Bot discussion

[Histidine]

So, on account of having played this game far more than is healthy, I have a bunch of thoughts/feedback about the state of the bots. Comments welcome

General notes
Short-ranged bots in general are almost never a threat since you can cut them down with ease before they ever get into attack range. Most of them could do with HP buffs in general (and give NinjaBot double-move as an intrinsic ability).

Lion's Den missions basically mean that you don't have to worry about non-bosses in the final battle. Rocket and Grenade Launchers make quick work of the huge bot clumps, and even if you don't have any (because you picked the wrong exos! hee hee) you generally have the firepower to cut them down as they try to close.
Unfortunately, the best idea I can come up with is to reduce the number of enemies in LD missions (for instance, cap to half of current standing army), so they lose fewer bots on the mission

Specific bots
DiamondBot: The "gives money when it shoots you" mechanic is pretty worthless at $6 a pop. Could stand to be at least 10x that. Maybe even more, but with higher damage to compensate.

GaffeBot: Seems to exist only to make a nuisance of itself. Particularly silly with electrified floors. Don't think it actually needs changing, though.

HideBot: Might be relevant if it actually had the firepower to do more than scratch your paint once it decloaked.

CannonBot: Almost never a threat on account of being Forever Alone. Maybe if it had a bigger "friend" radius, or if it could shoot but not move when lonely...

TigerBot: Powerful if it gets close... but if you let it do so, you did something wrong. Because taking damage disables it for two turns, you can stunlock two of them at once and never be threatened; more if you use an AoE weapon. Perhaps reduce stun time to 1 turn, or increase range?

EMPbot: The fact that it disables you only temporarily, but its allies permanently, makes it a huge liability for the enemy. Suggestion: bots hit by EMP are disabled without losing all ammo, but recover after a while (at same speed or slightly slower than the player).

HunterBot: The activate-on-sensor-detection ability doesn't really help her...but it might if she also had stealth.

ThunderBot: Probably the leading cause of friendly fire "accidents" among bots. At the very least she should probably not use her weapons danger close.

SkyBot: Just for giggles, I'd make every fourth bot it drops be an Invigorated DumBot.

RazorBot: Why fight your enemies when you can whistle to Razor and let him do it for you? The mechanic is fine, but I think he could have more HP (and probably ammo) to make up for all the enemy bots you don't have to fight because of him; right now two laser shots will reliably drop him.

I'll post more if I can think of any other changes I think would be good.

[Tridus]

EMPbot: The fact that it disables you only temporarily, but its allies permanently, makes it a huge liability for the enemy. Suggestion: bots hit by EMP are disabled without losing all ammo, but recover after a while (at same speed or slightly slower than the player).

I agree with this one 100% EMPBots appear to be strictly helpful to the player. They're pretty helpful early one, and super helpful once you can outrange the EMP. On Easy I'm also finding that even if I do get hit by the EMP I can just move around a few times and then I'm repaired, while the enemy is still disabled. So even shooting them at point blank range isn't "bad" unless there's something big chasing me that wouldn't get disabled.

They're also too passive.

To demonstrate that, here's a save (in mantis) during a mission I ran into this morning. You can walk into the room to the north of my exo and walk around all you want. The EMPBots and LeaderBots (the only two types actually in the room) don't do anything. There are a couple of active bots farther away, but given their trouble in getting to the room you can just dance around with no resistance whatsoever.

In addition to Histidne's suggestion for them, I'd give them a weak weapon just so they're not sitting still waiting for the player to use them to disable other bots.

(Also loading a save in a mission doesn't center on my exo, and it probably should.)

[Aeson]

EMPBots don't move anymore? They used to run towards me and follow me around all the time in earlier versions unless I killed them.

[Tridus]

Maybe there was another reason why those ones weren't moving, but I had an entire room of stuff without guns kind of just watching me.

[mrhanman]

Maybe I'm mistaken in my understanding of the game, but if we "fix" all of these bots, aren't we missing the point?  I thought the only reason humanity has a chance at all is because of all the bugs the bot's AI has.  If we make them too smart, we're making the game impossible.

How about just throwing more bots at the player on a given difficulty, but keep most of their quirks?

[Tridus]

I'm not really trying to fix the quirks, but a bot army that just ignores you entirely is a pretty odd outcome.

[Histidine]

Or a bot army that blows itself up!

"Say, Bob... how did we lose the city to these fellas, again?"

[keith.lamothe]

"Say, Bob... how did we lose the city to these fellas, again?"

Tactics that no one could have anticipated.

Because they make absolutely no sense.