Very funny, since I just uploaded my first Cogmind's video (should I open a dedicate thread just for info, or put a link here ?) and the very first robots I have met were pests. I say "see, here I will go back in that room to wait for them but they should move 3 times faster" and I was a bit puzzled when I noticed it wasn't the case. I have told myself it should have been because they shot at me so it took a volley time, but one did not and was not that fast, well I was still full of doubts.
So it is a clarification here !
Anyone is free to start a thread for their LPs (one thread per person, please). Go ahead and make one in this (General Discussion) board, unless it talks a lot about strategy, in which case you can drop it in the Strategies board like jimmijamjams.
And thanks for your video, Gobbopathe! I saw it linked on Twitter and it brought in a few more sales last night
I was wondering about this too, but I found it difficult to track accurately. It does seem that enemies wait the correct amount of time after attacking, but I could be wrong.
AI time failed to be correctly reported for
movement only--all other actions are working normally (including volley time).
I think it might also help players if the turn counter also had a time unit counter for that turn, such as:
[turnCount].[timeUnits]
This way players know how much time is left for that turn considering there are actions that don't take a full turn.
That's an interesting idea, though I think it might end up more confusing than helpful since all robot turns are relative. No robots take turns on an actual turn, only when they are ready to act (which can happen at any time depending on when their last action occurred). I do see one possible advantage: Players could get an even stronger feeling for exactly how long actions take. Maybe I could make that part of Tactical HUD mode to hide it from beginners but make it available to experienced players.
A couple other things I noticed (not 100% sure):
The waiting action appears to wait until the beginning of the next turn and not wait for 100 time units. I'm not sure if this is intended or not, but it is unclear in controls/documentation.
Enemy robots appear to only perform actions at the beginning of turns and not during turns, like the player can. (might be linked to the movement time issue above)
Yeah, this must be an illusory side-effect of the newly discovered one-turn movement issue, since most non-movement actions are intended to take exactly one turn. Robots follow the exact same rules as the player regarding time--the time system just puts everyone in a queue and pushes them back by X time every action they take. There is in fact no relation to the game turns counter at all--the "turn counter" itself is shifted around within that same queue as necessary, always being pushed back by 100 units every time its own "turn" comes around
.
Waiting simply pushes the player back in the queue by 100 units, behaving as an action that costs 100 time, so in game turns it could theoretically put you at the beginning, or the end, of the next "turn," but no matter what it will be
somewhere in the next turn where you end up.
As you can see, turns are really just a convenient way to talk about the passage of time, but not super strict (with regards to robots) except when talking about effects and events that are intended to happen on a per-turn basis.
Also, a timer for each robot showing the time left until they perform a new action would also be helpful, but that might just be me, I'm kind of an info addict
I was thinking about that, the kind of feature you see in some tactical combat games, though I wasn't sure how useful it would really be. I'm sure the info addicts among you would love it
It would certainly be doable, probably as on-map popup labels that just display a number next to each robot (akin to the damage popups in style).
Now that I think about it, it would be especially helpful in certain situations like when enemies fire and you want to know their remaining volley duration, or for really fast sneaking Cogminds you might want to know if you can cross a hallway before a Sentry spots you, or have to duck back in and find a different route to avoid being noticed.
I'll think about it, but probably not for Alpha 3--the high-priority TODO list on that is still too long and I want it out the door soon
I don't mind changes
Oh you'll get some