Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle

[Nord]

And which craft weapons you use?

[ohartenstein23]

Sabres + Tesla Cannons are practically necessary to beat that shield regen, but you can always try the canonical method of loading down Devastators or Brave Whalers with Avalanches.

[Zharkov]

Say, Dioxine, sometimes I wonder - do you ever feel anger or even hate towards the players? 

[legionof1]

Bad day in mine craft eh?

[juff]

I had that happen as well and I was wondering if that was a bug or a trap for players.

[Dioxine]

Well, you walked in there on purpose, didn't you? So where is my fault in this?

[ivandogovich]

Lol.  Is that the bottom of the Extractor?

[Zharkov]

Lol.  Is that the bottom of the Extractor?

Spoiler:

It's the x-prision. You're trapped and need to go through a wall to get out and there is a pick-axe at the bottom of this pit. Nice trap, I nearly choked from laughing when I noticed that you don't get out. But only works once.

[khade]

This might have been asked before, in fact, possibly by me:  Is it possible to put the point loss behind a research gate?  We have to attract more notice to be worth crushing, after all.  Probably it would be a very early research, and one that you won't just avoid for a while, but it could help avoid a very early early game wipe. Just for the record, I don't think the money one should be unlocked, if you aren't making money, you aren't going to lead long.

[Dioxine]

I made a mistake when removing negative score from civilian shipping. It will be fixed in the next version. Should have a major positive impact on early score, before heavy flights start.

[khade]

Please note that I wasn't complaining about the design, I'm just saying that we're nobodies at the beginning, so it doesn't make sense that they'd even care enough to squish us.

[karadoc]

I'm curious about the balance around the timing of *the mutant alliance* tech. In previous versions you could activate the mutant alliance pretty early and easily just through research. But now it's locked behind the alliance favours item, for which the player must wait a long time (as far as I can tell).

I'm in August of the first year in my current playthrough. I have three bases and pretty good tech. I'm finding it interesting that 'back to school' is blocking my tech advance - forcing me to use lower level tech. For example, I'd usually just skip building dojos and go straight for the luxury spa; but this time I've just go no idea how long I'll have to wait for that spa, so I'm building a couple of dojos. Similarly with overcharged radars. Usually I might just build one or two, but this time I'm putting them in all bases because I can't get decoders. I'm expecting there to be a significant leap in possibilities when I finally do get access to the mutant alliance...

So, I think it's interesting and fun; but I'm curious about whether this bottleneck a deliberate design feature. And since I'm still behind the bottleneck, it isn't clear to me how long it will last or how much control I have to get past it. I can think of a few things I've done wrong that could have slowed me down significantly in terms of the mutant alliance; but I'm kind of curious about what players are _expected_ to get access to it.

[Dioxine]

I confirm that pushing Back to School was deliberate to raise relevance of earlier tech. As for what players are "expected" to do... That'd be an impossible task to tell! Players will most certainly do something unexpected and interesting. I just hope they have fun.

[Stoddard]

If anything, I think it wasn't pushed far enough. Certainly more fun now, and I think a bit more can be squeezed still.

[legionof1]

I'm somewhat with stoddard in pushing certain gates back to allow the full spread of the tech tree to have it time to shine.

But the present form also feels clunky and inorganic. The major gates end up feeling like a holding pattern while you grind the same strata of content over and over. Sometimes for quite some time. Implosion bomb in particular but all the big ones have something that might leave you puttering around for extended periods.