Beta 11 X1 Prerelease (Patreon)

Let the fun begin! So I streamed the first version of Beta 11 today and there was of course a ton of discussion surrounding the changes, and now you can all try them out for yourself. Though I'm sure much of the focus will be on the beginning of our rebalancing efforts, this release does include other completed Beta 11 work like a number of fixes as well as the item search and filtering features. (As usual any runs in this prerelease version are included on the separate leaderboard for patrons, including access to all the run data which I'm sure will be very interesting.)

Also note this is a very early prerelease--we've never done a prerelease anywhere near this early before, so most of the Beta 11 work is still ahead, with all kinds of new updates in store (which I've sorta covered in previous posts), but it's important to test this one incrementally because there are going to be quite a few changes coming, on top of the ones which we've already got here.

This release is so early Beta 11 doesn't even have an official name yet :P

I will preface the rest of this by saying that there are some pretty wild ideas in here, but keep an open mind and try not to overreact. Do some test runs and we'll continue to tweak things if/as necessary, but we'll first have to see what real runs look like, and whether these changes are achieving the intended goals.

Storage

Storage Units now have the <no_stack> property, so you can only get the effects of one at a time.

Players have been tending towards carrying larger and larger inventories, because it certainly does feel safer to have a lot of spare parts, but at the same time this almost irresistable strategy makes for much heavier builds while also reducing their overall effectiveness by taking up extra utility slots (or slots that could have been non-utility slots) that could otherwise be put to use making one's build more effective and need fewer spares in the first place.

Yes we can say that players choosing to do this to themselves deserve any negative consequences of that choice, but when faced with the option to carry as much loot as possible, many can't help themselves, and enforcing some limitations has these other benefits, too--most importantly, this change is not happening in isolation! Storage Units have also been revamped to hold 2.5x as much as before (also individually becoming heavier in the process), so more inventory for a single slot, and we also do have some even newer types of storage for those who really need a higher limit and are willing to pay a premium for it. (It'll also opens up some more design space for different unique storage types in the future.) So yeah you can still hold a reasonably large inventory, definitely large enough to support good builds, but not like dozens upon dozens of extra parts :P

I know some people are worried about RIF builds in this context, since on the surface those benefit from having an endless supply of couplers, but given current numbers and strategies I believe the effect of <no_stack> will be fairly minimal on that front, or again even beneficial in some ways because RIF builds that want to take the coupler-heavy route can choose to gain the benefits of using more couplers at once. As with most everything in this build, we'll see how it works out and make tweaks if necessary.

Regarding the new Storage Units, everything can be found randomly in 0b10, although in a future version there will be a new reliable source from which to obtain the largest common storage.

Overweight

The old overweight system (Ox1, Ox2...) could definitely use some improvement, and I think this build includes a decent solution, but it sure wasn't easy to get to its current point despite still probably being not quite there yet.

So many versions of charts and graphs...

I spent a lot of time trying to find an approach that would work without breaking everything, and settled on a solution that applies a single speed penalty on going overweight (as before), and after that a further speed reduction based on the amount of mass by which you exceed the threshold.

The mass-speed relationship is not linear, however, instead following an inverted exponential curve so that the effect is more pronounced earlier on and it gradually tapers off as you get heavier. This is actually the opposite of what you think might happen, but it seems to keep speeds within reason while allowing for heavy builds?

I'm not sure yet, honestly, since the best test for that will be real builds built by real players, not some Excel chart estimates, and although I think the system will probably work, the devil is in the details, where details means specifically the curve formula. Tweaking that one formula will allow for a lot of control over the balance, and if necessary we can introduce different curves for each propulsion, although I haven't gone that far yet except to introduce another specifically for wheels to try to keep them balanced in their niche without becoming the new go-to ground combo propulsion :P

Overall due to the <no_stack> changes (and leg changes discussed below) I think more builds will start to learn towards being underweight anyway, either because they have more prop slots to play with (due to freeing up storage slots) or simply less mass devoted to heavy Storage Units.

Naked core overweight propulsion is probably not yet balanced. I wanted to see what others play like first before getting deeper into that, although some temporary changes were made there.

Anyway, try out different propulsion. Get creative. I wouldn't be surprised if you can break the system, but we need to know how so we can update it :)

(Note: Player 2 AI does not yet fully know how to handle the new overweight system, so for now that special mode could be weird like that.)

Flight and Hover

Okay so a potential nerf for flight and hover mass support has been brewing for a long while, but only now has it become a more opportune time to try it out what with a big part of Beta 11 being about rebalancing many aspects of the game.

Flight and hover builds have always been pretty similar to one another--powerful and fast, and especially in the case of flight, incredibly fast alongside being able to hop over other bots, which can be quite a useful special ability currently shared by no other propulsion. So the idea is to reduce the support of both such that hover becomes more what flight used to be, potentially pretty powerful but also relatively speedy (albeit without hopping), and flight is further differentiated by being even more fragile and likely focused on speed, evasion, stealth, and hacking.

Note the changes are most significant in late-game hover/flight, since lower-end parts were left mostly as they were and the biggest change was to the rate of improvement. I'm sure we'll see some more tweaking here, but this release is the starting point for exploring that direction.

It'd be nice if we could build flight out into its own even more distinctive niche in line with how it was originally envisioned, more of a hacker-type that avoids direct combat. This could come into play if Beta 11 also ends up nerfing machine hacking, which is quite good for how easy it is, even for a combat bot with just a bit of hackware. That could shift a bit more back into flight's arena, perhaps in combination with new hacks or abilities?

Miscellaneous

Mass support utilities have also become <no_stack> alongside the storage and propulsion changes, but this is just a temporary modification. They were slated to be updated somehow (perhaps removal from the game, but I'd like to keep them if possible/balanceable), but for now I've just set them to not stack so we can at least play with that idea. The effect numbers are likely too high since those were not modified at all, but it's hard to know exactly what to do with those until the propulsion and overweight issues are more settled.

Energy containers were also nerfed by reducing their capacity (especially at the higher ends), since those values were set years ago long before even the ability to draw energy from parts on the ground was added to the game. Their capacity still reflected only the mechanics that existed when they were first added (the original values literally being set during the 7DRL in 2012 xD).

Naturally all these changes to parts and mechanics required updating robot loadouts, so there have been quite a few tweaks throughout those. In general nothing hugely significant for gameplay purposes, however. Except that Crushers got a bit slower ;) (you can likely avoid and outrun them on treads now, if you play it right). Some other bots did get slightly faster or slower.

In terms of rebalancing, this is just the beginning--much more to come as we work through Beta 11, with no doubt more prereleases along the way. Also there's going to be more buffs and cool new stuff as well! I promise Beta 11 is not just "nerf everything" :P. We just happen to be starting with the most fundamental biggest nerfs to get this part down first.

I wasn't originally going to include it in this release since it's less controversial and overall more of a buff than nerf, but it is fairly experimental and it turned out there was some extra time to work on something, so in this release we also have a new leg feature. Legs now gain the "Running" status while you're moving, and for each momentum (up to 3) you'll gain an additional 5% evasion modifier, so at best an extra 15% to dodge. There is also a matching negative modifier to your ranged accuracy, so shooting while dodging becomes less effective (unless I guess you have really good targeting or other factors working in your favor). These aspects add some interesting tactical considerations which will gradually reveal themselves as we test it out (I only started realizing more of its potential while streaming today, but there's a lot of stuff in there...). There's a fair amount of room to tweak this feature as well, considering there were plenty of options on the table in terms of implementation and balance, but this is where we're starting with it so let's see how it turns out. Note that it doesn't work if you're overweight, and remember as with most mechanics this also affects all other bots as well, which has... certain implications ;)

For the rest of the changes you can also see the attached changelog, which is the same as what's included with the download.

Get Beta 11 X1

On Steam, Beta 11 X1 is currently located on the beta branch "beta_11_x1" accessible with the code "FunWithNoStack", or if you don't have Steam and would like to try the DRM-free version, send me an email at gridsagegames@gmail.com to be added to the Beta 11 cycle notification list.

Saves are not compatible with previous versions.

Update 210123a

And we already have our first update! Really just a quick and dirty one mostly aimed at slightly patching up the fact that airborne prop energy and heat values did not yet reflect the mass support changes:

• MOD: Halved all heat and energy costs for airborne propulsion (both upkeep and on movement)
• MOD: Accuracy reduction while Running on legs still applies if overweight
• MOD: Steeper overweight curve
• MOD: Hauler build classification limited further as intended
• MOD: Scoresheet Average Overweight updated calculation was incorrect

Saves should be compatible so I simply have this on the same branch.

Note that the propulsion cost changes are only generally reflected in your HUD and in terms of how they actually affect your resources--part info will still display the old values! This is because the system does not yet support decimals and was hacked in, but I've been thinking about finally allowing fractional costs for those, which has always held back airborne prop design due to the high speeds possible in Cogmind.

Anyway, if there's anything messed up with this build I'll fix it soon, and I imagine you can expect more builds this week as things are tweaked further :)

Update 210126a

Another update! Again saves are compatible. Summary of changes since 210123a:

• MOD: Heat costs for hover/flight rolled back, restored to original values as displayed
• MOD: Energy costs for hover/flight officially allowed to support and display fractional values
• MOD: Energy upkeep and movement costs for flight propulsion display values match actual values (halved from original)
• MOD: Energy movement costs for hover propulsion values match actual values (halved from original), upkeep costs reverted to original values
• MOD: Cogmind base inventory capacity increased to 5 [edit: oops, this was in the changelog and planned but not actually implemented xD--next time!]
• MOD: Overweight speed mechanics reverted to Beta 10.2 status (original system)
• MOD: Tread and leg overweight penalties increased (quick static increase, will tweak more closely later)
• MOD: Sensor Array range progression tightened, ratings increased

I'm ending the experiment with the alternate overweight system after determining it won't work properly in all situations without becoming even more complex, and the original one was really quite nice and just needed a few more tweaks. Still more tweaking to do, so of course plenty more builds down the road. Just another little milestone here :)