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Post by rob on Feb 18, 2015 14:47:37 GMT -5
Hello again Brave Testers! Welcome to build 132! Changes:
* Add Power Pods
* Rename Power Cells as "Implants"
* Add augments and other stuff to the discovery rewards
* Add 25% change that augments won't match region
Power Pods are per-tank installable items that give a buff and last until death. They currently drop from convoy and region bosses. You'll need to unlock the power pod slots on your tank before you can use them.
Power Cells are now known as Implants. NEXT WEEK ALL IMPLANTS, STIM PACKS and NEURODRIPS WILL BE DELETED. We are going to revamp the stats on all of these items. Use them this week! Or lose them.
In response to player suggestions, we added more stuff to the rewards for discovering mineral deposits, convoy routes, towns, etc, with an emphasis on augments. We also relaxed the hard link between augment type and region type.
Tim's going to be working on the installable 5th triggers next. I think those are going to be really cool!
Thanks for playing!
Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games
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Post by Crunch on Feb 19, 2015 3:39:24 GMT -5
Small display error:  When creeping on other players, their Power Pod slots are off by one. The display works correctly if you're looking at your own tanks, even via search menu. |
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Post by tim on Feb 19, 2015 14:32:39 GMT -5
Small display error: When creeping on other players, their Power Pod slots are off by one. The display works correctly if you're looking at your own tanks, even via search menu. Thanks for reporting this, It'll be fixed next week. |
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Post by quicklite on Feb 20, 2015 12:03:07 GMT -5
My only main piece of feedback now is that prism collecting could serve to be much less erratic. Mind you, this does not mean that prism collecting should be easier. I like that prisms are harder to get. My complaint is that when you lose a bunch of prisms (like I have...on many occasions) I have no idea how and where to get them back. With every other resource, there is a specific way to get them. Clearing and scouting specific regions nets you minerals, hunting voys and signal beacons gets you tank unlocks, voys and war material gets you storage, those green squares (forget what they're called) give you specific augs, but for prisms...well, getting them just seems too random. Hunting fortresses are unreliable; sometimes you can kill 10 drills and only get one shoddy prism, only to collect a auroral from the small fort you kill next to it. You can level towns, but even then you just get shoddies most of the time. The only thing that seems to get me prisms reliably is clearing convoy routes, but that's not only rather boring, but also erratic (sometimes I trigger the convoy waypoint reward three times in 5 minutes, sometimes I don't trigger it once in 15 minutes. Seriously, how is that reward determined?  ). And the 40% buffs they give you are pretty major, since the damage buff makes clearing way easier, the health buff makes it harder to lose tanks, and the speed buff determines whether you can actually go fast enough to avoid missles and keep up with convoys. It would be nice to be able to reliably get them back after a blunder, even if doing so proves to be much harder than just killing a delta like it used to be. |
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Post by Crunch on Feb 20, 2015 15:39:02 GMT -5
In the same vein of thought as quicklite, is it possible to get the drop tables on prize drops? We can see them for enemy loot bags, but I'm not sure where we can find the same information for town leveling, beacons, voy waypoints, etc. And also, it would be nice to see all those things an how they're affected by the difficulty of the region you're in.
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Post by Crunch on Feb 20, 2015 18:45:19 GMT -5
Well, two posts in a row for me... Anyway, I saw an interesting interaction between the new uber towers and the old standard watchtower:  It seems like additional shooters are triggered at certain damage thresholds and they don't despawn if the tower is healed. Interesting twist on tower interaction. To be perfectly honest, I think it's kind of cool and wouldn't mind seeing it left as is. Just thought I'd bring it up. |
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Post by rob on Feb 21, 2015 7:43:23 GMT -5
Somebody actually made progress on a red region. Who wants to tell the story?
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Post by quicklite on Feb 21, 2015 10:40:49 GMT -5
Somebody actually made progress on a red region. Who wants to tell the story? Oo, I can! In some sorta twist of good luck, me, Crunch, Dems, Cardz, and Cat (I believe it was them) were all on at the same time, and a whole bunch of signal beacons had popped up in a red region...to cut a long story short, there was a lot of deaths, and I no longer have any more tank unlocks  Speaking of which, now that I've actually played a red region I have some feedback regarding those giant square fortresses: Firstoff, I really like the touch where the slows from missles stack, but to be entirely honest it just makes fighting them unfun. Getting hit by one slow missle makes you unable to dodge the other 4 that are generally shot along with it, and after 4 stacks of slow, you might as well be paralyzed. And when you're paralyzed in front of that fortress, tactics go out the window. First-off, there's no more moving, since you now are completely unable to dodge the 16 missles inevitably coming your way, and secondly once you're dealing with that amount of damage not even a corsair will save you. And since stacks go through invincibility, you can't really tank the missles for your teammates, as you become frozen in place when your invincibility wears off, and then you're pretty much a sitting duck. And disarming isn't an option either, as disarm triggers stop lasers, but not the missle salvos. Because of that, the only viable strategy is to just spam cloaking tanks, run back to origin, wait for cloak to refresh, then repeat. And I don't think this will be solved with more people, since all it takes is four missles to take a single tank out of the fight for good. In fact, the only solution more players will give is allowing for a zerg-rush type attack that's frankly just as boring and tacticless as the current solution of cloak-spam. As for feedback, I'd either say to make the missles either not stack or be far easier to avoid, or at the very least make the slow debuff only take effect when your shields are pierced, so that you can actually support teammates. If you feel like this would make the fortress too easy, you could always give it another factor, like bombs or patrol type minions similar to the kind the giant circle fort gets. Heck, maybe you could make the fort deploy watchtower type trap squares, it would be fun to see another fort use those. As for the second piece of feedback...well, this one's simple. In my honest opinion, I find these forts substantially harder than most subcommanders, and yet their loot pool is about as substantial as a drill's. I've killed about 5 of them and have never gotten anything more than 150 exp. It would be nice to give the thing a good loot pool for anyone crazy enough to try and kill the darned things. Same goes for the cores of maze regions. Maybe that's just me getting hella unlucky, but I seem to have gotten no more than an aug off of those. That's all I have to say though. Other than that, great build all round ^^ |
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Post by rob on Feb 23, 2015 11:27:06 GMT -5
Great story! I love that the signal beacons tempted you in, since that was why we made them in the first place. A lot of my gameplay ideas don't seem to work out, but just this once, one of them did.  The Crippler and its extra-large friends the Pathogen and Necrosis all share a loot table with the Drill. Yes, they should get their own table with better loot. However, I don't want to make it "worth it" to kill these guys all on their own. We are using a rule of thumb that grinding down forts you just happen to come across in the wild should not be an attractive proposition. In fact just killing random forts should be an unrewarding pain in the butt, which I think sums up the current situation in red regions with a 5-person group. However, I definitely want it to be worth it to achieve map objectives such as signal beacons, mineral deposits, city levelups, etc. Perhaps we need to increase those rewards in red regions. On the other hand, perhaps you just needed a bigger group. Had there been ten people there, would it have been worth it? Surely you could have hidden behind your teammates and maybe died only half the number of times, all the while tossing in Thunderbolt nades or spamming Hurricane lighting and anti-missile shots? Would it have been worth it then? Although you claim having more people wouldn't have made any difference, we won't really know until it gets tried. Yet another rule of thumb (I should collect these somewhere): each party of players should consider its own "total party awesomeness" when deciding where to fight. A team of 5 veterans like yours would have been wasting its time in a green region. Likewise, you were just losing tank items by beating your heads against the Cripplers. So although I really appreciate the attempt (and loved hearing the story), perhaps the best place for your group would have been an orange region. Also, I'm reluctant to nerf the hardest stuff in the game just because you guys couldn't beat it. Once you beat it, there won't be any unsurmounted challenges left! Plus, we have new upgrades coming out in the next few weeks... |
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Build 132
Feb 23, 2015 11:51:52 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by quicklite on Feb 23, 2015 11:51:52 GMT -5
Great story! I love that the signal beacons tempted you in, since that was why we made them in the first place. A lot of my gameplay ideas don't seem to work out, but just this once, one of them did. The Crippler and its extra-large friends the Pathogen and Necrosis all share a loot table with the Drill. Yes, they should get their own table with better loot. However, I don't want to make it "worth it" to kill these guys all on their own. We are using a rule of thumb that grinding down forts you just happen to come across in the wild should not be an attractive proposition. In fact just killing random forts should be an unrewarding pain in the butt, which I think sums up the current situation in red regions with a 5-person group. However, I definitely want it to be worth it to achieve map objectives such as signal beacons, mineral deposits, city levelups, etc. Perhaps we need to increase those rewards in red regions. On the other hand, perhaps you just needed a bigger group. Had there been ten people there, would it have been worth it? Surely you could have hidden behind your teammates and maybe died only half the number of times, all the while tossing in Thunderbolt nades or spamming Hurricane lighting and anti-missile shots? Would it have been worth it then? Although you claim having more people wouldn't have made any difference, we won't really know until it gets tried. Yet another rule of thumb (I should collect these somewhere): each party of players should consider its own "total party awesomeness" when deciding where to fight. A team of 5 veterans like yours would have been wasting its time in a green region. Likewise, you were just losing tank items by beating your heads against the Cripplers. So although I really appreciate the attempt (and loved hearing the story), perhaps the best place for your group would have been an orange region. Also, I'm reluctant to nerf the hardest stuff in the game just because you guys couldn't beat it. Once you beat it, there won't be any unsurmounted challenges left! Plus, we have new upgrades coming out in the next few weeks... Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate and agree with everything you said there, but I think I should rephrase my qualms with the missiles. It's not that I find the missiles too powerful in a 'can't beat it with 5 people, too OP' sense, but more in a sense that the missiles themselves just seem to create unhealthy gameplay even in larger groups. My logic here is that a slowed tank can still support its team, and a tank with reduced movement speed still has options. An entirely paralyzed tank, on the other hand, can not. A paralyzed tank can't effectively protect teammates when static, nor can it retreat when it has taken one too many hits. And I find that when four missiles connect, something that a shield/protector tank should expect to happen at any group size, you pretty much can't move anymore. Which is why I find that cloak spam will always be the best solution for paralyzing. Why risk getting frozen in place? 4 missiles renders you useless, causing you to either die or retreat, in which you may miss valuable loot during the teleport delay. I just find that even in larger groups, paralyzing just seems to completely conflict with the gameplay nature of grid12, whereas slow would still leave a definite mark while still allowing support/protector tanks to serve their purpose. |
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Build 132
Feb 23, 2015 11:53:42 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by dabeastlybro on Feb 23, 2015 11:53:42 GMT -5
More beacons in threat level green regions pl0x. Need as many tank unlocks as possible xD
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Post by Crunch on Feb 24, 2015 19:51:57 GMT -5
level down items at death in list Build 134Description instead of losing shields, energy pods, etc at death, just level them down by 1 Just wanted to say that I had been wondering about moving the lose-on-death items in this direction, and that I can't wait to see the update! |
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). And the 40% buffs they give you are pretty major, since the damage buff makes clearing way easier, the health buff makes it harder to lose tanks, and the speed buff determines whether you can actually go fast enough to avoid missles and keep up with convoys. It would be nice to be able to reliably get them back after a blunder, even if doing so proves to be much harder than just killing a delta like it used to be.
