Hi im a little bit disappointed from the abilitys the heros have, the most are very similar :more power!! ok the spider women with her net what slow them is cool,sara with more defense but her more speed ability are preety useless because she is the fastes hero and with the kristal you cant use it .the new hero women that give more power to the small moduls is cool. whould be cool to have more variety. maybe one can heal the other heros in fight not like deena with tp regen,lay down mines ,power a room without dust for short time because she/he is a super hacker and this room dont have to be beside a powered room or maybe a item what give this ability,can close one door to block path for a short time,she/he can control one/two mobs for short time they will fight on heros side,or can spawn 1-2 little drones that help to fight,instant kill:kills all mobs in the room the hero is but need alot doors to open to reactived,can place selfshooting Gun (sentriegun from aliens?),hero have some sort of gas granade what make mobs agressive they fight each other for some time,or confuse them so a big mob groub splits and walks in every direction this makes it more easy than fight all at ones usefull in lvl 7-8,well bye bye

I am a bit dissapointed that there is a lack of control in this game. I mean, all you can do to survive is to A) heal people B)Move people between rooms C)Press skills that give passive bonuses. A serious question for developers: Will game give more control to player with research panel in the future? I really like rogue likes but the main thing about most modern rogue likes is that you have feeling that you are doing something meaningful than pushing skill buttons and heal buttons and praying good rng. I did not want to make another post since this concern of mine is similar to this post: hero abilities are dissapointing. The art and shadow effects and music is superb. If this is the way of this game, fine. It is ok game still.

I am really quite satisfied with the game thus far. I enjoy the level of abstraction - further micro would slow the game down even more. It would be nice to have better time-management controls, like a button to increment the action by one second, or to play in slow motion. Very often large battles are reduced to pause-action. But, you know, the game is in alpha. They're still working out game mechanics.



Abilities are fine. Some are quite interesting, others are *so* vital to team progression (such as the repair ability) that the redundancy is nice. And it gives individual characters and interesting quality to unlock similar abilities at different points in the level-progression. Some characters, like Max, have an excellent early game, though I fear he may be a tad underpowered in the long game (ie. after level 5) --- others need to be babied until they reach a high level to be of particular use. Their powers are the same, but the fact that Nurse Deena unlocks her medic ability at level 2 and OpBot unlocks hen's at level... what, 7? suggests to me that Deena is a more 'professional' medic...

I agree that Sara's speed ability is totally useless. She's already the fastest character by far, I don't think I've ever used that ability.

The most interesting skills seem to be the passive Repair and Operate Major Module skills. These are really the only skills that force me to manage my heroes closely as I open new doors. It seems like almost every active ability is an "oh crap" button when you're in trouble during a fight, which is good and fine, but not terribly interesting in terms of strategy.



I like the suggestion of "drop a mine" ability, or "drop a barricade", something that you can choose to do BEFORE you're already in combat which could lead to more interesting strategies.



How about a "power this room" ability, where the hero powers up whatever room they are in (regardless of any connection to the crystal) until the next door is opened.



Or maybe a "build a minor module" ability, where the hero builds some specific minor module (e.g. build a free Level 3 Dust Field Generator) in a random available slot in their current room.



(both of those abilities would probably require significant cooldowns, like 5+ turns)

I use Sara's speed ability. Either because she is babysitting an unpowered room at the other end of the dungeon and every second counts when getting her to the battle, or toggling it just before she picks up the crystal.

rzero wrote:
The most interesting skills seem to be the passive Repair and Operate Major Module skills. These are really the only skills that force me to manage my heroes closely as I open new doors. It seems like almost every active ability is an "oh crap" button when you're in trouble during a fight, which is good and fine, but not terribly interesting in terms of strategy.



I like the suggestion of "drop a mine" ability, or "drop a barricade", something that you can choose to do BEFORE you're already in combat which could lead to more interesting strategies.



How about a "power this room" ability, where the hero powers up whatever room they are in (regardless of any connection to the crystal) until the next door is opened.



Or maybe a "build a minor module" ability, where the hero builds some specific minor module (e.g. build a free Level 3 Dust Field Generator) in a random available slot in their current room.



(both of those abilities would probably require significant cooldowns, like 5+ turns)

I like those ideas! A tinker that could build free stuff on cooldown sounds really interesting!

Ail wrote:
I like those ideas! A tinker that could build free stuff on cooldown sounds really interesting!

Hmm, dunno how that would interact with the next update and the rest system.

melkathi wrote:
Hmm, dunno how that would interact with the next update and the rest system.

Considering the requirements of that I don't see a problem there.

Since the cooldowns are in essence related to rooms opened, maybe the effects, or at least some of them, can also be related to rooms opened, rather than a straight timer. Such as an emergency turret in a room, regardless of power, for X number of rooms. Or, as mentioned, power a room remotely for X room openings and cooldown for X rooms? Just food for thought.

There powers to feel immersive to be honest, they feel like bland place holders. I would like some for variety of powers for the heroes, which we will see mostly as the game develops more. We just need to be patient and supportive of the Devs, give our honest feedback and ideas. As not many developers listen to their player bases much anymore and it really hurts the quality of the game itself, but I digress this is about the heroes' abilities/spells.

I really like all of the hero's "individual" abilities but I don't like that most of them have the same abilities based on the class/role of each hero, it would be better to have more hero diversity because to me as of now it comes down to stats more so than what ability hero has. Some hero's I'll avoid completely because another hero shares the same abilities and is overall better due to stats.

I would like to have active abilities which are used between phases, not just during combat.



Infinite Recombination Tinkering - Can only be used in the same room as merchant: reroll all items available on merchant. Costs dust equal to number of items on merchant/2, round up. Upgraded skill progression: cost is divided by 3/4/5 etc. Each time it is used increases the quality of one item, making offers better over time.



Supercharged Dust - lights up all rooms for one turn. Cost = number of unlit rooms / 2, round up. Each higher skill level reduces the cooldown by 1 door and cost by 2 dust (minimum ability cost 1 dust).



Whistleblower - Call up the enemies when you know you are strong. Galleries will be depleted after this large wave of monsters. Guarantees that every unlit room will spawn monsters, and the next door opened too - even if that door would not have monsters - it will have the non-monsterish-event, plus monsters. Also guarantees that the next 2 doors opened after that won't spawn monsters on unlit rooms (but may spawn on opened door). Should have a long cooldown, like 5 doors.

Cannot be cast if teh doors are already opened.

If the crystal is picked up while this effect is in the first phase, initial mob spawn will he higher, then lower, then normal (if the player does not reach the exit by then). If the crystal is picked up in the second phase, mobs



Sentient Dust Companion - hero can ask for help from his symbiote dust companion. It will absorb airborne dust particles over time. His dust pool is separate from the team's dust and increases in +1 per door.

1) get dust equivalent to the symbiote's dust pool / 2. Depletes dust pool.

2) choose one minor/major module to be built with cost being paid from his dust pool 1 to 1.

3) get +4 wit on each operating character / mechanical pal production per turn for 3 turns per each point in his dust pool. Can have partial results if his dust pool is not large enough to improve every pal/hero.



I Like Big Boom - hero can demolish one room. must be a qualified room (per my room demolition idea).