This Demo has more content than many full games

[Ugly Horse]

I spent almost 12 hours on my first, linear playthrough, which is insane considering it is just a demo! I honestly can't remember when a dev released such an extensive and generous demo the last time. For that reason alone I will support the game on day 1 (and also, the demo got me hooked quite a bit).

Just wanted to say thanks!

[Ugly Horse]

Ok and I might want to add some feedback as well while I am at it :)

1. I only used the debate system once in the prologue when its introduced. The button never lit up again throughout the game and I couldn't find any targets even if I looked for them. Was I doing something wrong?

2. The speed at which enemies (and allies too for that matter) zoom across the map was a bit scary. Changing that would have a lot of balance implications tho. But I would like the base movement to be slower (at least for combat units) and -/+ speed from equipment or classes to matter more. Transport ships are in a very good place I think.

3. The limits on buildings are very unique and thematic, I enjoyed that a LOT and it sets it apart from similar games. Same with the shared AP system; it is absolutely top tier across the genre!

4. Combat felt very good, strategic and rewarding throughout with ample QOL. A good balance of micro and combat flow. I am not sure about the way armor plating works. I get that its kind of a gatekeeper mechanic where you need certain techs to defeat certain enemies, but it feels quite frustrating. With hacking you can remove all armor at a cost, but I would have liked an option to for example stack more armor piercing (at exponential cost) or that damage reduction is capped at 95% or something like that. Also stacking 3x armor piercing for 3 AP feels too expensive, I would have liked a button to stack 3x with just 1 AP. All in all combat was really good and fun tho, these are nitpicks.

5. The Intimidation Presence thing (forgot the name) is an interesting mechanic. But what it meant for me was that I had to use all my bulk units basically as support buildings for deterrence. I don't think I ever moved them or bought other bulk units than the guards. I tried to place the buildings that need deterrence together, but still, that was one of my least favorite mechanics in its current form.

6. Hacking is awesome! I kept reloading a hard hacking challenge like 10 times just because I really liked the mini game :D

<3

Edit: Oh and I absolutely love that there is no XP for the units. This is so flavorful and really sets it apart from similar games in a very good way.
Edit2: The writing is really really awesome. I enjoyed the style a lot and it fits very well :)

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

You're welcome! And thank you for the kind words. The demo takes you up to the start of chapter two, and you can just pull your savegame across and keep playing from that spot on your existing game when you want. It will also retroactively award you any achievements you unlocked.

There are two different folders for the demo and the main game in terms of where save files and settings are stored, but if you are loaded into a city, and then hit the escape key, there is a shortcut that will take you directly there. Or you can just look in your install folder and grab the PlayerData subfolder and copy or move that across; that's all it will tell you to do, but the buttons are for convenience.

---

To your feedback items:

1. There are some other times that you can debate enemies and fend them off in the demo, but only once or twice. It was a mechanic that was added very late in development, and I just have not made use of it too many times yet. It's definitely under-represented.

2. Are you referring to visual speed? If you're wanting to watch things happen, you can change how quickly that happens and watch each unit move, if that's what floats your boat. In terms of the physical distances being moved, those have a lot of important balance implications, and they're in a good spot. Bear in mind that the portion you've played as the demo is just the tutorial, and it always had you only doing one thing at a time, and without time pressure.

In chapter two and onwards, on difficulties above the default, you definitely need the movement ranges, etc, that units can have. It tends to come down to the mental energy costs of movement, versus taking other actions, in the heat of trying to accomplish other things. When not much is going on, it can feel like a small world situation where you can just have a robot run all over town, and that's by design -- I don't care to waste your time. But when combat is happening or there's a big wave of enemies somewhere, suddenly you can't just toss away turns so carelessly. If you're playing on Hard or Extreme mode, again, you have to use your moves carefully. Right now the balance is in a spot that mixes convenience with danger-in-certain-circumstances.

3. Thank you! That's very kind.

4. AP is kind of an arms-race situation, and right at the end of chapter one, where the demo ends, the enemies all get a major buff. This makes a lot of enemies literally invincible to you unless you do some things that mostly you can't do. As you progress through later parts of the game, you unlock new units, you upgrade your AP capabilities, and so on. But it depends on what paths you take.

The challenge with soft caps (for example, keeping it ti 95% percentage) is that they are not really soft. They make it so that there is a hard cap, but that cap is now just invisible, and you have to do a lot of mental (or Excel) math to find out where it is. Same deal with the exponential increasing costs of using something. If that something is a thing that you can just grind to get, then we can negate any strategy just by grinding, which means that on any difficulty level without time pressure, the game will just become a slog. Hard and Extreme have time pressure that is meaningful, but the normal difficulty mode gives you so much time that it's basically infinite-feeling.

Overall I try to avoid soft caps and similar in order to protect players from having a Excel spreadsheet open to them to find out what the real point of diminishing returns is. Chapter 2 and onward gives you various tools for dealing with high-armor enemies, but in general there should be some scary enemies that you can't deal with until you're much further along in your own power curve. It's always kind of a back and forth thing, and you see this some in the demo -- you do a new thing, and the humans upgrade. The humans upgrade a thing or threaten you a certain way, and you bust out a new invention. Etc. Chapter one ends right after the humans did a major upgrade of all their mechs, and that's the starting point for new timelines -- I like the tone of having players a bit back-footed, despite also having a lot of technological prowess and momentum as they enter the start of the main gameplay loop. Figuring out which way to shore up your new weakness (inability to deal with armored units) is part of a call to action, if that amkes sense.

Items used to cost not just AP, but also Mental Energy! Just having the AP cost for 3 armor piercing rounds is I think a good value for what you get. That said, both vehicles and mechs are MASSIVELY better at dealing armor-piercing than any androids are, and they have more AP in most cases, and they also only use a 2-stack of AP in order to get a better result.

The cost of the AP items, in Prismatic Tungsten, was generally speaking too high though. That cost has been reduced for the next build, which will be out on launch day or the day after. In general, I go back and forth between whether I am using "mechanical fear" against you, or giving you the power fantasy a bit. Having giant unkillablle enemies every so often, especially at the start of fresh timeline (where chapter 2 starts) is more towards that fear side. But as I say, it's an arms race. The balance of units, and which units you even have, is constantly changing based on your choices after the demo.

5. Deterrence. Yep, that takes a bit to wrap one's head around. You're just at the point in the game where you have enough Compute Time to start investing in your forces more. Basically, you're preventing violence from breaking out by having your own units stand guard. But if something comes near, they will shoot at it. You can think of this a bit like the board game Risk. Those units are slow to reposition, by design, but having them out and available is really important when you're trying to hold a front, etc. The demo teaches you how to use them, but doesn't really push you beyond that. They become increasingly important in the rest of the game, and it's kind of a fundamental element of the game.

This mechanic takes a while to truly get used to, but I don't really plan on any substantial changes to it unless something really surprises me. Having the player forced to keep active guards in play is really critical to the flow of any strategy game, and having them double as fire-support works really well. That said, in the main game, for more active situations where you are taking over an area, there's a third kind of android, called Workers. Those are more autonomous and active, and do "whatever it is that their host building is programmed for them to do."

So in a broad sense, I think there's already kind of multiple tiers of how to handle this, and I try not to over-rely on any one mechanic. But the idea of just having buildings out in the wind with no need to defend them is not great. And unlike in a lot of my past games, having periodic attacks that you have to fend off isn't really an option as that's distracting, slow, and causes makework for the player. So Deterrence, while a bit something to get used to, is really a key innovation that stops from wasting your time, while also still making you have to think about both active and passive defense.

6. I'm glad you like hacking so much! It's something I'm really pleased with, too. Some people HATE it, so the quick-hacking is available for them to be able to skip it. You get extra rewards from doing the minigame, which can be really important on Hard or Extreme modes.

Thank you for the kind words on both the lack of XP and the writing! I was really tempted to add XP, but am glad I didn't. And the strongest writing is beyond chapter one, so I'm really excited for more people to experience those parts. Really really excited. :)

[Ugly Horse]

Thanks for the extensive responses. That all makes sense, and I appreciate the focus on not wasting the players time with unnecessary combat or micro.

I think at the end of the Demo I unlocked the predators with 2x200 AP guns that allowed me to finally take down all the hard mechs. So I get the system of being on the defense and teching up, then pushing for more map control / objectives, etc. I agree with your comments on the armor system, soft caps etc. only introduce more problems (although I am part of the people who like to open an excel sheet next to my game lol).

Regarding speed, sometimes when a response team spawns, they would be inside my main base blowing up buildings within 1 turn despite spawning halfway across the map. But I guess the bulk units and expanding / securing the base a bit later on will mitigate this. I enjoyed the large movement radius most of my units had.

A couple more pieces of feedback I forgot if you dont mind:

1. The bastion ships felt a bit overpowered in the demo content. They did more damage than my combat units throughout (and I upgraded the shotgun damage whenever I could), have higher movement speed and have 5 AP. So I often just used 2 Bastions to clear out enemies since that was a much higher return on my AP instead of the Elite Units.

2. The Ninja Units have the Bee ability which sounds really cool. However, I NEVER found a single enemy that I could use it on :( None of the enemies had "exposed skin". And in general, the morale and terror stances felt inferior to weapon damage. I never found enemies that were more vulnerable to either of the two other "damage" types. What would be use cases for these outside of roleplaying as a non-lethal AI?

3. The Gang Wars: I want to influence the war to help one side, but when I interfere, both sides would always attack me and I had to wipe them all out or run away. Is this intended, or did I do something wrong? Also, is this system tied into anything? It felt a bit detatched.

4. The explorations came in quite late. I spent at least half an hour trying to figure out how to start explorations, since they were listed in the overview menu, with requirements, locations and everything. I had no Idea I needed to wait for the lens to unlock... so either unlock it earlier or don't show it in the UI would be nice :)

5. I never found a use for the Nickle Units. Techs are cheaper to do menial tasks (like extracting money) and combat units are more effective AP wise. They are listed as sharpshooters if I remember correctly. But I never got a weapon for them that could compete with the combat units (makes sense since they are cheaper). They also dont really have equipment that fills a niche? What is the intended use case for them?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond. I am having a blast with the demo and look very much forward to the full release!

Edit: Ok one more thing: I built large housing complex for the Humans, but I am kind of confused what "more humans" do? They never asked for more food or water and boni they give don't change with the amount of humans you are housing. Does it clear up more of the map as they move out of the tents? Or what is the mechanic here?

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

Ah, sounds like you found the Punt Gun -- yep, that is a way to turn Predators into... their premium form, so to speak.

Makes sense in terms of the resistance of yourself to other forces. In general, a turn is equivalent to something like a substantial part of a day, although the time period is never really specified exactly. The size of the map is equivalent to most of Manhattan island (lower and middle), and different enemies have different speeds.

The lack of borders, and inability to provide perfect safety for yourself is one of those things that I do to kind of try to get away from my own tendency to turtle in strategy games. Usually it's okay if something of yours blows up, since repair spiders will just rebuild it, and their range is huge. Enemies targeting your buildings that have living things inside of it tends to be lower on their list of priorities, and them being able to disrupt your supply lines briefly (even if it's just a ripple) cause a bit of anxiety and disruption in a way that is intentional.

There's a lot of really bad habits that a lot of players, including myself, build up when they get the sense of being too safe, as it makes for conservative play that is repetitive and boring. So a big part of what the tutorial tries to do is get players into a mindset of curiosity and exploration, where taking some losses is okay if you learn something from it.

To your second round of feedback:

1. Yeah, you're definitely right that Bastion is OP right at the end of the demo. That's not really something I plan on resolving unless that remains the case throughout later content -- which it might! I might need to do something there. But for a lot of players of the demo, the end of the demo is this big watershed moment, whereas for in the regular game you're immediately getting into something else. I haven't run into this feedback from the playtesters in chapter 2, but there are bound to be things that are too OP, and which need a strong alternative, or in worse cases a nerf.

I'm not ready to commit to this one yet, but you have my attention on it -- if you still feel like that's the case in the main game, please let me know. It's always possible that none of the playtesters happened to think the same way you did about this unit, but I've mostly seen heavy combined-arms from mechs, vehicles, and androids. Vehicles were also being really underutilized for anything but transport, so I gave them a bit of a buff in early December, and it's also possible that playtester preconceptions have not caught up with the actual balance of these yet. For the moment I'm going to wait and see, but you have my attention on it. Thank you!

2.a. Most enemies that have exposed skin are rebels, cultists, gang members, or low-level syndicate soldiers. Almost none of which you face in the demo, aside from a few asides. The main use for the unmodified bees is for stealing prismatic tungsten, since it does work on those soldiers. In chapter 2, there is a thing you can do in order to upgrade these so that they don't have this limitation.

2.b. In general, you have the bees because you chose to speak to the Geneticist Exalter woman. If you had ignored her, you would have the more-powerful weaponized mechanical spiders, which are essentially as powerful as the (later on) Saber Bees. However, you would not have her as a contact, and you would not be able to do the Uplift project chain in that timeline.

It doesn't matter which one you pick, as in another timeline you're likely to just pick the opposite, and these are specific timeline crossovers. But yes, the bees are very disappointing at first. I have a habit of giving you something disappointing or useless-seeming that is thematically appropriate, and then your character figures out a use for it later. I also mix that with finding things after the question has been asked, but sometimes I like to reverse it so that there is "what is the use for this?" instead of the usual "what do I need to get in order to solve this?" that is more common.

2.c. In general, morale damage is meant to be harder to do, as it's mostly for role-playing as a non-lethal robot. Balance-wise it is TOO hard, and not where I want it to be. There are various playtester ideas for how to make it work a bit better, but I had to set that aside to focus on all the other things for EA launch. Originally I was going to tie that to being a more difficult way to play, but ultimately in this environment I don't believe that a fully nonlethal approach is possible in an Undertale sense, if that makes sense. You can definitely avoid murdering people or killing civilians, etc, but avoiding combat kills by being entirely nonlethal just stretches my suspension of disbelief too much. So this is on my list to deal with later.

2.d. THAT said, there are some later units that are heavily fear-based, or which give fear-based bonuses, and there are some units that are weaker to fear than they are anything else. Not so much in the demo, but later. So there is a place for morale damage already, but it's not hugely represented in the current builds of the game. Morale damage is probably the main under-baked mechanic, mainly because I have been very cautious with it to avoid it dominating the meta for advanced play.

2.e. As far as throwing spiders or bees on people for causing OTHER status maluses, you'll note that even once you have Saber Bees, this is just plain not useful on normal difficulty. The time to kill on enemies is low enough that debuffing them does not make much sense. On hard and extreme mode, the time to kill is quite different, and being able to even moderately debuff certain prestige (full color) enemy units is a really big deal. Even on normal difficulty, if you're facing some Vorsiber Inquisitors, it can be a decent idea, for example.

3. There's a handbook entry on background conflicts. These are basically an immersive sim mechanic. You get nothing for doing them, and never will. They aren't related to you. If I gave players a bonus for doing things with them, then they'd hurt themselves grinding it for bonuses. Basically, these are kind of like the crowds in something like Cyberpunk 2077. They don't matter unless they matter. If a cop or a gang member is standing right there, and you want to do something where punching a cop will help, go for it.

It's very situationally-useful, and on normal difficulty you will rarely need that kind of cover of a random crowd of third parties. But that's what it's there for, when you do happen to need it and things are nearby with them. They also, in general, help to keep the city feeling more alive.

4. OH! Wow, yeah, I did not realize that they were showing up before the lens is there. I've added a ticket to fix that, thanks for the catch: https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=30331

5. I don't know that the elite version is ever useful during the demo, but the bulk version of them is the best bulk unit you have, hands-down, early in the game including the demo. You can have an incredible amount of interlocking fire with them, whether you've given them the sniper rifle from the black market, or if you're using something else like the Achilles. These are absolutely a favorite of playtesters, and if anything they're borderline too strong once you really get into the math -- not the elite version, the bulks. The elite versions are junk, it's so sad. That itself might be a plot point later, you'll have to see. :) Your character has an active prejudice against them from early in the prologue, if you read between the lines.

THAT said, some of the playtesters would jump on me for saying what I did about the elite version being useful. If enemies have slipped the lines, then the elites are the cheapest units you can quickly deploy to clean up that mess. And with the ability to use the achilles, they can be excellent, excellent anti-sniper fast-responders. They're really cheap and quick to pop out and use for a bit, but most people won't have them hanging around for a really long time.

6.a. On having more humans, you're not explicitly feeding or giving water to your tenants, per se. Housing people and feeding them are unrelated things. As part of your growth in chapter one, you are giving some food and water to the poor in general, and you get a buff for that, which you can increase if you want. But that's unrelated to the number of people you are housing, if any.

6.b. Toilet paper and furniture are related to your housing, as are VR cradles. The only real benefit you get out of humans in housing in this way is VR day-use seats. That increases your available neural expansion by a bit, but you're not going to get over an entire threshold here.

6.c. Building more of something than you need, for no particular reason, doesn't usually get you anything. But sometimes it does have secondary effects, like of course being able to sell the water or food to the rich or to the religious co-ops for major money, or as you guessed, getting rid of the tents if you feel you need to. But broadly speaking, you'll need to follow a project chain that's actually related in order to get some sort of larger benefit, and that's not in the demo. So you can do it out of the goodness of your heart, or for that slight bit of extra neural expansion, or just to get a head start on some unknown future content. Or you can ignore them! That's also fine. In some timelines, you won't even bother housing any humans at all. In others, it will be super central.

6.d. The demo/tutorial makes a really big deal about it most notably because it's the instinct of a lot of players not to take on extra burdens. So it was important to show players the use of humans, at least one way, and that it's not THAT much of a burden (you really don't have to feed them, just because you house somebody doesn't make them your child or pet suddenly, and you are not their liege lord or something). It also happened to be a useful arc for teaching, in general. In general, the utility of various things shifts around a lot depending on what routes you are on in chapter two and onward.

Anyway, thank you again for all the kind words, and the useful reports!

[Ugly Horse]

Thank you so much for your very extensive response, again! Super rare to see a dev engage like this with the community - especially just days before a stressful launch :)

Pretty much all of what you said makes sense to me, thanks for sharing your thoughts behind the systems. I will for sure keep posting feedback here (or in the discord if you prefer) and you just convinced me to try another run of the demo with the opposite choices and bulk nickles :D

Just a couple things to add to your responses:

1. Gang Wars: The mechanic is cool, but I understand you don't want players to grind them as it will get old really fast. But how about if a couple of quest lines tie into a the resolution of a gang war. So you can leave it up to chance which way it goes, or interfere to get the outcome you want. I'm sure there is some cool design space there, but probably not a priority right now.

2. Bastions come much earlier than the end of the demo, more like the middle of it. I will run the demo again and pay more attention to their power level throughout and report back.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

Cheers, thanks again for the kind words! My first launch on Steam was 16 years ago, and this is my... uh... 12th or 13th game launched in that time. I've tried to make a habit of being responsive to players during that time. There's not always room for super long-form replies like this, but when I have time, and people aren't being actively rude, I try to engage.

For feedback that is meant to be directly actionable, I prefer that go through the bugtracker. If it's more of a conversational checking-in sort of thing like a lot of your things have been, then Steam or discord are fine. Typically that is a conversation with either myself or players, and then that may result in one or more tickets on the bugtracker. This thread has already resulted in one, as noted above.

To your numbered responses:

1. For gang wars, I'm really reluctant to do that. I'm not saying I won't ever, but... communication is hard. I would rather players think that something is never useful, than think that they should grind the thing. In the former case, they ignore the mechanic, that's actually what I'm going for, to an extent. "That is never useful," if that makes sense. That's really where I want most people's heads to be at.

Because that sets them up, sometime in some combat that is challenging (either from being higher difficulty or otherwise), for them to have a moment of "waitaminute. What if I got those gangs involved!? I've never done that before and they were there this whole time, and that might finally let me beat this specific combat!" And then the player feels super clever (and they are!). If 95% of people feel like that mechanic is useless 90% of the time, then it's working as intended.

There's no room for those "waitaminute" moments if I try and make everything useful to the majority of people the majority of the time. There needs to be room for mechanics that seem useless and that players go "well that's obviously not a thing I'll ever do," and practically forget about it. That's a specific way of hiding possible partial-solutions in plain sight, and one that I'm fond of.

That said, I plan on having players engage with gangs and syndicates and such, but it would be unrelated to those background conflicts. A given organization can be involved in more than one thing at a time, and I think that's the most realistic and interesting thing. There are corporate fights going on as well, although I can't recall if maybe those don't start in the demo. I thought they did, but kind of late in the demo.

2. For the Bastion being highly useful during a large chunk of the demo, in an outsized fashion, that wouldn't offend me if that's true. That's kind of what I mean by there being an arms race. If there's a period of time in the demo where xyz is clearly the best unit, I'm okay with that, because that's not the case forever.

Similarly, if there's some magic best combo in a specific project chain in chapter two or beyond, I'm absolutely okay with that, too. Where I start having a problem is if the SAME best combo is true too much of the time, across project chains in chapter two and beyond.

Giving players a chance to go "in this context, this is clearly the best, and this is clearly trash" is really useful for them to be able to sort things in their mind. And then changing the context on them in different project chains, to where those are no longer true, is my preference. If everything is equally useful all the time, that's really boring, and quite overwhelming to players. That's how you balance a competitive PvP game, but it's really overwhelming to newcomers. In a single-player environment, it's much better to let the utility of things rise and fall.

"Everything is equally generically useful at all times" is just as damaging as if, in the advanced meta, only a couple of units are useful. Because a player can throw a dart at the list of units, pick a random one for any circumstance, and it's fine. It's always "fine," which means your brain can be off. Knowing when specific units shine, and when they don't, is something I feel like is part of the general flow for when players are actively thinking.

The back half of the demo is one path that leads into the main game, which has overall 12 main paths at the moment. If each of those broadly has specific standout units, that's okay with me and kind of the goal. If it becomes a situation where the Bastion, as an example, overshadows everything all the time, in the main game, then that's a problem. I haven't had any feedback like that yet, and to be honest I have not had that feedback about the back half of the demo in general; but it's possible that recent balance has made it more powerful than it was a month ago.

TLDR you have my attention that this may be a problem, but there's not really a way to tell for sure based on the part of the game that you're playing right now. There are several kinds of units that are equally viable to the Bastion, and the back half of the demo isn't really overly-focused on which combat units are the absolute top. Predators are a contender, especially with various railguns, but then they just overkill units to a ludicrous degree.

Being able to tank some damage and dish it out slightly more moderately is often more useful, and so one railgun plus a riot shield is often a really viable Predator build, for example. The Bastion does get more shots per turn than that setup, but with half of the health of a Predator in that configuration. Having two Predators on-site gives you six attacks per turn, with slightly more power than the Bastion, and 4x the total health, for example. That doesn't mean the Bastion isn't useful, but it just means it fits in nicely in that general power curve instead of being completely left behind.

If anything, when things are really getting serious, this is a solid argument for a Bastion as fire support for multiple predators -- or if it's a larger crowd, then possibly a Predator and then a Sledge with some grenades, for example.

Right now I mainly need more data from more people. Regardless of the truth of numbers, if people start feeling like "just use x unit in y configuration for everything," that would be a problem.

Anyway, that's how I think about and break down balance problems, just for further clarity. I look at them as being localized to given routes, and I want for there to be solid reasons to mix units, versus having a homogeneous set.

Cheers!