Some upcoming stuff

[Misery]

Okay, so, there's some more changes upcoming as I work on enemy HP balancing, I figured I may as well list a few of them, just let people know what's going on.

Firstly:  many enemies have 3 variants that can appear.  For many of these, the third variant, usually the most dangerous of the 3, will now only appear in the late-game;  this either means floors 6-7, or floors 5-7.   The other 2 variants will appear early as usual but NOT in the late-game.  This means the late-game will mostly only contain the most dangerous variants. 

Some enemies that didn't really have variants will also now have one, and that one will be their late-game version.  Dark Demesne says hi.  You'll want to get rid of that one fast.

But not just that:  the late-game variants will have inflated HP now.  They aren't going to die instantly anymore.  So that makes it harder yet, and it works well with the better damage/power progression.

And, on top of that, some of the already-existing late-game-only enemies have also had their HP increased, sometimes by a lot.  There's an enemy called a Larva, which spawns when a Bubble goes nuclear, that's supposed to roam around for quite awhile, filling the area with slow-moving pain until you get rid of it.  For some reason, I'd decided that 150 HP was a lot.  It wasn't.  900, however, is, for an enemy that's so tiny...   A variety of enemies will get this treatment.  Even some of the big guys.

Some more room fixes coming with this too... I swear, this bit of fixing never freaking ends.

Probably doing something about the defensive drones, they need a bit of dampening as right now they are indeed too strong.  I'm experimenting with that.  Also, there's an issue with the robot shop that causes ONLY the defensive drones and that fire trail drone to appear in the shop in the last couple of floors, I think I can fix that too.

Boss HP changes coming too.  Terminus being the biggest one.  With a grand total of 36000 HP, he's going to be able to take a lot of punishment now.  But he's certainly not the only one that got buffed (he is, though, the only one that got buffed THAT much).

And lastly.... Face Rippers, those weakest of foes, just might get their revenge once you get deep enough.  Don't say I didn't warn you about these.  Hahaha...

[Pumpkin]

Here might not be the right place, but I'm asking anyway.

I feel very hard to remember enemies' names ingame because they appear after receiving a first shot but before dying, thus making the name displayed while shooting at the target. While the game is a bullet hell, players are highly encouraged to not read at the name while shooting and dodging.

I'm remembered Bionic Dues has a little console that lists actions that occurred during the turn. I think SR would benefit from at least some short-lived "XXX destroyed" text lines in a corner of the screen to be looked at after a fight.

Also, the names of some enemies are rather cryptic and hard to remember. But maybe just making the names visible after the fighting would be enough.

What do you think?

[Misery]

Couldn't hurt, though I have no idea how difficult or not that would be to implement.

[Pepisolo]

Sounds good. Having the variants turn up more routinely late game seems good to me. It also helps with the feeling of exploration a little, so that the game isn't just seeming to throw out random HP buffed enemies.

Defender Drone doesn't seem too far off to me. Just decrease it's burst fire rate to every 30 seconds. The version in SVN is actually already slightly nerfed as it doesn't burst for as long.

[Atlar]

Wow, sounds great 

[Mánagarmr]

Me like. Good stuff.

[Atlar]

Just finished hard. THERE stuff seems to have about the right amount of hp... well possibly not for your vision of hard but enemies didn't just fall over. Only Terminus was a bit weak again, fight took around 2min i think.
The first lvls of hard are really tough but once you get a good build running with some hp to spare then things become much more managable. So after about lvl3 difficulty was pretty constant (with the exception of a few super nasty rooms in 6 and 7), in contrast to normal which just drops to the floor after warden atm.

Btw, is there an eta for that new hp/enemy patch?

[Misery]

Just finished hard. THERE stuff seems to have about the right amount of hp... well possibly not for your vision of hard but enemies didn't just fall over. Only Terminus was a bit weak again, fight took around 2min i think.
The first lvls of hard are really tough but once you get a good build running with some hp to spare then things become much more managable. So after about lvl3 difficulty was pretty constant (with the exception of a few super nasty rooms in 6 and 7), in contrast to normal which just drops to the floor after warden atm.

Btw, is there an eta for that new hp/enemy patch?

No particular ETA, as I'm about as accurate with time as someone throwing darts while in a tornado, but it's nearly done.

It's not just about buffing HP, but moreso about getting enemies to fulfill their roles; some of them had HP that was REALLY off.  Hell, I found one that had just 15.  15!   I don't know why I did that.  There's some that are supposed to be tanky that are just sad, a couple of specific ones that ARENT supposed to be tanky but had too much HP...

Mostly I just need to test it a few more times on my end, with different types of builds.

[Logorouge]

Is the removal of Anklebitters (the ones that gave big bullet hugs) due to some upcoming changes for them?

[Draco18s]

If you're thinking the green bullet jaws of death, those aren't anklebiters. Those are chompers.

[Logorouge]

If you're thinking the green bullet jaws of death, those aren't anklebiters. Those are chompers.

No no, I'm really thinking of anklebitters, with the side rows of bullets that fold back toward the anklebitter. Chompers are still very present ingame. One just cost me a good Risky Assassin run.

[Draco18s]

THAT one is the anklebiter.
I rarely ever had a problem with those guys.

I don't mind them being gone, but I never realized that was their name.

[Mánagarmr]

Wait, what? Why remove Ankle Biters? O_o They're awesome. Horrifying, but awesome.

[Draco18s]

Wait, what? Why remove Ankle Biters? O_o They're awesome. Horrifying, but awesome.

#BlameMisery

[Misery]

Basically the Anklebiter's pattern encourages or sometimes forces the player to charge at them in order to hit them without being hit yourself, since the safe spot (often the only safe spot) is right in front of the thing. 

This creates undodgable situations depending on the layout and what's going on.  If the thing is on the other side of a laser, and there are other lasers around keeping you from simply diving out of the way of the entire cone?  There's nothing you can do but fire a missile or something in order to not get hit. Though, due to the duality of the pattern, one missile cant usually protect you from this (and FORCING the player to fire one in order to not get hit is a no-no to begin with).  With weapon range being what it is, you also usually cannot just sit outside of it's range to attack it.  The level design also often makes it so you cannot do that anyway.

I tried one fix after another to try to resolve this, but in the end found no solution.

And the rule for me is that if something can produce undodgable attacks in situations that aren't purely the player's fault (for example, trying to hide in a corner when something fires a wall at you, when you don't HAVE to hide there), I'm going to stomp down on them hard.   In this case, the Anklebiters were disabled, and the Lumiflares created to take their place.

I'll stick the Biters back in if I should find a solution to that issue.  Or once I get the category thing done, which I still need to do and will start on when the HP thing is done.  They wont be nearly as common as they used to be though.