Friday Facts #160 - Playtesting

[mrvn]

and an additional "repair by combining" tool could be researched that (only on demand) compresses a damaged stack to a corresponding healthy stack with fewer items.

How about this idea for combining:

You place (or find) a damaged turret on the ground. Then you take another turret in the hand and place it on top of the damaged turret. The health of the turret in the hand is added to the turret on the ground. If there is health left over you keep a damaged turret in the hand, if not the turret in the hand disappears.

[CharitableClas]

and an additional "repair by combining" tool could be researched that (only on demand) compresses a damaged stack to a corresponding healthy stack with fewer items.

How about this idea for combining:

You place (or find) a damaged turret on the ground. Then you take another turret in the hand and place it on top of the damaged turret. The health of the turret in the hand is added to the turret on the ground. If there is health left over you keep a damaged turret in the hand, if not the turret in the hand disappears.

That would be pretty much the same as picking up a damaged one and placing a healthy one down in its place which you can do already

[mrvn]

and an additional "repair by combining" tool could be researched that (only on demand) compresses a damaged stack to a corresponding healthy stack with fewer items.

How about this idea for combining:

You place (or find) a damaged turret on the ground. Then you take another turret in the hand and place it on top of the damaged turret. The health of the turret in the hand is added to the turret on the ground. If there is health left over you keep a damaged turret in the hand, if not the turret in the hand disappears.

That would be pretty much the same as picking up a damaged one and placing a healthy one down in its place which you can do already

Except for 2 things:

1) the turret keeps its bullets, any other item would also keep its state. An oil tank would keep it's contents, an assembler its recipie, ...
2) placing a 50% turret on another 50% turret results in one 100% turret

[CharitableClas]

and an additional "repair by combining" tool could be researched that (only on demand) compresses a damaged stack to a corresponding healthy stack with fewer items.

How about this idea for combining:

You place (or find) a damaged turret on the ground. Then you take another turret in the hand and place it on top of the damaged turret. The health of the turret in the hand is added to the turret on the ground. If there is health left over you keep a damaged turret in the hand, if not the turret in the hand disappears.

That would be pretty much the same as picking up a damaged one and placing a healthy one down in its place which you can do already

Except for 2 things:

1) the turret keeps its bullets, any other item would also keep its state. An oil tank would keep it's contents, an assembler its recipie, ...
2) placing a 50% turret on another 50% turret results in one 100% turret

true but how often are you going to have that happen in a game? from watching biters and spitters attack turrets and things they dont have a complete mentality to attack one at a time unless you place them down one at a time but if you do that then you will be overwhelmed especially in the later stages of the game when you have the tougher biters and spitters honestly the more i think about it the more i would like a way to just use repair packs in my inventory instead of having to place down what i want to repair or a research for auto-repair so you can place repair packs into something like a turret and have it auto-repair itself when damaged then you wouldnt need bots taking up precious time running from a roboport to repair something when you need them for something else. i would also like to see more turrets and more upgrades for laser turrets like one that makes it shoot a solid beam that deals more damage the longer it stays on an enemy or in use. and different ammo types as well like incendiary ammo for shotgun and rifle.

[mrvn]

and an additional "repair by combining" tool could be researched that (only on demand) compresses a damaged stack to a corresponding healthy stack with fewer items.

How about this idea for combining:

You place (or find) a damaged turret on the ground. Then you take another turret in the hand and place it on top of the damaged turret. The health of the turret in the hand is added to the turret on the ground. If there is health left over you keep a damaged turret in the hand, if not the turret in the hand disappears.

That would be pretty much the same as picking up a damaged one and placing a healthy one down in its place which you can do already

Except for 2 things:

1) the turret keeps its bullets, any other item would also keep its state. An oil tank would keep it's contents, an assembler its recipie, ...
2) placing a 50% turret on another 50% turret results in one 100% turret

true but how often are you going to have that happen in a game? from watching biters and spitters attack turrets and things they dont have a complete mentality to attack one at a time unless you place them down one at a time but if you do that then you will be overwhelmed especially in the later stages of the game when you have the tougher biters and spitters honestly the more i think about it the more i would like a way to just use repair packs in my inventory instead of having to place down what i want to repair or a research for auto-repair so you can place repair packs into something like a turret and have it auto-repair itself when damaged then you wouldnt need bots taking up precious time running from a roboport to repair something when you need them for something else. i would also like to see more turrets and more upgrades for laser turrets like one that makes it shoot a solid beam that deals more damage the longer it stays on an enemy or in use. and different ammo types as well like incendiary ammo for shotgun and rifle.

It would happen all the time. You put down 4 turrets, the aliens damage them some before they are all dead. Now, instead of picking up the damaged turrets or repairing them you use the extra turrets still in you hand to repair the 4 turrets and then pick them up. If you started with 5 turrets then you might end up with 4 turrets and a damaged one. Or 3 and a damaged one. It all depends on how damaged the turrets are. Think of it as canibalizing the turret in the hand to repair the turret on the ground. And you can do that during the fight. Alternatively think of turrets as expensive repair pack only for turrets. Because that's what you effectively do.

The point though is that just picking up damaged items doesn't make them disappear, I would really hate that. Placing one turret over a broken one on the ground would be the users decision. If you don't want to merge them then don't do it.

[yvanaquino]

I'm surprised at the low amount of response regarding the stone wall stack size issue. Moving from 50 to 100 is a nice step, but is it really enough?

Consider trying to stone wall a substation. In this theoretical experiement, you're going to leave a an extra space in between the substation and the wall. And to make things extra interesting, you're concerned with safety so you've decided to implement a double wall system.

A single substation with a 14x14 coverage area and an extra space in between your double wall is going to cost you 144 stone walls. Consider a square of n - length. if you want to leave a space in between the square and apply a double wall, the math is as follows:

(n+6)^2 - (n+2)^2 = 8n + 32

So for every unit in length of the square, it will cost you 8n + 32 worth of walls to double wall it in. The reason we step 2 over is because we're working with discrete values, it's simply not possible to buffer a 2x2 in a 3x3 with a space in between the walls, thus we need to step into a 4x4. With a 4x4 we can place a 2x2 in the middle. Now if you want implement a double wall, you need to get into a 6x6 with a 2x2 in th middle. Ergo (n+6)^2 - (n+2)^2 will yield the total number of stone walls needed to leave a space and double pad the wall.

That means 3x3 substation coverage will cost you 368 walls, which equates to 8 inventory slots. That's a lot of slots for some walls!

What do you guys think?

[mrvn]

I don't enclose things since then the aliens will attack the wall. Instead I make a labyrinth with turrets on the inside. The aliens then navigate the labyrinth trying to reach the turret, which means they are in range of the turret a long time. Sometimes they even get confused and change their path over and over never getting neaerer to the turret.

Why am I telling you this? A labyrinth has even more depth than a double wall and even more stones. Since I'm playing with trains at the moment I'm building a train station and have it deliver stone walls instead of carrying them myself. Stack size seems to be perfectly fine that way. Otherwise I would take a car and fill it up. Plenty of space there.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I'm surprised at the low amount of response regarding the stone wall stack size issue. Moving from 50 to 100 is a nice step, but is it really enough?

Double walls actually do very little to boost your defences, spitters don't bother attacking them until the turrets are dead at which point it doesn't matter how many walls are there, and if biters are making it to your walls then you don't have enough turrets. If the biters are not cleared quickly enough then the spitters are left to destroy your turrets, which will happen well before any walls are destroyed.

Besides, if a Behemoth (and I think Big) Biter attacks a wall, it hits the tile behind it too so you would need to have a tile between your double walls.

Even assuming they weren't totally useless, you're double-layering a 42x42 area with less than four stacks of walls. It doesn't exactly fill your inventory, especially if you're using power armour. Five stacks should be enough to double-wall a moderate outpost and as we've established double walling is pointless so no, I don't think there's a problem.

[ChurchOrganist]

Besides, if a Behemoth (and I think Big) Biter attacks a wall, it hits the tile behind it too so you would need to have a tile between your double walls.

Big biters can reach over a wall and attack whatever is on the tile behind.

Behemoth biters can reach over a wall and attack the tile behind that.

So to have your turrets/lasers safe from Behemoth biter attack you need to locate them 2 spaces behind the wall.

In a big concentrated attack, which you would experience in late game, even a 3 deep bank of lasers can fail to kill enough biters to prevent them from demolishing a wall, in fact I have seen them chomp through a 2 deep wall before the laser bank can kill them.

[mrvn]

Besides, if a Behemoth (and I think Big) Biter attacks a wall, it hits the tile behind it too so you would need to have a tile between your double walls.

Big biters can reach over a wall and attack whatever is on the tile behind.

Behemoth biters can reach over a wall and attack the tile behind that.

So to have your turrets/lasers safe from Behemoth biter attack you need to locate them 2 spaces behind the wall.

In a big concentrated attack, which you would experience in late game, even a 3 deep bank of lasers can fail to kill enough biters to prevent them from demolishing a wall, in fact I have seen them chomp through a 2 deep wall before the laser bank can kill them.

Because you made a wall and then everything attacks the wall because they can't reach the turrets. If you make a maze instead then they travel the maze without attacking the walls. The length they need to travel under attack can be increased greatly and you can force them to travel single file.

[IronCartographer]

what about combining all methods ?
all items are always put on max two stacks, one for healthy items and one for damaged items. the healthy stack can be used for placing healthy items without problems, and the damaged items are averaged so that their total number stays the same but on placing they are all damaged to the same degree. to repair them, any number can be placed and repaired and upon pickup would return to the healthy stack.

This really seems like the best idea and I hope it's what will be / has been implemented!