Part Stats Balance/Polish, Round 4

[Misery]

Good example of why this is going to be hard to balance, heh.   

My own experience is that the things actually dont die easily at all, and I often have to remove them myself after the fight is over so I can continue, if I'd put them in a spot that blocked some path or whatever.  SilenceBots will just eat the things, but most other enemies dont seem to be able to.   The occaisional extremely high health bot being a possible exception, but they're rare.  Shieldbots can screw them up as well.... if I havent already captured it for myself.    Other than that though, if I've been using them throughout a mission, chances are most of them will still be there at the end of the mission. 

4 or 5 turrets in a group is often enough, unless there's a particularly enormous horde coming.  They can be placed either in a very long hallway.... where their range hits things before they can get close, or if I'm dealing with something that the simple range just wont kill, I can put a longer string of them down, giving the rear ones more chances to fire as the bots concentrate on the ones at the front.  Doing the hallway thing is annoying though.  They can also go in a room, with the idea being to catch the enemy bots as they pass through the entrance to the room.  The key here is making sure that the bot has to fully enter the room before it can target anything;  if it can stand just outside, in the hall, this will not be too effective.   When done right, the bot enters, and is shredded immediately.     And finally, they can be placed around corners.  Generally this one is the easiest to do.  Bot comes around the corner, immediately gets shot a whole bunch.   With any of these tactics I can also support with my exos if need be.... generally the sniper and brawler are best for this.... but I dont actually need to do this very often at all, it's pretty rare. 

My sentries are being placed at trap level 19 right now, I think?  I dont always place them in groups, either;  sometimes one or two can be used to just add extra damage to my Assault Exo hitting things with his basic laser (which does about 1000 per hit by itself right now) or something like that.


I can show screenshots as well if it helps to illustrate exactly what I'm doing here;  I just dont have time to do that right at this moment.

[Winge]

Well, by the sound of it, we have similar tactics.  You use a few more turrets (I typically have them as fire support, so I usually place 2-4 at a time), and, by the sound of it, you're better at placing them--I'm still learning the LoS, and typically, I'm more willing to sacrifice a Turret than an Exo  .  I am curious what day you are on--my Assault is nowhere near 1,000 damage with its laser, but then I specced that Exo to take hits, not dish them out.  FWIW, I think my Assault's Overload is over 1,000  >D

A lot of the issue in my game is the aforementioned Leader Bots.  They are level 12 and (pre-nerf) had over 5,000 HP.  My Sniper can barely one-shot them with the Railgun, and I've stacked +% all attack on him.  Oh, and their 'pistol of uselessness' was dealing upwards of 200 damage at 9 range.  One hit puts a turret (or most of my Exos, for that matter) in the red.  The only way my turrets survive those is 1)  enemy Blaster Masters (<3) or 2) serious fire support from my Sniper.  As you mentioned, Silence Bots and Shield Bots also throw a monkey wrench in the mix.

I think I'll go back to that game tomorrow and check it out a bit more.  Part of my 'wow, what happened to my sentry' woes may have been bad placement or RNG love.

[Tridus]

As a normal player, i suppose for many reasons i find sentries too much trouble to really use. Therefore i dont focus on getting loot to boost , it then becomes less useful still, etc. It Is a brutal apathy cycle. Nerfing turrets will make it more niche as powergamers will use it as casuals then ignore it. I propose seperating the powergamers and the casual gamers, rather then trying to balance for the power gamers at the expense of the casuals.

"Normal" players don't need them, the game isn't hard enough at that level to need the entire bag of tricks. Which is just fine. Turrets don't need to be buffed into an IWIN button just because you don't need to use them to win on lower difficulty.

The absolute last thing we need is two sets of rules for everything depending on the difficulty level.

[chemical_art]

As a normal player, i suppose for many reasons i find sentries too much trouble to really use. Therefore i dont focus on getting loot to boost , it then becomes less useful still, etc. It Is a brutal apathy cycle. Nerfing turrets will make it more niche as powergamers will use it as casuals then ignore it. I propose seperating the powergamers and the casual gamers, rather then trying to balance for the power gamers at the expense of the casuals.

The absolute last thing we need is two sets of rules for everything depending on the difficulty level.

The absolute last thing we need is the top %0.1 of players to dictate the rules of a game.

[Misery]

Well, by the sound of it, we have similar tactics.  You use a few more turrets (I typically have them as fire support, so I usually place 2-4 at a time), and, by the sound of it, you're better at placing them--I'm still learning the LoS, and typically, I'm more willing to sacrifice a Turret than an Exo  .  I am curious what day you are on--my Assault is nowhere near 1,000 damage with its laser, but then I specced that Exo to take hits, not dish them out.  FWIW, I think my Assault's Overload is over 1,000  >D

A lot of the issue in my game is the aforementioned Leader Bots.  They are level 12 and (pre-nerf) had over 5,000 HP.  My Sniper can barely one-shot them with the Railgun, and I've stacked +% all attack on him.  Oh, and their 'pistol of uselessness' was dealing upwards of 200 damage at 9 range.  One hit puts a turret (or most of my Exos, for that matter) in the red.  The only way my turrets survive those is 1)  enemy Blaster Masters (<3) or 2) serious fire support from my Sniper.  As you mentioned, Silence Bots and Shield Bots also throw a monkey wrench in the mix.

I think I'll go back to that game tomorrow and check it out a bit more.  Part of my 'wow, what happened to my sentry' woes may have been bad placement or RNG love.

I was around day 23 when those stats were had.   Havent gone nuts with the +all-attack values on any of them, I've mostly focused on getting direct damage from specific weapons up.   And getting a zillion hacking points and computer points on my Science Exo.  Heck, he went from having 24 sentries to 65 sentries from one new item being applied.  Because math, I think.

There was one point though where the turrets just couldnt handle something, which was one mission where I ran into some sort of crazed horror with 12,000 attack and double actions and way too much health; pretty sure that was the mission where all 3 buff bots appeared at once.   Forget what type of bot that was.  No amount of turrets were taking THAT thing down easily, that's for sure.  Particularly since there was a shieldbot nearby.    Those damn buff bots can be really nasty.   Definitely some RNG !!FUN!! happening that time.

As a normal player, i suppose for many reasons i find sentries too much trouble to really use. Therefore i dont focus on getting loot to boost , it then becomes less useful still, etc. It Is a brutal apathy cycle. Nerfing turrets will make it more niche as powergamers will use it as casuals then ignore it. I propose seperating the powergamers and the casual gamers, rather then trying to balance for the power gamers at the expense of the casuals.

The absolute last thing we need is two sets of rules for everything depending on the difficulty level.

The absolute last thing we need is the top %0.1 of players to dictate the rules the bottom 75% use.

Wait, what's the problem with the sentries now?  I cant think of any concievable reason to buff the things, particularly on lower difficulties where they can often annihilate things in a single shot anyway.  Or am I not reading the issue right?

[Tridus]

As a normal player, i suppose for many reasons i find sentries too much trouble to really use. Therefore i dont focus on getting loot to boost , it then becomes less useful still, etc. It Is a brutal apathy cycle. Nerfing turrets will make it more niche as powergamers will use it as casuals then ignore it. I propose seperating the powergamers and the casual gamers, rather then trying to balance for the power gamers at the expense of the casuals.

The absolute last thing we need is two sets of rules for everything depending on the difficulty level.

The absolute last thing we need is the top %0.1 of players to dictate the rules of a game.

Oh please. You want to rewrite things to have a second set of stats to make sentries absurdly overpowered because you think they're a pain to use, on easy difficulties where they're ALREADY really powerful if you bother to use them?

That's ridiculous.

[chemical_art]

Turrets do not exist in a vacuum. they are troublesome to use, , peroid. on lower difficulties they simply are not worth the time to use compared to other options. nerfing turrets simply  wont change that. considering how other stats  change at certain difdiculries to help them be competitive, i dont find the concept ridiculous.

[keith.lamothe]

Expert wouldn't be the top 0.1% of players at this stage.  More like the top 20%, I think.  The game is honestly pretty easy right now all-around once you've put some dedicated thought into how to use each available tool.  Which is ok for 1.0, I think.  Brutal challenge is still available and there's plenty of room for further balance work, etc.

On the lower difficulties, basically by definition, a player doesn't need to worry about even understanding all the tools available.  Otherwise they probably wouldn't be much lower in difficulty.  So on normal a player probably doesn't use sentries unless they're experimenting or particularly enjoy the concept of deploying minions.  And there's actually quite a few in that last category, I think

Anyway, as it stands you don't have to specifically gear for sentries to have a very powerful sentry option available to you, and they are already way more powerful in terms of relative-stats on lower difficulties, so I don't think that they need to be _more_ useful at this time.  What happens in the future, we'll see.  There may need to be other factors than just the numbers or the balance of the sentries themselves.

[chemical_art]

Expert is top 20%? Rouge players are even hardcore then i thought. considering i consider expert the equivilant o 9/9 on ai war, and i know less then 1% of total players could finish.


Actually, ill have to respectfully disagree with the 20%. Maybe 20% of alpha players...who by definition are the most skilled/devoted players to begin. Considering the same for anyone who  posrs on the forum, i simply am skeptical.

[Misery]

Expert is top 20%? Rouge players are even hardcore then i thought. considering i consider expert the equivilant o 9/9 on ai war, and i know less then 1% of total players could finish.


Actually, ill have to respectfully disagree with the 20%. Maybe 20% of alpha players...

In an overall sense, the game is a bit easier than some other Roguelikes even on Expert and possibly on Misery, sort of.   To some extent it depends on the RNG though, as to which bots end up selected for the army list, and which bots are getting leveled up, and which arent.   

I'll be interested to see what players outside of the alpha/beta think of those two difficulty levels after they get their hands on the game. 

[chemical_art]

While that may true, that woud then imply that sales would be tiny. Rougelikes atent big sellers, which is why not many are made.  Id hope more for a good seller then a tiny brutal one.

On the other hand the game lets you save. Thats a big plus for sales.

[Tridus]

Turrets do not exist in a vacuum. they are troublesome to use, , peroid. on lower difficulties they simply are not worth the time to use compared to other options. nerfing turrets simply  wont change that. considering how other stats  change at certain difdiculries to help them be competitive, i dont find the concept ridiculous.

Lots of things aren't necessary to use on easy, because easy is easy. This isn't any different from AI War, where you can get away with not using all your tools on 6/6 a lot more easily than on 9/9.

That doesn't mean turrets are bad or need a buff. Neither is true. You just don't need to fiddle with them when your regular guns can mop the floor with everything on that difficulty. On high difficulty that's much less true. As it stands right now if you buff the turrets on easy, they're going to wipe the floor with nearly everything single handidly.