Possible Bionic Dues Expansion

[Pumpkin]

Inconsistency in weapons is really counter intuitive I think in this game. You are given all of the tools to make a decision, having some of your tools be inconsistent would drive me batty or I just wouldn't use them.

Buggy weapon doesn't mean inconsistent weapon. The dumb bot is completely buggy but totally predictable and consistent. I think weapons that can be powerful but have a huge drawback (like many bots) could be an interesting design vein.

Is overload ever useful?

YES!
I did a game recently with a full armor/regen Assault exo + overload. On some tanky bots (tiger was the most ridiculous opponent with that strategy), I could save so many bullets by spam-clicking the overload... Each overload costed only 1% health and I could regen more than 50% health. I was able to let some small groups of enemies unload their ammo on me and then blast them with overload while spending no ammo in the whole process.

Sorry, I derailed.

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

• I'd like to know the number of unopened loot containers on the level, so I can exit early without losing loot.

I'll look into that, but it seems like a bit of a cheap way to get some intel about the mission. Maybe only display unopened loot containers that you've found?

• I'd like to know how much damage a shot is going to do. The shotgun makes me very sad because I don't have a good idea of how much damage it will do.

You can see how much damage a weapon does by hovering over it, and then the log in the top right tells you how much damage the shot did, so you should be able to figure out how harsh the shotgun dropoff is. Less than ideal, but I'm not sure how to put the shot damage in there without it looking clunky.

• Different color and larger life bars. It's hard to seem them.

I wonder if a brand new life bar for your current mech would be in order (and be optional)? Have it display across the top of the screen, similar to how SR display's Boss lifebars? (Not sure I'm able to do this, but I can try)

• Better auto-saving so I can "undo"

Bad. No save-scumming for you. Where would you recommend the autosaves?

[ptarth]

• I'd like to know the number of unopened loot containers on the level, so I can exit early without losing loot.

I'll look into that, but it seems like a bit of a cheap way to get some intel about the mission. Maybe only display unopened loot containers that you've found?

I don't know if there is a good UI place for it to be realistically. Unopened ones I've seen don't bother me. Its the ones that might be behind door X, but I'd have to open it to find out that get me. Or finding the exit to a level early, killing all of the remaining robots and finding out there wasn't any loot. The credit gains from bots are just so low that it seems somewhat tedious to finish out a level. Or perhaps provide some sort of additional bonus if you do a full clear?

• I'd like to know how much damage a shot is going to do. The shotgun makes me very sad because I don't have a good idea of how much damage it will do.

You can see how much damage a weapon does by hovering over it, and then the log in the top right tells you how much damage the shot did, so you should be able to figure out how harsh the shotgun dropoff is. Less than ideal, but I'm not sure how to put the shot damage in there without it looking clunky.

The shotgun is particularly problematic because it has Y different settings, all of which can do different damage to each of its target squares. I kept trying to use it but would misjudge how much damage it dealt (ending in my death, which made me sad). I would suggest an option that adds the numeric damage dealt to the circle indicators now present.

• Different color and larger life bars. It's hard to seem them.

I wonder if a brand new life bar for your current mech would be in order (and be optional)? Have it display across the top of the screen, similar to how SR display's Boss lifebars? (Not sure I'm able to do this, but I can try)

The player Mech lifebars are a little too subtle, but I was referring to enemy mech life bars. A simple size increase/color change should work out?

• Better auto-saving so I can "undo"

Bad. No save-scumming for you. Where would you recommend the autosaves?

In the normal save folder? I don't think I get what you are asking though. However, something like a set of 5 filenames that would be constantly overwriting the oldest would work I think.

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

I don't know if there is a good UI place for it to be realistically. Unopened ones I've seen don't bother me. Its the ones that might be behind door X, but I'd have to open it to find out that get me. Or finding the exit to a level early, killing all of the remaining robots and finding out there wasn't any loot. The credit gains from bots are just so low that it seems somewhat tedious to finish out a level. Or perhaps provide some sort of additional bonus if you do a full clear?

I'm honestly not even sure if I could detect how many locked boxes were seeded, then how many you opened. I could probably do some kind of additional bonus for a full clear though. The hard part is making it not too good so your only real option is to hunt down every robot, but not so bad that it doesn't matter what you choose to do.

The shotgun is particularly problematic because it has Y different settings, all of which can do different damage to each of its target squares. I kept trying to use it but would misjudge how much damage it dealt (ending in my death, which made me sad). I would suggest an option that adds the numeric damage dealt to the circle indicators now present.

I'll look into it.

The player Mech lifebars are a little too subtle, but I was referring to enemy mech life bars. A simple size increase/color change should work out?

OH! I'll see how easy it is to make that happen.

In the normal save folder? I don't think I get what you are asking though. However, something like a set of 5 filenames that would be constantly overwriting the oldest would work I think.

I meant when do you want the game to autosave? Before each mission, as you enter each mission, every five minutes in a mission, etc.

[ptarth]

re: Clear reward
I think 1-2 parts for a full clear isn't unreasonable? It would effectively count as keeping an extra 1-2 mechs alive.

re:Numeric damage
Sounds good.

re:lifebars
I wasn't expecting it too be too troublesome. Not sure if it is an image or a in-engine change. Although if a full UI scaling update is made, this would also be part of it.

re:saves
Ah, okay. So, In-missions start (as opposed to pre-mission start which already happens), then perhaps once every 50 turns or so? Not long enough to be really cheaty, but enough that you don't feel horribly frustrated if things go south. Keep 4? of them around, and then rotate through the filenames (or delete the oldest?) (but not the in-mission start).

[nas1m]

• I'd like to know the number of unopened loot containers on the level, so I can exit early without losing loot.

I'll look into that, but it seems like a bit of a cheap way to get some intel about the mission. Maybe only display unopened loot containers that you've found?

• I'd like to know how much damage a shot is going to do. The shotgun makes me very sad because I don't have a good idea of how much damage it will do.

You can see how much damage a weapon does by hovering over it, and then the log in the top right tells you how much damage the shot did, so you should be able to figure out how harsh the shotgun dropoff is. Less than ideal, but I'm not sure how to put the shot damage in there without it looking clunky.

• Different color and larger life bars. It's hard to seem them.

I wonder if a brand new life bar for your current mech would be in order (and be optional)? Have it display across the top of the screen, similar to how SR display's Boss lifebars? (Not sure I'm able to do this, but I can try)

• Better auto-saving so I can "undo"

Bad. No save-scumming for you. Where would you recommend the autosaves?

Introducing Starward Rogue Style lifebars for enemies and player exos sounds like a great idea to me. If displaying both turns out troublesome one of the could be located at the top of the screen while the other resides at the bottom center...

PS: The proposed extended auto-saving sounds okay (i.e. fairly balanced) to me. Would be a good way to compensate for the occasional very frustrating microsleep...

[zoutzakje]

I've noticed it's important to check enemy ranges a lot in this game and it kind of bothers me that I have to count the number of tiles between my exo's and the bots every time I want to make a move. You can hover over a bot or click on it (forgot which one since it's been a while since played) to see their range but it's not always ideal. The moment you move away from that particular bot the orange visuals displaying it's range disappears. And it doesn't work on bots that are still inactive if I remember correctly.

I'm kind of a newb with this game still and I don't know if what I'm trying suggest already exists or not. But I wish there would be a way to check the range of multiple bots at once and keep that range check in place even when you move the cursor around. This should work on inactive bots as well and have a specific button or something to cancel it all. This is what Fire Emblem does and maybe Advance Wars too (not sure) and it's always proved helpful to me.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Not sure if it's a valid idea for this game but let me know what you guys think.

[ptarth]

There is a setting in the options for enemy LOS and targeting range that gets about halfway to what you want.

[ERISS]

the alternate customization mechanic that Keith was toying around

This was to make the mechs more simple to fill. I'm not against the expansion, but more weapons will go against this...
Firstly I think there should be a patch:
. Make the writings more readable, if fonts can't be enlarged then change their colors. Example: Writing dark or thin grey on black was not a good idea (weapon names of mechs). A saturation booster is maybe needed for the fonts.. (The one for texture should be made official, applied by default; really, this all black game is not good for selling it..)
. With mouse activated, sometimes we can no longer click in center of meka to make a turn pass (there are only the four arrows of direction).
. With mouse activated, starting a mission by clicking on its map icon, this immediately makes you move one tile once entering the mission, and sometimes it can makes the meka to be killed (mainly in boss missions)..

[nas1m]

Firstly I think there should be a patch:
. Make the writings more readable, if fonts can't be enlarged then change their colors. Example: Writing dark or thin grey on black was not a good idea (weapon names of mechs). A saturation booster is maybe needed for the fonts.. (The one for texture should be made official, applied by default; really, this all black game is not good for selling it..)

Thanks for that. Its good to know somebody other than me is getting something out of this .

[kasnavada]

Frankly, from my experience of the game, buggy weapons seem like a bad fit for this game.
- I played at higher difficulty and for this game RNG means death. You NEED to reliably be sure that the mech that will / has moved into shooting position next turn dies, because most of everything basically one-shots you. If you can't be sure that it's dead, it's %buggy chance% of game over.
- refitting mechs is already one of the down-points of this game due to the multiplicative bonus to systems and / or random loot, with parts that go on every mech or so. I like the "battle" part, but the endless refits were getting on my nerves. More weapons = even more complex refits. It'll become "excel : weapon simulator".

What this game might need as an extension is other "player mechs", new "enemy mechs", new pilots, alternate "super mechs" (forgot the name) other game modes with other mechanics (flooding, expanding radiations, capture the flag...), more "biomes" (fighting in zoos, parks, roads...), easier refits (via changing the UI).

[Pumpkin]

Frankly, from my experience of the game, buggy weapons seem like a bad fit for this game.
- I played at higher difficulty and for this game RNG means death.

"Buggy" weapon doesn't mean RNG!!!
The game is currently filled with "buggy" bots and there is no RNG at all!

[Logorouge]

"Buggy" weapon doesn't mean RNG!!!
The game is currently filled with "buggy" bots and there is no RNG at all!

A more accurate name for them might be conditional weapons, because they would work in a consistent manner but not necessarily in a simple/straightforward way.

[kasnavada]

Frankly, from my experience of the game, buggy weapons seem like a bad fit for this game.
- I played at higher difficulty and for this game RNG means death.

"Buggy" weapon doesn't mean RNG!!!
The game is currently filled with "buggy" bots and there is no RNG at all!

Then we don't have the same definition of "buggy", and examples should be proposed... and the second argument I proposed stands still.

Even if they're not RNG-buggy (I personally don't see how it's possible, but I'm prepared to be amazed), I don't think that bionic dues needs the added excel-sheet complexity that will be caused by determining which weapon (buggy or standard) is better, especially with refits needed every 1 or 2 runs at higher difficulty level.

For example, conditional weapons are the very examples of RNG weaponry that'll cause issues.
Ex: a weapon that shoots only bots with shields. Useless if the RNG presents you with unshielded bots only.
A weapon that can only shoot bots adjacent to another bot. Useless if the map layout and initial bot placement does not allow that.
A weapon that shoots with a weird pattern => actually we already have the issue with current shotgun.
A weapon that kills bots that have their "last" hit point equal to 7. I don't need to explain that one.

Setting a condition is basically RNG.

[crazyroosterman]

I've been playing bionic again and I think something id love to see would be the option to move or turn of the toltips for weapons when you hover over them mainly because it covers up the range showing and it drives me nuts.