Please stop the two enemy ships = auto-lose a section

[Callsign Casiotone]

I like to be rewarded for playing well! Auto-lose is never fun!

[Last To Leave Lex]

Yes the two ship mechanic does not feel well balanced at the moment especially that it gives the chaser ship and homing missile essentially extra movement as well.

[Callsign Casiotone]

Yeah! That's right! I forgot, when you're going to fight the second invader (who auto-won the previous round) that also lets pursuers take a turn, even though nothing is happening to stop the ship from moving.

[Gary]

Part of the goal of SENTRY is to make a run feel attritional - to foster those moments where it feels like you've snatched victory from the jaws of defeat - kind of how we imagine defending a spaceship against those odds would be like IRL.

As a result our core loop is slightly different from most other games - you can lose and it's okay (to a certain degree, you can't lose all the time without consequences) - whereas lots of games in the genre just throw you back to a checkpoint until you pass that blocker.

I'm explaining that ethos because putting you in a position where you have to make a choice about where to defend when two ships attack ties into that part of the loop. If you weren't pushed back, we feel it'd be less interesting with less choice and have less sense of drama.

The trade-off is that players who want to just 100% dominate may feel how you describe. Where we can smooth out things in future is by giving players more strategic choice around those elements, which is something we'll certainly be looking into.

Anyway, I felt it important to give you some insight into our thought-process.

[Rat Grabbler]

It did seem a little odd at first, but I think losing a section in a two ship encounter makes it so the player isn't always going to be fighting in the same 4 maps, which is good for variety. I feel it's balanced by being awarded enough scrap that the player can simply repair the lost section after the encounter if they defend well enough. If the defence isn't so good, it's more likely to become a choice between repairs or upgrades, though I usually find myself limited by research points more than scrap.

When difficulty settings are added down the line, maybe more scrap could be awarded at lower difficulties to aid the player in ship repair? Or maybe making ship repair cheaper? Not sure if this would cause other issues though, I appreciate that game balance can be tricky.

[Gary]

Yeah there's definitely some levers we can pull that'll help with that sort of thing!

[Callsign Casiotone]

Originally posted by Gary:

Part of the goal of SENTRY is to make a run feel attritional - to foster those moments where it feels like you've snatched victory from the jaws of defeat - kind of how we imagine defending a spaceship against those odds would be like IRL.

As a result our core loop is slightly different from most other games - you can lose and it's okay (to a certain degree, you can't lose all the time without consequences) - whereas lots of games in the genre just throw you back to a checkpoint until you pass that blocker.

I'm explaining that ethos because putting you in a position where you have to make a choice about where to defend when two ships attack ties into that part of the loop. If you weren't pushed back, we feel it'd be less interesting with less choice and have less sense of drama.

The trade-off is that players who want to just 100% dominate may feel how you describe. Where we can smooth out things in future is by giving players more strategic choice around those elements, which is something we'll certainly be looking into.

Anyway, I felt it important to give you some insight into our thought-process.

Sorry, I guess I am not getting the steam notifications on this, but, like, it's not an issue of how hard it is, it's an issue of, I shouldn't take losses if I'm not making mistakes. I'll take "tough but fair" in a game but if you want to sell me on "tough and also unfair" that's a longer reach and maybe a concept you should sell up front so people don't get confused about your game.