Hacking points (First impression)

[Ipkins]

Hi all!

Just got the invite to the Alpha and played the first five missions. (Version 0.909) Wanted to give a quick rundown of my impressions, will put the important stuff in Mantis.

- The active bot could be highlighted better. By this I mean that it could be made clearer on the sidebar which your active bot actually IS since I as a new player can not tell them apart by their models.
And maybe it could be emphasized more how the switching works. It tells the player that switching an Exo is an action, but in my eyes it should be stated clearly that although you have 4 exos at your disposal you only control one at a time and can switch at will.

- Hacking is not explained at all until you run into a locked door. The hacking cost should be displayed in the mouseover tooltip. This is not true for all objects and where it is true it seems to be wrong (for doors it says 3 + (Lvl / 2), but I spent 6 points for Lvl 1 doors and 7 for Lvl 2 doors).
- I searched a while until I saw the available hacking points on the sidebar.
- At the beginning it is a little frustrating to encounter lots of locked doors with no way to get at the loot. After three missions I finally found a +Hack item in the store, but still I can at max open two doors, while encountering at least 4. And if I find a "Stealth Recharger" behind one... well, not good.

- Terminals: Nice touch! Intel terminals are handy. The "random" ones... well, if it is a negative effect, maybe it should not be permanent? One caused a mission loss, because it made all enemy robots invisible and the mission was large open spaces. I got teared apart quite quickly even though I tried to stealth away. Will never use such a terminal again if it can cause an instant loss...

- Some items in the customization screen show their mk level at the icon, some do not. Any reason for that?

Overall impression: Very well done! I love the idea of a roguelike (and it really does play like one with the I act, they act logic) where you can swap things and where you have a little bit of extra game around with different mission styles (loved this concept in AVWW1 as well). Will play more this evening and maybe add some impressions then.

Regards,
Ipkins

[Tridus]

The hacking costs early on were caused by the 5+ constant in the costs, but that's been rolled back for the next patch. So this will get easier.

[Ipkins]

Ok new game with 0.911.

- Hacking is fne now, I have enough points to get what I find, but in later stages have to boost my points to have it stay that way.

- Mouse over health seems to be bugged. If I mouse over an injured enemy it shows me full health (=Shields?). If I have a shootable object that occupies more than one square, the tooltip updates only if I select a different square. More details on mantis.

- Did a hostage rescue mission and was also confused by the number below the mission symbol. It took a while to figure out it was the number of enemies left. Also tried to leave early and could not, maybe this should be made clearer in the description.

- In the "Destroy reactors" mission it does NOT state how many are left to blow up. Maybe it should.

- The "mission end" screen is partially obscured by the console output.

- An important global effect that is active (from a special terminal or the enemy freeze after activating a switch plate) should be put somewhere else except the console. Maybe an icon could appear in the lower right corner or on the top of the screen

Game is still a lot of fun! Did 7 missions so far, only one loss (on Normal) where I disregarded the warning and went into a Lion's Den mission. I took out a fair chunk of the enemy army so I still consider it a win, even though my robots were all killed. ;-)

Regards,
Ipkins