Some questions and suggestions.

[quicklite]

I've been playing grid for a little while now, and from my experiences of playing and being a forumer, I have a few things to say/ask about the game. I'll start with my questions

What was the deal with armadas?

Through one of rob's posts/looking through earlier, I discovered of the existance of armadas, wandering fleets of enemies. These sound really fun to kill! But, for some reason, they got taken out. I couldn't find the build where they were taken out, so I didn't get the information I wanted on them. So, what type of enemies were armadas composed of? How common/tough were they? Why were they taken out in the end?

What counts as a structure?

This is something that bothered me when I was using the Predator. Is a structure something that doesn't move, a fortress, or just something with an orange health bar?

Will there be any more invite codes?

Honestly, I'm not expecting this one to be answered simply because of the ridiculous and hard-to-answer nature of the question, but I'll shoot anyway. A while ago, a whole bunch of invite codes were given out (which was how I got to play grid ). Will that happen again, or has rob gotten all the players he wants on grid for now?

What were the 'broken AoEs'?

In an earlier build, I noticed the bulllet point 'AoEs replaced with lasers (they were obviously broken)'. Was that basically a bazooka fire, or just a repeating silver trigger? Were they broken as in OP or buggy? Should we be expecting these to return, or are they gone for good?

Now for the suggestions:

Put more shields on enemies, and make enemy and allied shields visible.

As for the first point, I feel like if enemy shields are gonna be a thing, then they should be present on more than 2 enemies (gridozer and drill, correct me if I'm wrong here). If you put some shielding on a few more fortresses/enemies, and then (possibly) rebalanced them by taking away some health/damage, it will make shields a much more viable demographic when fighting enemies. As for the second, the lack of visible enemy shielding can be confusing (for a while, I thought gridozers had bugged periods of invincibility ), and it would be useful to know the condition that, say, a drill's shields are in without having to hover my mouse over it. Also, it would be cool to know your allies' shield condition so you know whether or not to protect or get ready to heal him (that is, when the pegasus is put back ).

Make the probability of encountering more powerful enemies (like drills/deltas) increase as you move further away from Origin

I know (or at least I think >_<) this is done to some extent already, but it would be nice if this was done to a large extent, meaning that when you get 5ish squares away from origin, you can notice a significant different, and when you start to get 8/9 squares away, then things really start to get crazy. That would give a difficulty curve without creating god/newblands and alienating the main playerbase as well as stopping people from creating ridiculous 20-30 square grids in their search for cities.


Multiple win conditions <3

In my peruse through earlier builds, I noticed how the win condition used to be based on city levels, only to be replaced quite recently. But why replace it? Why not have both? It would add more variety and more playstyles. Heck, you could even add more win conditions, such as destroying 10 unique fortresses scattered around the map, or leveling 5 cities to level 10, or destroying 1500 fortresses, etc. It would be pretty awesome

And I'm done. What do you guys think of the suggestions, and can any older players help me out with the questions?

[hypevosa]

Structures are any stationary enemy I believe, so all the core enemies (not their minions) and drill walls and whatnot are structures I believe.

I have 2 invite codes I'm holding onto in case I see someone I really want on testing or for friends. I assume once the team has streamlined the textures for all vehicles like they did for the grid itself they might give out more invite codes since it'll not be as laggy to play in groups.

I agree that shields on enemies should be visible, but I feel we should be conservative with ho w many enemies have them. Anything that spawns minions itself should likely not have considerable shielding, nor should many minions, as it makes lone-wolf play impossible for some enemies and we don't have enough players to really consider ruling out the lone wolf yet.

I think the current rate at which hard enemies spawn is fine given our current win condition, I do think we could decrease the rate of super easy enemies as you go further out though (small circles should be almost non-existent).

Always supported the idea of randomized and/or multiple separate/grouped win conditions for fun and shenanigans.

[quicklite]

I know what you mean when you say that too many shields will make lone-wolfing impossible. But I don't want loads of fortresses with drill-standard shielding. Heck, I don't even want that many enemies with shielding, let alone strong shields. I was just saying that shields (even incredibly weak ones) should exist on more than 2 enemies, just to make shields a more visible threat than they are currently, and to vary things a little. Heck, as I said earlier, you could make newly shielded things have less health/damage if that would help balance.

Though for the record, please don't shield deltas ._.

EDIT: Oh, and I added another suggestion, just above the multiple win condition one.

[rob]

Quick reply (must run out soon):

* More invite codes this week. We'll probably delete all unused codes and then give active accounts a few codes each

* When the sector is cleared, you get your share of the 2K VPs whether you are online or not.

[quicklite]

So they do. Sorry about that, rob. >_<

Well, since that suggestion lacks point anymore, I might as well delete it .

And as for deleting all unused codes, please don't. There's a few people who have been holding onto their codes just in case they see someone who they think would be a good tester and should play. Deleting those codes, especially under the implication that they were gonna be valid forever (because frankly, by not telling them that they would expire, you are implying that), could be a seriously underhand blow to some people.

[rob]

Quicklite,

I understand the "don't delete my codes, I was saving them" instinct, but the point of the codes is to use them to invite people, not to hoard them as a kind of currency. I can also see that if a code was given out (printed, written down, emailed, etc) but not yet used, then deleting it would be an inconvenience.

Perhaps a better idea would be to just give out enough new codes so that everyone has a few.

[quicklite]

Erm, that's not exactly what I meant. I wasn't trying to go for a "Selling invite code 8 life" mindset. What I was trying to say was that perhaps someone would want to give an invite code to someone who looks like he/she would be a good, active member instead of just to the first 5 people he/she sees. Other people might want to bring friends into the game, or maybe people from other games and whatnot. Of course, if this isn't how you want invite codes to be treated, and if you want to keep your playerbase random and from realm (which is fair enough, I guess), then go ahead.

[hypevosa]

That was my issue was trying to find good testers. Honestly I'm kind of hurt you'd think we're selling codes, Rob, unless you have some evidence of codes going up for sale? (in which case )

[Lux :3]

I would love a code but this is kind of a problem. When new codes are released please notify me ^.^

[quicklite]

To quote from this thread:

Apr 16, 2013 16:04:27 GMT -5 rob said:

More invite codes this week.

Although most of everyone's codes have been used up now, some new ones are to be given out soon, probably due to the massive performance-upgrading build that was just released that'll help the servers handle more testers. I'm not sure who will get the new codes, but if ya stick around/ask around, you should probably be able to get one. Besides, from what I can tell, there will be a decent amount of codes being given out.