Build 135

[rob]

Hello everyone! Welcome to build 135! Changes include:

* Reduce installed items by one level on death
* Add cooldown to installable weapon and trigger item tooltips
* Rework the Vindicator
* Double loot for extra large fortresses
* Give Electrocutor its own droplist
* Terminate previous session when same user logs in again
* Fix Corsair Large Cannon Damage module property

When you die, instead of losing your power pods, weapon, 5th trigger and shields, they'll be leveled down by one. Our hope is that this will encourage people to level them up more before installing. Weapon and trigger items now have tooltips that show the cooldown benefit you'll get from leveling them up.

The Vindicator now has a four-segment shield, which recharges two segments when the shield refill trigger is popped. The blast maximizes its damage at 1/2 health. The guns swivel 360 now and the blink blast damage got a buff. Overall, the goal is to make it easier to use so that you don't skate on the absolute edge of death all the time. You should be able to do good damage and actively manage shields and health while waiting for triggers to recharge.

The big big forts (Crippler, Necrosis, Pathogen) got loot upgrades. They still aren't worth the trouble to kill without a map objective, but they should be slightly less insulting. The Electrocutor (the guy at the middle of the maze region) now drops loot like a region boss core.

We still really appreciate your help! Your feedback shapes the game every week. Thanks!

Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games

[Crunch]

The Vindicator seems pretty playable, so far. I haven't really pushed it out into the heavy wilderness yet, but it's better at clearing some medium/small towers than a few tanks. I can see it being useful. I'll have get my augs up, to give it a thorough test.

The Vindicator now has a four-segment shield, which recharges two segments when the shield refill trigger is popped. The blast maximizes its damage at 1/2 health.

So, the damage is based on the percentage of health? I assume that it's percentage of total health, rather than a percentage of a preset damage-taken value, a la smoke effects. Does having a Vind with health augs/prisms increase blast damage in any way?

[Zed]

First off, thanks for terminating the "Already logged in" issue.

Now, I'm not quite sure about buffing the Electrocutor to region-boss tier loot without making the fight a fair bit more difficult.
Giving it or the surrounding Oblivion fortresses (why not both?) a few low-power, long-range laser weapons might be a viable choice here.
Also, seeing as you're putting region boss loot on enemies without time restrictions, you might as well remove said restrictions from the region bosses themselves, no? (While in turn fortifying them similar to the Electrocutor)

Besides that, I encountered a slight visual bug that occurs when switching from/to a tank which's base HP doesn't equal to the standard 400.

[rob]

At full health, Vind's blast does 100 damage. This increases linearly as the Vind's health decreases to half, at which point the blast does 500 damage. Decreasing health below 50% does not increase blast damage further. Hull Augments and other conditions which increase health don't have any effect on this rule: no matter what your total health, blast damage still maximizes at the halfway mark.

Nice try Zed, on trying to get me to kill off region boss timers! Region bosses actually represent about 10-15 times more loot than just the core, as each redoubt drops a lot as well.

[quicklite]

Since we're talking about balance, I feel like bringing up a small pet peeve of mine, something's that's been bugging me since build 40 (why haven't I brought it up yet? No idea >_<)

The valkyrie's fourth trigger is...kinda useless. It doesn't really serve any sort of role with the tank. Yes, it freezes things in place, but the only things in the game worth freezing in place are the ones that could rip the valk to shreds in seconds. It just seems like a trigger that really had no meaning to the tank. In fact, the only thing I could see anyone using the trigger for is stopping armed convoys in order to screw with a group chasing them.

What do you guys think?

[Crunch]

Mar 19, 2015 18:06:32 GMT -5 quicklite said:

Since we're talking about balance, I feel like bringing up a small pet peeve of mine, something's that's been bugging me since build 40 (why haven't I brought it up yet? No idea >_<)

The valkyrie's fourth trigger is...kinda useless. It doesn't really serve any sort of role with the tank. Yes, it freezes things in place, but the only things in the game worth freezing in place are the ones that could rip the valk to shreds in seconds. It just seems like a trigger that really had no meaning to the tank. In fact, the only thing I could see anyone using the trigger for is stopping armed convoys in order to screw with a group chasing them.

What do you guys think?

The role paralyze plays in this game has been poked at before, irrc. And I agree, there really aren't many applications for it, considering most enemies we encounter are already completely stationary. There's simply little point in freezing most minions in place, paralyzing voys actually makes them more dangerous in many ways, and only the Dreadfang patrol can be paralyzed, which usually doesn't make much of a difference, anyway. Imo, paralyze, in general, is out of place in most cases, and can border on griefing in others. I don't think I'd miss it, if it decided to stop attending new builds. But things could change in the future and there could turn out to be practical uses, at some point. 

Truly, though, Aesc is probably the person most intimate with the Valk, and could have some insight into any uses, specifically. 

Mar 19, 2015 15:18:07 GMT -5 rob said:

Nice try Zed, on trying to get me to kill off region boss timers! Region bosses actually represent about 10-15 times more loot than just the core, as each redoubt drops a lot as well.

Taking the timers away might be extreme, but it would be nice to see RBs made more accessible. Right now, we only get a single 5 minute bout with a RB, which inevitably ends in failure, after grinding 900 towers. It's really asking too much for such an empty reward. The sectors tell the story, honestly. The map, which closed last night, had only one yellow region cleared. And if I'm not mistaken, the map before that closed without a single region clear... If clearing regions and fighting region bosses is supposed to be a major part of Grid12, it's not quite hitting the mark. I've got some ideas on the topic, if you're receptive.


Also, I've asked about Grid12's 'core loop' before, but I'm not sure you saw it (or maybe the term isn't quite applicable to non social-games). Still, it'd be easier to make suggestions if it were more clear what players should be spending their time doing. 

[tim]

Mar 19, 2015 8:52:38 GMT -5 Zed said:

Besides that, I encountered a slight visual bug that occurs when switching from/to a tank which's base HP doesn't equal to the standard 400.

Can you reproduce this? If so, what are you prisms/augments/mods/current region/lone wolf bonus/ etc.?

[Zed]

Mar 20, 2015 14:36:07 GMT -5 tim said:

Mar 19, 2015 8:52:38 GMT -5 Zed said:

Besides that, I encountered a slight visual bug that occurs when switching from/to a tank which's base HP doesn't equal to the standard 400.

Can you reproduce this? If so, what are you prisms/augments/mods/current region/lone wolf bonus/ etc.?

Yes, it's reproducible seemingly 100% of the time, though the health bars always normalize after a few frames.
Hull boosts don't matter as long as the tanks your're switching between have different total hull integrity, which is why I didn't mention any further details.
(Maybe I should make a proper bug report next time...)

[rob]

This HP bar bug is known to us. Don't spend any more time on it.

[Zencron]

There was a subcommander over the same area but subcommander didn't spawn either when fortresses were cleared.