Goal Reached! "Patrons create an item/mechanic"
Wow, we reached this goal faster than I expected we might, thank you all! The support so far has been amazing with over 60 patrons so far :D
So it's time to talk about how this goal will be handled...
First of all, notice that I changed it from it's original wording, which simply mentioned "item" creation, to be a little more inclusive. Now I've summarized it in general as "an item with a new mechanic, or a new machine hack, robot hack, or some other type of mechanic/content." This makes more sense to me, as interesting items are usually about more than just stats and are generally based on some unique mechanic, anyway, yet there are other areas of Cogmind where unique mechanics can manifest as well. Players have, after all, also been calling for more machine/robot hacks over time, or a number of other various mechanics.
Guidelines
As for specifics, an item or hack could be a common one, or some special prototype/unique ability only found in special areas or conditions. If appropriate, technically an item-related mechanic could result in multiple items if having tiers is feasible or even necessary.
Balance will be maintained, though! Where this new content appears will depend a lot on what it is. E.g. a very powerful item will be hard to obtain, whereas something very balanced will be easily available every run.
Try not to be too meme-ish or weird, since it does need to fit into Cogmind lore, although as you've seen, there is a lot of leeway in terms of what we can fit into Derelict territory :). As such, the name and location (and stats, of course, for balance) of this new content will be finalized by myself, although good suggestions that take into account all the existing mechanics and lore are gladly accepted and could be used in their entirety if appropriate.
Note there is no guarantee this new content will not be modified in some way in the future, if necessary for balance or some other game-defined reason down the line. It's not too likely there would be major changes, but I should say this up front just in case, since the future is pretty unpredictable as far as long-term game development goes :P
Bring on the ideas!
So everyone can throw ideas out there as comment on this post, and I'll reply as to their feasibility and get some discussion going. (Obviously not everything can be done, or is too far beyond the scope of this goal's intention.)
Discussion is also fine on Discord as well, but to be fair to everyone not on Discord (and to make it easier for my own organizational purposes) only proposals posted as top-level comments here will be considered.
If you later change your mind, edit your comment to add either the new idea to replace the old one, or withdraw your idea entirely because you're thinking you might like to support an idea suggested by someone else.
After a certain period (maybe 2-3 weeks) I'll do a separate post where we can vote for which to add. When that time comes, you'll be able to vote for as many ideas as you like, so hopefully the overlap in votes will result in a clearer outcome than would everyone just voting for their own ;)
Future Patreon Goals: Note I'm not 100% sure about the next goal yet, which as currently written will continue this trend of collaboration, since whether/how to manage that will really depend on the outcome of this first time. So it may yet change or be adjusted in some way(s), we'll have to wait and see.
By the way, there's a little thing coming to everyone soon ;)
Also there's a new blog post coming this week...
Comments (41)
I guess I'm a little too late for this round of voting, but I suppose there will be another round in several months (?), so here is my two cents. You know, I'm also a fan of Nethack, so I'm going to steal some ideas from it. For example, a scroll of magic mapping, a wand of wishing, and an amulet of life saving are neat prototypes for a powerful one-time alien artifact. In addition, you can also draw inspirations from monster abilities, such as ghosts-like swarms that are extremely hard to hit and can fly through the walls, jelly-like Behemoths that split into two weaker ones when being hit, or mimic-like sentries that disguise themselves are out-of-depth items and shot you in the face when stepped on :D Since we are only allowed to post a single item, what about the Armor of Reflection that have a change (probably just its coverage%) to reflect all thermal/electromagnetic beams back? This would be fun but not really powerful, because kinetic/melee weapons can still reduce its integrity, and the beam won't hit the firing party as long as it's position isn't perpendicular to you. Yeah, we already have Reflective Platings, so it will need a better name.. If you don't mind yet another (Un)Nethack reference, what about the "Tin foil hat"?
No not too late here since I'm just now restarting the voting with expanded options, since I'd forgotten some, so lucky you there's enough time to throw yours into the pool :) I can add the concept of deflective armor.
I've often wished there were deployable items that could serve as "obstacles" to help with getaways. Think of smoke bombs to block visibility in a particular spot, chaff canisters to redirect attention, oil slicks to reduce mobility, flares or flashbangs to temporarily overload sensors. Cogmind does have upgrades like ECM suites, but I'm thinking of items with temporary effects that stick to a particular map location for a while rather than following Cogmind around. If I had to pick just one of the above, I'd say smoke grenates. Launch them into a particular corridor and sneak past or run away while visual detection is limited (in both directions!) and line-of-sight targeting is degraded.
Yeah I've thought of mechanics along these lines before, although most are avoided intentionally because blocking stuff is problematic for the AI. I *have* been considering eventually allowing an exception by making the otherwise useless Welding Torches able to fuse doors shut, though even that is probably just more problematic than fun in the end. Specifically smoke and other AOE gases/fluids will not be added, though, since that's a whole new area that occupies too much UI space, among other issues. Visibility is only *partially* blocked by machines, and while technically we could set up something to do at least that much, it might be too oddly inconsistent with the rest of the game because nothing else does that. Right now I think the closest mechanic we have to what you're thinking is deployable turrets, which are new and so far only have a limited appearance (but are extremely effective...). They are deployed, immobile, and both block and attack enemies. So in that case perhaps more of those could be added to satisfy your goal here? Not sure if/how that would occur just yet, since they're not something that really fits into 0b10 itself.
Hope I'm not too late, anyway: Trap Installer: A utility/processor that improves the effects of traps laid whilst it's installed. For example, it could provide a chance for the trap to remain active once triggered, or simply bigger explosions for explosive traps. You could potentially have multiple levels ("Imp. Trap Installer" etc) with higher chances or more powerful effects. These would probably be found around caves/mines, as bots interacting with traps are much more common there.
Nope, not too late yet! I was planning on doing the voting earlier, but we've had plenty of other things going on so I've left the thread open for now. I'm not sure if that idea would work, since rather than a single mechanic this would probably end up being part of a much bigger trap overhaul that would require other changes to the base game. Rather than an item that ties into the existing traps, in this case it would be more appropriate to have something that adds new types of traps/behavior, similar to the bomb factory. I, too, am interested in potentially adding more ways to fiddle with traps (since it's not a real build yet so there's design room there), but that'd be a pretty large undertaking...
Chain-Lightning EM cannon that hits one target and jumps to targets damaging each one. Another idea I also had along this was allowing certain weapons like the lightning gun to do this which ties into possibly allowing for conductivity to be added. These are all robots and they have a lot of metal so a new concept to interact with would be neat.
Note that mechanically a chain effect doesn't really differ too much from AOE attacks. The only difference would be whether it could potentially be selective (as in somehow this ability is controlled rather than random, although this couldn't be controlled via UI). In any case, this would have to be a specific special weapon since there isn't room to add a whole new stat/mechanic across a class of weapons for this feature in particular.
Just thought of something -- dunno if it's feasible or not: Spare-Parts-Propeller, 2-slot weapon KI Cannon (referencing Rock-It Launcher and Junk Jet in Fallout 3/4) mechanic: 2 potential idea here - a. (easier?) propels any single-slot item from your inventory to target b. (harder?) selects any single-slot item on the ground (or auto-select one based on range) under no more than a radius of 3, and propels it to the target Damage type: KI Damage potential: based on the propelled part's mass Cost: energy & heat based on the propelled part's mass, and a small amount of matter Range: some OK range, say maybe 14 or 16 Additional mechanic: The parts propelled will act like as if someone just dropped the item at the target location, plus an integrity cost on the propelled part. Reason: Another way of putting the littered enemy parts or parts you are not going to pick up anyway to some strategic meme-y use...? Where to find: random chance in Recycling (high) and/or Waste (low)
Time dilation! Not particularly original, I know, but cool nonetheless. This could go in one of two ways, either a one off or several use item which slows down time (or even stops it) for x time steps. Or a utility which has the same effect when activated but with a huge energy/heat cost. I think I would prefer the latter, but understandably it would be much harder to balance and decheese. You would have to be wary of some crazy build of nothing but generators and cooling systems which managed to slow down or (worse) stop time permanently...
Well anything can be balanced in some way or another, even by going as far as making it single use *and* rare or difficult to obtain. Certainly this is a mechanic that I'd like to add eventually anyway (it's been on my list for years, actually), but there hasn't yet been a good opportunity to add it since it *is* potentially quite powerful. Note that I did add this effect for Holiday Mode 2018, back in December, so people have already played with it before (or at least a variant of it--it was tough to utilize because during the dilation period you didn't recover energy or dissipate heat!).
Am I too late? Well, anyways, here goes: Gravity Well - An item with battery charge that you drop to activate, similar to the signal generator. Affects hostiles in a wide area, like say ST radius. Every turn strikes hostiles in range with light(10-20?) impact damage that has a 50% chance to disable propulsion for 2-3 turns, and a 50% chance to pull the robot toward the gravity well. All bots inside the radius have their mass temporarily quadrupled. If robots would collide while being pulled toward the center, they take extra damage. Robots directly above the gravity well take heavy impact damage each turn. (Alternatively, you could set this up as a AoE impact explosion that goes off every turn and has high damage but high falloff...however this would hit the player, which is undesirable ) Notes: If you think this is OP, remember that it's most likely a one time use item. You can try to pick it up and use it later but it probably won't have much battery charge left. Also, I thought about making it affect all bots, but that would make it pretty hard to use since you would struggle to get out of the AoE yourself. I also considered having it affect items, but then people would just use it as a knockoff phasing AFG, which is lame and not the intended use case. I don't have any preferences as to where you put this in game, so just wherever you think gravity tech makes the most sense.
Nope nope, not too late at all. Thread's only a week old and it'll be around for another week or two before we go to the next phase--got plenty of other stuff to be busy with in the meantime anyway! Your suggestion could certainly be fun, I mean it reminds me of the A0 event, if you know what I mean (don't want to get any more specific here because spoilers), though obviously a portable effect like this under your control is a different story.
Can we have more references to other games? Imagine siege treads that can be used to enter siege mode. It makes you immobile and increases range of your kinetic weapons and allows you to shoot through machines and other robots can not be easily detached and takes lots of time to leave siege mode. To enter siege mode click it similar to how you enable overload and wait a turn. To exit click again and wait. Also makes you unable to attack in point blank range.
That sounds like maybe one too many rules to be very streamlined for a single part, but... maybe? There are no "modes," as such in Cogmind, so adding something like this would likely need to have larger content scope to be feasible for the design. By that I mean there would need to be numerous items with a similar type of mechanic to justify keeping it. We could certainly try to add it and see where it goes.
Can I be greedy and post a second idea? A prototype launcher called the Dimensional Stasis Prison, or something similar. Inspired by the paradox mage in TOME4. Similar to the FLK has a finite number of charges and a hefty to-hit bonus to make sure the shot lands. When it hits an enemy, the enemy temporarily disappears from the game (the in game lore is that the target is flung into subspace on a circular trip with the same starting and end point), and then reappears in the exact same spot and in the exact same condition several turns later.
Sorry, happylisk, one idea per person! Otherwise we'd be inundated with ideas that will bloat an already long list, not to mention it's unfair to those who don't have as many. That *does* sound like an interesting part that would also be pretty easy to fit in, though you'll have to pick one idea!
How about a prototype energy cannon that produces an explosion where it hits (need more of these, tbh), but its damage type is Impact. Think some kind of space-time manipulation magic, which should help envision where I see this fitting lore-wise ;) The AoE could also push things around perhaps; I don't remember if any explosions push things around, so maybe this would be the first and have some extra tactical power from that.
Right now no explosions push enemies, although I've considered this multiple times in the past--making *all* explosions cause knockback. I mean sure, it makes sense, right? Plus it'd be cool. One of the main reasons I didn't though was because this would make AOE even more inconsistent and difficult to use, while also opening up cheesy strategies like knocking *all* enemies further away and/or around corners so they they have to move back into position. AOE would essentially get less predictable and yet more powerful at the same time. (And possible become a lot more situational, in some senses.) It might seem weird to have one AOE attack that pushes enemies when others do not, though yeah it could be possible if we want to emphasize its uniqueness... It could be as simple as some kind of force grenade, though again, I think this type of weapon might lead to very cheesy strategies, and end up needing resource limitations (or even "breaking") to balance it out.
Probably planned for future versions, but what about different starting core options? Perhaps we could start as LRC-V4 which can attach parts for no matter and energy cost, but starts with negative 10 targeting? LRC-v5 that evolves 3 slots every third level, but has no built-in energy generation, storage and heat dissipation?
Sorry, that's far beyond adding a single item or mechanic--that would be an entire expansive game-change system! Suggest another idea if you like, but yeah I have a number of long-term plans of this nature that I don't know if we'll ever actually reach, but it's not impossible.
Robot Repair Kit: I imagine something like the FLK that lets you repair broken bots (e.g. from caves) and make dangerous Furnace friends. (Less desirable but funny alternative mechanic would be to allow attaching whatever parts you want to an ally bot, or possibly enemies: here, have a few HCP storages, that should slow you down...)
Ooh, repairing broken robots does seem like a potentially interesting unexplored area! I like it. Of course, at present there are only so many sources of them, since they generally don't generally become broken naturally during play.
Factory Drone Bay Add-on: attach it while other drone bay is there and it will build your lost drones back. Matter and time cost depends on type of drone building, let's say 50 turns and 50 matter for the cheapest one and 250 turns and 200 matter for the combat (or assault, don't remember which one is better) one.
Nice copy-paste job there, 8fps ;) I can see this being feasible, sure. It'd probably precipitate at least some of the planned drone behavior and control overhaul, if chosen.
Ok, how about this one. Item (weapon? maybe even propulsion slot?) that propels the user towards target and slams against them(attacks in melee? rams? adds temporary momentum?). Idea is to allow for more of a yolo-style melee combat on legs/treads instead of waiting for victims in doorways. Can be balanced with heat/energy consumption/delay as any other gun. Can disable itself for a certain time after use with existing "disabled" status to simulate cooldown. Can be implemented for example using knockback code if nothing else. Also enemy rogues would love it :D
Enemy melee bots are already very scary! Distance is basically the only real good defense you have--to take that away would be too mean :) I'd have to say Via's somewhat similar suggestion seems like it would be more widely usable for a similar cause (among others), assuming you, too, have a melee weapon. Rather than actually ramming yourself, just a faster way to close on them even if you're generally slow. Via's idea, and yours, are both similar to the Jump Jets concept item I was thinking of adding one day (a la Battletech), to make melee a little more viable outside bottlenecks, and for slow-movers. What do you think of Via's idea?
I'm very glad to hear that Patreon achieved something. 'Players have, after all, also being calling for more machine / robot hacks over time, or a number of other various mechanics.' - Totally I agree. Game developer who understand what he is making always makes me happy. I am in step of exciting about current items lineup and can't say that know whole of mechanics, but as some brainstorming: Disposable booster Utility that gives flying state, high propulsion and momentum bonus while consuming matter, once activated. It only can be stopped by detaching which destroys booster. I intend it works as like panic button for slow-propulsion build and early stages (it would add little or no propulsion for consummate flight build). While matter pod etc can extend booster's duration, its cost would be not low enough to keep it infinite. BTW, I can't also wait to 'a little thing'!
Hm, interesting part idea. Actually, I like it! It's only a little problematic to implement (unlike some ideas xD), is easy to balance, and could feasible be a common 0b10 part that everyone could obtain and use. Good suggestion :D
Additionally, a concept that I thought of that may have some interesting lore tie-ins: What if there was an Uplifting device/hack to make Unaware 'Aware', so to speak? I imagine several factions might want to look into such a concept, and with the lore describing the Relay Interface Framework and its mechanics, such a thing could definitely exist, in-universe.
True, though what's the mechanic here?
I think I posted this already in the discord but I'll put in here just to throw it out there: You could possibly add a terminal in Exiles to add/enforce conducts in a run. I remember you saying earlier that you didn't really want a pre-run menu before the game for immersion's sake, so this is probably the best option to slide them in the main game without having to mess around with advanced config files. In general, it doesn't like too many people are aware of them from the achievement list and scoreboard, so it'd be cool to make them easier to use (as well as adding a few more, possibly :3)
Yeah I read the discussion before. This isn't really relevant here since it's a big system rather than a piece of content, but to comment on it again: it's something that could be considered in the future when challenge mode access is addressed, because that and achievement progress tracking are on the table, but it's too early to work on additional related features beyond those (or even consider how they'll be implemented) until the more important ones are done. Feel free to use the top level to suggest an item/hack/etc that you'd like to see though :)
Equipment sets. Including operations with multi-slot items. Have an option to register your current equipment as a set. Then make it so that all available items that are in a registered set are swapped with items that are not in the set. For example, swap out sensor array, terrain scanner, melee weapon and ecm suite for damper plating and a gauss gun with one keystroke. Items that are in the set but are not available anymore, are ignored. Idea is that if certain parts of a set are not available anymore, equip whatever's possible, make adjustments and make it easy to register a new version of the set to the same key. I think having a convenient option for quickly swapping multiple items generally opens up more possibilities for highly dynamic/adaptive builds that rebuild themselves for whatever situation they're facing.
We did talk about this on Discord before, and my opinion is the same: this would be a lot of work for a possibly little-used feature. Also it's way beyond the scope of what we're doing with this goal, where the aim is to add some kind of content, not QoL/UI features (although it's true that some content might indirectly require adjustments to the UI). What you're suggesting here would be appropriate for the TODO list prioritization, so add it that that thread if you like (<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/todo-list-call-25285179)">https://www.patreon.com/posts/todo-list-call-25285179)</a> for later voting on that, and come up with a different content idea for this one.
Something to make game harder, I imagine you have a lot of similar ideas in your ideas list so just grab something from there and move it from bottom to the top of TODO list :P
Hehe, this is not a relevant suggestion, 8fps xD There are plans to increase challenge, but I can only add those where they fit in the long-term content plans!
Hologram projector. Upon activation, projects a perfect hologram of a bot (I'm thinking a grunt) that always stays within radius ~6 of Cogmind. The hologram acts like an ally but can only be given a few movement related commands (go to, stay, roam, follow). Even if ordered to stay or roam, the hologram will follow you if you move outside its max range. Enemy bots will target the bot as if it were any other ally. They obviously can't damage it since it's not really there. Uses for the hologram: draw fire so that you take less damage; project around a corner to lure sentries off stairs; project around corner to see if anything hostile is there; etc. Some other considerations: possibility for enemies to stop targeting the hologram after shooting it a certain amount of times; possibility for enemies to ignore the hologram if there's a watcher nearby, since the signal interpreter will see through the ruse; the hologram should have an effect on the alert level like any other ally, since after all the unaware treat the hologram like a real threat. This tech feel like derelict stuff to me. Could be a Zion/Warlord find. Could also be repurposed 0b10 tech - perhaps you could add a prototype utility to Testing that spawns multiple holograms at the same time when activated. Bonus: if this mechanic is added, one could imagine an enemy or NPC or even map that uses it against you.
Ah, another stealth-related suggestion :) I think this would be technically feasible, although design-wise it'd be OP without some kind of limitation, either short- or long-term (more likely the latter, otherwise flight could forever re-use it at the occasional important intervals).
0b10 disguise. Prevents hostile 0b10 bots from noticing you when they otherwise would. Loses integrity per turn in view of a hostile. Does not work on bots already tracking you. Hitting a hostile or being run into by a hostile will get you spotted. It could be a unique item or an item with several tiers (if this can fit into the lore) balanced by integrity.
Hitman: Enter the Cogmind for real tho pretty cool idea.