Hey guys. Love the game thus far it's very entertaining and a good thinker too.

I would like to suggest that perhaps heroes should gain experience from battling the mobs, which could go towards leveling up. Currently the feed to level up system takes precious food away from healing abilities, especially with the now rising cost of production modules. I wonder if it might be possible to do a hybrid of what I'm suggesting: Heroes could gain xp from battling that can cause them to level up over longish periods of time (maybe only one level per like 10 doors opened and 20 mobs killed or something), but the player could also make up the difference between levels by feeding the hero food. So, rather than a set cost to level the hero, it would be dynamic, scaling off of things like how much you use that particular hero, how many of what kind of creep they have killed, maybe repairing modules, how many doors they have opened, etc.

I realize that this seems like a large, overarching change that could have effects on all aspects of gameplay now that I think about it. I still think it would be awesome if heroes could level up on their own though.

Thanks for making this game!

Another thought that I had (unrelated to hero XP) is that there should be module hardpoints in the crystal room, and that at the beginning of each level it would make sense for the crystal room to be the same shape as the elevator room that brings the player and their heroes to that particular level. Also the amount of doors leading to the crystal I feel can be unfair sometimes. When there's 4 doors leading into your crystal room it can be extremely difficult to plan adequate defenses, especially since often many more rooms are open than can be powered.

But, I think that could be more fair if there were turret hardpoints in the ground in the crystal room, so you can have at least some defense if your heroes are too far away or are otherwise engaged.

There should be some reward from killing mobs with your hero, but I don't think XP is the way to go. More like, you have higher chance of getting dust or anything from them. Levelling atm seems pretty smooth to me, it puts you right into that difficult situation - save for heal or level up?

Agree, DeV tottaly must do something about it, becose already on lvl 2 you explore many rooms and killing so much monster and geting for that NOTHING(killing monsters i mean)!

I like the current trade off set using bio for levelling up OR manual healing - if anything needs to be attached to killing mobs then its the drop of the precious dust. And at the moment thats how you currently get dust. In fact, if you're spending all your bio resources on healing manually, then you've not really set up defenses properly. For me, manual healing is usually set aside for emergencies when something unexpected happens with the incoming creep waves.



If your initial crystal room on later levels has up to four doors, its up to you to branch out in only one direction at first, the last thing you want is to open all doors having to defend fours paths in. In fact IMHO that is the whole point to game, cutting a surgical path through the dungeon, never opening up too much, so that you can manage the flow of nasties into your room defenses. I'd go as far as saying its the doors you don't open that are the most important ones.

I agree that it makes sense to keep the difficulty-- well, difficult. BUT I think that this is still very possible while implementing my suggestion regarding the home room in levels after the first. The main reason I suggest hardpoints in the crystal room: sometimes the first door you open has mobs. The game is random, right? So it won't always be mobs by rights, BUT! Lets pretend you just made it out of level 2, with one hero barely hanging on to life to get the crystal to the exit. Boom. Level 3 begins and you only have 1 hero?! Obviously this is a situation that can be strategically avoided, but it still makes a good example I think. IF that first door you open has mobs behind it, and IF say you only have 1 hero or only low level heroes, you can become overwhelmed right off the bat. And I'll be the first to admit that that is frustrating as hell, and makes me less likely to want to play the game again.

I don't think that putting turrets in the crystal room would be an unfair advantage for the player, rather, it oculd be a balancing mechanism.

Which gives me another idea: Difficulty levels? Maybe on easy you could have 3 hardpoints in your crystal room, normal would have 2, hard only 1, and cut-throat or extreme or impossible or whatever could have 0!