Perk Overhaul Brainstorming

[Pepisolo]

Indigo Dipole- Repulsive Paintjob: Mild passive bullet repulsion effect

I tried this but it didn't really work. If you set the repulsion too low things get janky and you don't take damage from shots for some reason. Then if you push the repulsion up you quickly become untouchable. I made one that gives a repulsion field each time you're hit, which looks cool when you're running around  force pushing bullets, but I'm not sure it's that useful overall, since when the repulsion runs out you get a load of bullets flying at you. It might be good enough, though.

Redshift- Time dilation: Enemies move and shoot slower, enemy bullets move slower.

This was easy to implement.

Redshift- Time stop: When you enter a room, enemies cannot move or shoot until you fire a weapon.

I gave this a good shot at implementing, didn't quite work, though. Drat!

Any chance you guys could do a small early update including the fix? (Beta branch in case something goes wrong?) Would be nice to potentially get rid of that sword of Damocles of a crash. Sorry for the selfish request, but redoing an entire 6th floor is such a pain.

The problem is that this would be down to Chris, and he's super super busy, of course, with other stuff at the moment.

Reactive Armor: When you take hull damage from an enemy shot gain +20% damage reduction for the rest of the room. Capped at 3 stacks. (NOTE: These numbers seem like they might be too high, depending on how damage reduction stacking works)

Something like this is already implemented actually. Once hit you get a -1 to any damage you take for 10 seconds. You get a visual indicator in the form of an orbiting globe, to see how many are stacked.

Name Here: When you hit with a shot, the corresponding gun gains +5% damage for the next three shots (damage boost is only on the gun that fired the shot to prevent cheese)

Hmmm, maybe on an energy weapon to promote accuracy and efficient aiming. Unfortunately, we can't split energy and main gun damage, currently, though.

Other Name Here: Recharge energy on main gun hits, with a capped proc rate

I implemented something like this a while back, but I kept recharging energy on hitting obstacles.

Can spend money in lieu of keys i.e. 5 credits to open a chest/door

Maybe something like this is possible...although possibly not thinking about it, we need something for the Green Mech, though, I'm struggling with that one.

[ptarth]

Can I get some floor 7 saves from people? I'd like to experiment and I don't have any accessible with the latest official release.

[Logorouge]

Can I get some floor 7 saves from people? I'd like to experiment and I don't have any accessible with the latest official release.

Got one with Rex if it's ok.

[Monkooky]

Here's two saves.
First is probably not very representative of much, I was running through top speed on very easy to get Terminus unlocked again
Second is a more normal Deep Blue run on Hard.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that you will need logorogue's Mech Pack to open these.

On a different note, is Green Envy staying the same, at least for the time being?
Pretty difficult to brainstorm ideas when we don't know what's happening with it.

[Pepisolo]

On a different note, is Green Envy staying the same, at least for the time being?
Pretty difficult to brainstorm ideas when we don't know what's happening with it.

Green Envy will be getting changes, the most likely change is probably going to be the innate ability to find loot from higher floors than the other mechs. It will still be the Treasure Hunter mech, though, so any ideas in that area should be good. It may also get a perk to switch to alternate unlocked and locked chest pools with better loot inside. How do these ideas sound?

[ptarth]

Thanks for the saves. We are actually resolving quite a nice list of things with this release. Getting some more end game run data is really helpful in that regard.

re:Green Envy
How about:

• #TeamBox: Replaces all chest contents with threatening junk. Gain a random permanent upgrade for each opened chest (+1 health, +10 energy, +5% damage boost, +2 maximum missiles)
• ChestMaster: Removes all familiars and replaces all familiar shop contents with threatening junk. Upon opening a chest grants a limited life Chest Familiar. Familiars stacks as long as you can keep them alive.
  
• Chest in Time: Replaces Energy weapon with Chest Disguise System. Use to hide Green Envy inside a stationary, invulnerable, and non-threatening chest. Use again to pop out and resume the battle.

Another Random Perk
Need for Speed: On entering a new floor gain +100% damage. This bonus reduces by 10% per X minute(s).

[Pepisolo]

Thanks for the saves. We are actually resolving quite a nice list of things with this release. Getting some more end game run data is really helpful in that regard.

re:Green Envy
How about:

• #TeamBox: Replaces all chest contents with threatening junk. Gain a random permanent upgrade for each opened chest (+1 health, +10 energy, +5% damage boost, +2 maximum missiles)
• ChestMaster: Removes all familiars and replaces all familiar shop contents with threatening junk. Upon opening a chest grants a limited life Chest Familiar. Familiars stacks as long as you can keep them alive.
  
• Chest in Time: Replaces Energy weapon with Chest Disguise System. Use to hide Green Envy inside a stationary, invulnerable, and non-threatening chest. Use again to pop out and resume the battle.

Another Random Perk
Need for Speed: On entering a new floor gain +100% damage. This bonus reduces by 10% per X minute(s).

Need for Speed sounds good, I might have a crack at implementing that now. Presumably we can use the probation stuff for it.

I don't really like the idea that one of the Treasure Hunter perks or abilities would replace all loot from chests with junk -- seems a bit off, that. It's hard to say if ChestMaster would work without knowing what the chest familiar does. Chest in Time might be a cool energy weapon or ability although I do have a similar energy weapon already made which phases you out of existence, but you can still move. So, the aesthetics are a lot simpler than hiding in a chest, it just shrinks you down to nothing. If you can make hiding in a chest work, though, cool. It'd be great to see in action.

[Pepisolo]

Ok, so I sort of implemented Need For Speed. In order to get a visual representation of the damage increase, I also made the mech increase in size, too. Which is kind of stupid/cool and also serves as a visual notice of how strong you currently are. This was merely for testing purposes, but it kind of works? Any thoughts on this?

There's a flaw, though, I'm not sure if there's a way to get rid of the modifiers at the end of the floor, so let's say you level up towards the end of a floor gaining the damage bonus, then complete the floor, when the next floor bonus kicks in it stacks with the on selection bonus. So, if you can then somehow rush the bosses within 10 minutes things start to get a bit silly. It's not a clean implementation, almost seems like it'd work better as a consumable or mysterious circuit. The mysterious circuits are in dire need of something cool like this, Gigantism circuit or something.

[ptarth]

The visual effect I don't know about. Maybe?
The stacking effect - You can remove it, well, maybe, depends on how you did the effect. However, I actually like the idea as it stands, that's because you are now encouraged to skip to the boss as fast as possible, so we reward "fast" runs. Currently there are no good motivations to do anything but full clears, so options that encourage players to not do a full clear are good.

[Pepisolo]

The visual effect I don't know about. Maybe?
The stacking effect - You can remove it, well, maybe, depends on how you did the effect. However, I actually like the idea as it stands, that's because you are now encouraged to skip to the boss as fast as possible, so we reward "fast" runs. Currently there are no good motivations to do anything but full clears, so options that encourage players to not do a full clear are good.

Possibly, I'm in two minds on this one. Also, is it a bit too cheesy that you can deliberately save the perk choice until the end of the floor, pick it, then get the end of floor boost too? Seems a bit like exploity behaviour. We could just say that you don't get the benefit until the next floor, but then that seems a bit odd too. It's not quite fitting together perfectly. Might work better as a New Mech ability. A mech designed for rushing. That's a pretty nice game-changey choice actually. Berserker Mech.

[ptarth]

It would help that way for essentially one boss, which isn't that much.

Although, you could pick up a warp to boss item and have it work for 2! Muaha. Eh...

On that note, perhaps a perk that is: gain double uses of consumable items?

[Pepisolo]

On that note, perhaps a perk that is: gain double uses of consumable items?

Yep, sounds good that. I can't think of a way that would currently be possible in the engine, though, unless I'm missing something. That'd be a pretty cool perk.

[ptarth]

Consumables have an ammo value. We'd just need to modifier that can modify that or have a modifier that grants a chance to not use ammo on firing.

[Pepisolo]

Consumables have an ammo value. We'd just need to modifier that can modify that or have a modifier that grants a chance to not use ammo on firing.

Sounds good if you can add the modifier, yeah.

[Monkooky]

For the "replace all chest drops w threatening junk, gain thing on chest open,"  seems like that would be better implemented by changing the chest drop tables. Be a bit less thematically strange.

Chest in Time: you'll have to shut down familiars while you're enchested.
 What happens if a bullet sits on top of your chest?

The visual effect of need for speed very much does not appeal- if it doesn't increase hitbox size, it will look strange. If it DOES increase hitbox size, It'd need to be super broken to make up for that.

As for the actual effect of need for speed-
If you happen to delay your perks until the boss and happen to have The Fourth DImension on hand, you could in theory get three full stacks of the buff, which seems like it might speed up future floors enough to snowball.
You give up a great deal running through the floor like that though, so it may well be balanceable.



Perk idea: Radar
Somehow identifies the location of offscreen enemies. I'm not sure what's possible with bulletpatterns- potentially could use arrow-shaped bullets that maintain a fixed distance from the player and each point to a different enemy?


Need for Speed has given me a much worse idea: SPEED
Incredibility which jacks up your sprint speed (and also attack speed so it's not total rubbish?) but blows you up if you stop for too long.
Good idea? No. Hilarious idea? Maybe!