Congratulations on the progress! And welcome
I think we should get different/random enemies every sorite, but let's not stop stop there. I noticed recently that the game tracks all your stats/progress, even classifies your build and it can been seen with "dumpstats". Why not put that to use ingame?
That's just a bonus optional thing for fun, which actually works against the intended immersion, so it will never be a part of the game mechanics proper.
Overall with regard to your notes, know that Beta 11 is a completely different beast, and
yes the game has generally gotten easier over time as it's expanded, so be prepared to get destroyed again in Beta 11 (and also in Beta 12 after that) because 1) much has changed (see the blog) and 2) there are more dangerous threats, including common ones.
Another problem I've found is that watcher bots are sort of a joke for builds who don't rely on sensors or just non stealth builds in general.
Not every enemy is meant to present the same level of threat to all builds. Some will be easier or more challenging depending on what you are--this is normal and we don't need or want every enemy to be a challenge at all times. That said, to be honest Watchers already present quite a few challenges to all bots, highly dependent on the situation at hand. This doesn't come from their own abilities so much as it comes from the fact that they can simply see further and alert across a greater range, creating more dynamic situations depending on what else is nearby at the time. Absolutely alone and isolated? Yep they're fine (at which point it is your choice whether to waste time and resources to try to kill them, or let them go, because a living hostile Watcher can be an asset as well
).
But its in a cheesy/arcadey sort of way because they can't be avoided. At least not with game mechanics,
RE Programmers: it sounds like you're currently only interacting with some of the game mechanics, because there are definitely avoidance methods, different ones depending on your capabilities, but the common way most players who don't want to fight them would handle it is to just recall the squad.
I just don't like the fact that this problem can't seemingly be dealt with within the confines of the game, outside of doing something dumb like exposing yourself to then ecm run.
Again, if you're fast you probably want to be able to hack to some degree, and if you can do this, recalling the squad is the easiest way. Though there are other ways, including various types of hacking. Very few people actually use ECMs, and certainly not for this purpose considering how fast Programmers are anyway.
RE your related suggestions:
Wait for Beta 11. (Again the blog has lots more information about this stuff--the game is changing a huge amount, which is why there hasn't been a new major public version in over a year.)
In regards to RIF, most of the abilities you get from subsequent Installations are not very useful mostly because they can't be chosen.. The primary offenders being ones that require a specific coupler, since they are only useful when stacked(somewhat).
I.E. Robot detection/jamming/programm shield
With two utilities you can have sensors and with one jamming. Even if you did have the slots to fit in a coupler of every type why would you waste slots in such an inefficient way? The typical answer being obviously you can stack all the "coupler required" skills along with the programm shield and route tracker Yada Yada. But that just isn't viable until you've visited allot of garrisons and there is no guarantee you'll even get those skills as well since it's randomized. You usually end up with half your skills being unused effectively.
Programmer/behemoth couplers are also hard to come by and non ob10 bots won't fall into your info net either so there is no incentive to use those skills as opposed to conventional info stuff.
I just can't think of any way to fix this outside of letting you pick what you get.
Well good news: there's nothing to fix because it's working exactly as intended
I mean it may not be the way you would prefer it work, but it's balanced alongside the other game mechanics and difficulty of achieving certain goals. Yes there is indeed randomness in terms of abilities, and lots of it, but acquiring many of them is also optional. As we've seen in the community there are a number of different ways to play RIF. Many abilities are very powerful when put to their best use, although it's up to you to take advantage of that, akin to how Cogmind is designed around mostly taking advantage of the items you find and use, rather than permanent and consistent items and stat buffs like you find in other games. You're not intended to be able to have all the abilities you want on a given run, unless you get really lucky (then more power to you?), although based on my reading of your opinion here, I'm betting that there are a lot of effective strategies you've still yet to discover! Remember that visiting Garrisons isn't
only about getting an ability--another important purpose for ongoing RIF builds is to supply yourself with more Couplers, and the ability is technically meant to a potential bonus on top of that. If in the end you're finding that "you usually end up with half your skills being unused effectively," then it doesn't sound like you're running the type of build that can maximize its use of RIF abilities in the first place (there are some builds which fall into this category, but they are pretty specific and not everyone will go to such extremes, for example the high-storage two/three-wheeled full-RIF build which evolves nothing but utility slots and can have a large variety of Couplers attached at once, but note that Beta 11 makes this build much easier to achieve, and it actually feels a lot better under that version, so Beta 11 is going to be really nice here as well).
