Feedback on invasion (and suggestions)
TreeToTheVoid
Member
in Suggestions
Here is my feedback after some hours playing version 0.6, mainly the invasion mode.
Before anything, let me tell you that the game is very nice and I am impatiently waiting for the 0.7 to test new things.
So :
- I have lost a lot of wood to the Great Void, some of my bricktrons even evilly pushing some innocent pieces of it away from their Pure Island.
- The spade task is difficult to extend once created, the easiest thing is to create a new task.
- After having put three bricktons to the closest mine, in order to get a lot of blue crystals to increase the family, I ended up to roughly 20 bricktrons and a great difficulty to get more (exponentials...) and TONS of iron and yellow crystal absorbing all the space in the stocks. As far as I know, I can only use iron to make bear traps and yellow crystal for torches and bombs. Well, torch is not really helpful, unless I have misunderstood something? Anyway, I have made a bear traps plantation, it does not deal a lot of damages but help archers to kill the smaller corruptrons. Bombs are VERY powerful, I think I could have destroy half the island with it, at least destroying all the natural bridges leading this naughty corruptrons to my base. What would have they done then? Throwing minitrons into slaughter? ... I will definitely try that next.
- I think, I need more iron stuff, traps, blade-traps, walking-armors ... More siege machines too, at least a ballista to pin down this pretentious corruptrons.
- Explosives are too powerful and too cheap - or yellow crystals are too easy to find.
- However, blue crystals is too rare, as I said, 20 is my upper limit, after I gave up mining. It means I end up with only 5 archers, 5 soldiers (most of whom die during the first waves) and 10 bricktrons. I understand that a survival has to be difficult, but this discourages from bold move like a bricktron bringing an explosive barrel into the corruptrons army.
- Perhaps lower the price of a bricktron if you loose one.
- What could be interesting is to have several type of mines (only in the invasion mode), the blue one being extremely far away in the corruptrons territory, that would force me to keep a path to it while avoiding to have lots of uninteresting iron or yellow crystals.
- If we could have a tutorial or a description on how to use the wooden materials it would be nice, because that is a tricky thing for new players.
- You spoke of magic, if we could gain some mana by throwing wood or bricktrons away from the island, it would be nice.
- I am eagerly waiting for an PvP multiplayer. Apart from the conquest mode, I propose (don't know if it is feasible) a 'siege' mode where one team (with some time and resources to prepare) has to defend against another attacking team. With a timer, several crystal points to take to increase the timer and spawn the bricktrons closer. That would be more than great.
- Other fun thing : wheels so we can make wooden moving structures (for attackers).
Before anything, let me tell you that the game is very nice and I am impatiently waiting for the 0.7 to test new things.
So :
- I have lost a lot of wood to the Great Void, some of my bricktrons even evilly pushing some innocent pieces of it away from their Pure Island.
- The spade task is difficult to extend once created, the easiest thing is to create a new task.
- After having put three bricktons to the closest mine, in order to get a lot of blue crystals to increase the family, I ended up to roughly 20 bricktrons and a great difficulty to get more (exponentials...) and TONS of iron and yellow crystal absorbing all the space in the stocks. As far as I know, I can only use iron to make bear traps and yellow crystal for torches and bombs. Well, torch is not really helpful, unless I have misunderstood something? Anyway, I have made a bear traps plantation, it does not deal a lot of damages but help archers to kill the smaller corruptrons. Bombs are VERY powerful, I think I could have destroy half the island with it, at least destroying all the natural bridges leading this naughty corruptrons to my base. What would have they done then? Throwing minitrons into slaughter? ... I will definitely try that next.
- I think, I need more iron stuff, traps, blade-traps, walking-armors ... More siege machines too, at least a ballista to pin down this pretentious corruptrons.
- Explosives are too powerful and too cheap - or yellow crystals are too easy to find.
- However, blue crystals is too rare, as I said, 20 is my upper limit, after I gave up mining. It means I end up with only 5 archers, 5 soldiers (most of whom die during the first waves) and 10 bricktrons. I understand that a survival has to be difficult, but this discourages from bold move like a bricktron bringing an explosive barrel into the corruptrons army.
- Perhaps lower the price of a bricktron if you loose one.
- What could be interesting is to have several type of mines (only in the invasion mode), the blue one being extremely far away in the corruptrons territory, that would force me to keep a path to it while avoiding to have lots of uninteresting iron or yellow crystals.
- If we could have a tutorial or a description on how to use the wooden materials it would be nice, because that is a tricky thing for new players.
- You spoke of magic, if we could gain some mana by throwing wood or bricktrons away from the island, it would be nice.
- I am eagerly waiting for an PvP multiplayer. Apart from the conquest mode, I propose (don't know if it is feasible) a 'siege' mode where one team (with some time and resources to prepare) has to defend against another attacking team. With a timer, several crystal points to take to increase the timer and spawn the bricktrons closer. That would be more than great.
- Other fun thing : wheels so we can make wooden moving structures (for attackers).
Comments
- The waves are too close, it would be more fun to have bigger waves coming less often. As it is, you have no time to upgrade or repair your castle till the next wave. But it can be done in another mod than invasion, I have heard of a mode "sandbox-survival", it may be just that.
- We need the ability to resurect bricktrons, or at least that a dead brickron gives enough resources to be spawned again. Currently after a fight, if you have lost one bricktron, you have lost the next fight.
- Bricktrons with a load cannot escalade some things (wood trunks for instance). It discourages from building small wood scaffoldings to repair walls.
- Corruptrons make tunnel in walls in less time than you need to build this wall.
- Archers do not aim when minitrons are too close to the wall. Throwing stones or burning things from top of the wall could be fun.
- Going back to the menu bugs and makes the game crash.
- Knights should have a stand ground hotkey in order to stop them in one move. Currently you have too pick them one by one, ordering them to stay.
- There should be a "defend area" order with a squared area and where the knights would not move unless they need to. The current one with the circled area is more a patrol thing for big areas to me. It cannot help to protect your walls from the flying minitrons.
- Same with archers, they should be able to move (while remaining on the wall) to have a better view of the enemy.
- When bricktrons have nothing to do, the task should enter a "done" state (with a change in color) and the bricktrons freed from it, so it will become easier to spot the lazy.
- Tasks that cannot be finished should enter a "problem" state (with a change in color). For instance a construction task where the last stone to install is too high.
- First bigger thought, tl;dr: smallest corruptrons should not be able to destroy stone.
Actually, medieval castles were made to resist attackers that could not destroy stone easily. They had high walls because attackers had to climb them and thick walls because it was hard to destroy them with siege engine. Remember that once powder started to be widely used, castles started to look like stars (search vauban fortress for instance). And this was only because it allows to deviate the shells. For attackers that can destroy stone bare-handed, making a stone castle is just not the good idea.
What happens is that a dozen corruptrons rush to the walls where archers have difficulties to shoot at them for no apparent reason (I mean they are in their LOS, I have made towers for this). Once they are here they start digging and so they get out of the archers' LOS. Ultimately they climb to the top of the wall from the inside leaving the wall difficult to repair.
So making wall thick or high only delay them, but as they can't be shot, it does not change the battle aftermath.
I tried to lure them into a trap making a ramp to the top of the wall, thinking that they would prefer taking the easy ramp than destroying my walls. Once on the ramp they would becom easy targets. But still, sometimes they prefer eating walls.
Same results with doors.
My conclusion is that both minitrons and corruptrons should not be able to attack walls. They should be able to destroy ground but not stone. Instead it would be fun if you had ninja corruptrons able to slowly climbing the walls or if some corruptrons could make a ramp with the ground to access the top of it.
Even for big corruptrons, they should have difficulties in breaking stones they would rather break two-three doors than one layer of wall. (Currently they prefer break a dozen stone bricks rather than two doors).
- Second bigger thought, tl;dr: make unidirectional roads
Construction is a bit too slow, but once a battle is started, the game becomes suddenly very fast and furious. I think the first problem is that corruptrons are too quick. Easy to modify. The second problem is the path finding. I think 30-50% percent of bricktron time is misspent: moving a stone where another bricktron has planned to put a stone, hurting other bricktron going in the opposite direction, the path is temporary blocked by a guy, I will take a shortcut through the other side of the world, oh no the stone is already place I have to go to the other side of the castle to put my stone (while there was a stone to be placed much closer) ...
That is I think a quite complicated problem. Good luck.
A bit of a solution : the ability to create unidirectional roads where the bricktrons would go faster and take it as static path from one area to the other (and you can define these areas). It would make it easier for the path finding and they would not bump into each other as often.
I have made strong walls on the outer side, a smaller wall (historical reason: resist the first rounds) between my workload and the blue crystal, three towers. The towers are here in order to let archers shoot at the base of the wall (see the bug explained above). Here I am planning to add crenels and finish the tower.
As you can see there is a small scaffolding on the front wall, it is here to patch the holes in this same wall. Not very convenient, because the time needed to make the scaffolding and the reparation is too higher than to the time left before the next wave.
Attached, you'll find the beginning. We see a small bugs on the numbers.
It is a ladder going above the corruptrons. The idea is that if a corruptron breaks a piece of the wall, he will get the stone above on its head and perhaps (?) die.
I could not witness that because the especially avoid this wall.
So @developers : tell me they'll die.
- It is cheap
- the corruptrons have a direct access to my archers, so they will try to access them instead of attacking the wall
- they have to climb each step, and it takes them a lot of time
- it gives an excellent shooting angle to my archers on the top of it
- I can add bear traps on each step, slowing them down even more
Until now, they did not managed to put a foot on the third step.So that will be my conclusions on "how do you make castles that resists walls-attacking corruptrons":
And I also tried the catapult, it is quite fun, just a small but : what can't the bricktron engineer be able to reload its catapult automatically ?
Another comment: I played this party for a few hour and when I reached wave 5 (budget of 250, which is equivalent to wave 46 in normal preset), the game slows down a lot. I also have 20 workers, 12 archers, 6 knights, 16 fireflies.
That will be all for now.
Thank you for your awesome criticism!
When it comes to catapult, it's a design choice at the moment. There's talk of streamlining the catapults' reloading and firing in the future though, so who knows!
As for building a catapult on stone, can you show me a screenshot? It should work fine!
Ok I'll retry, perhaps it was because the tower was not finished or perhaps I left a hole.
For the explosion, perhaps you should add gravels outside the crater in order to make a small mound around it once they 'solidify'. It might make craters (even) more realistic and give the field an even more (welcomed) apocalyptic look.
Thank you for being so active on the forums, it's very appreciated.
There is a way actually, but it requires time, basically have your bricktrons replace the floor with stone. This way you won't have problems with the Curroptrons literally scaling your walls with the bodies of the dead.
For your problem, my first solution was to add a gamemode with bigger time between waves but bigger waves. That would let you make bigger castles and have time to clean/repair between two waves.
For me, the original gamemode is more for trying to resist an infinite flow of corruptrons than to resist several big waves. Which is cool too.
Speaking of which, if someone has such a survival configuration/gamemode he thinks well-balanced and offering something different (and it sure can be) than the original one, would be cool if he publishes it on the forum.
@Shatojon perhaps on a speficic thread / discussion ?
Cool map, by the way.
Speaking of map, I was thinking of making a map in a forest, sort of. For now, I have only the idea of a big plateau with sparse trees so that bricktrons can move between them, and that seems a bit too light to make an entire map. If someone has some other cool forest-related ideas, I'm listening.
Anyway, once you have restricted the corruptrons to take your causeway, defended by a pair of knight and a dozen archers well placed, you'll be able to lasts until wave 40 at least (if the lags allow you to).
The only limit is the corruptrons that try to dig around your fortifications. But if your defense is smart enough, it won't be a problem so soon.
First of all, note that I think that all corruptron units have their own role in the early game and middle game.
Let's make a small review of the corruptrons units in late game.
- minitrons: only take some arrows and generate lags
- bricktrons: throw too few stones to endanger your archers, can dig around
- beeftron: can be dangerous if in group
So the challenge becomes: kill all the beeftrons before a pack of them reach your knights. The other corruptrons are just too weak to get through.
I remember of beeftron throwing minitrons: is it still there? I have not seen any flying minitron in that game.
The corruptrons throw too few stones. Can the corruptrons throw stones when they are on a stone pavement ?
*** Update on 0.9 ***
I am eagerly waiting for some new units like:
- climbers (I may have seen that somewhere...)
- shooters (either the corruptrons are more stone-friendly or a "slingtron")
- siege-engine : the new "shardtron", I'm pretty sure he can fire laser !
- jumpers (to go above the slowing obstacles and get on small walls)
- boomers that would explode sending a lot of stones or shards, and damages a bit your fortifications
- minitron pyramid
- tunneltron : that would be able to dig tunnels in the mountains and/or under your walls (the tunnel can have a max size / depth)
- mage
Speaking of mages, I think it is safe to say that the corruptrons have some kind of stone magic, I suggest powers like:
- heal corruptrons with rubbles, respawn corruptrons from rubbles
- spawn corruptrons from the ground,
- telekinesy: throw chunks (a dozen voxels) of the ground, propel the rubbles
And for the repartition of corruptrons among the waves, I suggest to add the following: every 5 new waves, a wave full of one new type of corruptron (randomly chosen) comes. Then this new type will be considered for the next waves.
For instance:
- wave 1-4: only standard corruptrons
- wave 5: surprise, you'll now be attacked by beetfrons: one beeftron attack you
- wave 6-9: standard corruptrons + beeftrons.
- wave 10: lots of minitrons
- wave 11-14: standard corruptrons + beeftrons + minitrons
- etc.
And keeping the current "budget" increasing thing for determining the composition of waves.
Then, why not a big boss every 25 waves ?
For the big bosses, just use the previous corruptrion I described and make them bigger focusing on their special ability even more.