Part Stats Balance/Polish, Round 4

[Winge]

Until this afternoon, I had never gotten a reactor from the Reactor Fab mission.  Could be RNG love, although I would almost say that at least one reactor should be guaranteed from a reactor fab mission.  That said, I'm not sure that putting a rule like that in the mission would be a good idea.  Thoughts?

[Misery]

Hm, Hacker parts:  These are really, really rare.   Hardly any loot comes from Science lab missions, and the store almost never carries these either;  almost all hacking points have to come as bonuses from other items, or from a computer-enhancing stat.   Considering how important hacking is.... particularly in higher difficulties where store prices are high.... this is definitely a problem.  They're alot more difficult to come by then reactors are right now.

Also, sentries can become pretty strong now, which isnt bad... the actual attack levels with them scale up well with trap-skill... but they're a little too easy to use.  So a suggestion:  dramatically lower how much ammo each sentry has.  70 per sentry is way too much.  The player can get alot of sentries to use per mission with the right parts, so even if they only had 10-15 shots each, you could still do some real damage with them, and use them to take out tanky sorts of bots.


Aside from that, and enemy attack scaling, which you're already working on.... I'm not really finding any further problems as I continue through the game.

[keith.lamothe]

Awesome, thanks for the feedback on the hacker frequency and the sentry ammo, both of those can be readily adjusted

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, here's what Expert's normal bot health multipliers look like, in the existing model and the new one.  The new one follows the same basic approach as most of the part stats with the three-linear-phases:

- The first third of the progression gives +A per level and ends at 1/6th of the end value.
- The second third of the progression gives +B per level and ends at 1/2 of the end value.
- The last third of the progression gives +C per level and ends at the... well, end.

The result is progression, and escalation of that progression (when you move to a new third), but compared to the straight exponents it's without the glacially-slow part at the beginning or the "each level is way more than the last" at the end.

[keith.lamothe]

A few other changes from this thread:

* Hacker parts are now about 50% more likely to be picked when a new part is generated.

* Reactors are now about 10 times more likely to be picked when generating loot in/for a Reactor Fab mission.

* Player Sentry Turrets:
** Max Ammo from 80 => 10.
** Attack from 120 => 150.
** The idea being that you can still get a ton of total sentry shots, but you won't get them from just a few turrets.

I did a test win of a Reactor fab mission.  3 of 4 of the loot pieces were Slave Reactors.

[Misery]

Hmm, looking on Mantis, there's one thing I wanted to mention:   http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=12858


That particular change seems unnecessary to me for a few reasons:

I'm at the 20 days left point in my current game, and with my science exo's current trap skill, they'd have over 20 shots each.    They're already very strong as is, and I have 20 of them.  This is WITHOUT me concentrating on trap-skill or turret stats;  the science exo's build is entirely about hacking.    That's a "kill the entire mission" level of ammo.   Heck, I already killed 50% of the bots in my last mission with about 8 or 9 of my 20 sentries;  and the science exo isnt the only one that has them.  AND, that's a late-game Expert mission with alot of high health bots.   If I actually concentrated on trap-skill and propulsion boost, the things would be basically unstoppable, AND last more than twice as long as ammo goes.  The low ammo is the only thing that keeps them from being able to just murder everything.

I know the ammo change to the things might seem a little extreme at first, but after extensive testing with that, the things are still quite strong.  Particularly once their range goes up.  They're hard to kill for most bots, as typically the only things that kill them quickly are explosive weapons, but that's IF the bot in question even gets close enough.  Usually I find the central threat to sentries is actually SilenceBots when they have followers.   The only thing players really need to keep in mind in order to use sentries effectively is that they're meant to be used in groups.  They dont run out of ammo as fast as you might think when they're powered up.  I'm seeing shield levels of 2000-3000 on average for many bots, and if I have a bunch of sentries down, say, a group of 8, a 2500-health bot will only take one shot from about 5 or 6 of those 8 sentries in order to kill at the current attack level my own sentries have.   In other words, just that one group can kill LOTS of things if used right.  Particularly as most missions also have numerous low-health bots as well, not just mid or high ones.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on that after messing with the things a bunch.

[keith.lamothe]

Fair enough.  I could drop the base ammo to like 5 to further emphasize that you need a trap-skill-build to murder levels with them (as opposed to light/moderate diversion use).  Then I'd probably up the ammo boost form trap skill to +10% so it's still 2-points-to-get-1-extra-ammo.  Unless that winds up still being too much.

The base attack/shields could also come down a bit, for the same reason.

On the other hand, this is one of those things where I wonder if not being OP will basically just cause people to ignore them because of the hassle involved in proper use.

Even there, of course, it needs to not be out-of-control-OP, and I guess clearing a mission on Expert would qualify as that.

[Misery]

Aye, that's true, if they're weakened it might indeed cause people to just not use them much.   

One thing you could try is lowering the numbers of turrets that items give you at a time;  larger groups of them would be harder to place, and smaller ones are not only easier and quicker to place, but you'd want to support their attacks with your own to maximize them, which is very different than just letting them kill everything for you.   Attack and health actually seem pretty good to me; it's mainly the fact that it's so easy to get large numbers of them going at once that can really wreck even high health bots before they even have a chance to fire back.

Or at least that's what I'm thinking.   It sounds like it'll be tough to balance and test properly.

[chemical_art]

On the other hand, this is one of those things where I wonder if not being OP will basically just cause people to ignore them because of the hassle involved in proper use.

Even there, of course, it needs to not be out-of-control-OP, and I guess clearing a mission on Expert would qualify as that.

I see two distinct points.

One, that turrets need to be strong in order for the common person to want to use them at all.

Second, that turrets need to not be so strong that it murders higher difficulties, which is inherently less common person audience.


Therefore, rather then the current situation of B dictating A, let A be very strong yet for B have it weaker. In other words, across difficulties, why not have turret stats changes. It already happens for armor although in a different direction.

It can be as simple as Normal and below get 40 shots, hard they get 20 shots, then expert gets 10.

In fact, why not have different ammo across the board for things?

[Tridus]

In fact, why not have different ammo across the board for things?

Because the wild swings in health already mean you need less ammo to kill things on lower difficulty.

[chemical_art]

In fact, why not have different ammo across the board for things?

Because the wild swings in health already mean you need less ammo to kill things on lower difficulty.

the lower health means you get a lot more overkill. so ammo is more important. keep in mind this in practice would only give more ammo for normal and below.

[Misery]

On the other hand, this is one of those things where I wonder if not being OP will basically just cause people to ignore them because of the hassle involved in proper use.

Even there, of course, it needs to not be out-of-control-OP, and I guess clearing a mission on Expert would qualify as that.

I see two distinct points.

One, that turrets need to be strong in order for the common person to want to use them at all.

Second, that turrets need to not be so strong that it murders higher difficulties, which is inherently less common person audience.


Therefore, rather then the current situation of B dictating A, let A be very strong yet for B have it weaker. In other words, across difficulties, why not have turret stats changes. It already happens for armor although in a different direction.

It can be as simple as Normal and below get 40 shots, hard they get 20 shots, then expert gets 10.

In fact, why not have different ammo across the board for things?

The thing about the lower difficulties though:  Pretty much everything murders bots rather easily on those.  On normal it's common for many bots to only take one or two hits from many weapons in order to be destroyed.  On top of that, the player is less likely to really be trying to squeeze as much power out of their items/builds as on the higher difficulties.


As the ammo goes though in the current version, even without doing anything to increase my trap-skill level further I'm already at twice the amount of ammo per sentry in my current game.   Even just that makes things distinctly easier in many situations, as enemy bot groups now take twice as long to overrun sentry groups.   With the exception of course being those sorts of bots that'll kill them in one hit with like 10 zillion damage per shot.  It is definitely a bit of an issue.

I wonder if their range extension should be lowered a bit?  That's usually where the problem happens the most.  Alot of enemy bots dont outrange these guys at all, and so must traverse numerous tiles in their direction before having a chance to do any damage.  It also means that what I'm calling the "hallway of sentries" tactic does much more damage to approaching bots in each turn as it otherwise would.   The more I think about it, the more I wonder if these things even need a range extension.   It's a change that made more sense coming off of how they used to be, but since their health/attack is at a pretty good level now, it might be unnecessary at this point. 

[keith.lamothe]

Good point on the range thing; I'll probably change it to be much slower in increasing once we're post-1.0, but for 1.0 I don't mind these being a bit more useful than perhaps they should be

[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.

[Winge]

I haven't had a chance to reply, but I think that you and I have very different experiences with turrets.  Not to say I find them useless; there are missions where I need them just to be able to thin the hordes.  However, my turrets die.  A lot.  In my expert game, with roughly 17 trap skill, my turrets die to 2 shots from Leader Bots (which were boosted to level 12 before I reached 30 days remaining...ouch).  They barely survive the first shot.  I'd be curious to know what you and I are doing differently--how many turrets are you placing and at what level?

Now, I'm not saying that I want the TF2 Engineer's invulnerable turret of death.  I see sentries as a way to 'thin out the chaff' by picking off weaker enemies and distracting more dangerous enemies, which is why I think having more ammo is a good idea.

As far as range goes, I agree completely.  I would try 4-5 points per range increase.  One other possibility is diminishing returns, although that would probably not be very intuitive for the player.  Basically, the first extra point of range would require 3-4, and each additional range after that would require one additional point.

So, with Trap Skill = 17:
Now:  Range = 11
4 pt:  Range = 10
5 pt:  Range = 9
Dr 3:  Range = 9
Dr 4:  Range = 9

For Range 12, need a Trap Skill of:
Now:  18
4 pt:  24
5 pt:  30
Dr 3:  33
Dr 4:  49 (non-Ninjas need not apply?)

Thoughts?