Legacy wrote:
I do appreciate that a lot of this is automated. May i suggest that you consider a manual mode option (like a button you can press when you select a hero) for monsters? Such a button would allow the player to simply right click on the monster in question, pathfinding would take the hero to that room and attack that monster as soon as the hero is within range. While the automated system allows players to not have to manage something every minute, it can lead to some frustration. If a critical module is being attacked (or even just an expensive one) and the automated targeting targets a different monster then you could cause a lot of frustration. The players can get into a crisis situation where everything is collapsing around them and manual control could mean the difference between a win and a loss. Just a thought!

After playing the game like 10 times or so now I would have to agree with some manual targeting options, for "that guy" especially - you know the one, the one that walks straight to the crystal. Even the option target the module destroying monsters would be extremely helpful.

For higher difficulties you could make it so that there is continous stream of monsters (probably with lower or none chance of receiving resources) based on number of unpowered rooms or something of your choice...

Hello everyone! I'm a new member of this community, i just joined because i liked the idea to discuss the developing of the game, which is already great btw.

Reading the ideas above, i really liked some of them! Especially the one concerning random encounters with NPCs (Survivors or not). I can already see how come random events, with branching choices, could benefit the game. Some of them could only just be a "Lore Explanatory Character": NPCs that servers the purpose to narrate some space lore, regarding the enemies, the current situation of survivors etc. Not something that has to go deep and long, just a short curiosity that gives a little more color to the setting. But since our heroes are Survivors, i think the player should be making decisions that can make the difference in his long term survival. For example, he could encounter a Robot that has been deactivated, our player could activate him by spending dust but at his own risk, due to the Random Nature of DotE, it could be either an ally or a powerfull enemy, or he could just explode and let the dust go to waste, or the player could use him to generate dust or science by using his electronic sistem. I'll surely enjoy events like that in DotE, they give more spice at the already rich dish of this game ^^



(Sorry if my English isn't top notch xD)

Random boss And maybe strange sound and a stressful music when you open this wrong door...how epic^^

Well, while we're at boss suggestions why not have a specific boss or two encountered on a certain level? Like, on levels 5 and 10 you get a boss fight with a certain boss. Now, why make something so completely not random (unless you switch the bosses in a random manner during every playthrough)? What I'm aiming with this at is to have a gimmicky fight. Like, using an event occuring in a certain room to flood the boss or placing modules in the rooms around the boss room to weaken him in order to beat him or place your crystal in an ancient device or things like that.

Okay, I know this would become a routine at some point, but I've always been fond of gimmicky boss fights (a'la Soul Reaver 1 boss fights... which is a terrible comparison with DotE, but I think some of you might get my point).

Or even perhaps if the player so chooses they can detour to a whole boss level. That would add a risk factor. And risk factors are spicy.



That said I will only add that I am fond of the idea of having a random boss room proposed by Jangles. You can easily skip it but if you manage to beat the Smaug of the level you get a really nifty reward.

Also, while I'm here I had a monster idea I wanted to share. Some form of a boss monster. The room you find contains a very powerful monster that does not leave the room, has no objectives to go for the crystal or pursue the heroes. He is there to protect treasure. The treasure he protects is usually a good item that is slightly more advanced than where you should be at this point in the game but has a chance of being a rare very valuable item and also has a small chance of being a standard fairly weak useless item.



These boss rooms, when encountered, don't obligate you to immediately engage the enemy and you don't really have to be worried about him devastating your modules and crystal if you find one before you're prepared (as stated the boss does not leave the room even if attacked). But they do hold the promise of potential great rewards so you can take your team, get your heroes equipped, leveled, ready to fight, and then engage the boss for some pretty epic battles which, when skills are implemented, could take some serious thought and tactics to accomplish. Or you could just ignore them and move along because they won't hurt anything and why risk losing your heroes?



So long as no heroes are in the room the game plays out as if no enemies are on map and your health will regen just as it would given those circumstances. This goes two fold, in that if you engage the boss mob and find him overwhelming and opt to retreat his regen will kick in just as yours would, making retreating to gain health and the re-engaging the boss not a feasible strategy. If you choose to keep exploring and opening doors the game will only enter battle mode when waves or monster rooms are found and exit battle mode when they are defeated; the open boss room does not affect in any way how this (normal gameplay) works and the boss will not ever leave the room even during a wave.



Just imagine a Smaug like enemy, he has no interest in causing you any harm unless you seek his treasure which he guards with vigilance.



This may also qualify for the event room section

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
The game speed is FAST and things get pretty hectic with 3 mobs spawned.





The player would have a list of target priorities to choose from:



Attack most hated monster species first - default; different characters would have a different 'hate' order

Follow the leader - if leader is in the same room, attack whomever he is attacking

Defend party - attack monster attacking the party member with the least absolute HP first.

Coward - attack the monsters with the least amount of absolute HP first.

Block - attack the firstmost monster.

Defend - attack monsters which do damage to equipment and crystal first.

I just joined the forum because I had the same idea from the quote during my play throughs of the game. Love the game and really wanted to get involved with the community in suggesting features and content. Being able to give target priorities, or commands, to each player in your party would be handy, if simply to be able to have a character automatically target enemies that are attacking modules/equipment.



Each character drop down could have a button labeled, "Command," or "Behavior," and upon clicking it would give various options that could be selected which would influence how that character engages enemies automatically. I like the already mentioned ideas but some of mine are as follows:



Aggressive: Default, attacks the most hated

Defend Heroes: Priority set to attacking enemies that target heroes, hero with the lowest health in the room is prioritized to being "protected."

Defend Major Modules: Priority set to attacking enemies which target major modules

Defend Support Modules: Priority set to attacking enemies which target minor modules

Defend Crystal: Priority set to attacking enemies which target crystal



In addition to these there could be a toggle-able retreat behavior:



Retreat: This is unique compared to the others in that it works in conjunction with them. As stated it would be toggle-able. Hero will attack in whichever other command/behavior you have also have selected until at half health and then retreat to crystal room. Notification will pop up, "A hero is retreating." I would love to see this by itself because sometimes when there are multiple waves (plus I just opened a particularly volatile room) I accidentally stop paying attention to someone I didn't realize was in danger and if they are weaker it's not long before suddenly they are dead, whoops.



I specify "priority" at the start of each because if there are no enemies of that type in the room they should fall back to default.



At any rate I hope that wasn't too much and I hope I offered some interesting ideas. I look forward to seeing how the game grows and changes and I'm going to go look around at some other areas and see what other fun things you've all posted and what I may be able to think up.

About monsters behaviors, here is one problem. When wave is spawned and many monster coming in your room few of them start attack your generator and heroes ignor that,they attack those monster who are closer.Its look very stupid, when 4 heroes in room and noone attacks these monsters who destroys you generator.

I second the notion of encounter survivors who aren't recruitable, and might have agendas of their own that could create conflicts.

I think you're right Digi; the reaction feels more to me like a knee-jerk one, as players are really used to being able to command their "units" more RTS-style than DotE allows them to. Thus it may cause players to think that not having the ability to tell your heroes what to attack specifically is a kind of design flaw (when golems were blowing up my mods and gremlins were getting past me, I thought this too in the beginning).



But it seems to me that the devs have consciously chosen for it to be this way, and I think the game is better for it. It made me have to think a little outside the box: "I know I can't manually target things, so how do I stop these guys from making my life so hard?" is what I had to find a solution to. And there is one available upon some reflection and experience, and this is one of the moments where I was proud of myself in the game for coming up with a workable solution. I love that about the game and I wouldn't want to see it disappear; I want to be presented with problems that are solvable on the game's own terms, in other words, that the game should force me to think hard is part of DotE's charm and a great boon to its gameplay.

Lulz! wrote:
I see a lot of people suggesting this, especially on the Steam discussion page. I can agree with some tweaks to the AI being made (sure is annoying having those ranged characters derp into monsters) or being able to change the priorities the AI places on things, but I think on the whole the game is better without manual control. A lot of the problems being said actually have a method of being worked around; for instance, the crystal golems only go after mods if they haven't encountered a hero in the room before, thus if you position yourself correctly the golems won't stomp your mods, but your heroes require a bit more attention as golems hit pretty hard. This is one of the reasons why you would want to build outwards from your mods/crystal, so that you can stop golems/gremlins from sneaking by you and hitting more delicate things.

I want there to be a fair balance between some manual control and some automated control, however I can agree with having it automated but with targeting priorities instead of a manual click hero, click monster set-up... because I guarantee everyone will simply do that for nearly every fight.

Legacy wrote:
I do appreciate that a lot of this is automated. May i suggest that you consider a manual mode option (like a button you can press when you select a hero) for monsters? Such a button would allow the player to simply right click on the monster in question, pathfinding would take the hero to that room and attack that monster as soon as the hero is within range. While the automated system allows players to not have to manage something every minute, it can lead to some frustration. If a critical module is being attacked (or even just an expensive one) and the automated targeting targets a different monster then you could cause a lot of frustration. The players can get into a crisis situation where everything is collapsing around them and manual control could mean the difference between a win and a loss. Just a thought!

I see a lot of people suggesting this, especially on the Steam discussion page. I can agree with some tweaks to the AI being made (sure is annoying having those ranged characters derp into monsters) or being able to change the priorities the AI places on things, but I think on the whole the game is better without manual control. A lot of the problems being said actually have a method of being worked around; for instance, the crystal golems only go after mods if they haven't encountered a hero in the room before, thus if you position yourself correctly the golems won't stomp your mods, but your heroes require a bit more attention as golems hit pretty hard. This is one of the reasons why you would want to build outwards from your mods/crystal, so that you can stop golems/gremlins from sneaking by you and hitting more delicate things.

The game speed is FAST and things get pretty hectic with 3 mobs spawned.



I think that 'targeted' skills would be too hard to use with current game speed.



Instead, I think that skills mechanics should be focused in a more 'indirect' management, in line with the way the chararacters currently work in combat.



The player should elect one of the characters as a party leader, and would be able to change at any time.



The player would have a list of target priorities to choose from:



Attack most hated monster species first - default; different characters would have a different 'hate' order

Follow the leader - if leader is in the same room, attack whomever he is attacking

Defend party - attack monster attacking the party member with the least absolute HP first.

Coward - attack the monsters with the least amount of absolute HP first.

Block - attack the firstmost monster.

Defend - attack monsters which do damage to equipment and crystal first.

my suggestion and feed back. The game is great. The only thing I desired was a game speed slow down option. Pause works I suppose, but that's my two cents.

Digitalhawk96 wrote:
Would be interesting encountering a band of other survivors who are either peaceful or want your stuff... real bad; stabby, stabby badly.

That. It would be really great to see something like that.



And in a kind of similar manner... how about a whole level dominated by someone like that? A survivor who's trapped in the lower leves because he doesn't have a crystal but made a whole level his own complex (or something like that). Wouldn't it be nice (or rather terrifying) to meet some kind of a deluded Horatio survivor and a small army of fabulous clones?



Also, I'm all for letting the player choose the target in battle. Could save some modules. And I would really appreciate the option to repair a module while in combat. It's kind of annoying when you need to rebuild your module from time to time because you couldn't kill that crystal golem thingy fast enough and there were two of those stacked on top of eachother.

Monsters



Monsters are the main threat of the game. They can spawn when the player discovers a new room or when a “wave” is triggered.



There are different types of monsters, and for each type, several difficulty levels (which modify the value of their different stats). The monsters are classified by families. They have a high probability to populate rooms only with other members of the same family. (We can add affinities between families to mix them in a room / in a wave, or otherwise create conflicts between them).



Moreover, there is a set of behaviors applied to each monster, regardless of the type. A behavior defines how the monster acts and reacts: focusing on the Crystal, chasing the heroes, destroying everything in its path…



Each monster type is defined by a unique visual asset. The level is shown via slight variations in the style of the asset.





Wave system



A wave is a specific event which generates a lot of monsters! They are meant to harass the player and provoke her death.



The difficulty of a wave is defined by:

• The level in the dungeon
• The number of rooms that has been explored
• The number of waves that has already occurred
  
  

Monster archetypes

• Basic warrior: melee attack
• Ranged warrior: ranged attack
• Buffer: gives battle bonuses to other monsters in the same room as him. If he is alone, he can attack like the basic warrior
• Cataclysmer: he can start fires within a certain range
• Summoner: he can invoke other monsters within a certain range
  
  

Battle



Each element that is able to fight (monsters, modules and heroes) has the following stats:

• Haste: number of attacks by second
• Attack damage: damage per attack (improved by weapon)
• Attack range: maximum hit distance
• Defense: damage reduced when receiving an attack (percent)
• Health points: when the health reaches 0, the element dies/is destroyed. Forever.
  
  

A value of morale may change these stats for the heroes during the game.





Targeting



The heroes and the modules target the monsters depending on their type, their level and their behavior. Each type and behavior has a certain weight, and the hero targets the monster with the highest sum (level + type weight + behavior weight).



The monsters’ targeting depends on their behavior; some of them will focus on modules first whereas others attack heroes…





Fighting in a room



When the player builds modules in a room, they are automatically placed at predefined spots: the player does not have to micromanage their position. Minor modules’ effects target the whole room.



When a monster enters a room, and for instance its behavior says that it targets modules, it will move toward a module and then attack.







To fight a monster, the player has to select a hero and send it to the same room. Once the hero is in the room, he will automatically move towards the nearest monster to fight it.



If the hero has active skills, they will be highlighted only when they can be used.





Loot



When a monster dies, it may drop some loot (FIDS or a hero item). A dead hero may drop a part of his equipment. These objects are automatically collected by the nearest hero.





Combo



When 2 skills (passive or active) are triggered on the same target (a mob, all the heroes/mobs/modules of the room/dungeon, himself etc), a combo may occur in the form of a new skill. The initiators can be heroes, modules, mobs or events. The combos may be positive or negative for the player. All the combinations of skills don’t produce combos and only pairs of skills are considered. When skills trigger a combo, they are disabled for other combos (passive skills are reactivate in each new room). Combos may occurr in the same time… and may trigger new combo.







VIP's Feedback

This game design document has been shown to the VIP. At the end of each topic, we will add a little summary of the fruitful discussions.

• We discussed combos (I add precisions in the document above).
• They proposed A LOT of ideas of mobs! Some examples: flying mobs, digging mobs, elemental, room mobs (?!), virus mobs, puzzlemaster, hacker mobs, Endless war veterans...
• We confirmed the presence of some Endless Space factions.
• Obviously, the bestiary is mostly inspired by the Endless Legend factions.
  
  

Hi.

Legacy wrote:
If a critical module is being attacked (or even just an expensive one) and the automated targeting targets a different monster then you could cause a lot of frustration. The players can get into a crisis situation where everything is collapsing around them and manual control could mean the difference between a win and a loss. Just a thought!

Yeah, I'm agree with that. I've been through that sort of situation. It's indeed a bit frustrating.



Also, I'd like to have more informations on the stats (for me, it's a common problem in games). Cause sometimes it's not easy to choose who to level-up or which item to equip. For example, on my last playthrough, I had to choose between a +5 in defense, or a +2 in defense and a +90 HP. For now, I have to experiment and try, cause I don't know exactly the effect of +1 in defense (in this thread it says the defense is a percent, but the game don't, so... lack of informations). And I make my decision not on fact, but some vague suppositions. I don't like the lack of informations of a lot of RPG/A-RPG on the effects of stats, cause it can result on a wrong choice based on lack of information, and not on a bad strategic choice...



I like the idea of digging monsters. Could be interesting with a barricade system, to slow down the monsters in a specific room, while the digging ones could keep moving.

Would be interesting encountering a band of other survivors who are either peaceful or want your stuff... real bad; stabby, stabby badly.

I think some of the heroes should have sidekicks a character that you can not control but might be useful at doing something like sneaking into rooms that have been powered and setting of traps.



DarkMeph

I do appreciate that a lot of this is automated. May i suggest that you consider a manual mode option (like a button you can press when you select a hero) for monsters? Such a button would allow the player to simply right click on the monster in question, pathfinding would take the hero to that room and attack that monster as soon as the hero is within range. While the automated system allows players to not have to manage something every minute, it can lead to some frustration. If a critical module is being attacked (or even just an expensive one) and the automated targeting targets a different monster then you could cause a lot of frustration. The players can get into a crisis situation where everything is collapsing around them and manual control could mean the difference between a win and a loss. Just a thought!