mission 15 bugreport

[Fireball14]

After collecting everything and killing everything mission 15 dose not end.
screen - http://imgur.com/a/npatf
log - http://pastebin.com/yDi7yebg
save - http://www.filedropper.com/bug_1

[knucracker]

There is an omni pickup you didn't get. In the middle of one of your starting islands. I'll move it so it is more likely to be picked up. 

That mission only requires the collection of tech and caches actually. It's a new mode I just added. Saves you from having to destroy every enemy. Chances are if you had gotten that omni pickup at the beginning you would have gotten victory before you destroyed everything. Don't know the order you played, but you may have gotten the info cache before you took everything out.

[kwinse]

I hope it's alright to use this thread; I noticed a few typos in mission 15:

Spoiler

"Your worse fears have come true Ogun." -> worst
"In any case, we need to cut of the ore supply to the planet." -> off
"It contains the missing records of the Precursor's! -> Precursors (?)

Also the steam achievement is still named "TODO".

[close]

[dhc]

FYI: Steam Achievement name for 15 is still ToDo

[Fireball14]

There is an omni pickup you didn't get. In the middle of one of your starting islands. I'll move it so it is more likely to be picked up. 

That mission only requires the collection of tech and caches actually. It's a new mode I just added. Saves you from having to destroy every enemy. Chances are if you had gotten that omni pickup at the beginning you would have gotten victory before you destroyed everything. Don't know the order you played, but you may have gotten the info cache before you took everything out.

Yeah i thought so. It was 5 am so I must just miss it. Maybe add some bright green outline to tech pickups. Gray on gray ground is not that good idea. But yeah i've collected everything on 15th min. Spend 4 more destroying everything.

[knucracker]

I hope it's alright to use this thread; I noticed a few typos in mission 15:

Spoiler

"Your worse fears have come true Ogun." -> worst
"In any case, we need to cut of the ore supply to the planet." -> off
"It contains the missing records of the Precursor's! -> Precursors (?)

Also the steam achievement is still named "TODO".

[close]

Yes, thanks for the typo report.  I would normally sit on a mission for another day and review it a extra couple times... but I'm down to the wire so I figured I'd let the mission out and hope some other folks might catch the inevitable typos.

[planetfall]

I personally think the emitter inside the moon is too powerful. Perhaps there's some trick I'm missing like "rock-burn space for a lathe" but there seems to be no way to destroy it short of mass suicide by omnis - a tactic I'm usually too honorable to employ :P

[knucracker]

Yeah, there are two ways as it currently stands.
Send in like 6 omnis is one.  You can get away with no or only 1/2 lost if you send end enough and hop them up right before death.

Mining out the moon with the rock burner is the other way.  I think it takes longer, though.

I can change one square of land and another option will open up. One of the fragments on the left side of the moon won't get a lot of particle impacts.  Right now you can't land an omni on it in range of the emitter.  One more square of land and you could.  That would allow a more traditional approach, if you identify that segment of land and provide sufficient nearby support.

How were the emergent near the end?  I actually have not played this mission after the emergent damage changes I made last thing yesterday.  I had a really hard time as even the weakest emergent would tear through the omnis I would send in.  I expect there was still some of that, but I hope it wasn't quite as bad.

My strategy was basically to rock burn part of the planet away so I could get ships and a blue particle stream near the main segment with the info cache.

[planetfall]

The endgame emergent seemed completely weaksauce. Omnis are feeling very OP right now. Emergent was their only real weakness before, and now they can take emergent to the face. I just sent a bunch of omnis in to grab the cache.

[knucracker]

A more moderate change would be to keep the damage parity (emergent take damage when hitting an omni based on the omnis health), but to restore the full damage that an emergent does to an omni.  That's more of a middle ground.

[SuperTerminator]

The endgame emergent seemed completely weaksauce. Omnis are feeling very OP right now. Emergent was their only real weakness before, and now they can take emergent to the face. I just sent a bunch of omnis in to grab the cache.

I agree. Even though parking the entire fleet in one spot lays down quite a lot of covering fire for the omnis, I think 13 of my 14 omnis managed to drop down on the cache, destroy the cache, and take out the "weapon" without worry. I think the emergent needs to be tuned back up, as they are supposed to be the bane of weak ships and headstrong rushes.

Edit: while I was typing the wall of text virgil proposed a good balance change for emergent, I likes. Move along :).

For the level though, I felt like it was maybe a little too easy... Securing your starting point was a bit too easy in my opinion. Really weak ships plus flipping the emitter were capable of making a solid defense for your base. The particles never really make an initial push on your base, and there are no threats later on that can actually threaten your base very much. There was practically no doppleganger threat to your base, as the only one was busy topside playing turtle mode with the moon.

Second, the whole "wave of particles" thing wasn't that impressive to me. A thin skirmish line of particles every 15 seconds or so that evaporates halfway across the map felt kinda weak. I think it should fire maybe 3-4 times faster, or maybe shoot a three or four particle thick wave that takes maybe double the time to evaporate. Considering that the characters say that it evaporates "like our benign particles" I feel like it wasn't all that impressive.

Third: the main weapon, very cool! However, I feel like it should be a lot more of a threat. The activation of the cannon is supposed to be a major difficulty spike, but instead it really doesn't change the pace of the game except to make the player make sure to not line up his ships. Since it uses the bertha sprite, I'm thinking it would maybe have better applications as an area denial weapon instead. Maybe a thicker line of particles, a targeted spray of particles, or maybe a burst of shells in an area capable of heavily damaging or destroying your ships. From my experience with it, I never really felt threatened by the cannon, as it seemed incapable of actually causing significant harm to my ship. If it weren't for the energy constraints, I probably could have just launched a southern assault onto the mainland and saved myself some time (I'm actually gonna replay the mission and try that, I wanna see how well it goes). Considering that this is almost at the end of the game, I think the difficulty level should get cranked up a bit.

[kwinse]

Yeah, I just flew a bunch of omnis in to the planet, and only lost a couple to the mire instead of to emergent (or emergent only helped). I only used rock burner for the flip emitter, and even then that didn't help too much.

[GoodMorning]

I think I prefer the planetary shield to be solid and constant, as in an existing Exchange map, at least until the generator fails.

I didn't bring out the rock burner, having the opposite approach to planetfall. I am happy to break a lot of omnis, because unlike land, they are fully replaceable. I didn't even release the blue particles for this reason, not really needing them.

Omni damage parity seems good. The real issue with Omnis is that nothing can dislodge them save vast amounts of mire or an emergent hit. The first case doesn't happen unless there is a buildup of particles against the land, and even then, it must be constantly topped up. Perhaps the particulate needs to be able to fight Omnis with the anti-mire cannon shot.

The endgame was a letdown, pushing Omnis to the NE corner, and working straight for the cache. Even stopping off for the big gun was trivial. I'd say that the on I reactor should be less powerful  that the Omni would need to have an external power source or operate at reduced efficiency.

[Fireball14]

Did some balance testing.
Top emitter near moon can be killed by HQ on start of the mission - as result 10 min map time

[knucracker]

What did you do after taking out that emitter?  Nuke you HQ and jump back in down south or try to hold the top left island?