Internal Playtest – Changes to Basic & New Grenadier Bot – The Dox is Saved! – 4/29

http://www.twitch.tv/metabolical/b/524317378

• New Unit! The Dox is now back to a direct fire unit like it previously was and the unused T1 artillery bot model is now used for a new dedicated Grenadier bot. The new Grenadier bot fires a low arc that means it doesn’t have as much overkill, can hit moving units, and can still fire over walls.
• Skitter has no gun.
• Inferno has 1,000 health as opposed to 750.
• Gunships have 240 health as opposed to 250.
• Light Tanks deal twice as much damage and have twice as much health. They now have 250 health and 84 damage.
• Bombers have 100 health as opposed to 80 health.
• Metabolical energy stalls again…
• The Asraeus launch animation looks pretty awesome. It unfolds in a cool way and has rocket flares.
• Metabolical used the Astraeus to send fabbers to several planets extremely quickly since the Astraeus is now so cheap. Fast colonization of all planets is now quite the possibility. That’s gonna mean it’s very possible to rush colonize other planets very early into the game. Well within 10 minutes if done quickly. That’s gonna make for some very interesting, and drastic, changes to multi planet gameplay.
• Garat was producing a lot of bots and had sizeable raids incoming, but still were closer to 10 minutes into the match.
• Air fabbers reclaimed an Astraeus. Was pretty amusing. Too bad the Astraeus he was reclaiming didn’t help out his economy as his storage was full.
• Meta sure was wasting a lot of economy all game…
• The devs certainly used a lot of T1 units that match, but they also didn’t go to T2 with any sort of haste. I wonder how T2 would alter the gameplay.
• Factory build queues can now send units automatically through a teleporter!
• The Teleporter has a activate/deactivate sound. Never heard it before, so not sure how new it is.
• Formations are tighter, although I’m pretty sure that’s a product of a previous build.
• The engine effects of aircraft are pretty awesome looking.
• The new grenadier bots are pretty cool, but Doxen definitely beat the new grenadier in a direct confrontation.
• Fabbers can reclaim trees located on another planet. lol
• Not sure how much advanced metal extractors produce, but it definitely wasn’t very large amounts based on how much Meta was hurting for metal.
• Units will get attack commands on forests rather than move commands, whoops.
• Colonizing other planets seem to feel faster and easier. Managing multiple planets is still a challenge, but it always will be a challenge.
• Aaannnddd… Meta wins with a planet smash!!! Best way to win.
• Meta says this new build, with new units, will be out to the world real “soon!”

sweet

I've done a fair bit of testing regarding this. Unfortunately, I don't think it will pan out that way. Here's what I tested:

Starts are on two identical small moons with very few mex (I tested a few between 6 and 15), orbiting a planet with far more mex. This should encourage an orbital rush to build eco. The cost of the orbital launcher + astraeus is 3900+1500 = 4400, which is about half the price of going T2 + fabber. The payoff is sending a single fabricator (or a commander if you like taking risks) to another planet to build T1 eco. I found that sending a single T1 fabricator to another planet has a slower payoff than rushing T2. I didn't keep track of the exact amount of time taken for each, it was mostly by feel, so maybe I'll do that now just to be sure.

This was with the AI, so there was no way to test the effects on controlling that second planet (since the AI decided the first thing it would do after going T2 is build halleys). Hopefully someone else can try something similar against real players. The metal density I would suggest for the small moons with the current settings is -75, by the way (for very low metal).

Since building a multi-planet empire is going to be much more common/necessary, there is a camera issue that BADLY needs to be fixed. When the player presses the "," key to jump to the next planet, each planet should show the EXACT same camera view that was shown the last time the planet was jumped from.

Currently, pan operations apply to ALL planet views, which effectively makes your starting camera point RANDOM on each planet as you jump to it. Try it - Make a 2-planet system, and start a game. Pan to some recognizable feature on planet 1. Press the comma to jump to the next planet. Make note of what you see. Now hit comma repeatedly and you will jump between those two exact views, unchanged. Now, pan one of them down one screen. Hit comma again, and you'll see that your camera position on the second planet has panned down one screen as well.

Hotkeys are a must in this game of course, and to effectively build bases on several planets at once you need to be able to switch between them quickly. Yes, there are camera save/restore points, but No, that is not sufficient. To accomplish the same thing I am describing, you would have to save and restore camera points constantly. A more reasonable use case is that you have a "current" view you are working with on each planet, zoomed and panned to what makes sense for what you are working on there. And you just need an efficient way to jump between these multiple views to help you multitask with minimal task-switch overhead.

Any word on sheller bugs?

Hmm... so once more, expanding is pointless when compared to T2.

So multi planet colonization is almost even discouraged by the current game mechanics.

That is extremely unfortunate.

No word from Uber on that topic.

will the next patch have the immobile anchors and orbital factories?

Probably since those were in the build they were testing in this playtest and Meta said they're gonna try and get it out real soon. Maybe tomorrow or Thursday? I hope.

THE DOX IS SAFE!!!!!

I manage this by setting a camera location for each planet with Shift+number and then I can just Alt-# to flip between them. It helps a lot.

They did it, they really did it! Oh thank you Uber, I knew you had it in you! <3

Some really awesome stuff in the works. Reading this thread was just like "Yes. Yes. Yes. YES. YEEEEEESSSSSS!"
Things going in the right direction.
Keep being awesome Uber!

I noticed Garat didn't like the metal changes much. I'd at least like to try something extremely low to see how it plays and how it limits strats.

Did he mention if it would be in the stable or PTE build? I've been hoping for an update to the stable build to make T1 units viable again.

He didn't specify between the two. I got the feeling that it was for the main build.

Thanks for replying. I understand that this is an option, but the part I do not like about it is that as my focus drifts on a planet due to expansion I have to keep re-setting the saved location or I'll have to zoom/pan every time I recall that location.

Is there any particular technical reason that there can't be a last-location-used stored for each planet, recalled when the next-planet key is used to select that planet? Or, put another way, is it a *feature* that when I pan the view on Planet 1 my next-planet view of Planet 2 is panned as well? Doesn't seem very useful, and seems like a side effect of having a single set of planet-centric camera coordinates that are used for all planets. Just sayin'...

I don't want to seem nit picky though, overall I love this game!

Well, the new PTE build came out a couple hours ago, so I suspect that's what he was talking about.
Of course, no way to be sure.

I wants it on stable. None of this expensive T2 stuff please.

There are no technical issues preventing this, as far as I know. If the devs don't plan to fix it, could you please post in the "Mod Ideas" thread over in the mod forum? Someone will get around to it eventually.

I laughed a little at this, given that I'm already starting up on other planets by the 7-8 minute mark. Of course, cheaper Astraeus and cheaper teleporters mean I'll be getting things moving even faster now...