Selecting Servos

We used to have it this way (select a servo when it was first dropped).

It felt clunky on your side because it was a big UI effort at a time when you might not be ready for it. In contrast, the choice to rank up is made at a time when you do have time to think about it (usually). Or, if you don't, then you know you don't (vs. X seconds in the future when you might be busy).

The first servo choice is there for a couple of reasons. It reduces analysis paralysis for you. We found that when we didn't make people pick the first servo ahead of time, some folks would just take too long to get going for fear of making the wrong choice. The first servo being selected reduces the initial bandwidth on the player. It's easier to get going in our experience.

On the flip side, it also helps your opponent understand your strategy. If I see Blink coming at me, that's different than seeing Reece. I have a hint about what you're likely to do, so I have a context for my choices.

That's not to say that we can't change those decisions again; more just giving the background for why they work as they do now.

something related to this: how do you think it would effect things making it when two or more servos die at once, you choose which to respawn first?  Say instead of having separate timers for each servo (that cannot count down at the same time), you have a general timer that, when its up, you choose which servo to respawn?

I can see how this would add to bandwidth on the player, but at the same time... Everyone has a favorite, or better geared servo. 

Say Blink and Reece both died at once, Blink is much better geared than Reece.  But the game has Reece respawn first.  It'd be nice to be able to choose Blink to respawn first when the general timer is up.

We've been discussing something like that... Would love other ideas.

One that we're semi-fond of... Allowing you to pay Bloom to get them back sooner. Thoughts?

That could be interesting, especially when drones get beefed up a little bit.  Right now the only real choice would be "do I bring my servo back a little sooner or save for a servo weapon/armor upgrade?" When drones are up the choices branch out to building more drones, upgrading them, etc...

One thing that could be interesting:

Have the spawn timers for servos start the moment the servo dies, for all servos at once.  Yet have the timers on a 3 or 4 minute timer for each.  That way its not only "do I upgrade/build or get the servo(s) back sooner?" It's "which servo(s) do I bring back quicker and how many?"

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Or here's a crazy idea:

The more bounty kills you get the quicker it speeds up the servo timer?  That could give drones a greater value if they're beefed up a bit.  I dunno that seems a lil too arcade like.

Though, that could actually be kind of cool for a pvp scenario game type... Servos only respawn based on victory points held and bounty kills.  Victory Points (seperate from bloom refineries) generate points that are only used to respawn servos, and bounty kills add to those points.  Have like 3 Victory Points on the map total.

When that dialogue comes up maybe the servos could have a hotkey each, Q W E R T Y etc, if you greyed out already used servos instead of removing them you could reliably go b-t-e to rank up and take Hauk, b-t-q for Reese, b-t-w for Blink and so on. I personally like that the first servo is set before the match.

Might be cool, though it might make the end game take longer. Should give it a try and see what it does to the game. If you have the resources to spend then why not?

Well, there could be one upgrade icon per servo, but that would break the hotkeys, and we might eventually get more than 3 servos.

Perhaps move the rank-up off the dropship entirely and put in the player panel, so the next empty servo slot becomes the button.  Having a different interface would make it clearer that something different was going to happen (servo dialog)

Ranking up is weird because it's both an upgrade (the game has lots of upgrades with no fuss) and a dialog trigger.

I think this would actually make the game end faster since the player that was ahead on economy could continuously respawn their servos every time they were killed.

Yeah, assuming we keep this as-is, we'll hotkey it like you suggest. We'll hotkey the sh*t out of everything by the time we're done.

Yes, assuming we keep it, it will either move to the top left panel (where you see the servo pilots) or go there, too (mostly so we can keep the 'b' hotkey simple).

Another idea we've discussed is having a building per servo. Landing pad or somesuch. You build it, select which servo "goes" there, etc. It always gets bogged down in being more complicated than the current system.

Thank you I'm surprised so many things have hotkeys as is TBH you've all done a good job with it.

What are the current plans for when there are more than 3 servos available?  As in, do we select which 3 servos will be active before the match? Or will all servos be available and you have to choose which 3 you want as you get another available in the scenario itself?

Building one the last - are there any plans for saved configs?  I was playing around with all-ranged vs all-melee, as then switched back to mixed for the games tonight.

That'd be cool. Either saving profiles for each mech or for the whole team. Then some sort of indication items are used in a saved profile when in the sell parts screen.

The plan is let you have your stable of servos to pick from. In reality, the way things are currently setup, the pilots are the limiter.

So, once you unlock all ~6 or so pilots that will be in 1.0, you'll pick your leader and then you'll have the other 5 to pick from in the game. The idea is that you'd be able to see what the other player's strategy is and then have some options ready to go. Oh, he's going fire damage, let me bring down my lava tank. That sort of thing.

If/when we get past "too many pilots to reasonably pick from", yeah, we'll have to add some kind of pregame filter. Take your 20 pilots down to 6 or something. But, that's later.
 

We've been calling that the blueprint system. I don't know if that will make it into 1.0, though, or not. It's doable, but I think it's probably on the outside looking in relative to the 1.0 feature set we have now.

Where would you all rank that in terms of desired feature?

The issue with multiple pilots is that you'll always have certain "best" equipment  Unless the late game shifts and specialization matters more than simple power.

As far as ranking... whats the competition? ;^)

I guess most of the time I have a standard configuration.  Beyond experimentation I'm thinking I may need very different builds for coop vs pvp, but that may be partially covered by pilots (except for the first servo thing)

I'm not sure I understand your concern there...

If you like Blink, Reece, and Hauk, that's fine. You'll kit them out with your best gear. But, like any good RTS game, you can't have it all. Giving yourself an advantage in one area will open you up to holes in others.

In the terms you framed it in, yes, specialization/skill/strategy will matter at the high end for sure. The best players will always have the best gear for every pilot. But, the "best gear" is subject for debate. Is fire gear better than cold gear? Or is stun the best? etc.

Our goal is to make a game that constantly keeps you on your toes and rewards folks for both pregame strategy (e.g. building servos with good synergies) and ingame tactics (e.g. picking the right servo for the right time balanced against what's going on with your econ, drones, etc.).