Just came back from pretending to be productive, and it looks like I'm late to the party.
Hopefully though, not too late to give suggestions.
Not too late, we're probably looking at a couple more weeks of internal testing and work, and then maybe a couple of weeks of steam beta testing. Don't hold me to it, though.
Dodge perks are kinda problematic, now that I'm thinking about perks.
First, it's impossible to tell when they kick in, making them seem like rubbish. You get this 10% dodge chance, but it has no noticeable effect- you probably wish you'd gotten something else. Some kind of sound and/or blur effect on your mech when the dodge procs would clear this up.
Second, they're rather inconsistent. I for one do not survive enough hits during a boss fight for the law of large numbers to kick in. Makes things a wee bit RNG. Not the biggest deal in the world.
Third, I don't think they play well at all with overlapping enemy shots. A lot of patterns have a large number of heavily clustered shots- normally, this has about the same threat level as a single shot as you only take damage from one if many hit you. However, clustered shots I believe each bullet rolls against your dodge- rendering it moot.
Yeah, they could be better aesthetically, but this would probably need engine work which complicates things. Regarding the overlapping shots, I don't mind this too much. If there are too many shots to reliably dodge then that seems kind of fair enough.
Undying Will sounds like it would make me salty when it failed and absurdly pleased when it saved me repeatedly. This is the good kind of RNG- but please make it clear when the effect procs.
Yeah, I'll try and make the description clear, and experiment with some visuals.
Scrap Repurposer: Health packs restore missiles instead if at full health
Munition Repurposer: Missiles restore health instead if at full missiles
These sound good, I think they're probably not able to be implemented currently, but I'll look into it. Pretty cool.
Unenecumbered: Faster move speed when at low missiles/energy
I think the problem is that move speed isn't really desired in a game like this, though. It can actually make things harder, so move speed boosts are tricky.
Panic!: Brief phasing and move speed boost when hit
We could do this, but we already have the phase module which is similar to this. Do we want a similar perk, too?
Powered by Pain: Energy capacity increases with missing health
We can almost do this in the engine, I think, although last I checked I ran into problems with this conditional stuff. I'll look into it.
Double Tap: % chance to fire twice in rapid succession
Good idea, worth looking into.
Deep Blue- Overclock: +20% energy costs +20% energy weapon damage
Right now this dude is mostly about the energy, not the starting familiar. Maybe that ought to be changed, but +100% energy totally overshadows the familiar as is.
Cool idea, this runs into a current problem, though, in that we can't target damage boosts at only energy weapons, although engine improvements are being looked at in this area.
Indigo Dipole- Repulsive Paintjob: Mild passive bullet repulsion effect
Yeah, seems good for the mech. The worry with this is that it'll make the mech untouchable, I'll look into this later, probably.
Flame Tank- Burning Ring of Fire: basically just move the flame nova auxilliary to a perk
Flame Tank- Great Balls of Fire: ain't got anything but a name. Prrrobably would involve fire. In ball form more likely than not.
Flame Tank- Inferno Discus: Get a burning familiar with a large orbit radius and contact damage. Doesn't fit the mech too well, but lame puns!
For the moment, the current Flame Tank special perk gives +20% multiplicative damage boost when dealing fire damage.
Redshift- Time dilation: Enemies move and shoot slower, enemy bullets move slower.
Redshift- Time stop: When you enter a room, enemies cannot move or shoot until you fire a weapon.
Sadly, no time puns came to mind- names are boring for now.
Yeah, perks something like this sound about right. No puns? Shame!
If possible, it'd be cool to have some perk selections be entirely mech-specific perks
i.e. at level 5, Redshift can select between Time Dilation, afterimages, or Time stop.
This would guarantee players see the perkand you'd be able to make the perks more impactful without making them an obvious pick.
On the other hand it might be a little bit difficult to come up with and balance the bajillion perks this would require.
Yeah, seems a good idea. Coming up with 3 cool perks per mech is the tricky part, I think. But over time we could aim for that. I think for the next build we'll probably stick to just at least 1 per mech, though.
