Founder's Alpha Update Notes

Excellent ! Thanks.

Tis live!! Just fire up Steam (or restart it) to grab!

Downloading now! Can't wait to see the changes!

Edit:

Just got a heal and a hot fist, good to see that fists got some love for all the related heads that I had last version! Though they do look a little odd with a fist on one arm and a shield on the other at the moment.

That and the fact that torsos are useful beyond a cosmetic level is proving this build to be awesome.

Oh and the new build animations are sweet. I love the call down mechanic on the buildings and the shooting of bloom off into space as it is collected. Though I'd ask that the building lands as the build process is completed so we have access to it right away, rather than arriving 3-4 seconds later. Another small gripe is that the mega turrets have four barrels but only fire 2 projectiles which is kind of funny to watch.

My last comment on the buildings is a request to make bloom mines blast a bloom orbital-package-thing out the top that then lands and explodes as well when they are destroyed. The new bloom nodes are sweet though, very alien looking.

As far as the new animations go, they are all sexy looking, my only gripe is with the recoil on the rifles still. Coming from somebody who enjoys using guns immensely, a big turnoff to the rifle recoil animation for me is how it is late as well as divided into two parts. A gun recoils in the moment that the projectile is fired, which comes before it actually leaves the end of the barrel. It looks like this animation got passed over between this build and the last so it is no big deal, but the sheer size of the recoil as well as the fact that the gun kicks after the laser has left the barrel makes it look odd to me.

After bug submission I was directed to the support submission website.  Are the ingame reports going through?

Initial impression:

Factories are really micro, unless I missed something.

A little base armor is nice - with the starting gear I've had servos that could pretty much ignore turrets, drones, and at least one servo.

How does armor work?  Does cold damage switch to cold armor and ignore regular armor completely?

Last I saw, yes, the ingame reports were going through.

Yes, the armor and damage types align. Cold armor stops cold damage, but nothing else. Regular armor only stops regular damage.

I initially tried the offline mode to see how it worked.  Completely separate profiles - so basically no offline play unless you want to start over (or vice versa)

I felt my second, online starting equipment was worse, both in variety (first had several types of swords, three shields, several rifles, the holy grenade launcher) and in stats.  The major thing saving the second batch is one 50dps drill arm.  Just the nature of random numbers I guess.

Not that I've really evaluated any strategy, but my initial reaction to the drone changes is to switch from a drone/upgrade strategy to a servo/rank strategy.  I don't want to deal with the building micro, plus the drone cost, which makes the CoOp Emerald hills even worse - drones are dropping like flies and replacing them slows down buildup.  Plus, readily available armor has made servos way more survivable.

Online vs. offline is a tough one.

We absolutely want offline folks to have a fantastic experience. But, we also have to protect the online folks. We just can't trust any data once it's "been taken offline". 

Eventually, we will likely allow you to seed offline with your online profile. We've talked about converting offline to "unprotected" mode so that you could use it to play MP games with your friends (and cheat your butts off, etc.). Those extensions will be driven by feedback/demand. As a small studio, we've got to priortize. But, Servo will be around for a long time. We'll get a lot of stuff added post-launch.

I don't mind if we 'cheat' that initial crate to give a certain distro of gear. As long as it's still randomized (to avoid everyone having the same starting bits), we could ensure it was all weapons or one of each thing, etc. We already have several changes in that crate for the next update (a few weeks out).

We will do something to alleviate a bit of the drone tedium (either let you queue past the cap or add an infinite train mode). But, we've been pretty happy with the change in feel to go back to drones costing resources. Game variation, etc. have all gotten the expected shot in the arm by doing that. Balance, well, that's still a work in progress.

Yeah, just didn't get to that one yet. We spent some time fixing the pistols (p comes before r, I guess). Rifles will likely get some love build-after-next.

Keep it up! Loving all the changes so far. Will provide further input once its molds out

Found a cool bug, the build limits for factories isn't enforced until the factories build, so I was able to build 10 factories in rank 2 against the ai, 30 more drones than I should have had. To reproduce it just save bloom and spam build like 10 factories really quick before enough of them build to hit the build limit.

Hmm, we theoretically fixed that. But, clearly not.

Yeah I didn't notice it with beacons and turrets, just factories.

I hit bug reporter for that day one.  Is the ingame reporter working?

It is indeed working - our fix just didn't fix the bug.  Oops.