Feedback?

[Hearteater]

You guys still interested in feedback on BD? My brother and I just started playing and I've been jotting down notes on my experiences. Only 7 missions in on Easy but having fun.

[keith.lamothe]

Absolutely!  Actually the most recent beta update was just last Tuesday.  There was a very long period during which there were no updates, but I'm hoping to keep the refinement going on this one for a while now.

Glad to hear you're having fun   Is that on the official version (1.008) or the beta (1.016) ?

[Hearteater]

Going from memory, I think it says 1.015 at the top.

[Hearteater]

I just want to start off saying the game is solid and enjoyable so far. I can't speak to the final fight so I suppose the pacing could be off, but otherwise I consider this game a win. Just to dump a bit of my initial feedback. Keep in mind I'm enjoying the game and just want it to be better.

Overall Game Feel

• 50 missions seems pretty long. Honestly, given I've done 7 or maybe 8, I'm pretty certain I'd always run the missions to cut the end fight earlier. I'd say 20 missions feels like the right length to me for a rogue-like. Of course I would love to have the option to play longer games, just like how we select number of planets in AIW. But 20 starting out seems a lot more reasonable. Part of this may be the options available in components.
• Gah, missions can get too close to the left side of the city. I feel so scrunched in!
• As a general rule, and I'll hit the specifics later, there is too much text in common dialogs/tooltips. Also, a few could use some more color. I'll have to hit tooltips in more detail later because I'm almost out of time.

Mission Maps

• The floors look like I'm walking on glass. Very odd look. Actually, overall they aren't super engaging, but that "glass-look" is very odd.
• Cover is first, confusingly named. They really should be called obstacles. Second, it is hard to see. They really blend into the floor. I actually prefer when cover is out of LOS so I get the blue wireframes. Those are much easier to see. Actually, I have backed out of an area just so I could see those to plot a path. Adding a common border around all obstacles would be a huge help.
• Why are there seemingly endless variants of the explosive floor runes? I can't tell that it matters. Also, there are a damn lot of them for something that doesn't come up terribly often. I realize they are really useful and powerful tools to exploit, but do I really need to be seeing 3, 5, or 10 in every third "room"? They stand out and distract way too much and confusingly had both an important "bright white" color, and belied their dangerousness with that same color. Also, their tooltip is HUGE! It should read something like: "When detonated spreads the explosion to all runes within 5 spaces.\nTriggered by: Grenades, Rockets...etc".
• In Destruction missions, the explosive obstacles really should indicate they explode in their tooltip. My first destruction missions I was really uncertain what exactly exploded.
• No mini-map? :(
• I'd like clearer indications of what mission objectives are still to be completed. Sometimes I'm uncertain if I've got everything so I need to run around to every explored place. Also, can we get a quick exit when the objectives are complete and no bots exist? Or maybe even objective complete, no active bots and no bots within X spaces of either the warp out or ourselves?
• Some traps (trip wires) don't indicate in the chat log what happened. Can be pretty confusing.
• Unexplored terminals have too much text!
• As a general rule, for both fuel tanks and BombBots (why aren't these called BoomBots?!)...if I hover over it and it explodes on death, I want to see the area effect.

Combat

• I dislike the range indicator (orange icons). I'd really prefer a solid shading or other more subtle effect. Also dislike the AOE icons, but not as much.
• I have trouble telling what killed me a lot of the time, especially the first few battles. I think the combat animations happen a touch too fast. But I also feel the transition when an Exo dies is really abrupt. I just don't get a good cue when that happens. I need to check the Exo quad panel to see if something died (faster than checking the bot on the map, especially if I'm zoomed out). I'd like an audio and visual cue when you lose an Exo would be excellent.
• Speaking of dead Exos, the monitor really should have "static" in it when they die, instead of that blue.
• Mine placing and virus use is awkward with the arrow keys. I'd much rather hit the mines and click to place. Like so much so I don't use mines unless I really have to. I have to take my hand off the mouse and that's really annoying.
• Ninja welder is really awkward. Why can I ever hit myself? Why isn't a NSEW attack always away from the Exo? It is almost comical.
• ThiefBot should probably just steal one of each. I think he reads "steals your best...blah blah blah". I'd prefer the simpler, if somewhat broader, effect.
• If a bots attack will kill you if you press wait, I'd like a little "danger" triangle (with an ! in it) next to that bot.
• Similarly, I'd like a skull if my currently selected attack will kill a bot I'm mousing-over. The white "damage" indicator has fooled me twice with a sliver of shield.

Components

• I'm already feeling a bit of sameness to the gear. Obviously that can change over time and maybe I just haven't seen all the cool stuff. I'd really like more trade-off. Where is my +range on virus or mine laying? I can haz mine launcher?!
• The +x% Y skills (propulsion, computer, shield) really seem to be pigeon-holing my Exos into roles. I pretty much just want to stack those and some base value and go nuts. Basically I'm maxing stats and there isn't any trade-off. My Science Exo is stacking all Computer skills because that's what components encourage you to do.
• While I'm on items, I kind of dislike the Produces Power components. They appear randomly sprinkled. I realize this may be a result of components that can be slotted into both the reactor and another slot, but it still feels weird. I may also not be seeing the pattern yet. I think I'd prefer if slotting components in the reactor swapped the "Consumes" to "Produces" or something (with whatever multiplier is needed to make stuff work).
• The omni-tool parts (can slot anywhere, do different things in different spots) appear a bit too often for my tastes. They are wordy and complex components that end up only giving a single stat (whichever is best). Rarely can I see myself swapping them to a new system to get a different bonus. I'm likely to have better gear later and just use that instead.
• Their tooltips are too long. I get 5 lines of extra text in every one: 3 lines + a spacer explaining how to sell/equip them, plus another telling me how to access flavor text. Those top their should just be somewhere on the customize screen instead of inside tooltips. I'd even ditch the flavor text line. Or really, add a "toggle flavor text" button, and keep shift as the "temporarily show flavor text" so I can turn it off universally, but show it as needed.

And I'm out of time. More when I get a chance. Thanks for make a really fun game guys!

[nas1m]

Gotta run, but have some quick feedback:

Overall Game Feel

• 50 missions seems pretty long.

Keith and I have already been a new conduct to halve the number of missions here. So there is hope :).

Mission Maps

• The floors look like I'm walking on glass. Very odd look. Actually, overall they aren't super engaging, but that "glass-look" is very odd.

Did you try these yet ?

[Hearteater]

I will be loading those ASAP. Much better!

[Hearteater]

• Empty computer slots after 2 are hard to spot. See the attached image.
• White damage on a yellow health bar is also odd. Actually, so is a yellow health bar.
• Should the base even be repairable? It seems to fight the game play. If my base is only damaged by failing a mission, and I need to run a mission (which I risk failing) to do nothing more than protect me against a future failure, then why ever run those missions? It is almost always a better option to run something else. The rule of rogue-likes is "fail early" so giving us a method of propping up a failing game just to get crushed at the end seems less than ideal.
• I like the custom floor tiles :)

[nas1m]

I will be loading those ASAP. Much better!

Good to know somebody (other than me) is enjoying them . Thanks!

Mission Maps

• No mini-map?

In a way the map itself works as a minimap by zooming out very far. But I guess you already though about that.

• As a general rule, for both fuel tanks and BombBots (why aren't these called BoomBots?!)...if I hover over it and it explodes on death, I want to see the area effect.

You can achieve this already by holding CTRL (or was it SHIFT - anyway, the hotkey that shows weapon ranges is it) and hovering over a Fuel tank, BombBot or EMPBot iirc.

Combat

• I dislike the range indicator (orange icons). I'd really prefer a solid shading or other more subtle effect. Also dislike the AOE icons, but not as much.

Come to think of it I think this could really improve the visuals. I will have a look when I next got time to fiddle with the texture pack stuff. Maybe I can come up with a replacement that works more as you describe it...

More feedback on you feedback coming - gotta work now ;).

[Misery]

• Empty computer slots after 2 are hard to spot. See the attached image.
• White damage on a yellow health bar is also odd. Actually, so is a yellow health bar.
• Should the base even be repairable? It seems to fight the game play. If my base is only damaged by failing a mission, and I need to run a mission (which I risk failing) to do nothing more than protect me against a future failure, then why ever run those missions? It is almost always a better option to run something else. The rule of rogue-likes is "fail early" so giving us a method of propping up a failing game just to get crushed at the end seems less than ideal.
• I like the custom floor tiles :)

Keep in mind, this isnt supposed to be a "pure" Roguelike.  Mistakes are easy to make in this game even at low difficulties, and many players can be pushed away from a game like this if they're encountering that type of frustration.

The salvage missions give you a bit of a buffer;  so that if you make a big mistake and get destroyed, you'll have a CHANCE to undo it.... but at the cost of wasting a day, and also at the risk of simply losing AGAIN.  And you'll already have lost the chance to get the end-of-mission loot items from the one you died in.

As such, the amount of times you can do this goes down with each higher difficulty, with the base having only 2 HP on Misery (meaning you get ONE chance to save yourself if you have a mission go bad). 

The game is meant to have a very wide range of difficulties and such so as to appeal to many players, and that idea helps to further this concept. 


As for the bit you mentioned with loot and "roles", some of that, I think, is intended.  There's a reason why the Science Exo is called, well, the "Science" Exo... it's the one meant to be the master of computer parts/functions, and is not very good in combat.  And so on for the others as well.  It's what makes team choices important.   That being said, there's still alot of ways to approach it, and as the difficulty levels go higher, you have to be more and more careful about how you equip them, as simply maxing the heck outta everything is *not* possible. It might be more doable on low difficulties... I have no idea, I dont bother with the lower ones.  On Expert & Misery, it cant happen.  Those are meant to be very difficult, not the sort of things you can just run down with a lawnmower.  I'd be clamoring for balance fixes even more than I already do if it were possible to do that; there's enough of that "outlevel everything and hit the win button" in various other genres (like JRPGs... sigh) already as it is.

It might be worth trying out those two difficulties yourself to see what happens and what you think of them.  Equipment choices on those, particularly Misery, can outright wreck your team if you're not carefully considering every choice you make.

The lack of minimap is mostly because it honestly just seems kinda unnecessary.  Zooming full out takes about half a second, and scrolling around the map as you see fit is very easy.

[Hearteater]

Just to make sure I understand, I can win the game with my base at 1 health or 7 health, and there is no difference? If that is the case, the only time I might want to salvage is when I'm at 1 health. If I've run any salvage missions and I get to the end fight with > 1 base health, those salvage missions were wasted. I could have gotten better loot elsewhere. Really, the only way a salvage mission makes any sense is if they don't cost me a day. In that scenario each I find on the map gives me one chance to heal one damage.

I should note I find 7 health too high for later difficulties (I don't know, does it go down at higher difficulties?). Maybe I'm putting too much value on completing missions, but if I'm at the top difficulty I can't imagine I've got much chance at winning if I've lost 6 missions. I'm not sure what balance tuning could make the game challenging at max difficulty when you lose 0 missions and still be winnable at max difficulty after losing 6 missions (not to mention losing more and wasting missions salvaging). Give me 3 base health (at higher difficulty) and salvage missions don't cost days. That reminds me:

• Can the base health bar be segmented? The number, even at 7, is small enough I'd prefer if I can just count the blocks: =======

The gear issue comes down to the +x% skill boosts hit a lot of skills. For example, there is no reason to have a hacking specialized bot without virus points (or vice versa). You'll have so much +% computer skills for your hacking even getting a random +5 Virus will net you 20-30 points. So really I only have one specialization option for each skill group. Increased difficulty will only make this more pronounced because everything else will be too inefficient.

And I don't want to zoom in and out. It is awkward and requires me to memorize the path I'm going to take and then zoom back in. Silly maybe, but it affects my enjoyment. And I do enough zooming in AIW already .

[Misery]

Well, as the salvage bit goes, the way I view it is simple:  Allowing yourself to hit 1HP and then doing other missions *before* doing the salvage ones is a bad idea.  Why?  The majority of mission types are harder than salvage missions, so you're MUCH more likely to lose in them.   Keeping your HP above 1 before doing normal missions gives you the breathing room necessary to survive if you make a mistake.  However, if you're at 1 HP and make a mistake, that's it, it's over, because you didn't give yourself that buffer. 

At lower difficulties it's not really a big deal though, as you have way more HQ health, and enemies are *much* weaker.  Wheras on the higher ones, well.... on Misery, you can afford *one* mistake.  Another one, and you're done.  And the devious changes to that mode in comparison to Expert make it *extremely* likely that you'll have a "mistake" or six.  The salvage missions are almost a necessity to win on that one.... if you can beat them, that is.


What difficulty are you playing on, by the way?  You seem good at giving detailed feedback, so if you have any specific thoughts on any specific difficulty mode as you progress, that feedback could be very helpful for all of the balance changes we've been messing with here.

As for the loot on higher difficulties (Expert and Misery being the only ones I play), I actually find that I end up IGNORING the "+ all computer stats" ones, and similar things.  Loot is harder to come by, and the stats necessary for any given Exo to be effective at specific things are MUCH higher.  Distributing gain via the +all is.... not very helpful.  You might want a couple of those, but not more than that.  Targeted gains are MUCH stronger, as you need those massive single-number increases in order to remain not dead.  Even the science bot needs way more than just computer skills, as on higher difficulties he is required to join in the actual fighting just as the others do.   Too much +computer is too many parts that ARENT enhancing his other aspects.   It's the same for weapons.  Enemy HP doesnt trickle upwards, it LAUNCHES upwards on the higher difficulties.  Just overall boosts arent good enough.  Targeted boosts, where each individual part is giving a high amount like 30-50% (or more) are typically the way to go, as it's the only way to make sure that your most important weapons keep up with the enemy enough to actually deal real damage to them, particularly as you usually need to be able to take out any given enemy bot in only one or two hits.... when they have thousands of HP.  And that's not late-game, mind you. 

In addition, on higher difficulties "good" loot is MUCH harder to come by, as the stat gains need to be so much higher than lower modes.  Particularly in the store, where things are freakishly expensive and typically require that you save up over a few missions just to buy ONE specific thing in there.  And it's important that you do so.   This makes the idea of stacking "overall" boosts even less viable, because you just cant afford to concentrate resources that hard on something where each INDIVIDUAL part is only offering a low percentage.  It'll take you a bloody long time to get enough parts of that type to create the stack (for just ONE Exo), and by that time the enemy stats will have bloated out of control.


However, if you are finding something along this line, one thing that'd probably help for balancing is probably some examples of equipment setups, and maybe an uploaded save, if you've got your team in a state where they seem way overpowered due to that sort of thing.  It'd probably be quite useful for ironing that sort of thing out.

[nas1m]

Mission Maps

• Why are there seemingly endless variants of the explosive floor runes? I can't tell that it matters.

I always found myself a little confused by these as well, especially in terms of whether hitting a rune with one specific symbol will only transfer the shot to runes carrying the same one or not. if this is not the case (and it doesn't seem to) I don't really see any reason for having different graphics for them at all. Visual clarity would trump diversity in this case for me.

As a related note having them indeed transmit only to runes of the same symbol combined with making them spawn in a less piled fashion could be an interesting puzzle to solve for the player.

The one other thing that the game is really missing as far as runes are concerned is a preview of the of the area(s) that will be affected by the explosion. As they are these are a grab bag in terms of whether they will eliminate the bots you have to get rid off - which is always a source of frustration on the higher difficulties.

• In Destruction missions, the explosive obstacles really should indicate they explode in their tooltip. My first destruction missions I was really uncertain what exactly exploded.

Being able to get a blast radius preview for a cover piece here would be immensely helpful as well!

• I'd like clearer indications of what mission objectives are still to be completed. Sometimes I'm uncertain if I've got everything so I need to run around to every explored place. Also, can we get a quick exit when the objectives are complete and no bots exist? Or maybe even objective complete, no active bots and no bots within X spaces of either the warp out or ourselves?

All good suggestions in my book.
I would appreciate a more prominent objective display than the mission icon tooltip (which is really fairly opaque).
Being able to warp out once the work is done and all bots on the way to the exit have been cleared would be a cool feat!

[Combat

• I have trouble telling what killed me a lot of the time, especially the first few battles. I think the combat animations happen a touch too fast. But I also feel the transition when an Exo dies is really abrupt. I just don't get a good cue when that happens. I need to check the Exo quad panel to see if something died (faster than checking the bot on the map, especially if I'm zoomed out). I'd like an audio and visual cue when you lose an Exo would be excellent.

I have this problem from time to time as well. Scrolling the message log helps, but this could definitely be more prominent.

• Speaking of dead Exos, the monitor really should have "static" in it when they die, instead of that blue.

Now that's a cool one. I like it. I would like to check out whether I can find something suitable for the next texture pack, but I think there is no image yet for this occasion yet that i could replace :-\. Or am I wrong here, Keith?

• Mine placing and virus use is awkward with the arrow keys. I'd much rather hit the mines and click to place. Like so much so I don't use mines unless I really have to. I have to take my hand off the mouse and that's really annoying.

That or at least have mines always be put behind your Exo would be a change I would much appreciate.

• If a bots attack will kill you if you press wait, I'd like a little "danger" triangle (with an ! in it) next to that bot.

I would like to see this. Would be a vast improvement in clarity I think, especially for learning players.

• Similarly, I'd like a skull if my currently selected attack will kill a bot I'm mousing-over. The white "damage" indicator has fooled me twice with a sliver of shield.

Seconded.

[Hearteater]

It's just my first game and is on easy. It is clearly way too easy for me, but I'm focusing a lot of my feedback on stuff that detracts from my general desire to play a second game. 50 missions is the big one. I just don't have time to play games that long...and if I do, I'm playing AIW. I'm also passing forward some feedback from my brother who likes the genre but is turned off by several points I've brought up. In particular, getting one-shot repeatedly on easy and not understanding why has been pretty annoying for him. And he's only 5 missions in. His first feedback on his game, on easy was approximately: "This is f'ing easy?! WTF are they thinking." I attribute this entirely to the interface not conveying critical information to him (particular in categories of what explodes and how big). I specifically started playing just to get some information so I could point him in the right direction so it wouldn't be so frustrating.

Well, as the salvage bit goes, the way I view it is simple:  Allowing yourself to hit 1HP and then doing other missions *before* doing the salvage ones is a bad idea.  Why?  The majority of mission types are harder than salvage missions, so you're MUCH more likely to lose in them.   Keeping your HP above 1 before doing normal missions gives you the breathing room necessary to survive if you make a mistake.  However, if you're at 1 HP and make a mistake, that's it, it's over, because you didn't give yourself that buffer.

I did mention that if I'm going to use salvage at all, I wouldn't do them until I'm at 1 hp. I meant to imply that I would do that at that point. That may have been missed because of my feeling that I likely would abandon the game before that point since I having trouble imagining the game being winnable if I've lost that many missions. Really, the only way losing a bunch of missions and still winning the game is possible is if winning missions isn't that important. Or rather, losing missions isn't that bad (hence why we need base health to encourage us to care about winning).

If losing multiple missions is expected, especially at higher difficulty, I think the problem is one of perception and feel. I feel really bad when I lose a mission, like I'm losing the game and should just restart. I'd feel better if the game ended for me and didn't make me make that decision. Imagine playing a game and getting the prompt, "You've already lost, continue pointlessly?" That just would feel worse than the game ending. A shift in how the game felt (not behaved) on "losing" a mission would help. In fact, why call it failing a mission at all? You can still progress past a failed mission. What if, instead of the thematic "robots attack your base because you failed and you lose 1 health" we got "emergency air strike called in to clear the area, but we only have 6 more airstrike drones left." Then modify the "failure" text to mention something about salvaging parts from the wreckage or something so the player doesn't get such a negative feel. Again, that's assuming failing missions is expected.

Anyways, my second game will be either misery or the level right below that. I may even start that before I finish my current game just to get a better read on the difficulty modifiers.

[keith.lamothe]

Glad you're enjoying the game   I don't have time right now to reply to all the follow-up info, but for the first chunk:

• Gah, missions can get too close to the left side of the city. I feel so scrunched in!

I can try and expand the allowed black area around the map, if that will help.

• As a general rule, and I'll hit the specifics later, there is too much text in common dialogs/tooltips. Also, a few could use some more color. I'll have to hit tooltips in more detail later because I'm almost out of time.

Yea, Arcen Information Overload was in full force here.  This is after we cut it down a lot!  Anyway, if better ways to put things (brevity, color, etc) can be identified then we can whittle away at the walls of text.

• Cover is first, confusingly named. They really should be called obstacles.

True, I've made a note to go through that after the official.

Second, it is hard to see. They really blend into the floor. I actually prefer when cover is out of LOS so I get the blue wireframes. Those are much easier to see. Actually, I have backed out of an area just so I could see those to plot a path. Adding a common border around all obstacles would be a huge help.

Hmm, I'm not sure how I'd do that.  Not much of a shader programmer, you see.  Would they look at all reasonable if they just stayed as wireframes?  Or perhaps drew the wireframes whenever you had the "show firing ranges" key held?

• Why are there seemingly endless variants of the explosive floor runes? I can't tell that it matters.

The variants have no gameplay meaning.  I can just make them always show up the same if that helps.  Might not look as good.

Also, there are a damn lot of them for something that doesn't come up terribly often.

The tooltip was claiming they were rare?  Mapgen doesn't seem to agree, yea.  I'm happy to fix the tooltip, but if folks would rather see less of them, or perhaps make their frequency more mission-type-dependent that could probably be done.

They stand out and distract way too much and confusingly had both an important "bright white" color, and belied their dangerousness with that same color.

So dimmer and more orange than blue, or what?

• In Destruction missions, the explosive obstacles really should indicate they explode in their tooltip. My first destruction missions I was really uncertain what exactly exploded.

Newbie Trap Working As Designed

More seriously, yea, I can add a line to the tooltip there.

• No mini-map?

A minimap could never give you enough information while still being "mini".  But I could give it a shot.  It could be a bit of a performance hog, since the texture will need to be re-computed at the end of every turn, but it'll probably be ok.  I'm guessing it would probably be 1x1 pixel per tile (since 2x2 doesn't allow much more info, and 3x3 allows an inner and outer bit of info but would be too big), with different colors for:
- unknown tile (black)
- known wall (dark gray)
- known empty space (light gray)
- known obstacle (medium gray)
- exo (light blue)
- known inactive enemy (dim yellow)
- known active enemy (light orange)
- exit (white, with slightly darker color drawing over adjacent tiles if they're empty)
- known helpful tile (ammo chest, repair bay, etc) (light purple)
- known objective tile (fabricator in a factory mission, etc) (not sure what color, since green and red are unusable for accessibility reasons; possibly a darker orange with the adjacent-tile-spillover like the exit)

Anything else?

• I'd like clearer indications of what mission objectives are still to be completed. Sometimes I'm uncertain if I've got everything so I need to run around to every explored place.

Hmm, the mission button on the sidebar's supposed to give that info, but perhaps there are mission types we couldn't figure out how to be clearer on.

Also, can we get a quick exit when the objectives are complete and no bots exist? Or maybe even objective complete, no active bots and no bots within X spaces of either the warp out or ourselves?

Hmm, yea, maybe we can make clicking the mission button end the mission if it's been accomplished.  Probably without checks on active bots, etc, since that sounds pretty fiddly.  Basically if you've won that's fine, it's up to you whether you want to kill the rest of the bots for money and search for remaining treasure, etc.

• Some traps (trip wires) don't indicate in the chat log what happened. Can be pretty confusing.

Oh, I thought they did.  Any others than trip wires?

• I dislike the range indicator (orange icons). I'd really prefer a solid shading or other more subtle effect. Also dislike the AOE icons, but not as much.

Both textures are in RuntimeData/Images/ , I'm happy to use a different one if it's broadly considered to be better.


On exo-death notification, yea, that could stand to be better.


On putting static in the dead exo boxes, that could be done; nothing the texture pack can do there right now, nas1m, I'll have to code in a new animator for it to do that since it would presumably need to be multi-frame to have the appearance of static.


On mine/virus use by clicking I'll think about it.  Single-press usage is nice, though I do get that the consequences are awkward here.

• Ninja welder is really awkward. Why can I ever hit myself?

Nobody said they were smart   I can exclude self-hits from that particular aoe type, but in general it's basically like shooting a plasma charge right in front of you: of course it's going to hit you.  Though I did make the new volatizer and shotgun aoe types never hit the firing unit.

Incidentally, can the ninja actually hit itself with a welder?  I thought its aoe-immunity would cover that.  Unless it's literally shooting its own tile.

Why isn't a NSEW attack always away from the Exo? It is almost comical.

I'm not sure what you mean by North-south-east-west, but with the welder you can shoot at any tile in range, and control whether it's vertical or horizontal with the ctrl key.

• ThiefBot should probably just steal one of each. I think he reads "steals your best...blah blah blah". I'd prefer the simpler, if somewhat broader, effect.

True, would be simpler.

• If a bots attack will kill you if you press wait, I'd like a little "danger" triangle (with an ! in it) next to that bot.

I don't know if that much prediction is viable.  But potentially it could do a simple check to see whether the bot's attack power would be sufficient to kill you on a direct hit.  Bear in mind that some things won't generally get direct hits, or hits at all.  So the warnings could be misleading.

• Similarly, I'd like a skull if my currently selected attack will kill a bot I'm mousing-over. The white "damage" indicator has fooled me twice with a sliver of shield.

Yea, I've also thought some kind of "this will actually kill it" indicator would be nice.

[Hearteater]

Lighter and orange for runes sounds good. Less of them will help with them all being the same now.
Nothing to add to mini-map. I care most about general layout, quickly spotting unexplored areas, and the exit (quick exit on success makes that less important). Everything else is gravy.
Trip wires are the only ones that haven't given me info...so far .
Virus/Mines can just be made to work like weapons. Select them and I right click were I want them to go. Most intuitive because now all weapons/abilities work the same.
Wow, I completely didn't realize I could control vertical vs. horizontal with the welder. Was making it pretty awkward to use. Control is not intuitive at all. It never even occurred to me to think of that.
And I don't know if I can hit myself with the welder because I haven't tried. I got the warning the one time I experimented and I NOPED right out of that.
Danger <!> on bots that could one-shot me if I wait is all I ask for. No advanced calculation needed (like if the crazy rocket bot will randomly shot a different direction). Safe > Sorry.

Thanks for all your hard work btw.