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Author Topic: Assembled Mods  (Read 6520 times)

Ander Hammer

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Assembled Mods
« on: January 06, 2012, 02:25 »

Rather than common, exotic, and unique mods, let's tweak the latter two a bit. Instead of hoping for a random drop, how about being able to turn 2-3 mods into an exotic, and (more) mods into a unique? Just mod an agility mod with a tech and maybe another agility. Bang, Sniper Mod.

This lets us have all assemblies rely on basic mods to be constructed. No worrying about if something will drop, just when - you're likely to get enough for at least one thing you want in a WK game.

Other thoughts that occurred to me:

This makes raising and lowering assembling quantity as easy as adjusting the basic mod economy.

Alternatively, mod and weapon assembly quality could be altered and the game could spawn mods more frequently, encouraging experimentation.

Another possible way of limiting use of this feature would be requiring a certain new basic mod type to drop - an 'assembler', I suppose, that you load with mods, rather than modding mods with other mods. This would have the side-effect of more complex mods that require pre-assembled mods possibly needing multiple assemblers.

Implement this and leave natural exotic/unique mod spawns in?

Mods mods mods mods modding modder modded mod.
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Zalminen

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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2012, 03:28 »

This.

Unless you're using Scavenger or playing Ao100, all the exotic and unique mods are so damn rare that most of the current assemblies are too damn luck dependent. When you finally find a cool mod, there's not enough levels left to get WK anymore. Or you found a Sniper mod and it's an AoB run.

If you could make exotic mods from enough basic mods, and uniques from basics and exotics, it would make the whole process so much less frustrating.
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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2012, 11:06 »

Hmmm ... Exotics from three basics and no WK level (to make them more accessible), uniques from four basics (or perhaps include one exotic) and both WK levels (to keep them unique)?
If you ask me, I second this idea.

And some considerations:

It would probably be not that much of a hell to code. "What do you want to modify (wabm)?" Press "m" and a list of your mods pops out.

A question how to handle modded mods sprang to my mind - would these be attachable to weapons or armor, until they are complete?
The answer would be no, _unless_ this would form an assembly. Otherwise, this would be an easy bypass around WK.
Also, triple mods would not be allowed to be even created without WK, even if they could create an advanced assembly. Again, an easy WK bypass.

There could also be a consideration regarding a saved spot in inventory, but this doesn't seem to be much of an issue to me. AoLT would be a different matter, though.

Well, take this simply as a little brainstorming about an interesting idea :).
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Uitë

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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2012, 11:26 »

Another take on this: What if you couldn't assemble mods on their own, but only when they're already attached to an item? This would require Whizzkid obviously, and maybe could be exclusive for Technicians? The assembled mods would then collapse into the exotic or unique.

Say that you could make an Onyx out of four Bulks. If you want to make Plate armor, for example, the requirement would be PO, like normal, or alternatively, BBBBP. Still not very likely, but definititely easier to get.
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Ander Hammer

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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2012, 20:53 »

Uitë:

This would require a re-structuring of what mods are allowed on what items, and seems like it would be unintuitive.

Tell the player that two agility mods and a tech mod combined in any way will give them a sniper mod pack, OR
Tell the player that modding their pistol 2A1T will make their pistol sniper modded, and thus they can't without WK.
4B won't fit on an armor... in fact, 2B won't. And, on the way to your Onyx-packed armor, you would likely at some point wind up with 400% 6/6 red armor, which is a little silly; and if you could do that, why not do 4P1B armor, and of course, as things are now these would require WK2.

I back requiring WK to make uniques, but only one level. This idea is meant to proliferate assemblies and be able to count on exotics and maybe a unique appearing, not to force WK2 for any game that wants a chance at one of the neatest toys, like it does now anyway. Master assemblies and ridiculous T3SF plasma rifles are your reward for spending the extra level, and if this suggestion warrants serious consideration, it might encourage some assembly migration, limiting the number of basics and increasing the advanced/master pools in the course of balancing.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2012, 20:55 by Ander Hammer »
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Silhar

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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2012, 05:15 »



Ahem.

I don't know, but there is something I don't like about this feature. Unique mods would suddenly stop being so unique - and assemblies containing these are sometimes far more useful than... well, even some regular uniques. Game balance gets whacked and suddenly everybody's playing a technician.

That's the way I see it.

Ander Hammer

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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2012, 20:22 »

Silhar, that's the beauty of game balancing. Assemblies can be changed to reflect how much easier they are to get, and even the mods themselves could be nerfed, if requiring several mods to make wouldn't be enough.

The other classes have exclusive advantages that are as attractive as a tech's, and everyone has access to WK. All I'm trying to do with this idea is make assembling less of a joke - right now there's four or five things you can definitely make, and then one or two you'll do if you find a F or N or O but will just waste resources if you prepare for them and never get them.

Somewhat off-topic: I don't get some gamers' fascination with excessive rarity. Sure, it feels like an accomplishment if a neat toy drops, but you spent 50 hours not seeing it drop.
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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #7 on: January 10, 2012, 20:30 »

The thing is the rare mods are overpowered and therefore need to be rare.  What's the WORST thing you get out of any of them? Infinite ammo rocket launcher? Two extra bullets per shot out of a plasma rifle? Unbreakable red armor? Perfect aim? Honestly half the time I'll just use these as single mods. The problem is that the only time you get to build most of the assemblies is Ao100 with a scaving tech. Most of the assemblies could be altered to use less rare mods.
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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #8 on: January 10, 2012, 22:33 »

The assemblies clearly need to be modified (and will be for 0.9.9.6, if Game Hunter has his way) to take less rare mods. The Onyx Mod doesn't really need to be unique. It's no more powerful than the sniper mod...maybe even less so, considering there are other ways to make armor unbreakable. The Nano is the only one on the level of "unique"...and should stay that way. Once you get all the schematics, there's probably like a 1/6 chance of it spawning..which is pretty good.

A lot of people seem upset that you can't have an amazing build every single run. That ain't how roguelikes work. Sometimes you get something amazing, sometimes pretty crappy, sometimes you die in 3 turns. That's how it goes. Not sure how I feel about this assembled mods idea, I guess it could work...I'll wait for others to weigh in.
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Zalminen

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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2012, 03:20 »

Yeah, having most of the assemblies only require basic mods would also be a nice solution.

I don't mind rare/unique mods being hard to find, I mind the fact that they make many of the assemblies too hard to get - not only do you need to find or scavenge the mod, you also need to do so during a run where you have or can still get WK/WK2.

It will be interesting to see what Game Hunter comes up with :)
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Uitë

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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #10 on: January 11, 2012, 08:33 »

Another take entirely is to remove all assemblies with special mods and remake them with only normal mods. The specials could then be made to go on any piece of equipment you want, without consideration for assemblies.
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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #11 on: January 11, 2012, 08:50 »

At the moment we're playing around with some fundamental changes on how regeneration works: if successful, it'll probably put the Nano Pack in a position to become an exotic mod. Hopefully, all of the mods can become exotics, so that they're more common in general (and that you aren't necessarily forced to pick one assembly over the other when it comes to the currently-unique mods).

In general, the plan is to make assemblies more accessible but less powerful (at least in terms of the raw stats). The cool thing about assemblies should be that you can makeshift something that you either expect to have to deal with or want to focus your build around: if you want to simply upgrade your weapon, you can use the mods in their base form. Back when I was suggesting assemblies, I tried to include a bunch of interesting possibilities: at the time the API couldn't handle much, but it's far more flexible these days, so I'm hoping to come up with a ton of new special properties for this stuff.

Being able to use assembling to replace or upgrade your mods isn't too bad of an idea. I think that it'd work more or less like this: two (or three) mods of the same type are assembled to form another mod of the same type (specifically, a mod that wasn't used as part of the assembly), and three (or four) common mods are assembled to form an exotic mod. This is assuming that only common and exotic mods exist. I'm tempted to say that only characters with Whizkid should be allowed to "assemble" mods into other mods (it's not so much assembling as it is disassembling into usable parts and reassembling into something better), if only because it can have a pretty big impact on the game: alternatively, this could be how the Scavenger's ability works instead of scrapping uniques (making the master trait far more desirable in non-A100 games).

I have to agree that I'm not a particularly big fan of extremely-rare-but-powerful equipment, especially in a game as short as this. There's a big difference between "weapon that will make things easier for me" and "weapon that has single-handedly won the game for me". I want to get rid of the latter whenever possible, with DS being the likely exception. This also means that exotics and uniques will get a close lookover (at some point, I doubt it'll make 0.9.9.6) and take buffs and nerfs when it makes sense.
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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #12 on: January 11, 2012, 09:33 »

The scavenger idea sure sounds interesting.
But honestly, yeah. There should be less "Game over for hell" things, and more "this stuff is much better, man" things.

And we could also use some more assemblies, the more the merrier. :P
Perhaps even revamp the modding system into something classier.

Eg:
Code: [Select]
[ ][ ][ ]
[ ][ ][ ]
[ ][ ][ ]
And now for some POWER
Code: [Select]
[P][P][B]
[ ][ ][ ]
[ ][ ][ ]

Of course you won't be able to fill all of those, but it makes space for lots of assemblies using the same mods - but different placings. ;)
Again, an example here:
Code: [Select]
High-power chaingun:
[ ][ ][ ]
[ ][B][P]
[ ][ ][ ]
Code: [Select]
Boomshot Super Shotgun:
[ ][ ][ ]
[B][ ][P]
[ ][ ][ ]
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tinyrodent

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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #13 on: January 11, 2012, 09:39 »

A few more ideas to throw into the mix:
  • remove the distinction between "exotic" and "assembly"
  • assemblies may only be created if the schematic is known
  • any class can disassemble an item to obtain its schematic and a component
  • scavenger trait gives schematic and two components from disassembly
The "disassemble" command would have to be changed from its current mechanism, which only works for a subset of weapons never mind armor etc. Maybe drop the item in acid... :)
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Re: Assembled Mods
« Reply #14 on: January 11, 2012, 23:12 »

I see nothing wrong in it having it's own key.
If you press it without the trait, nothing happens.

Win-win!
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