Author Topic: Valley 2 Beta .722 "Concentrated Reports " Released!  (Read 3185 times)

Offline x4000

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Re: Valley 2 Beta .722 "Concentrated Reports " Released!
« Reply #15 on: February 01, 2013, 11:17:16 am »
Them spawning in like that is going away in the new release, so that's a big thing right there.  You're meant to encounter them more at a range and be able to deal with them better.  The sudden-spawning made them a lot more oh-crap.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Valley 2 Beta .722 "Concentrated Reports " Released!
« Reply #16 on: February 01, 2013, 11:43:42 am »
My main issue with the game balance still remains the factories;  it's still very hard to get scrap sometimes, and building new factories seems A: Very, very expensive, and B:, it seems like it takes quite some time before a factory you build has paid back it's own cost, and thus actually becomes profitable.   Perhaps it's meant to be more of a late-game thing when you have huge areas of the map uncovered?   Getting enough scrap seems to still be very dependant on happening to find abandoned towns at times when the boss is not anywhere near them (and having enough guys to stand on enough factories at once).
Yea, the map starts with a ton of factories in the abandoned town areas.  I've done dozens of maps in various stages of playtesting and I don't think I've ever had trouble finding an abandoned town segment that I was able to exploit for several turns (enough to build up a sufficient scrap stockpile).  But apparently the RNG waits until I'm not looking and gives you guys the short end ;)

At this stage the only truly important thing scrap does is let you convert ice-age-buildings and ocean-shallows-buildings into covered farms.  That's basically it.  It also allows you to build clinics and housing/fortifications but those are pretty minor (I want to rebalance clinics and power again so that clinics are more important).  The fact that you can build more factories is something of an emergency fallback.  And you're right that the "return on investment" is pretty dubious right now due to the numbers.

Backing up a bit, the core chain of the strategy game is:
1) If all your NPCs die, you lose the game.
2) If your NPCs face high danger levels, they tend to die fast.
3) If your morale is low, your NPC danger levels will get high.
4) If you run out of food, morale will drop like a stone.
5) If you have scrap, you can build more farms rather than just relying on scavenging and grasslands farms.

There are other things: scrap can directly influence point 2 through clinics and fortifications, and your NPCs are needed to get through impasse lines and can help save you turns (and thus monster-escalation) by mass-purify.  But basically it's just that Population<-Morale<-Food<-Scrap thing.


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There's one other thing I'm noticing:  Is it just me, or has the overall danger level dropped REALLY dramatically?   For the survivors, I mean, not the player.   It could just be my map, but I've got tiles directly adjacent to wall tiles that have like, 2% danger.
It's probably due to the recent rule change that high morale reduces danger level.  Low morale increases it (to rapidly fatal levels if it gets really low).

And yea, there's a ton of small housing around, perhaps too much considering that fortifications are now a thing.


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One thing though, I wonder if it might be a good idea to buff the summoned beasts a little?    Without the wound system in place, these guys seem super easy to deal with, as (so far) they seem to do only 1 or 2 damage when they meet a survivor.   Unless they get stronger later maybe?
Later on the overlord gets to summon stronger ones and/or more of them.  You'd probably pay attention if he dropped 15 wall crocs on your head.  But we've been kind of conservative on his magic power to avoid just roflstomping folks, so it may benefit from some buffing.


Just checking: which strategic difficulty are you playing on?
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Offline x4000

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Re: Valley 2 Beta .722 "Concentrated Reports " Released!
« Reply #17 on: February 01, 2013, 11:49:17 am »
One thing that is probably skewing things is that the number of housing starting out on the map versus the city blocks, etc, are somewhat randomized.  They have weights, and the overall count of abandoned town tiles is not randomized at all, but the specific number of sub-tile types is often really randomized at the moment.  That leads to overall a consistent feel, but at the same time some it's quite possible to get outlier positive and negative maps.

I think what I'm going to do is make it so that those are instead fixed numbers of the sub-types of tiles, so that the only thing randomized in the maps is placement.  That alone is really something that will affect the difficulty quite a bit, but it will make for fewer extreme outliers.
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Offline Panopticon

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Re: Valley 2 Beta .722 "Concentrated Reports " Released!
« Reply #18 on: February 01, 2013, 12:39:25 pm »
I've been testing the game on the default difficulties. Adept for combat and Rook for strategy.


Offline Misery

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Re: Valley 2 Beta .722 "Concentrated Reports " Released!
« Reply #19 on: February 01, 2013, 08:08:25 pm »
As difficulty levels go, I've been mostly on Hero for the platforming stuffs, and I left the strategic bit on default.


As the danger levels go, I mentioned it mostly because so far, at least in my current game, it's been kinda easy to ignore;  the survivors just never take any damage at all unless Demonaica tosses a monster at them;  the highest danger level anywhere on the map, I think, is 21%.   Though again, with my current map it's kinda hard to say just what the balance is when you can barely walk without tripping over tiny houses.

Morale actually seems very difficult to lose with the current setup, since buildings being stomped dont seem to have an effect on it;  it seems like I'd have to die in the adventure scenes lots and LOTS of times before it has an effect, so that (so far) has been something of a non-issue as well.   At least on the default difficulty anyway.


One question I'd wondered about:  Do any of the various buildings like castles and warehouses DO anything right now?  Are they having the effect that the text always says for them, or are you guys planning on changing them?   Currently it's hard to be sure if I should bother purifying them or not.




Offline x4000

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Re: Valley 2 Beta .722 "Concentrated Reports " Released!
« Reply #20 on: February 01, 2013, 08:15:16 pm »
Castles and warehouses do what they say, yes.  There are a number of other buildings that are currently useless in .722, but all of those have their advertized functions as of .723, which will come out in 15ish minutes.
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Offline x4000

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