Feedback from a CW addict.

[patrick]

First of all, I love this game. I'm glad I held off buying harvest: massive encounter. I just thought you'd want to know the things that made it less than perfect for me, just adding my feedback to everyone elses.

-- Partially constructed collectors should give you an indicator of the future catchment area, like SAMs. If this is a design decision to make the network grow more organically, fair enough. I can see a case for not doing this. Otherwise, it's a little fiddly to try to lay down a network with no gaps, then find I missed a stripe of map squares in the middle. This is the only bit of feedback I can give that I think will actually improve the player experience for other people.


-- The super-secret awesome amazing etc mode for completing the game, I realise this is nothing more than an unlockable easter egg and a nice gift, and it's actually made some of the challenge maps challenging. It would be good to be able to track my progress separately - see what maps I've completed in this mode specifically.


-- Levels with spores didn't really feel like they were making a difference. There's this one enemy, one unit counters it and that's all it does. Level has spores? Build a SAM after the first wave reminds me they exist. I've never (apart from chopper!) felt like I was struggling against spores or that they really damaged me at all. By the time I had to build a SAM, the required energy was a trivial amount. Maybe this'll change in the bonus mode, I don't know.


-- Some of the dialog could be tidied up, grammar-checked. This is just me being anal. It's fine as it is, and a better plot than I was expecting.


I guess energy consumption/use is a matter of surface area vs volume - I was expecting a level of balance where I used 4 units to defend a 4.5 unit area, but it's usually much easier. Yeah, I know, you're a guy who loves this stuff, you don't have a 10-man committee working on balancing.


I am completely happy to have paid full price, and will continue to think so, even if the game never gets updated.


[edit] removed from the wrong forum and reposted here.

[knucracker]

Excellent feedback....

Just so everyone knows, I do read feedback like this and I do take note.  Since CW is an indie game and I don't have a giant marketing budget (ok, I don't have a marketing budget at all) it is currently unknown by approximately 100% of humans on the planet.  Like most indie games it takes a while to gain modest momentum.  Now CW is ahead of the curve and has a high conversion rate of demos to full version players...  But we're still in the first month of the release.

I say this so that I can say that I do have plans for CW and feedback like this is helpful.

Regarding some things in your feedback;
Energy production, storage, use, and damage calculation were the hardest parts of CW. 

A few notes for those interested:
- Energy production is a function of total "green" area plus the number of reactors you have.
- Energy consumption is a function of the number of packets that Odin City produces.
- Packets are produced on demand when there are structures/units that demand them.
- When ammo packets are requested by a unit they are requested at twice the rate that construction packets are requested.
- When energy production exceeds demand, the energy storage buffer grows (up to its max).
- When energy demand exceeds production the energy storage buffer shrinks.
- If the buffer is empty, yet a packet is requested, Odin City waits till the buffer fills up just enough to produce one packet.
- When structures/units have requested packets but Odin City can't deliver (because it is waiting), the starvation queue grows.

Regarding damage:
- When a blaster fires at the creeper it damages the cell that it shoots at and then radially around that cell until it has damaged X cells.  When it damages a cell it reduces that cell's Creeper by "1".  (Where "1" is one terrain elevation level).
- When a mortar fires at the creeper it damages the cell that the mortars lands on and then radially around that cell until it has damaged Y cells (where Y > X).  When it damages a cell it reduces that cell's Creeper by "4".
- Mortars take considerably more energy to fire and fire at a slower rate than blasters. 
- Given the first three points, if you have a mortar firing at "thin" creeper you are wasting precious resources.  Conversely, if you have a blaster firing at the edge of a deep lake you are wasting resources (each shot won't damage the full creeper depth).
- Drones drop bombs that act mostly like mortars.  The energy it takes to charge a drone is less that the energy it takes to fire the equivalent number of mortars.

While I'm at it a few words about storage and speed structures:
- Storage increases the max energy buffer size.  In an ideal world you never need this since you are always building or powering things optimally (using exactly the amount of energy that is being produced).  But in reality there will be moments where you dip and peak consumption.  Storage is like a capacitor in an electrical circuit.  So, it can often benefit you to build storage in the first few minutes.  It can really benefit you if you build a couple of drone bases and these drones land at the same time after a bombing run.  They will put a temporary drain on your energy and if you don't have a buffer to handle the drain you could starve out some front line blasters...
- Speed.  Some people think you don't need it.  You certainly don't need them on all maps.  There are some maps where you do, though.  Speed can help you build an extended line of collectors faster.  The next collector in a line won't start until the previous collector finishes.  When it does the distance between Odin City and the new collector becomes a factor in how long it takes to finish the next collector (this is not really true for short distances).  Building speed can make a difference for extended networks.  Speed can also make a difference when you are trying to take a hill with un-supplied units and you are building in behind them.  The time it takes to build a connecting collector to your assault units and then the time it takes for ammo resupplies to get to those units can be the difference between a successful assault and the loss of your assault force.

Lastly,
If you are playing for score then time is all that matters.  Don't build more than you need to get the job done.  Your goal is to use the smallest amount of energy to reach the totems.  On many maps you only 'need' a few blasters and mortars.  Noob players often will build giant armies that require enormous amounts of energy to build and supply, when two blasters and a mortar well positioned would do the job.  Also remember that units need to be given a chance to work.  A mortar can take a minute to "work down" a lake that is full.  Surrounding creeper will flow into the lake and this flow takes time.  Once the surrounding creeper has depleted its reserve, weak spots or dry land may appear to take advantage of.  This process may not happen in 10 seconds... it may literally take 30-60 seconds.  So give units a chance to work the way you know they will work. 

With experience a good player can look at a map and pretty much plan out the next 10 minutes of gameplay.  Good players can identify where to park the city and where the first assault will be.  The first assault is usually designed to stabilize the creeper's advance and carve out a "base area".  If the topography doesn't allow for much of a base area, good players will build reactors... but not more than are need to launch an assault to open up more land.  Good players also develop techniques for bunny hopping blasters, assaulting high (take a hill) and low (clear a valley).  Good players also know when not to fight (early fights can drain early energy that could be used to build your economy).

Anyway, I could go on.....  but I would like to hear from players and what their strategies are.  I'm sure there are techniques for play that are yet undiscovered.

[patrick]

I abandoned speed upgrades pretty early on - because the creeper never pulls out any crazy moves, once you've captured some territory it tends to stay captured unless the player does something stupid. With this in mind, I tend to move the city towards the front lines quite a lot, and I've never been in a panic situation where I've had to move it back. Also, having the city slightly closer to the portal opening point might save a few seconds off a speed-run, even though score's never been my goal.

From watching the endgames, it seems like the place where the portal opens is manually specified on the map, rather than being a calculated midpoint of the generators - can you comment on this?

[knucracker]

That's right, the Rift opens in a manually specified point.  It doesn't really matter, though, as the time for the missions stops ticking down as soon as the Rift opens.

[patrick]

Ah, that's nice!


On the playing side, I've done Grimm, Skuld, and Frigg in double-down mode, and by far the hardest was Frigg 3. Cloying, desperate struggle, 25 minutes just to build enough reactors to get a spore defense up. Losing my drone to a spore attack made me almost quit. Loved it.

[knucracker]

Yeah, double down mode will kick your tail on that mission.  It starts out and you think it won't be too bad... but if you mess around and don't get a mortar going fast enough you will die faster than you think.  The thing about double down is that it doesn't really look like it will be any harder for about the first minute or so.... but then the valleys fill up and that Creeper comes streaming towards you.  If you do survive long enough to stabilize and build a base it feels pretty good to push that crap back and cap it all off.

[phloggy]

A question that was not addressed by your description of energy production:

A few notes for those interested:
- Energy production is a function of total "green" area plus the number of reactors you have.
- Energy consumption is a function of the number of packets that Odin City produces.
- Packets are produced on demand when there are structures/units that demand them.
- When ammo packets are requested by a unit they are requested at twice the rate that construction packets are requested.
- When energy production exceeds demand, the energy storage buffer grows (up to its max).
- When energy demand exceeds production the energy storage buffer shrinks.
- If the buffer is empty, yet a packet is requested, Odin City waits till the buffer fills up just enough to produce one packet.
- When structures/units have requested packets but Odin City can't deliver (because it is waiting), the starvation queue grows.

How is the maximum energy output calculated?   I've never noticed energy output to exceed 16; is this the ceiling?  Some maps seem to limit production to 8.5 or 9 regardless of the "green area" or the number of reactors and storage.  I've had a huge buffer stored up but weapons starved for energy while the energy output is limited to 8.5 - is there something I'm missing?

[knucracker]

Here's how energy works.

There are four values shown in the command bar at the bottom of the game, they are:
Energy:
This is the amount of energy on hand.  It is how much energy that is currently stored in Odin City and all connected storage pods.  The number represents the number of 'packets' that could be produced even if energy production were zero.  Think of it like money in the bank, or packets on hand.  So if the number reads 5/20, it means that there are 5 units of energy currently on hand.  The 20 represents to maximum number that could possibly be on hand.  You raise the second number by building energy storage pods.

Collection:
This is the rate at which Energy is being produced.  The number is in energy units per second.  So if it reads '4' you are producing 4 units per second.  This would be enough to deliver 4 'packets' per second without building a deficit.  Energy is produced proportional to the green area around collectors.  If you build a lone collector on flat land, you will get a nice symmetric circle around the collector.  If you build a collector near the edge of a cliff, you won't.  A collector only collects energy from the same terrain elevation as the collector.  Also, overlapping collectors does no good.  The other way to produce energy is to build reactors.  Each reactor produces a little energy.  When you build a reactor another number will appear next to the collection rate.  This number represents the energy produced by reactors.  So if your collection rate reads '5.5 +1.5' it means you have a total energy production rate of 5.5.  And 1.5 of that is coming from reactors.

Depletion:
This is the rate that you are consuming energy.  It is in packets per second.  Building things and supplying ammo packets takes energy (and charging totems naturally).

Starvation:
This is an indicator of the total queue depth across all things that require energy.  Whenever you build something it will start to request packets at a fixed rate (about 1 per second).  If the energy is available to produce a packet, the packet will be dispatched.  If not,  the thing you are building might decide that it is ready for another packet even before the first packet is dispatched.  If so, the request for the second packet will enter a request queue.  Starvation is the size of all queues summed up.

So that describes energy for normal circumstances.  However.... should you start to do 'crazy' and interesting things you start to encounter another rule that you normally could care less about.  Kinda like newtonian physics works great at low velocities and mass.  Start to approach the speed of light and you discover things are more interesting than you first thought. 

In Creeper World, the speed of light is the packet production rate.  Odin City has a maximum limit at which is can dispatch packets.  This is regardless of the amount of energy on hand or the production and demand rates.  This limit is a depletion rate of 16 (averaged over the calculation interval).  What can you do to explore this limit?  Well you need to have an energy demand that exceeds 16 packets per second.  So you could simultaneously try to build 16 or more things at once.  You will also need to have either a very large reserve of energy (lots of energy storage pods) or an energy collection rate that exceeds 16.  Do these things and you can create starvation even though you have enough energy on hand / being produced.  Odin City's reactors are the finest quality, but even they have their production limits.

Below are two screen shots to demonstrate this effect.  The first screen shot shows that I covered the map in collectors so that most of the map is green.  You can get around 15 to 16 energy production by doing this...  Then I decided to build a bunch of reactors all at once.  Odin City delivers packets as fast as she can...




The second shot shows the game after I have built a metric buttload of reactors.  The total energy collection rate is almost 64 in this case (all of the collectors plus 49 from the reactors).




So there are not hard limits on energy collection rates.  You can make as much energy as the map will permit.  Cover the map in green then build reactors everywhere you can.  This will create collection rates that are very, very high.  But..... exceeding 16-17 doesn't really do you any good for finishing the map (though it can be entertaining).  The maximum rate Odin City can produce packets is around 16 per second.

Now granted you never need to come anywhere near to these levels to finish the maps (especially in the most efficient manner).  But it can be kinda fun to build lots of things.  I personally like to build crazy numbers of speed pods.....  Build a bunch of those and you eventually hit another 'extreme physics' limit.... but that is another story :)

[phloggy]

Thank you for this very detailed answer!
In light of this, I've been able to reproduce a situation where these rules are not being followed, perhaps a bug...  I've got screenshots but they are from the final map in the story so I won't post here to avoid spoilers.  I will email to your support address.

[knucracker]

Ok, one more thing that I think is not as clear as it could be in the game.... and it is critical to understand especially in these "extreme physics" situations.
The energy collection rate reads as two numbers (when you have reactors built): X +Y  (Ex: 5.3 +2.7)
X is the _total_ amount of energy you are producing.  The +Y is what part of X is coming from reactors.  So don't add X and Y together... X is your total energy.

Now I realize that X +Y sort of, er well, looks like X + Y....  so this isn't as clear as it could be (ok, it isn't clear at all).

In the upcoming update to the game I may just remove the +Y from the display completely since it provides no real value to the game play that I can determine.... but it can lead to confusion in these cases. 

Bottom line for those following this thread:  The first number on the collection graph is the total energy you are producing.  Look at that number to know how your are doing on energy production.

[guilden]

I've been having a blast playing CW, but the min/maxer in me is curious about a few things still:

-you mentioned the speed unit having an 'extreme physics' limit. Would you like to elaborate? :D
hard to figure out how heavily I should value the speed units without knowing the size of the boost :P

-is it accurate that energy storage is the ONLY thing negatively impacted by starvation?
I've been experimenting with pushing starvation slightly by expanding two lines of collectors from the start, and it seems like a better way to go, but wanted to make sure I had the whole picture

thanks for clarifying about the + in the energy meter; was confusing the hell out of me :P

[knucracker]

So the speed pods will increase the speed of all of the packets.... this is always true.  The more you have the faster each packet travels.  But, each packet must stop at each structure along its path.  So imagine that you have an infinite number of speed pods.  You might think that each packet would instantly arrive at its destination.  This is not the case, however.  Since each packet must stop at each structure along the way, each packet will spend one "frame" at each structure.  So if there are say 12 structures between Odin City and the target for a packet, it will take approximately 1/3 of a second for the packet to propagate to the target.

Now in practice this isn't really much of a factor.  But it can be interesting to create some bases that intentionally create long serpentine paths to a target with tightly spaced collectors.  Then build a huge number of speed pods and watch the packets get faster and faster.... until they are hopping from one collector to the next.

Now, as for starvation and what it means.  Starvation is an indicator of all of the packets that have been asked for (by structures being built, or ammo for weapons) that have not been dispatched yet.  So it is a proper backlog for packet requests.  Whenever you have starvation you will have an empty energy store (excepting for the extreme limits of 16 packets per second discussed previously).

So it can be beneficial to run at a slight starvation in the early game.  The thinking is that by running slightly behind you guarantee that you use your energy as soon as it is available... and you never fill up your storage and let energy go to waste.  On the other hand if you start the game and lay down a whole bunch of collectors to be built in parallel, you won't build any one collector very fast.  Doing this causes you to remain at low production longer than if you have let some collectors get built sooner.

Starvation can be tolerable, or fatal depending on what is getting starved and for how long.  In the early game you lengthen the time it takes to build new structures.  In the mid and late game you tend to starve the ammo resupply for your weapons.... and this can be a real disaster scenario during an assault or an Alamo type situation. 

Lastly, I tend to build two lines of collectors as well on some maps.  I basically try to build two things at once till I get a few collectors, then I'll let three things build at once.  Plans may change, though, if I have to start powering a blaster in the early game.

[guilden]

ah, that clears it up,
thanks for the quick response

[wiskerando]

Do active blasters and mortars also consume 1 energy per second?

[Karsten75]

This is one of the all-time great threads. I clearly recall reading this and how it changed my gameplay.  I propose that it gets pinned to the top, my post (this one) deleted, and locked before it gets diluted.