.908 out now.

[x4000]

* The internal per-level scaling exponent for enemy shields and attack now varies by difficulty, and is now different for bosses and regular enemies (generally bosses need to grow slower since they start more crazy to begin with).
** Previously, this was always 1.08.  Now it is typically 1.08 for bosses and 1.11 for normal enemies.
** On hard difficulty, this is now 1.11 for bosses and 1.16 for normal enemies.
** On expert difficulty, this is now 1.13 for bosses and 1.19 for regular enemies.
** This matters _enormously_ in terms of enemy balance, because, you know, exponents.
** Specifically the formula is exponent^level * (attack or shields).

* Fixed a bug where the Expert difficulty level was only granting 9 levels to bots per day instead of the slated 20.

* Factory missions, if won, now blocks most bots from leveling up at the end of that day!

[x4000]

* BombBot, EMPBot, AvalancheBot, BatBot, EagleBot, and GaffeBot are no longer allowed to be in the final battle.

NOOOOOOOOO!!! Obscenely large explosions and hilariously destructive friendly fire incidents, I'll miss you !

You should seriously include some dev tools/cheats to allow players the opportunity to do this, though. As the soldiers in AVWW2 can tell you, explosions are highly therapeutic.

It's not like they're gone from the game!  You can still do what you are describing in regular missions just fine, and will have plenty of opportunities to.  Just not in the very last battle.

[x4000]

* The range at which enemies are alerted to you if they have LOS on you now varies by difficulty level.  Normally it is 7, which is what it was before.
** On hard it is now 10.
** On expert is is now 14.

[x4000]

Incoming wailing!

* AOE damage rebalance:
** Rocket launcher default range is now up to 9 instead of 7, but its AOE range is down from 3 to 1.  Its ammo is also down from 11 to 7.
** Grenade launcher default range is now down from 9 to 6, and its ammo is down from 26 to 14.
** The reasoning is that these things can be upgraded pretty enormously, and they go from being powerful to being ridiculous.  Now they go from being moderate to being powerful.  Otherwise it's too easy to just AOE your way through all the levels.

[Misery]

These changes sound pretty good.  Should make a good difference.

Though, the Siege Exo might kinda lose it's purpose with the AoE change, when I think about it... as that effect isnt much different from that of the Assault type, but he lacks the strong single-target attacks the Assault also has.   I'm not sure how other players were using the Siege exo, but in my case it was sorta an emergency room-clearer, like if I opened a door and there were way too many in there.   Other than that though, and maybe the Shadow Torpedoes, he seems weaker than the others, so I usually only pulled him out to launch rockets.   A bit too situational.

The one other thing that does occur to me is that the Explosion Booster items really dont work on AoEs that are that small;  you simply need too many of them to increase it by even one level for them to be worth it.  I think the rocket launcher was the ONLY thing I'd ever used them on, for that matter.  They dont work for the grenade launcher very well, that's for sure.

[Histidine]

** Rocket launcher default range is now up to 9 instead of 7, but its AOE range is down from 3 to 1.  Its ammo is also down from 11 to 7.

One. One! I may as well use a shotgun! 

I agree with all the other nerfs, and rocket AoE does need reducing, but this is too harsh. Make its AoE radius 2? Please? Pleasepleaseplease?

[Tridus]

The rocket launcher starting at 1 means that for the first few days a newbie won't know it's an AoE weapon at all (as it has no AoE). Without it the siege exo kind of sucks, so I'm not sure this is a good idea.

2 would seem to be a better place to go, along with a nerf to the AoE scaling items so they don't scale so fast.

[keith.lamothe]

If rocket launchers and shotguns have the same AOE, I'm sending my rocket launcher back for a refund

On banning those guys from the final mission, it'd be nice if they could show up in some small numbers.  Simple exclusion, like simple immunity (to reclamation, for example), often cuts out more of the fun than is necessary to resolve the problem.

[x4000]

Okay, the AOE to the rockets is back to 2.

On banning those guys from the final mission, it'd be nice if they could show up in some small numbers.  Simple exclusion, like simple immunity (to reclamation, for example), often cuts out more of the fun than is necessary to resolve the problem.

You can't do that, though, because only 7 types get chosen for the final mission.  (Plus the special-seeding types, but those are not being affected here).  What I've changed is to say that the 7 types can't include the ones above.  There aren't any smaller numbers of any other bot types in those missions, so it's definitely an all-or-nothing sort of thing.  Kind of like how each mission itself has a mix of 5 bot types, not just a stew of everything, now.

[keith.lamothe]

You can't do that

"Can't" is the wrong word here.  You'd just have to allow their inclusion via something like the special-seeding rules.  If you don't want to do that, I understand, but it's not that it would be unfeasible.

[x4000]

You can't do that

"Can't" is the wrong word here.  You'd just have to allow their inclusion via something like the special-seeding rules.  If you don't want to do that, I understand, but it's not that it would be unfeasible.

Okay, I could completely change the rules of all the missions so that we have a soup again, but barring that or barring doing a new special rule where there are tiny numbers of extra bots beyond the base 5 (non-boss) types, "can't" is I think the operative word.  The way you were saying it made it sound like you thought that dialing a number up or down would work within this model, but what I was saying is that we'd have to revise the current model to do it.  Which in itself wouldn't be hard, but frankly I like the current model...

[keith.lamothe]

Okay, I could completely change the rules of all the missions so that we have a soup again

Not necessary at all:

1) Set a new bool IsExtraBotTypeForFinalArmyMissions to GameEntityTypeData, to true on the excluded types.

2) In PopulateFromFinalBattleList, after the list over LastMissionBots, loop over all GameEntityTypeData and if the new bool is present add 1 (or more, or 0 based on random; whatever) to the entityTypes list.

I'm not sure if anything is necessary beyond that.


Anyway, if you're not interested in doing it, that's fine, but I'm not understanding why it would involve some kind of big effort.

[x4000]

Well, I don't want to get into a big argument over it, but there are reasons why that suggestion isn't fully fleshed out.  But bottom line, yes, I don't want to do it.

[keith.lamothe]

Alas!  The final mission (and assasination missions, and lion's den missions, iirc) will no longer explode so gloriously!


Hmm, must find a way to amp the plasma cannon up to 1000 radius...

[x4000]

It's not a "no longer" thing anyway, really.  You had around a 5% chance that they would do it before.  Thereabouts.  Now that 5% is 0%.