Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tilla]

Everyone's favorite Caves of Qud creature, the twinning lamprey, returns in the hanging hills of Sproggiwood! Everyone rejoice!

Quoting to signal boost, Sproggiwood is cool and needs your support. Launching on steam soon. https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/17110-sproggiwood-releases-on-steam

[Angle]

Are you guys still developing this? If so, you should allow people to deconstruct items they've made with tinkering and get the bit's back. subject to the usual disassemble limitations, of course. Perhaps add a few more tinkering skills and fill in some of the distance between disassemble and perfect disassemble. Like a skill that lets you choose one bit that you get for certain when disassembling, and leaves the rest random. So you can get the higher level bits, but won't necessarily get loads of the lower tier bits.

[unormal]

Are you guys still developing this? If so, you should allow people to deconstruct items they've made with tinkering and get the bit's back. subject to the usual disassemble limitations, of course. Perhaps add a few more tinkering skills and fill in some of the distance between disassemble and perfect disassemble. Like a skill that lets you choose one bit that you get for certain when disassembling, and leaves the rest random. So you can get the higher level bits, but won't necessarily get loads of the lower tier bits.

We removed it as a workaround for people chain-building-disassembling things over and over in order to learn blueprints. Not a very fun behavior to incentivize!

[beorn080]

Are you guys still developing this? If so, you should allow people to deconstruct items they've made with tinkering and get the bit's back. subject to the usual disassemble limitations, of course. Perhaps add a few more tinkering skills and fill in some of the distance between disassemble and perfect disassemble. Like a skill that lets you choose one bit that you get for certain when disassembling, and leaves the rest random. So you can get the higher level bits, but won't necessarily get loads of the lower tier bits.

We removed it as a workaround for people chain-building-disassembling things over and over in order to learn blueprints. Not a very fun behavior to incentivize!

A solution, as the gentleman said, just slightly different. Tier it. First tier, normal disassemble, with chance to learn, second tier, double potential bits back, double chance to learn, third tier, all bits back, will always learn recipe.

[unormal]

Are you guys still developing this? If so, you should allow people to deconstruct items they've made with tinkering and get the bit's back. subject to the usual disassemble limitations, of course. Perhaps add a few more tinkering skills and fill in some of the distance between disassemble and perfect disassemble. Like a skill that lets you choose one bit that you get for certain when disassembling, and leaves the rest random. So you can get the higher level bits, but won't necessarily get loads of the lower tier bits.

We removed it as a workaround for people chain-building-disassembling things over and over in order to learn blueprints. Not a very fun behavior to incentivize!

A solution, as the gentleman said, just slightly different. Tier it. First tier, normal disassemble, with chance to learn, second tier, double potential bits back, double chance to learn, third tier, all bits back, will always learn recipe.

One change I'd really like to make to tinkering is to give many more consumable sinks for bits; because you tend to rack up piles of low teir bits especially that have no use. I'd like to give tinkers a pool of abilities they can power with bits. Recharging was the start of that, but I'd like to do a bunch more.

[beorn080]

Let me see. Off the top of my head, it was scrap metal, scrap power, scrap crystal, scrap electronics. So, lets see.

Caltrops: 50SP 14 Int: Deploy a small number of caltrops onto a square. Enemies stepping on them have a chance to take damage based on the amount left. If it hits critically, (figure out how to determine hit rates of stationary items, figure pull from the young ivory @$^@#% plant thing) then cause bleeding. The placer of this field is immune to it. Costs one Scrap Metal.

Firestarter: 50SP 14Int: Use a Scrap Crystal to light a fire by banging it against a handy rock. Sadly, this destroys the crystal. (Effectively, kindle, but with a cost of crystals rather then cooldown and mutation slots.)

Then something for the doors, I think for electronics. Maybe the lowest level doors require a scrap electronic to try to get through, mid tier doors need prisitine, and the highest clearance doors need the ai microcontrollers. 50% chance if you use electronic scrap at the level of the door, or 100% chance if you go one tier higher.

[unormal]

Let me see. Off the top of my head, it was scrap metal, scrap power, scrap crystal, scrap electronics. So, lets see.

Caltrops: 50SP 14 Int: Deploy a small number of caltrops onto a square. Enemies stepping on them have a chance to take damage based on the amount left. If it hits critically, (figure out how to determine hit rates of stationary items, figure pull from the young ivory @$^@#% plant thing) then cause bleeding. The placer of this field is immune to it. Costs one Scrap Metal.

Firestarter: 50SP 14Int: Use a Scrap Crystal to light a fire by banging it against a handy rock. Sadly, this destroys the crystal. (Effectively, kindle, but with a cost of crystals rather then cooldown and mutation slots.)

Then something for the doors, I think for electronics. Maybe the lowest level doors require a scrap electronic to try to get through, mid tier doors need prisitine, and the highest clearance doors need the ai microcontrollers. 50% chance if you use electronic scrap at the level of the door, or 100% chance if you go one tier higher.

The biggest design trick with it is trying to come up with flavorful powers that aren't just better off as build-able stuff. Recharging was one that jumped out early. Like for caltrops, or thermal grenades, you kinda just want to add a new item "caltrops" to the game and make it build-able but also find-able by non-tinkers . The same is true for temporary buffs, where most should just turn into injectors or the like. Unlocking doors is an interesting one, though! (One use lockpicks, essentially)

e: The other option is to actually just go ahead and make them buildable things, basically start tinkers with a bunch of "cantrip" recipes.

[Angle]

wait, how does building things and taking them apart get you recipes? I mean, I know reverse engineer can get you recipes, but I don't see how being able to take apart things you already made makes that easier.

[unormal]

wait, how does building things and taking them apart get you recipes? I mean, I know reverse engineer can get you recipes, but I don't see how being able to take apart things you already made makes that easier.

Once you get full-disassemble, since every time you disassemble something you get a percentage chance to reverse engineer, you can just breakdown and rebuild an item over and over again to (eventually) guarantee a blueprint from reverse engineer. Generally we wanted to disincentivize things that weren't much fun, and this didn't seem like much fun. Though there are obviously a ton of other ways to approach it. This is just why things are the way they are at the moment.

[beorn080]

True. Caltrops might be a bad example. Though, the firestarter one is supposed to basically replicate kindle, except its melee ranged and costs bits rather then have a cooldown. Specifically NOT supposed to be to the level of a thermal grenade, strictly one square. Almost a flavor skill, except that as we know kindle is the most powerful mutation in the game  /halfsarcasm. Though, we could give each of them tiers based on the material. Also, new idea.

Skillful improvement: blahblah costs and req, probably high int req and cost due to potential power: Take one metal bit, and attempt to improve a weapon or piece of armor. Scrap metal has a 25% chance to add a low tier bonus onto a weapon or armor, pure alloy a 50% and chance for better bonuses, and nanomaterials 100% and better chance for better bonuses. Can not improve already improved gear( ?And can only be attempted once per item?). So, for example, take that musket you picked up early on, use a scrap metal on it, and possibly get a scoped musket out of it. Or possibly nothing. then, down the line, take that lovely phase cannon of yours, and since you definitely want some sort of bonus, use your limited nanomaterial supply to guarantee a bonus out of it.

The power sources, just scale up the amount of power they recover. The crystals, blah. in this instance with firestarter skill? Bigger fires? Still one square, but hotter? Maybe kinda spray the fire out like a cone from you, making mulitple kindle level fires? harummph. crystals are hard.

Also, Angle, you use the data disc to build an item from it. I don't THINK that uses up the data disc, and still lets you sell off the disc.

[Graknorke]

I should have done this a long time ago...

PTW.

[beorn080]

Also, question. Has anyone ever figured out what a nullray pistol actually does?

[beorn080]

Also, question. Has anyone ever figured out what a nullray pistol actually does?

Isn't that the one that

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

kills robots?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If it is, I have found no one else who realized it. I know it does nothing when you test it on a standard target, and AFAIK there is nothing pointing towards that. However, if it does one shot bots, then, yowza.

[beorn080]

Also, question. Has anyone ever figured out what a nullray pistol actually does?

Isn't that the one that

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

kills robots?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If it is, I have found no one else who realized it. I know it does nothing when you test it on a standard target, and AFAIK there is nothing pointing towards that. However, if it does one shot bots, then, yowza.

I may be wrong about it - do me a favour and post back and let me know when/if you test. I've just got a vague memory of it in my head, along with the fact that in a few other games (I was just talking about Wizardry VII in another thread - that has the Mystery Ray, as an example of this), when you have a mysterious gun with a funny name that doesn't seem to actually do anything to normal enemies, that's what it's for.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

New game, real fast made, wished up a nullray pistol, nuclear cell, and a waydroid. five shots into the droid, no change in its health. Edit: Just tested it on the Grit Gate force field. Nothing.

We may have to kidnap unormal to solve this mystery. My google fu shows that no one else has ever figured it out either.

[puke]

some googling suggests that it requires AM cells to power it, otherwise it will not have enough juice to work.

My gut feeling is that it is in actuality just a play on it's own name, and it literally does exactly what it says.