Lot of respect for speed runners.
Agreed! Much more tense in my opinion, without a bunch of armor and weapons to hide behind
. I've been trying to do faster runs in recent weeks and end up falling back into combat mode most of the time... It takes a brave Cogmind to do a speed run. Sounds funny to say that since as zxc puts it you just run from everything
I assimilated an operator and he was a total bro.
That's good to hear, since I haven't done that yet and should soon. They have so many benefits now, if you can just keep them alive.
You were quite close to winning!
This quote is from Kyzrati's garrison access post.
That said, there is another advantage to destroying them: For each Garrison Access taken out of commission, Programmer dispatch frequency is further reduced.
I know that Kyzrati said this was not the case in the stream, but does sealing the garrison access points reduce prog dispatch? Do you need to destroy them? Shouldn't sealing have the same effect?
Okay, first of all, sorry about the misinformation. The blog post is of course correct (it always trumps whatever I think I remember at some later date
)--destroying a garrison
does reduce the Programmer dispatch frequency. Man, I really should destroy those things more often! And actually, yes, sealing them has the exact same effect, so do it if you can.
About the other machines, they aren't as useful but there are plans to improve them, gradually anyway. They've been pretty low priority so I'm getting to them bit by bit. At least brute force hacks gave some of them secondary uses, and another one is coming with Alpha 7 that will make Recycling Units somewhat more useful. Still lots more to do on that front, because I too generally pass up other machines except for the very occasional coincidental need.
So yeah as zxc puts it the opportunity cost for these machines is currently too high, something that will certainly change in future releases. (Fabricating in particular is an area that will be examined in detail, but as a secondary/supporting feature I want to reconsider the design after most other elements are already in place. But also remember that when you fabricate something, you usually don't just get one of them--a single build run will create several of the same item, or even robot.)
What is the reasoning behind having two hacks to seal a garrison instead of one?
One is the direct hack, which is difficult but allows you to seal it unnoticed and has no effect on your presence.
All brute force hacks increase the alert level, quite a lot in the case of a garrison jam, but this is something you won't really know yet unless you're paying very close attention to alert level (later there will be NPCs that provide you with this information).
There are three ways to disable a garrison access, which vary from relatively easy but with significant alert drawbacks, to relatively difficult but no other drawbacks:
1. Blow it up
2. Jam it.
3. Seal it.
Question: Does enumerate(surveillance) reveal watcher locations?
That's exactly what it does, but its usefulness is only so great because Watchers move a lot, so your intel will go stale before too long.
Trying to decide which way to flee when a watcher emits a distress signal can be quite tricky, especially if you dodged patrols in the first place.
I have a new feature planned that you might like (although I haven't confirmed it yet, I've gotten close to implementing it several times but it keeps getting put off as lower priority): When distress signals go out they'll trace a path on the screen showing the direction of the signal.
.....the labyrinthine layout leads to forced encounters with stealth
I wonder whether this problem could be solved via item design. For instance, a common late/mid game item which gives you "+X% chance for enemies not to notice you" with fancy name like "quantum decohorence generator" or something like that and it can stack.
Even before alpha release I had an idea to possibly convert or enhance ECM mechanics by way of a system like this, but it's been on the back burner for a very long time.
There are multiple specialized utility mechanics (some of which don't exist yet) that I want to look into later, possibly altogether as a group which is one reason nothing's been done on that front yet. In terms of design, I'd like to get much of the main world complete before using some new mechanics or adjustments to existing ones to smooth out any rough edges.
