos and undesirable side effects. Larger caves are even more likely to feel empty unless they are simply packed with stuff.

Turning two-cave progression into a single cave is not going to happen.

Some new suggestions and brainstorming I've been doing

o_O

Yeah that's a long list xD. My own general TODO list includes a number of the same things. Also I even noticed at least one thing on your list which is in the game already

Other notes:

I think in the end no_stack reduces a lot of build versatility and while it definitely would add to certain types of fun, it would likely reduce versatility and nuance in builds so seems like a bad idea. I kinda want to test it anyway, which is something we might still do depending on how quickly I get past all the stuff I'm busy with right now, and also on how many other changes would be necessary to make a real test of it. Further expanding the number and types of storage units may actually work to mitigate some of the negative effects of no_stack, so I like that complementary idea.

I like the metafield nerf idea that damages propulsion

RE sterilization, score, and Pimski:

You can still get a ridiculous number of kills and massive score if you go into Command and destroy everything, after of course clearing out Access and maybe another area or two before that.

It's also true that technically builds which can repeatedly fight through high security across more maps will get a higher score, and this is also much harder to do (than just saving up all the best gear for one really really long Final Fight), so deserves a higher score for it.

Separately: In the end Cogmind isn't really designed for being a competitive scoring game. Score is in a lot of ways a basic measure of how much you did--I mean you even get a higher score for just hitting plot points and visiting maps

Naturally people are going to compare their runs to others, though, and we even have leaderboards for doing it, so it's nice to try to make that comparison somewhat meaningful, but there will always be deficiencies since it's not designed like that from the ground up, so no matter what's done, there will always be certain play styles that have an advantage over others, depending on what's rewarded, and by how much. You can incentivise certain behaviors among people going for score, since that specifically defines the game they're playing, as opposed to score simply being one kind of reflection of the game they played.

[zxc]

  - Machines that cause corruption

This is probably bad because of the possibility of not carrying backup modules because you expect to stay at 0% corruption (at least for a while), getting bumped to 1% because you got close to a machine probably doesn't feel good, neither does equipping something before going past the machine.

Just avoid the machine. Easy peasy. Now, enemy robots constantly going past the machine and dying might be a real problem...

- Guns
  - Lower coverage to make them less like 'cannons but bad'
  - Lower resource costs as well?
  - Promotes more weapon slots and gunslinging, especially non-KI crit

While I kinda miss Com. Railguns and Coilguns, and they were more satisfying than Com. Mass Drivers are... a general change to guns probably isn't warranted. Gunslinging with 3-5 weapons at once is already enabled by the frequency of kinetic guns (Sentries, Hunters, etc.) and while the coverage is a part of what blocks even more weapons than that from being a great build, the idea of 3-5w gunsling is partially to have your weapons serve as integrity that you pick up from the ground. You want some distribution between engines, treads, and guns getting shot or you're wasting all of those items when they drop. Thermal gunsling is not competitive due to a combination of thermal gun integrity, heat, and qcap being good on the better thermal guns like Dispersion Rifle. It's fairly satisfying that grunts actually lose their weapons quickly if you keep missing core, means you don't always need to EM them.

I'm not sure I find this convincing except for the risks in messing with enemy bot loadouts (though ultimately I think you would kill enemy bots much faster if gun coverage was reduced). We have determined that storing tons of items in inventory is bad, and while most builds don't need to do this, gunslinging does need a decent store of backups due to its levels of attrition. It also seems like a sensible way to better differentiate guns from cannons. Why should guns be almost identical to cannons except in damage?

edit: I remembered that the dig change also removes cave-in for walls. This could be used tactically and would definitely be a buff for combat. I picture more 'interesting' scenarios involving builders. Some potential for cheese involving penetrating weapons though.

Attacking from inside walls should still cause them to cave in.

I think it is important that they do not, because that renders 2 tile digs with melee risky and annoying. This is one of the main things I wanted to fix with the dig suggestion. I don't like using ranged weapons for doing small digs.

Also I even noticed at least one thing on your list which is in the game already

:thinking:

[GJ]

gunslinging does need a decent store of backups due to its levels of attrition

One of the optimal ways to play 4 weapon slots is to equip 4x kinetic guns and have melee+launcher+kincannon in inventory because they are low coverage, highly efficient, high integrity whereas your active loadout is common items getting shot and replaced. Could play most of the game with just 3 weapons in inventory if you wanna stick to low inventory (would mean equipping the occasional TH/EM gun), don't really need the kingun backups because you don't need to be all-in on gunslinging 100% of the time instead of 90%. The identity that the different weapon categories have here is at least pretty good.

[Sherlockkat]

Long time since I posted here:

I had been following this discussion silently and thought I would toss my 2 cents in.

Re storage nerf: I am in favor of no_stack. From what I understand, the other nerf involves tweaking storage mass/capacity and my opposition to that is that ppl are either going to find out that they can get away with stacking storage anyway and find out that the weaker version of their original builds are sufficient. That is undesirable if the goal is to move away from the large storage meta. It just results in the build being slighly unfun but viable anyways. If it turns out that large storage builds are no longer viable, the nerf would just be an uninteresting verison of the no_stack version.

Other suggestions/modifications:

I haven't been active in the game, so feel free to ignore this. 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 think one interesting verison would be to spawn the player in the middle of a larger map and have the complex exit in one end and the caves exit in another and have that be random.
 

[Tone]

I think it would be worthwhile to review some of the more powerful alien artifacts and how AAs in general fit into Cogmind's endgame meta.  I don't know what the spoiler policy is here so I'll just put the rest of this post in a spoiler block (S7 spoilers).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The energy and cooling AAs are too common in S7.  Many games leave S7 with lots of free energy generation and heat dissipation, to the extent that at worst you gain several free slots worth of energy/cooling, and at best you can sustain a very energy-hungry build without even equipping an engine (yes, I've done this). 

Proposal #1.  Make all of the energy and heat artifacts less common.  I'm picturing a scenario where you get either (not both, just one selected at random) the integrated singularity reactor or the integrated heat negator *guaranteed*, probably located in the top-right AA shell of the LRC lab? (The one with a tile for a single AA that is sometimes empty.)  In addition to this, the lesser integrated reactor and integrated dissipator would be elevated to the status of artifacts that are protected by S7 guard (in place of the integrated singularity reactors and heat negators which would no longer spawn in these prefabs).  The net effect is that players get less free energy/cooling on average.  The benefits of this are more careful consideration of overall build composition, energy use, and heat upkeep; evolving a third power slot becomes more appealing and an interesting build option; Zhirov's AA increases in value, as does Lab's.  Players with the subatomic replicator could still replicate the AAs that they do find.  That is, unless...

Proposal #2.  Subatomic replicators aren't as effective at replicating integrated singularity reactors and integrated heat negators.  I don't know if replication of these should be blocked entirely, upgraded to a supercharged variant that has less overall value than two full AAs, or maybe the duplicate comes out as their lesser counterpart (either a plain integrated reactor or dissipator).  This would be much less extreme and wouldn't change the current meta *too* much, while also putting a small limit on the slotless energy and cooling numbers currently possible.

I think these AAs are very interesting and that they *should* be powerful.  These items break the rules of the game in a really compelling way, and seeing one for the first time is one of those novel unforgettable player experiences.  I think it's really awesome that we can take on a somewhat challenging branch to gain what are essentially additional build slots.  But S7 has a tendency to give the player so many of these that they no longer feel special, and that you gain far too much of an otherwise scarce resource for free (mostly looking at energy generation but the cooling is very powerful on certain builds as well).

To make some practical comparisons, the integrated singularity reactor gives the same energy generation as a rating 9 quantum reactor, with no mass, heat, or *build slots*  associated with it (or storage, if we're being fair).  The integrated heat negator gives 50% more heat dissipation than an exp. heat sink, and just slightly (5%) more than an exp. cooling system.

I prefer something closer to Proposal #1, which lends itself to more interesting build planning and less absurd levels of free energy and cooling.  A lot of players use these AAs as a crutch and it allows players to coast through the extended endgame without having to give any real consideration to two of the game's primary resources.  Bringing down the S7 power boost will make endgame build considerations more interesting and promote build diversity.

[GJ]

My own experience with S7:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Currently it just feels high variance, with I presume a % chance that an AA will be one thing from the pool, CRM included. Sometimes you get enough energy to dissuade you from evolving further power slots, sometimes you get no energy at all which can feel really bad if you also miss IR, tends to mean you saw a bunch of CRMs. Main issue with making energy/heat AAs less common is you really don't want the game to show you even more CRMs, probably don't want it showing more IRs either --- current IR frequency feels fine with most runs getting either 0 or 1, the occasional run with 2 or more, but they're likely a bit too frequent than they are infrequent.

Disregarding whether it would seem weird, purely in terms of gameplay SR on Singularity giving a standard variant instead would be good, currently SR is a "hold in case or until Singularity is identified" item because that's the best use for it, and it can have much more interesting applications than that, but you don't usually want to go for them over +20 energy.

Heat/energy AA values are possibly fine as is? I don't think they're egregious. It can definitely feel excessive through variance, though escaping a second power slot or dissipation/injector usage entirely is not easy in my experience, maybe I just use very high heat weapon-loadouts.  Less heat/energy help from the average S7... probably makes the game more interesting, though it'll also breed more Matter Drive builds and those are already very good.

Personally I think Hvy. Regen and Matter Drive vault are bigger balance issues than the AAs, those are extremely good for guaranteed items. Heat AAs sorta don't feel like a problem to me, probably a direct result of exp. injectors still feeling too strong, I don't ever struggle with heat on the builds I play (though you do need the 1x injector) and would almost never consider replicating a negator or equipping an Exp. Cooling System or Coolant Network.

[zxc]

Agree that AAs need nerfing. What about removing the large version of the heat and energy AAs? This makes them less of an obvious target for SR and reduces build power slightly for extended.

Also, it would be cool to have more instances of enemies (like S7 guards) holding AAs in their inventory.

[GJ]

As it is of some relevance to the recent discussion, I will highlight a run I just played: https://cogmind-api.gridsagegames.com/scoresheets/zdEEsud7mfcDK3ud7.txt

This is a slow-combat (treads) ++ win,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

utilizing Alpha Cannon and EMDS for A0

with no S7. I've also previously done ++ without S7 using a treads-multirails type of build. What this demonstrates is that energy-greedy strats are not that necessary for doing extended endgame, at least for combat. Something like flight could possibly need a lot of energy supply, I've done a hover++ without R branches that managed to support its energy costs with a VCR, Imp. Fusion Compressor and energy wells. There are alternatives to beating the endgame than just having a ton of AA support from S7, so maybe it's not necessary for those to be as good/frequent as they are, though you do want S7 to feel somewhat satisfying in terms of what you get, and having it occasionally enable certain types of energy-greedy builds is good.

[mtf]

Proposal #1.  Make all of the energy and heat artifacts less common.  I'm picturing a scenario where you get either (not both, just one selected at random) the integrated singularity reactor or the integrated heat negator *guaranteed*, probably located in the top-right AA shell of the LRC lab? (The one with a tile for a single AA that is sometimes empty.)  In addition to this, the lesser integrated reactor and integrated dissipator would be elevated to the status of artifacts that are protected by S7 guard (in place of the integrated singularity reactors and heat negators which would no longer spawn in these prefabs).  The net effect is that players get less free energy/cooling on average.  The benefits of this are more careful consideration of overall build composition, energy use, and heat upkeep; evolving a third power slot becomes more appealing and an interesting build option; Zhirov's AA increases in value, as does Lab's.  Players with the subatomic replicator could still replicate the AAs that they do find.  That is, unless...

I really don't see how nerfing the energy / heat AA's makes the game any more interesting. I personally don't consider evolving extra engine slots interesting gameplay, they don't *do* anything other than provider power. Utility and weapon slots are where all the interesting mechanics in cogmind lie, and if I have to evolve more engine slots to support the same build, I'm losing those interesting utility or weapon slots. I also don't think they are too common.. I have so many games where I get zero energy AA's and then my builds feel significantly weaker. Also, some builds are so energy hungry that they require energy AA's and those builds will completely disappear if energy AA's are changed significantly, which I think is the opposite of increasing variation.

Finally, if we reduce their spawn rate even further, like GJ said we're going to end up with more CRM's / IR's unless we add more artifacts. Getting 4 CRM's in one s7 feels really bad, and we all know that getting multiple IR's is significantly more impactful than getting multiple energy AA's.

If you want to change energy balance or heat dissipation I would stay away from the interesting AA's. Instead, focus on the fact that coolant injectors are insanely powerful compared to regular cooling systems, or perhaps the fact that energy gen doesn't matter if you carry 5 exp. biowells in your inventory. I think if you can manage to get some AA's that replace cooling utilities or engines you're going to end up with even more interesting builds as you have more slots available to put on other cool utilities or weapons.

As it is of some relevance to the recent discussion, I will highlight a run I just played: https://cogmind-api.gridsagegames.com/scoresheets/zdEEsud7mfcDK3ud7.txt

This is a slow-combat (treads) ++ win,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

utilizing Alpha Cannon and EMDS for A0

with no S7. I've also previously done ++ without S7 using a treads-multirails type of build. What this demonstrates is that energy-greedy strats are not that necessary for doing extended endgame, at least for combat. Something like flight could possibly need a lot of energy supply, I've done a hover++ without R branches that managed to support its energy costs with a VCR, Imp. Fusion Compressor and energy wells. There are alternatives to beating the endgame than just having a ton of AA support from S7, so maybe it's not necessary for those to be as good/frequent as they are, though you do want S7 to feel somewhat satisfying in terms of what you get, and having it occasionally enable certain types of energy-greedy builds is good.

This is a super awesome run, very impressive. I do agree that s7 is not required to ++, though it is much more challenging to do so without s7's support... that said I don't think that acts as evidence that s7's AA's should be nerfed. In reality your path through the game should be part of what helps you direct your end game build... if I want to go for a very energy hungry build, I should probably go to s7 to get some energy AA's. If I want to focus more on offense (and maybe don't want to run a force field), or maybe have issues with alert management, I could instead go to Lab or T and otherwise skip s7.

- 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
- Mass support utils
  - Subvert disadvantages of fastest prop types
  - Tread on the purpose of prop slots
  - Probably could be safely removed

This alert change sounds awesome... I think it makes more logical sense for alert to rise as you get spotted (enemy bots reporting your presence back to MC and all that), whereas killing enemies would "silence" their communications and not affect alert (leaving their superiors wondering what happened)

Mass support utils are interesting in that they are usually not great overall, but if you stick them on flight they enable 2 prop flight builds that have way better energy efficiency than standard 6+ flight builds, or if you stick them on core hover you can use treads as prop armor and fly around at 50 speed. I like these usages but I have to agree that 2 prop flight being the best type of flight feels very strange to me. Not sure what a good solution is here but I definitely don't think they should be removed.

I like the metafield nerf idea that damages propulsion

ughh please no more nerfs that just break parts. Currently it's already somewhat tedious to manage metafield early in F due to energy concerns (lots of toggling until you get something like fusion compressor), this change would just amplify that greatly. Metafield is one of those items that completely changes how certain prop operate (namely looking at hover) and it enables some of the most fun builds in the game... If it has to be nerfed, I would prefer something that doesn't require even more tedious item management... Things like:

* Requiring matter to operate, like a fusion compressor
* Changing the speed increase to be more reasonable, maybe closer to meta fiber
* Causing random heat spikes like corruption effects
* Playing with the overall energy consumption / heat generation balance

If the item just burns out parts randomly it's not going to be worth my time anymore, which would be a shame, because I think it's so much fun. If it's just a slow drain on propulsion then that is slightly better, but overall I'd prefer modifying resource consumption instead of having it consume my parts. Also I can imagine the cheese now where people just run the imprinter all around ZDC till she burns out her prop and they get a free kill... why do I get the feeling there are insidious cheese strats behind the proposal of this nerf?

[zxc]

If metafield generated a huge amount of heat, that could work.

Matter consumption is interesting.

[GJ]

I really don't see how nerfing the energy / heat AA's makes the game any more interesting. I personally don't consider evolving extra engine slots interesting gameplay, they don't *do* anything other than provider power.

More engines or Power Amps or Fusion Compressors or Thermal Generators or MD is more interesting than builds just having enough energy for their plan because they replicated a singularity reactor. The latter being good enough for your energy at 1-2 power slots and no other energy generation is maybe a bit too common at the moment.

if I want to go for a very energy hungry build, I should probably go to s7 to get some energy AA's. If I want to focus more on offense (and maybe don't want to run a force field), or maybe have issues with alert management, I could instead go to Lab or T and otherwise skip s7.

Yep, sounds good to me. Another balance issue with S7 is that there's so many sec-1 terminals to botnet and purge/recall at, you can exit the map at low-sec/sec-1 without playing an actual hacking build, by just killing operators for a hacking suite or entering the level with ~2 offensive hackware in inventory. If you play combat your build can't die when it has hvy. regen and exp. biometal, so there is no challenge, often just a big & boring map. Currently S7 is an interesting decision/map exclusively for imprinting and I guess if you have intercepts.

2-prop flight, metafield

2-prop is slower than multi-prop flight, that is supposed to be the downside of mass support utils there. I think some of the proposed metafield changes are interesting, but I also think metafield isn't inherently busted relative to imprinting, it seems a real choice. I think more than the metafield the fast+stealth builds people play it with still seem far too easy, it's also why the speed of 2-prop flight is inherently sufficient and you never feel like being even faster. Would be nice if this paradigm was somehow solvable with sensor/dig changes. Although metafield with 2x. Exp. flight is very fast, so maybe a lesser speed boost than halving base speed is reasonable too, seems a good item even at worse numbers. I've had runs where the effect was excessive and I could've reached roughly speed-cap even with a worse metafield, those weren't 2-prop builds of course.

[Tone]

Also I can imagine the cheese now where people just run the imprinter all around ZDC till she burns out her prop and they get a free kill... why do I get the feeling there insidious cheese strats behind the proposal of this nerf?

Come on man, don't imply that I'm trying to deceive the developer into changing game mechanics just so I can exploit them.  Anything that I post here is only because I think it could potentially improve the overall game experience.  Finding cheese can be fun but most of us only do it so that the game can be updated and improved, the same as with finding bugs.  And poking holes in unimplemented mechanics and ideas is important so it's good to bring up considerations and concerns like yours; that's part of the purpose of this thread.  In this case, the damaging parts idea was one of several that I proposed, and the rationale is that it would be similar to cooled propulsion in both function and theme.

[mtf]

Also I can imagine the cheese now where people just run the imprinter all around ZDC till she burns out her prop and they get a free kill... why do I get the feeling there insidious cheese strats behind the proposal of this nerf?

Come on man, don't imply that I'm trying to deceive the developer into changing game mechanics just so I can exploit them.  Anything that I post here is only because I think it could potentially improve the overall game experience.  Finding cheese can be fun but most of us only do it so that the game can be updated and improved, the same as with finding bugs.  And poking holes in unimplemented mechanics and ideas is important so it's good to bring up considerations and concerns like yours; that's part of the purpose of this thread.  In this case, the damaging parts idea was one of several that I proposed, and the rationale is that it would be similar to cooled propulsion in both function and theme.

I guess it didn't come off that way, but I was just playing around =P Def don't mean any disrespect, tbh I didn't read closely enough and I thought zxc had proposed it and I was poking fun at him since he always has insidious cheese strats in mind. I don't think anybody here is trying to ruin other people's fun and I truly believe we all have the best intentions for this game, so sorry if that came off like I was disgusted by your proposal or something lol

[Tone]

Also I can imagine the cheese now where people just run the imprinter all around ZDC till she burns out her prop and they get a free kill... why do I get the feeling there insidious cheese strats behind the proposal of this nerf?

Come on man, don't imply that I'm trying to deceive the developer into changing game mechanics just so I can exploit them.  Anything that I post here is only because I think it could potentially improve the overall game experience.  Finding cheese can be fun but most of us only do it so that the game can be updated and improved, the same as with finding bugs.  And poking holes in unimplemented mechanics and ideas is important so it's good to bring up considerations and concerns like yours; that's part of the purpose of this thread.  In this case, the damaging parts idea was one of several that I proposed, and the rationale is that it would be similar to cooled propulsion in both function and theme.

I guess it didn't come off that way, but I was just playing around =P Def don't mean any disrespect, tbh I didn't read closely enough and I thought zxc had proposed it and I was poking fun at him since he always has insidious cheese strats in mind. I don't think anybody here is trying to ruin other people's fun and I truly believe we all have the best intentions for this game, so sorry if that came off like I was disgusted by your proposal or something lol

All good man!  I know you too well to seriously think otherwise, but felt the need to reply in case anyone was reading out of context.  Sorry if I sounded overly defensive in my reply 

[Kyzrati]

Attacking from inside walls should still cause them to cave in.

I think it is important that they do not, because that renders 2 tile digs with melee risky and annoying. This is one of the main things I wanted to fix with the dig suggestion. I don't like using ranged weapons for doing small digs.

Of course doing so just restores the cheese potential there... Walls didn't used to cave in, it was added later to block various cheese!

I prefer something closer to Proposal #1, which lends itself to more interesting build planning and less absurd levels of free energy and cooling.  A lot of players use these AAs as a crutch and it allows players to coast through the extended endgame without having to give any real consideration to two of the game's primary resources.  Bringing down the S7 power boost will make endgame build considerations more interesting and promote build diversity.

I do like the idea of somewhat reducing the availability of energy/heat AAs in S7. That's always been a bit overkill, mainly due to the extreme variance and it's never had a big balance pass before. Clearly you sometimes just get way too many. Certainly reducing their number affects the loot table in other ways, but that can be addressed separately.

Also nerfing coolant injectors sounds fine and good.

Mass support utils are interesting in that they are usually not great overall, but if you stick them on flight they enable 2 prop flight builds that have way better energy efficiency than standard 6+ flight builds, or if you stick them on core hover you can use treads as prop armor and fly around at 50 speed. I like these usages but I have to agree that 2 prop flight being the best type of flight feels very strange to me. Not sure what a good solution is here but I definitely don't think they should be removed.

Yeah I almost never like removing things, either, but these have never been balanced (despite several attempts) and I'm not sure how to do it without some weird new mechanic/requirement...

If the item just burns out parts randomly it's not going to be worth my time anymore, which would be a shame, because I think it's so much fun. If it's just a slow drain on propulsion then that is slightly better, but overall I'd prefer modifying resource consumption instead of having it consume my parts. Also I can imagine the cheese now where people just run the imprinter all around ZDC till she burns out her prop and they get a free kill... why do I get the feeling there are insidious cheese strats behind the proposal of this nerf?

It's not random destruction, "burnout" as in slowly damages like the burnout mechanic, which seems fine for a very powerful part. Just not something you use for an entire run, which fast builds are otherwise very good at doing and this one currently just makes them that much better at it.

Huge amounts of heat is also possible, also matter req idea. Any would work really. I prefer the damage approach unless its effect is nerfed, though (which is not as fun).

Imprinter is not a problem, can just have her toggle it if necessary.

The alert changes sound interesting, though that would basically have to be a special build all on its own just to observe and analyze the results. When fully implemented it could have very far-reaching effects...

[Kyzrati]

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).

[Pimski]

Re: Metafield

I honestly really dislike the idea of nerfing metafield, and especially the 'overloading' nerf proposed by Tone. Below I will outline the main reasons I think metafield should not be nerfed, and in the end I will discuss my qualms with this type of nerf in particular.

1. Metafield makes the earlygame challenging. On flight runs, there is very little reason to take risks. If you have a halfway decent flighthack build, you can just hack for any and all schematics you need, and build the perfect extended build by the end of factory. Any parts you fab are likely better or at least as good as anything you could find by taking on the extreme challenges in the game, like killing exiles or Zheroes. This makes flight earlygame boring and trivial. You get some decent flight parts from haulers, get your hackware stack going, put on utility shielding, and just skip your way to lategame.

The existence of metafield changes this. The fact that you can make your lategame state more powerful by getting metafield, incentivizes the player to prepare to take on Zimprinter. Doing so is extremely difficult on flight. This in turn incentivizes players to put together an insanely good build by -7 or -6. This requirement makes the earlygame challenging and interesting. The parts you can get from Zheroes or Brawn, which would otherwise be outdated by the time your fabbing gets online (or at the very least, fabbing easily replaces them, and additionally doesn't require you to keep the parts in your inventory throughout the entire midgame), now have real value.


2. Metafield makes slot distribution challenging. It has been said earlier in this thread, but metafield synergizes especially well with low-prop flight builds. This synergy incentivizes the player to plan their evolutions around acquiring metafield. This induces a significant challenge. The early- and midgame become significantly harder. At this point in the game, the player doesn't have enough energy to run metafield yet, supposing they even managed to get it, and additionally there are few good mass support utils available. The resource management this entails makes the midgame a lot more fun.


3. Near-similar lategame builds can be achieved without metafield as well. If you take a 4-prop exp. thruster build, it already nearly reaches the speed cap. The energy requirement compared to 2-prop with metafield is very similar. You have to spend an extra slot, and deal with more propulsion attrition, but you also get the extra support from the additional thrusters. Four-prop slot distribution also makes the earlygame significantly easier. Even if this setup is maybe not exactly on par with 2-prop metafield, it is very close.

The real strength of metafield lies not so much in the enabling of few-prop lategame builds. Rather, it lies in the ease of transition. If you have a suboptimal, less extreme flight build, for example a 6-prop one, metafield makes the game significantly easier around -4 and -3. At this point the player has just become able to use metafield in terms of energy, instantly allowing them to boost their speed such that they can more easily deal with things like R branches. Without metafield, this would require the player to first fabricate better thrusters to replace their old ones. With metafield, you can reach the speed you need instantly, and then worry about replacing your thrusters afterwards.


4. It's okay to have powerful parts in the game. Metafield takes significant effort and skill to obtain, and again significant effort and skill to succesfully use in a build. If it is not at least as good in-slot as the tier 8* and tier 9* stuff flighthack builds fabricate with significantly more ease, then it will not see play in lategame builds. This would be a shame, because it is a really fun item.

There is something to be said against the prevalence of metafield in most flight builds we see on the discord. One could take this prevalence as an argument that metafield is too strong. I would like to present an alternative interpretation however. It is not that metafield is too strong. Rather, there are simply not many other things bored veteran flight players can greed for in the earlygame and midgame. Rather than removing the one fun part from this major section of the game, we should add other fun alternatives that conflict with it. (Imprinting bad. Fight me. )


Reaction to nerf-suggestion:
The overloading nerf puts metafield on par with triangulator and heat shielding. Cld. propulsion already exists, and the cld. aspect is bad. Having to overload propulsion is the sign of a weak build that is already doomed to die. I really can't imagine any decently skilled player regularly overloading prop for any other reason than escaping stasis traps. Since metafield would not even help with this, it would be a truly useless item. It would be a 3 mass -20 energy utility that allows you to turn your thrusters into worse versions of bad thrusters that already exist. Metafield is an item you have to build your entire slot distribution and loadout around. If its use becomes limited like this, any time you're not using it, you're limping around on a mutilated build. The very fact that this is even being considered as a nerf makes me feel like the people who have agreed to this suggestion have never played this sort of build.

End of rant.

[Joshua]

Metafield is an item you have to build your entire slot distribution and loadout around. If its use becomes limited like this, any time you're not using it, you're limping around on a mutilated build. The very fact that this is even being considered as a nerf makes me feel like the people who have agreed to this suggestion have never played this sort of build.

I've played this sort of build, following Valguris's 2-slot flight guide, and I would be fine with the nerf. Flight by itself is almost always fast enough, metafield is only needed in the same situations where overloading prop is helpful - running past enemies, getting away fast, dodging around corners, getting out of range to run ECM, getting to a terminal before an operator, potentially sneak attacking an enemy with melee. Overloaded prop is not meant to be something you use continuously either though I sometimes try on the last map where the consequences don't matter as much -- the same place where I would have enough energy to sustain MF continuously.

I find fabhack builds reliable and boring already, would agree that trying to get metafield does make the game more interesting and it would still be very powerful with the proposed nerf (slowly burning out propulsion), just more situational. If you're playing flight even burnout from cld. propulsion takes a long time to become a danger.

Not sure what to suggest about mass support. I would say, after having tried the 2-flight strategy several times, it still takes considerable practice and skill to pull off; it is just not that interesting waiting for fabricators most of the game. (It's more interesting when they pop out a sentry or grunt right when your part is done!) Changing mass support to a percent increase would make its goodness proportional to the support you're on, but probably make it OP for treads/legs. It is neat that you can do 2-flight which would be extremely difficult or impossible otherwise; maybe it's OK that it shifts the difficulty for it to the beginning/middle of the game? I've looked at mass support as being the equivalent of additional prop slots, with more flexibility (you could swap in other utilities) but also higher risk - if you lose the utilities your build is doomed.

Re: flight boredom, maybe there should be other dangers besides swarmers that pose a significant threat to flight - perhaps immobilizer turrets, or a higher chance of stasis traps appearing in later levels, or a slow enemy that can fire volleys quickly+accurately to get more than one or two off before you run past. (B-90 Cyclops are the only enemies I can think of that are like this now, and very easy to avoid because they stand in alcoves.) Swarm Drone Bays are interesting, maybe some hunters should have them or at least the hunter drones could be armed.

[GJ]

As Pimski says flight has an easy time pulling schematics to fab a perfect build. One of the best anecdotes I have for this is a recent hover run I played that managed to lose all of its protohackware before -1. Even so, through the power of botnet, operator networks and picking up hackware from the floor, it had an easy time pulling & fabbing Femtoactuators in Access, ending as an Ascended++ with no R branches. Flight has an even easier time avoiding enemies and assimilating operators. Arguably items like Femto, Exp. Armor Analysis, should not be pullable with ease on what isn't even an impressive hackbuild.

More than one recent-ish change to Central Database Lockout mechanics had made pulling schematics easier, and while it is perhaps reasonable for CDBL to work according to these rules... it would be nice to see manual hacking for schematics become less viable, not more. There are more interesting and varied ways to acquire powerful items than typing the same-ish schematics into terminals. Here's a rough list of potential nerfs:

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

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

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.

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.

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.

To some extent nerfs in this vein will make things harder on so-called combat builds too, though it is currently optimal for those builds to fill their hcp. storage units with some amount of hackware: I believe this is much better on average than perma-equipping a signal interpreter or terscan processor and is thus the main & best infowar approach for combat builds, mainly due to being cheap as you can comfortably discard hackware. Combat builds also do not truly need manual hacking all that much, except maybe access(branch) and that one does pop up naturally in terminals too in addition to the exit being naturally findable. Schematics are not an issue for combat, can always scan something like armor or a hvy. tread and print integrity, scanning an imp./adv. weapon cycler is always fine as they do eventually get shot on combat and thus end up being high-value fabs. And then you have DM/Zh stuff, won't be looking at nothing-valuable-to-fab even when you want to risk the +influence from fab lockout.

Metafield takes significant effort and skill to obtain, and again significant effort and skill to succesfully use in a build. If it is not at least as good in-slot as the tier 8* and tier 9* stuff flighthack builds fabricate with significantly more ease, then it will not see play in lategame builds.

The overloading nerf puts metafield on par with triangulator and heat shielding.

Having to overload propulsion is the sign of a weak build that is already doomed to die.

The very fact that this is even being considered as a nerf makes me feel like the people who have agreed to this suggestion have never played this sort of build.

This seems excessive even assuming intentional hyperbole, and you should know it as a likely truth that the people suggesting these nerfs have played these builds. As we recently concluded in Discord, you were there, speed is one of the best forms of damage reduction. The damage you take from burnout can easily represent much, much more damage avoided. Changes to metafield could easily call for changes to its energy upkeep, especially if it outright overloads prop and the energy cost of that prop becomes magnified. The spirit of the suggestion seems to be to change metafield from a mainly energy dilemma to an integrity dilemma.

[mtf]

If the item just burns out parts randomly it's not going to be worth my time anymore, which would be a shame, because I think it's so much fun. If it's just a slow drain on propulsion then that is slightly better, but overall I'd prefer modifying resource consumption instead of having it consume my parts. Also I can imagine the cheese now where people just run the imprinter all around ZDC till she burns out her prop and they get a free kill... why do I get the feeling there are insidious cheese strats behind the proposal of this nerf?

It's not random destruction, "burnout" as in slowly damages like the burnout mechanic, which seems fine for a very powerful part. Just not something you use for an entire run, which fast builds are otherwise very good at doing and this one currently just makes them that much better at it.

Huge amounts of heat is also possible, also matter req idea. Any would work really. I prefer the damage approach unless its effect is nerfed, though (which is not as fun).

Imprinter is not a problem, can just have her toggle it if necessary.

Couple of things here... currently overload dmg to prop is so high that you really can't use it for long without completely destroying your prop. Lets just look at the best cooled prop in the game, Cld. Q-Thruster. It has a 20% burnout rate and only 80 integrity... which means on average you have about 400 moves before that prop is completely used up. This is nothing in the grand scheme of flight builds, and it explains why people mostly use overloading for just a few turns here and there to maybe escape a partial spot or a squad that was looking for them. Now granted some of the earlier prop have slightly more integrity (90) and less burnout (10-15%), but my point is these effects are extremely damaging to low integrity propulsion and as a result are only used sparingly.

Lets look at some stats here on some end game prop...

2 Cld q-thruster (overloaded)
Speed: 20
Energy: -6 upkeep - 19 move/per turn = -25 energy per turn
Heat:  0 upkeep + 28.5 move/per turn = +28.5 heat per turn

2 Cld q-thruster w/ metafield
Speed: 13
Energy: -26 upkeep - 15.3 move/per turn = -41.3 energy per turn
Heat: 0 upkeep + 15.3 move/per turn = +15.3 heat per turn

2 Imp. q-thrusters w/ metafield
Speed: 16
Energy: -26 upkeep -12.5 move/per turn = -38.5 energy per turn
Heat: +6 upkeep +12.5 mov/per turn = +18.5 heat per turn

As you can see, using metafield increases speed by about 50-75% over overloaded prop and generates about half as much heat, but nearly doubles energy costs... In other words, you trade heat generation/prop degradation for energy consumption, some extra speed, and another slot utilized. In my opinion if metafield also degraded prop the benefits would not be worth it over just overloading standard cld propulsion because:

1) Heat is much more manageable than energy through most of the game
2) The extra utility slot / inventory could be put to better use than a utility that I'll only toggle every once in a while (whereas cld prop doesn't have this issue considering you need prop to move)
3) Don't have to worry about metafield being shot off
4) The speed difference really isn't a big one overall. Do I really need to go 13 speed over 20? No, not really. (Speed is an irrelevant stat [tm])