I disagree with repair, for the most part. The whole game is about scavenging the landscape. Your wheel is yellow? Blast that near by engineer and take his wheel. I always go with wheels since there's always a readied supply, until half way-ish through factory where legs start to get really good.
I have also, never, ever died due to core damage unless I have lost most/all of my equipment(in which case, I was going to die anyway). I know that's kind of a redundant sentence(you can only die from core damage), but I hope my point is made.
If repair is implemented though, it should take a lot of time(no combat repair), and cost a lot of matter. It should also cost more and more matter/time as parts get more complicated, making it not viable once you get to late factory.
Orb has stated my position exactly.
Your core integrity is high enough (and gets much higher) that if it gets seriously damaged it's because you 1) don't have many parts and are going to die anyway, or 2) have stayed in a single level way too long.
Later in the game, you can get up to *26* parts. By that point, at an average coverage of 75% per part, your core has less than a 5% chance of being chosen as a target. Assuming enemies have a 60% chance to hit you at all, that's 3% of enemy shots fired which will hit your core, much less damage it. Assuming enemy shots deal about 4% (or less) damage to your core per shot, it would take over
800 shots for them to destroy your core. That is, of course, an extreme example of how protected your core is if you can keep it covered. It's also the situation at the end of the game; at the beginning you are more vulnerable, but it is also easier to escape the first few levels.
As others have mentioned, repair, if implemented at all, would have to be rather rare for balance reasons, in which case it might as well not be there at all.
I was originally considered implementing it as one-time items, or machines you could interact with, but neither of those made it into the game.
No matter how much of a powerful behemoth you build, you'll still be worn down via core damage, so tanking/heavy builds are FAR less sustainable than light, underpowered builds.
Not true, see calculations above. I only ever go with the heaviest thing I can build, precisely because it enables me to carry a crapload of armor and other parts to protect my core. Light builds can be entertaining, but IMO tough to maintain. With treads and legs you also don't have to worry much about being overweight, since they'll generally still move at a reasonable speed. I am ALWAYS overweight when I play (I ignore mass completely, in fact, so long as my speed is 80%+, which it usually is with treads/legs).
As much as I'm anticipating the completion of X@COM, Cogmind just has so much promise! The whole concept behind it seems, at least from what I've seen, completely original.
If I do them both at the same time, though, that'd slow progress on both, and I don't like slow
For now I'm sticking to getting Cogmind in enough shape to call it a solid game, then we'll see.
Ideas for features once you are happy with it as it is and done (bored) with working on X@COM:
-New terrain: Tougher/softer walls and ground with effects? Like an acid lake that can be crossed without damage by hovering and flying, or different terrains with different speed modifiers depending on propulsion type.
-Consumable items: Items used directly when picked up or need a specific utility part to carry around (backpack?). Not repair kits, rather something that upgrades a part, changes a slot or gives a temporary bonus to accuracy/speed/resistance.
-Crafting: Not of parts (which would be boring and unnecessary), but what about robots? Have the correct utility part and the right parts in inventory and you can strap them together to create your own pest/serf/warrior/whatever that wanders around.
-Specialist Slots: Projectile (Matter shooters), Energy (energy shooters) weapon slots; Articulate (legs/flight), Fixed (wheels/treads/hover) propulsion slots; Electronic (Targeting computer), Mechanical (Weight Distributor) utility slots; Inductive (Ion Engine?), Reactive (Nuclear Engine?) power slots. These would be in addition to normal slot types, just further restricted.
-Extra Slots: Certain parts could give additional slots, but be themselves vulnerable to getting shot off (in which case anything attached to it drops on the floor). Could give specialist slot types.
-Melee weapons: Not necessarily range 1, just really short range (1-4) but use no matter and produces no heat. Both as backup weapon and just because running around with 4 chainsaws sounds like fun.
Every single thing on your list was in the design docs
Just not enough time for it in a 7DRL. You can read the original
completion blog post to see a list of some of the things I cut.
BTW, I really think flight and hover units energy requirements should be significantly lowered, since they were apparently calculated based on 100% speed. Even if I attach a light ion engine, two flight units and nothing else from the scrapyard, I'll still be losing a whopping 10 energy per turn. Doesn't look balanced at all.
Hover/flight aren't meant to be very viable for the player in the early levels--do I have to remove those units from the Scrapyard to convince you?
Hover/flight was also supposed to be better if there was different terrain, but I didn't get to adding that.
I found a fusion compressor, which converts matter to energy (at a 1:60 ratio- not bad.) Is there a reverse utility?
The reverse utility didn't make it into the game. It lives on in the design docs as a "Matter Fabricator". I could possibly add it in later.
Also, does utility shielding cover armor plating? That seems like it'd be a nasty combo.
Armor is considered a utility, so yes that works.
Or degradation something like "Use matter+the Welding Torch (actually something much rarer probably) on the Huge Storage, SUCCESS! Your Huge Storage has been jury-rigged to an undamaged Large Storage!"
I like that idea--didn't have that one on the list.
Ooh question - has anyone had success with the Terrain Scanner/Seismic Interpreter - even if I equip both I can't see any difference in what is displayed - is the low level stuff just not powerful enough? I *think* I tried it with "advanced" type stuff though, and didn't see any difference either?
The low-level ones carried by engineers suck. They're there just to show you more or less how they work. The better ones are definitely very useful: Improved Terrain Scanner + Improved Terrain Scan Processor or better will get you a pretty detailed map of everything over a rather large radius (it happens gradually, and make sure you have both turned on). And if you can find the prototype versions (around level 5+), you'll pretty much be able to see the entire level map perfectly...
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Topic: Cogmind 7DRL (sci-fi roguelike from the creator of X@COM) (Read 109942 times)