I haven't edited this enough to justify calling it a mini-guide, but here are some thoughts on resources in Cogmind.
Like most roguelikes, this is a game about resource management. It includes more resources and food clocks than most games:
Intrinsic (you are / carry with you)
Extrinsic (found around you)
- Time. Propulsion and weapons affect your usage of time. Interactive machines use no time.
- Slots. You start with 1 power, 2 propulsion, 2 utility, and 2 weapon slots. Each time you reach a new level in the complex, you get to choose two more slots to evolve. Your choices here are very important and shape your build.
- Core integrity (HP). You get a single filling of this per level; once it's gone, it's gone. This acts as a food clock meaning you can't stay on a level indefinitely (though with high coverage you can certainly extend your stay). Part coverage is vitally important because it keeps you from losing integrity.
- Energy, needed to power weapons, utilities, propulsion. This forces you to make tradeoffs between the parts you can use and for how long. It's OK to run a deficit for a short time, but you can't live like that forever.
- Heat dissipation, needed to prevent bad side effects from overheating due to the above weapons, utilities and propulsion. Some items are inherently Cooled and produce less or no heat. This and energy are what keep you from evolving all weapon slots and slaughtering everything.
- Matter, a finite resource used up by attaching parts and firing certain weapons. It's also used by some special utilities (e.g. Integration Mediator uses some to avoid faulty prototype side effects).
- Mass support.
- Parts. These are all destructible (as far as I know) and running out of weapons, energy or propulsion is very bad. This acts as another food clock. It is possible to protect them and minimize damage. Caves areas act to test your mastery of this mechanic.
Food clock #1: core integrity. Once this runs out, it's gone. But it could also be considered a kind of currency: it's often a good idea to stay on a level while your core is still healthy if your build is not as good as it could be yet instead of going on to a more dangerous area.
Food clock #2: part integrity. If you have a specialized build that requires certain parts, it's very important to not let them take too much abuse. The supply of replacement parts is limited and often requires taking more damage, like in chess.
Food clock #3: programmers.
Food clock #4: alert level.
Extrinsic resources:
- Parts. You need them, the Complex has them. But can you make use of the ones you find?
- Robots. Aside from making friends (not easy with robot hacking, but there are several other ways), they can also be used to get parts or matter you need and give you information about the Complex. Notice the direction they come from when a squad is dispatched: it may lead to an exit. Watchers only send out a distress alert when they spot you and there are robots in range. (Note that Sentries act like watchers but don't leave a message in the log saying they alerted all the robots around.)
- Interactive machines. You can hack them to do many useful things. Garrisons - disable to delay programmers. Enter to diminish patrol size for following area.
- Noninteractive machines. The explosive ones are like big bombs sitting around waiting for someone to set them off.
- Traps. You can set them off intentionally, reprogram them, extract them, or corrupt robots to set them off. Chute traps can be used to escape in an emergency, or potentially acquire some out of depth items. You can use stasis traps as shields.
- Walls and doors.
- Branches: potentially useful rewards. Major story triggers. Unique items.
