Great Utility Update, Parts 2~N (Patreon)

Over five years ago, there was a plan to do a sweeping review of Cogmind's parts, especially utilities (as they represent the bulk of Cogmind items and offer the widest variety of unique effects), basically to ensure that everything was working together smoothly and had its proper place in some compelling Cogmind build or another. So-called "Part 1" of this process began during Alpha 12 with a few fundamental mechanical changes, but since then the project remained on the TODO list in order to wait until 1) even more content was added to the game, and 2) we collected more info about what items people are and aren't using, and why. Certainly there have been lots of changes along the way, though for the most part these have been targeted at certain mechanics, or even individual parts, and not what I meant by "great utility update," an otherwise truly comprehensive review of every item in the game with an eye towards balance and usefulness. Beta 11 is finally tackling this project, and we've already seen it manifested across propulsion, weapons (crits), and storage units, but the comprehensive review has yet to happen, and is the goal I'm focusing on for X9. This is what I've been working on over the past week.

Eventually I'll be going item-to-item to confirm each is in the desired state (again, with extra focus on utilities), though there are still a handful of categorical item adjustments to be made before getting all the way down to the individual level like that.

For now the first two categories have been completed: Exiles prototypes and alien artifacts.

The Exiles prototypes in general aren't meant to be something incredibly OP to hoard for most of a run. Yeah it's still possible, even after changes, though having plenty of collective experience with them it's pretty clear which could use a bit of a nerf, buff, or... some other sort of change ;)

I'm especially curious how the new Lightpack (3.0? :P) will fare in the hands of players. Given that I buffed it in some ways it might be a bit too good for some types of builds (maybe not the ones that were using it earlier!), but it can always be tweaked again later--that's what prereleases are for :D

Artifacts are spoiler territory so I won't go into details here other than to say I've weakened some permabuffs, and added a couple of interesting new options to fill the gaps left by changes to accessibility.

The next category I'll be reviewing is overloadable weapons to update those along with related utilities.

Then it'll be time to do the remaining item-wise adjustments, which will of course include looking at whether a given utility effect is worth keeping at all, or maybe needs adjustments. In general I prefer to modify or add features in order to maintain balance, rather than removal, though removals do happen on rare occasions where changes alone can't solve an issue (generally because a mechanic was added in pre-alpha simply because it could be, not because it was a good idea at all :P). Examples of rare removals include Cannibalization Units and the Stasis Generator.

I've been talking about some of this stuff on the Discord channel (and my streams), and will be bringing up more item-related questions for discussion there as I go down the item list checking everything off one by one as I get to it, but if you'd like to go on the record with some opinion on further item updates for Beta 11 and aren't on the Discord, leaving that here in the comments works, too.

One thing to remember is that there will always be some cases where a given part is meant more for other robots instead of the player (and not every item is supposed to be amazing or desirable in numerous situations). That said, it's always nice when a part can also be useful to some builds as well, so I tend to work towards that where possible.

I've got a lot of feedback on this stuff already, of course, and have plenty of ideas of my own that still need to happen, so if you'd like the wait until X9 is released and try that out first, we will totally do a second pass as well to iron out any kinks (it'll be necessary because this build is once again changing a lot!).

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