Build 67

[rob]

Hello Brave Testers, it's time for build 67!

* Enable installation of modules into tanks
* Re-randomize module properties at buy/sell
* Remove all but 6 of the 23 zoom levels
* Debuff groups of fortresses that are cut off from the main mass of enemies
* Eliminate gridshards
* Eliminate buildings & their sockets
* Eliminate town wealth display in tooltip
* Automatically level up cities to fit cleared radius
* Set max city level to 12
* Give maxed-out cities a new icon
* Color all cities blue except unconnected level 0 stubs

This week Tim pushed forward with the module project, building the UI and database components that allow you to install modules into your tanks. They still don't do anything, but he's hoping to get that part going in the next build.

I removed most of the zoom levels. I really like this change, but I'm wondering if people miss any of the levels or wish we had fewer still. Please let us know!

If you can clear a ring around a group of enemies, they take 50% hits to speed, turn rate, turret turn rate, minion creation rate, and max minions. Is this fun? Is it exploitable?

This week I also removed gridshards and buildings. You now level towns by clearing the surrounding area, and you debuff enemies by ringing them. There is not currently a prize for leveling a town, but we're thinking that perhaps we'll add one next week.

Thanks for helping us test out the game! Please post feedback below.

Rob

[levesque]

I like the changes, specialy to the zooming but i personaly would like a zoom level between 2-3 that can alow you to see forts while your clearing so you can see where your going. Also that switch between 2-3 seems a little laggy sometimes. could just be me, anyone else think there should be one zoom lvl between lvls 2-3?

[taken]

Haven't played in a while o.o

[kable]

Wow, some amusing yet very radical changes you've got here. I'll have to get on when I can (maybe tonight or tomorrow) and have a look around.

[quicklite]

Although I don't mind that you took away a lot of the later zoom levels, I don't understand why you had to take so many of the earlier zoom levels away. I loved playing with and adjusting the zoon levels as I play, and it's a bit of a downer to only have 'really zoomed in' and 'really zoomed out' to choose from anymore. if you removed the zoom levels for lag purposes, then imo it couldn't hurt to put a few earlier zoom levels back in. However, if this is just for 'convienience' purpouses, then there's gotta be a better way to do this without nixing the zoom levels. maybe double tapping q or e to auto zoom out/zoom in to a set setting?


Gridshards will not be missed, but cities look a little bland now. IMO, adding something even if that's only temporary decor, would do wonders.

Given how easy it is to cut off enemy fortresses, I feel like this is a little OP, given that this nerf really destroys some of the difficulty behind minion hesvy enemies such as the triangulum, the drill, and the nova. Imo, the debuff is fine, but perhaps limit it to only 10 fortresses that can be debuffed at a time? After all, it wouldn't take that much effort atm to apply that debuff to most of a region, which feels a little broken imo.

[kobbi]

I agree with the comments above regarding zoom levels, please add a couple back at lower levels.

Regards,
Kobbi

[fire]

quicklite, note that now that you do not get these buffs from cities, it would seem appropriate that cutting them off for a 50% downgrade would be fair. It is basically like gridshards, without the troubles of having to go to each building and wait 5 seconds every time. Now you can fight and get these buffs. Also, I find that there are still plenty of difficulties when soloing and it is not like i become invincible or anything from the debuff.

If it appears necessary I can agree to a maximum amount, but 10 seems far to small to even make it worth anyones time. possibly 100, considering their are 900 enemies per region.

[tarbomb]

Being stuck in overdrive is still possible - just experienced a stuck trailblazer gun today. Reenabling the gun unstuck it.

There was nothing odd happening when it activated - hp was not low, the trigger was not used when about to origin or teleport, and there was no lag.

[gingerbear]

If you remember the old building system, a facility would generally inflict a 5-10% debuff on 1 specific element, which generally affected about 1-4 types of enemies. There are 12 enemy towers in game (minions not counted), which means to cover only 1 aspect of all the buildings, you would be required to build 3 - 12 buildings, to cover everything, you'd need 15 - 60. And this would be only a 5%-10% debuff, to reach 50%, you would need something between 75 - 600.
The middle of that is at about 300 buildings, which is a mild estimation, considering the randomness and unbalanced tech trees. The cities have 84 buildings at level 6 (as there is no difference in tech over level 6), which means that you would need 4 fully upgraded cities to cover everything evenly to 50% per every region. Have you ever seen that in game?

Well, of course this is a lot more skewed, since the old system was quite imbalanced: for example you could reduce the minion count on small buildings by 80% with a lucky set of cities, (from 10 initial minions to 2), while you could barely put a dent into triangular towers as there were simply not enough debuffing facilities. With that in view, giving a 50% debuff to everything is a just about fair solution.

---

That being said, just like quicklite, I think it is kind of OP, at least in the sense that it has no "scaling", you won't need any strategy or too much effort to get to it right from the start.

My suggestion would be a repeatable, stacking debuff, which takes in consideration the amount of towers affected. The more you "cut off" at the same time, the more debuff you get. I would say 0.1% per buildings affected, capped at a maximum of 80%.

Just a quick counting: a sector has 900 towers, you have to tear down the outer shell of 116 towers to separate it from the main blob. It would leave you with a quad of 784 towers, which would recieve a 78% debuff. Does this look too much? Probably. But keep in mind that you had to go around a whole region, killing exactly only the outer shell, which is no mean task.

Where is the stacking coming to play? As soon as you separate a group of towers from the main blob, they would become a new entity. If you tear this in two half, the remaining groups would get a debuff again...

Of course this idea needs a bit of balancing (fiddling with the % / tower rate, it might increase/decrease dynamically too, depending on for example the remaining towers), but I think it would be beneficial to the game:

- "The bigger you shear, the more you debuff" feels natural, and would also reward greater efforts with the subsequent, smaller splits.
- It might change the way people are clearing now. The most common (easiest) method is just clearing "around the borders", because that is the safest method: you always have 1 side fully empty, and can clear in 2 directions, minding only what is in front and on 1 of your side. If the new debuff system kicks in, this could change, since killing towers on the border of a separated group would mean no further debuffs. This also means that the players who want weaker enemies should criss-cross these separated blobs, which is a lot harder: you are always surrounded by enemies on 3 of your sides.
- For the same reason, it might change the pattern of the map: since the most debuffs can be achieved by cutting through again and again, it is possible that the map will end up being similar to a grid: a red background divided up with zig-zaggy black (empty) lines. I think it would fit the game (namesake) perfectly.

[Ood]

Zoom level lag

It seems like some zooms are laggier than others.
Before this build, I could play on basically any zoom level (with the exception of perhaps the very closest few in a big gunfight) at 60 fps.
Now, just sitting in a town yeilds the following:
Zoom 0 (starting level, furthest in): ~45 fps
Zoom 1 ('playing level'): 55+ fps (with so low spikes when playing that is to be expected)
Zoom 2 (click to travel mode): 10-13 fps
Zoom 3 (route view mode): 10 fps
Zoom 4 (Map view mode): 20 fps
Zoom 5 (What is this used for?): 40+ fps

Zoom 2 and zoom 3 being slow is problematic because it's often where long distance travel takes place, and for me at such a low fps, my tank won't turn if the map is clicked to travel some distance away. I might end up in enemy territory because I was pointing that way to start with despite being in a safe spot, clicking on a safe spot, and having a save path to travel through.

Not sure if anyone else experiences this dip in performance, and it might be attributed to the size of the current map. Regardless, it's quite annoying.

[Kelsoo]

Ood I am also experiencing much more lag with the new zoom.

I think there are not enough zoom levels at all, not to mention the closest one to how I usually played at is much too far zoomed in or completely zoomed out, I really like actually having the ability to customize how zoomed in I was.

In my opinion removing the zoom levels that were super close onto the tank and way too far out would be fine, as it stands it looks very ugly and causes lag trying to zoom out, not to mention not everyone likes playing at the current levels. So I think there are not enough zoom levels. Kind of flips your stomach zooming out so much as well.

Please add in some more zoom levels back and remove the useless ones?

As for the town leveling, I don't really know? It feels like more features are being removed then added, and now towns are so barren it's kind of disconcerting, hopefully that will be fixed? It really just feels like the game is being stripped down of a lot of features and becoming more basic as a result. Just have to wait for some more builds I guess to add some more content in.

Last thing I can say is the game takes much longer to load in too, in fact about 10-20 seconds on average, where as before only taking 2-6 seconds at the most.

[Justin]

Questions about modules:

When you equip it to a tank, will there be a way to un-equip them? (If so, the rest of the questions are irrelevant).

How much of a benefit will melding modules bring?
If you equip a module, and you can't unequip it, does that mean there's no way to meld it or upgrade it any further? I feel like this would be frustrating depending on how useful modules are, and the differences between each level.

What is the purpose of multiple module slots? Will the modules give % bonuses to certain augments/abilities, and will other modules bonuses stack onto those stats already supplied with bonuses?

Besides this, I pretty much agree with what everyone else was suggesting. I'd like a zoom level between the closest and the one after most importantly. The 2nd one would probably be the farthest I'd zoom out when fighting enemies.
You've said before that you'd consider allowing players to choose how they want their zoom levels to be.

I'd suggest having a list of all 23, and allowing people to select which ones they prefer as a custom option, and a few default options. (maybe name them?)

Example:
All (the one before this build)
Travel (focuses more on the furthest zoom levels, ignores the closest ones)
Attack (focuses more on the closest zoom levels, ignores the furthest ones)
Basic (the current one)
Custom (what I explained earlier)

Also, I think there's a player-health bar bug. Sometimes (I don't know how to repeat the result), the green bar fills passed the red outline to the right of the last column. I don't see the HP bar arrive to that point; usually I just notice when I teleport to someone and they have full HP, or when any other situation involving them not being attacked.

[Crunch]

I haven't been on for a long while. This latest build is looking really solid and has been much more interesting to play. The new debuff mechanic is really cool, but it needs a nerf. Personally, I should think that the max debuff% should be divided by the number of connected enemy structures in any given grouping or perhaps decreased linearly. It feels a bit exploitable to be able to, theoretically, grind through 512 enemy structures (not including locating towns to satisfy callback) and debuff 16,384 towers at a flat 50%. However, if the debuff acted like a distributed load on the remaining structures, a giant ring like the one described above would exhibit almost no recognizable impact. Conversely, a lone enemy tower should be debuffed at the maximum percentage. This encourages many, smaller rings rather than few, giant ones. It also encourages players to engage in something other than scan-line style gameplay. 

On the topic of giant rings: I assisted Ood in completing one the other day. It debuffed ~10 regions all at once and caused a great lag spike at the destruction of the final tower. The game sent me back to Origin directly afterward. Interesting experience, but maybe not one to be encouraged. I could see how this might be exploited by those with mal intent/bots to lag out the map. 

Thanks for the new build! It's been really fun to play.