Dec 08 IotM: Good? Bad? Woefully underpowered?

Talk about the game. What game? The game with the power? What power? The power of ... aw, skip it.

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What do you think?

It's good
7
47%
It's bad
0
No votes
It's woefully underpowered
8
53%
 
Total votes: 15

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Cristiona
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Post by Cristiona »

I freaking love the unstable isotopes.
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MagiNinjA
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Post by MagiNinjA »

This is pretty good for transmoggers, I guess, if you have autosell items to burn off. Not so much for the higher levels before robots.
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Ryme
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Post by Ryme »

Socket wrote:Unless I'm missing something, the Isotopes work out to 20 chips per PP, which is far worse than 12/pp in the Desert or 8/pp on the Space Station. What's to love about that? :?
This data is only partially correct. There's more to it than that. Under the right circumstances, it's MUCH more valuable.

It is true that this thing is probably going to be more useful in an ascension environment (not just hardcore--regular ascension would apply). I did think it would be a fun way to trade junk items for useful items, but various definitions of "junk" and "use" may be applied here.

If cost versus value is a real issue for the consumables, I'm very willing to examine that. I'm also open to suggestions for things that might make it more interesting--is there an item that's particularly weak, or particularly out of place for the cost?
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Cristiona
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Post by Cristiona »

Hm. Actually, I'm thinking the sugar substitute might need a bit of a boost. On average, it's only better than the green/blue/pink gumballs, I believe.
The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"
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Ryme
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Post by Ryme »

DrKirre wrote:For the combat stuff, it's just too weak to be worth it. By the time you can afford to use them, they're not useful. And what's the point it using something that is useless?
I would encourage some spaders to take a longer look at TNT. I think it's a lot more powerful than you seem to think. I could be wrong, but knowing the math, I think you're underestimating it.
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Post by Ryme »

Points taken on the caffeine and sugar, which have both been bumped up a bit. Sugar is pretty close to stroopwafel, and with some variance that means if you're lucky it's better, and if you're unlucky it's no worse than the middling candy. Oil can coffee averages out to just better than Mr. Tea. I don't think I can justify making it much better than that, despite the cost.

Unstable isotopes have had the base PP return increased significantly, because that was a fair point. But it's tough to talk about this stuff because I don't know what people have figured out yet, and what you're assuming. For instance, is anyone even aware that there's a base return, and then a greater (potentially much greater) return under the right circumstances? The wiki is still pretty sparse on data from these items, so I'm going to assume that the player base at large still has incomplete info about it, too.

Also the items are now multi-usable. I'll make the Recyclonizer vend multiple one of these days, too.
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Cristiona
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Post by Cristiona »

Ryme wrote:I would encourage some spaders to take a longer look at TNT. I think it's a lot more powerful than you seem to think.
Heh. No kidding :P
The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"
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Cristiona
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Post by Cristiona »

Some of the items are more useful in a power leveling context, though. I think it's pretty nicely balanced, especially after the adjustment to the coffee and sugar.
The churches are empty / The priest has gone home / And we are left standing / Together alone
--October Project: "Dark Time"
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Corrupt Shadow
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Post by Corrupt Shadow »

Socket wrote:Removing the cap would certainly make it easier when making several of something. Doubly so when vend-multiple is implemented.
I would have to agree.
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Ryme
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Post by Ryme »

Socket wrote:
King's Knight wrote:Does it have to do with possible future "ascension" ability and needing to make it so people can't load it up with points to then use them after "ascending"?
Even that wouldn't be an issue if it was made clear it's stockpile would be emptied upon Ascension.
This was the main reason. I don't think I can make it clear that it will be emptied upon ascension, because I don't know for sure how that will work, and the game doesn't even have a retcon feature yet, and some players simply wouldn't know what such a warning meant.

If I don't have a limit, someone, somewhere (or many someones) will end up dumping a few million chips worth of items into the thing and then have a massive disappointment if they accidentally or unwittingly lose what's in there. So this is planning ahead for that.

If it makes you feel better, it's also protection against accidentally destroying a very large number of items instead of a small number. I'm not sure I support protecting players from themselves like that a lot, but it's undoubtedly already served that purpose.

The number 300 was fairly arbitrary, though. If 500 or 1000 as a cap would ease the pain of production that might be okay.
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Post by Ryme »

Doctor Mojo wrote:The interface needs work.
Yeah, it does need work, but that wouldn't make a bad item good or a good item bad.
Doctor Mojo wrote:The "resource unit" concept is unnecessarily cumbersome.
I don't want to have to search for expendable stuff that's valued in multiples of 10. Why not just multiply the capacity and the unit cost of everything by 10, and avoid the annoyance?
Dunno. I figured small units would be easier to deal with than large ones. Particularly now that it's expanded to 1000 units, counting to 10,000 in chips value is a pretty big number. Based on your comment about multiples of 10, I assume there's an unspoken dislike of losing any extra chip value due to rounding, too, right? That hadn't really occurred to me until now, but I'm not sure what to do about it.
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Post by Ryme »

As noted just above, I've upped the cap to 1000 units.

Also, and probably much more importantly, I've added a feature where any recyclonizer owners will occasionally find some scrap metal that can only be recycled -- essentially some free recycle points every day. It is capped daily, but assuming you play your daily allotment of turns it should be enough to get two sugar items or the caffeine plus some each day.
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