The main tactic that gets restricted is holing up in a room to wait for a squad. As you may remember from our discussions during Alpha I've always found Exterminations to be kinda boring, alert decay decay was introduced I think partially to combat "Extermination cheese" but while that mechanic is great and has interesting incentives it's kinda for other reasons i.e. you're still supposed to just wait for an Extermination once you get that alert, the small nuance that got added to that is maybe don't hole up immediately if you can push forward for a few turns after the notification. I think these will just be more fun/exciting in this mode, and you can still play for preemptive tactics in dangerous terrain, like in the floors after Factory there will still be occasions to wait for an Extermination before going through an open area or whatever, there's just a real cost to it with potentially letting the decay timer tick for longer than you'd want it to, though it also gives some time for adv. terscan processor to work. Given Hcp currently makes it easy to always stay below alert 4 with treads, what with NC couplers or just picking up hackware in conjunction with Hub, I think this is nice. I haven't really felt any time pressure in all of Research since the introduction of RIF, that's also partially due to figuring out (around this time) how much better hackware/terscan is than sensors for slow combat.
Assaults kinda have similar incentives as Exterminations, especially now that Saboteurs will satisfyingly suicide on multislot parts I think it's a bit boring that 98% of them won't even reach you if you position yourself for the assault. Even without the notification you'll have an idea when assaults definitely can't happen and there's ways to modify your active loadout to be resilient against a slapfight with Saboteurs and Brawlers (even with good processors attached), I can't fully predict how this'll affect mass assaults à la high-sec but I'm inclined to say it'd be nice for high-sec to be actually scary, the addition of Executioners and Strikers alone doesn't really do that, feels a bit more like "fuck yeah, Helical Railguns and Plasma Lances!" in some way. Either way whenever high-sec has been at its scariest e.g. Access, the play has been to furiously move forward whenever not shooting makes any sense, so there might not be much of a difference here. You always had to look for the briefest moments of relaxed pressure to move and they didn't correspond strongly with the dispatch timings, as in they would happen during a wave too and the wave-end moment is something you always needed your eyes for.
With Investigations and Reinforcements the decision to either wait and clean up or attempt digging away is actually interesting, but these are the type of dispatches where you can still know that it's coming and if you merely suspect it there can be interesting ways to confirm it in this mode. Shooting through walls to spot a locked terminal, enumerate(squads)... and garrisons used to be silent in Alpha so we know how that plays out, it'll be less of an issue than it ever was, even the very recent Siege mode helps here. You can always just... guess, when dealing with some situations.
Seems like to make this one more interesting there should be a kill requirement. Like say you have to take out at least X enemies before exits are accessible, or something like that.
Yeah, that could be good. Some small amount that disincentivizes the type of fast build that doesn't really trigger dispatches, in practice I think those builds will just launcher a few patrols and combat builds that quickly encounter the branch they want can just stand there and wait, but a small amount of necessary killing can contribute the right kind of flavor for this type of run.
almost no one would ever win
So I think Cogmind has a fairly pronounced skill floor relative to its actual difficulty, specifically learning the game is very complex but once you're no longer in unfamiliar territory it's not that difficult to be consistently unstoppable, I'd say typically this has applied to around or more than half of the people in the top 5 of the leaderboards. I suppose I can understand that hushed Exterminations would be extremely tilting to people still in the learning stages, but have you considered a difficulty above roguelike to e.g. target players abusing the static aspects of the game? Abuse here doesn't even have to be as specific as say, Damper Plating and EMDS, just knowing exactly what the map-typical mobs have and how good it is makes it very hard for the complex to break you in any seed, like the game changes when you know that e.g. Flak Guns have nutty DPS relative to their depth but Helical Railguns don't, that adv. target analyzer is notably better than adv. core analyzer, that Hvy. Autocannons exist, that Adv. Phase Shifter is aight but Imp. ain't, that Q Guards are chumps and have nice loot... not asking for flak gun or target analyzer nerfs, btw, though maybe Q being the easiest branch in the game just ain't right. The introduction of locate prototypes has made this even more pronounced and part of me misses the times when at least Testing felt potentially scary, or scarier than the average main floor Research.
The combat balancing was mainly to bring it closer to flight capabilities (even though it's pretty much impossible to totally catch up in that regard...)
And if you'd like some feedback on that, regardless of what the specific hierarchy is I would consider flight, hover and treads to share tier-1 prop status at this point. If players are still struggling with treads then I think that's just similar to when players don't yet know how to properly
abuse play flight or hover. Hcp is a big boost and relative incentive to playing treads, the prop itself is much more armour-y than it used to be so carrying treads is easier and makes more sense, whatever genuine matter issues used to exist don't really anymore, crit gunslinging is really good, it's even easier to play for hoarding hackware and dropping/discarding it for more combat potential when necessary then picking up hackware again... and you can chew through some Colossi for multirails if you need endgame DPS. Salvage targeting computers are good now: Sentries have good weapons (though they kinda get worse with every upgrade?) and can supply extra treads if needed, potentially double hackware from sniping Operators, and killing Behemoths with kinetic guns can sometimes be nice, it'll get you injectors and 2-slot treads at the very least. I suppose treads are still #3 in the hierarchy due to the fact that knowing whether and when your treads build needs to transition into Exp. Biometal Legs and start mixing in Neutron Cannons is more challenging than flight/hover ++.
Also if you're wondering how to counteract the playerbase's inevitable complaints about how there's no reason to play legs despite the fact that the prop is still pretty good (looks worse with Hcp existing though), then I'd like to suggest upping the max range of ramming to 200 to truly incentivize the kick build when adv. force boosters are found, what could go wrong? <--- Unbiased player who never abused this mechanic.
