Build 57

[hypevosa]

Zetas are about numbers not strategy: the combination of having around 4-5 enemies throwing bombs that all have multiple thousands of HPs, and players going off in random directions causing randomized bomb hits, with bombs that kill in 2 to 3 hits, and an enemy that disappears so quickly, means any strategy aside from corsair shearing abuse is inefficient without a substantial number of people on board.

Compared to convoys, this is a pretty sad enemy for the thinking man.

Hornets using their overdrive to strike from beyond attack range might work as well, if you clear an ionic region they may get off scott free.

EDIT: maybe if bombs actually had a 3 second fuse or something it would be a little more strategy and a little less raw chaos.

[levesque]

Just thought of idea for the zeta bombs, maybe once someone is in range the bombs sorta drop randomly around it. Dunno if this would be any better but just a thought

[quicklite]

For the record, the new GCT bombs are wonderful.

And as for zetas, I haven't even fought them, but you really gotta push back that time limit, if you really insist on having one at all. Hard things are fun, especially for veteran players, so you shouldn't nerf this, but putting those kinds of time restraints on something that hard can only lead to disaster. Heck, just now, we didn't finish clearing a sector because there weren't enough people on and we didn't want to "waste" a zeta.

My solution would be to just make the thing heal itself every 15 minutes or something, and only actually disappear after 24 hours, or just not disappear at all. There's no need to get people to hold back on clearing because of lack of firepower, and there's nothing wrong with having another group of people of having a chance to kill the zeta. Besides, it's not like it stops progression or something.

[hypevosa]

I'm with quicklite, a facility that replenishes its health and minions instead of having a time limit would be tremendously better.

[zub]

Tanks in tank menu should retain their color. Imho color is what identifies the tanks, not the shape, mainly because on zoom levels I use the most, all the tanks look like colored blots.

[quicklite]

One more thing: There should be a confirmation when buying things in the sell menu. It gets really annoying when you misclick and end up accidentally paying a lot for something that you don't need.

[tarbomb]

The concept of a region boss that activates upon clear is not something that I think works right now for several regions.

1) Region clearing doesn't require a lot of people to be on to finish. A single person can finish a region clear and finish up the region and be woefully unprepared to take on the zeta.

2) Clearing regions is a rather artificial aspect of the game. The convoy mechanic encourages clearing corridors between towns; fully clearing square regions of the game wouldn't be something people did if it weren't for the stat boost or the zeta boss.

3) Encountering a zeta (and killing it) is more a matter of lucky timing than working towards the goal. If you log in when a region is almost clear and there are lots of people on, you'll see one. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

Here's my proposal for a zeta mechanic that encourages facility building and requires a lot of people to be on when it falls:

• The zeta is a preexisting structure that exists in each region. A scout must discover it.
  
• The zeta is surrounded by several layers of walls, sufficiently thick that it's impossible to teleport over them. The walls regenerate quickly; you'll need some team DPS to get through them. Once you punch through the walls, they disappear and the countdown timer starts (or alternatively, there's no countdown at all).
  
• There are extremely expensive (10million+) facilities needed to sufficiently debuff the walls to a point that even a sizeable team can punch through them. Building these requires a significant team effort to collect the necessary gridshards comparable to clearing a region, but it allows people to attack other regions to contribute to the shard count. And since there's no hard limit on how much the walls need to be nerfed to punch through them, a larger grop can make a good attempt at punching through the walls earlier, mitigating the timing problem.
  

[Duco]

Jul 9, 2013 10:50:19 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

The concept of a region boss that activates upon clear is not something that I think works right now for several regions.

1) Region clearing doesn't require a lot of people to be on to finish. A single person can finish a region clear and finish up the region and be woefully unprepared to take on the zeta.

2) Clearing regions is a rather artificial aspect of the game. The convoy mechanic encourages clearing corridors between towns; fully clearing square regions of the game wouldn't be something people did if it weren't for the stat boost or the zeta boss.

3) Encountering a zeta (and killing it) is more a matter of lucky timing than working towards the goal. If you log in when a region is almost clear and there are lots of people on, you'll see one. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

Here's my proposal for a zeta mechanic that encourages facility building and requires a lot of people to be on when it falls:

• The zeta is a preexisting structure that exists in each region. A scout must discover it.
  
• The zeta is surrounded by several layers of walls, sufficiently thick that it's impossible to teleport over them. The walls regenerate quickly; you'll need some team DPS to get through them. Once you punch through the walls, they disappear and the countdown timer starts (or alternatively, there's no countdown at all).
  
• There are extremely expensive (10million+) facilities needed to sufficiently debuff the walls to a point that even a sizeable team can punch through them. Building these requires a significant team effort to collect the necessary gridshards comparable to clearing a region, but it allows people to attack other regions to contribute to the shard count. And since there's no hard limit on how much the walls need to be nerfed to punch through them, a larger grop can make a good attempt at punching through the walls earlier, mitigating the timing problem.
  

And it makes lore easier.
I mean, why would a building pop up out of nowhere when all others are destroyed?

[gingerbear]

Jul 9, 2013 10:50:19 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

The concept of a region boss that activates upon clear is not something that I think works right now for several regions.

1) Region clearing doesn't require a lot of people to be on to finish. A single person can finish a region clear and finish up the region and be woefully unprepared to take on the zeta.

2) Clearing regions is a rather artificial aspect of the game. The convoy mechanic encourages clearing corridors between towns; fully clearing square regions of the game wouldn't be something people did if it weren't for the stat boost or the zeta boss.

3) Encountering a zeta (and killing it) is more a matter of lucky timing than working towards the goal. If you log in when a region is almost clear and there are lots of people on, you'll see one. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

Here's my proposal for a zeta mechanic that encourages facility building and requires a lot of people to be on when it falls:

• The zeta is a preexisting structure that exists in each region. A scout must discover it.
  
• The zeta is surrounded by several layers of walls, sufficiently thick that it's impossible to teleport over them. The walls regenerate quickly; you'll need some team DPS to get through them. Once you punch through the walls, they disappear and the countdown timer starts (or alternatively, there's no countdown at all).
  
• There are extremely expensive (10million+) facilities needed to sufficiently debuff the walls to a point that even a sizeable team can punch through them. Building these requires a significant team effort to collect the necessary gridshards comparable to clearing a region, but it allows people to attack other regions to contribute to the shard count. And since there's no hard limit on how much the walls need to be nerfed to punch through them, a larger grop can make a good attempt at punching through the walls earlier, mitigating the timing problem.
  

Re-Quoting this because it's a really good idea. Too bad we can only +/- people and not posts.

[rob]

You raise a valid point about how a couple of noobs could complete a region and waste a Zeta. However, I dislike the proposed solution of having Zetas prepositioned in the world, for the following reasons:

1) The Zeta would no longer be a big-deal "boss" encounter available only after sustained effort
2) Zetas would be cherry-picked like Deltas
3) The facility system is not going to continue to exist in its current form, so I don't want to tie Zetas into it

Inspired by your idea, I'm considering a related option. The Zeta would appear in a random location after the region is cleared, but "encased" in a self-healing shell that requires some decent DPS to get through. Once the shell is penetrated, the actual Zeta would appear and the timer would start. The idea behind this mechanic is to ensure that there is some minimum amount of DPS logged in before starting the 5-minute timer.

One problem with this idea is that when the shell is defeated, the Zeta would spawn right on top of all the players that killed the shell. So maybe the shells should be "cloaking field generators", and there would be 3 or 4 of them, and when all were defeated, the Zeta they were hiding would be revealed in a new, random location.

Thoughts?

[hypevosa]

That's an idea I can get behind - I was actually thinking lore wise the zetas might be, essentially, power stations for the grid inhabitants.

I would also rather have the zeta spawn ON the players with some neat effect like a wobbly fade-in (and a tardis sound effect...^_^). Having enemies appear in more interesting ways would be a nice piece of detail that would attract more players. (Attention to detail has made me purchase many indie games on a whim)

[gingerbear]

rob:

Or that encasing shell could be larger than the actual Zeta, just like the walls around the Drill main. That way you don't have to "respawn" the zeta, it is enough to check whether the walls (or certain amount of them) are destroyed. You could even make it a two-phase challenge, arming up this encasing, which would also drop loot. That way people not ballsy enough for zeta main could participate at "cracking" the shell and get something in return... hmmm ... Why do I think about "Crystal Prisoner" all of a sudden?

If you don't like the zeta spawning right on top of the players (so they won't get insta killed and also won't be able to pre-shear), then you could add a "force push" effect: an outwards expanding circle (like explosions) from the center, simply pushing every player to the perimeter, barely out of range.

I'm not really fond of the zeta spawning again randomly somewhere (as it is now or as it would be with the "cloaking field generators"), because players lose precious seconds when trying to reach the zeta (again). Once it appears on the map in any form, it should stay there.

---

Unrelated:

No more facility system? Do you take suggestions how to change it to fit the role better, or will the whole concept be trashed? I think being able to actually build something and not only destroying is a fine element of the game.

[hypevosa]

I have to agree with gingi in the case of the facilities, I really enjoy having them around to balance out the raw destruction we wreak in this game. I also enjoy the twist of expectations - how many games let you really screw with the other side's ability to fight back like this? Normally the player is the one who almost always ends up suffering from various debuffs, it's rare for a game to let you cripple an entire army with debuffs of your own.