About the usefullness of Teslas

[madks13]

Hello,

as said in the title, i'd like to discuss the usefullness of Tesla towers, which i find lacking. Why?
- Teslas are pretty much end game (near the end of the tech tree)
- Teslas require Qartz, which is rare
- Teslas require Myphril, which ir rare too (especially if we want to craft Myphril armor/weapons)
- Teslas have very low damage
- Teslas are easy to destroy (a few hits from a boss ennemy and the players needs to build a new Tesla tower)

The high cost of a single piece of a Tesla tower (remember they don't do much damage till they attain level 3), the fragile state and low damage make them pretty much useless against anything other than ghosts, which only a level 3 Tesla can one shot. As it is, the only time the tesla towers are useful against the waves is at the begining, but they are inaccessible at that time unless in sandbox mode, which is pretty much not usefull at all.

Recenlty i've been playing the Winter map of the campaign (assembled the portal long before, just trying to have some fun), and as of late the only way to keep Waves from breaching the wall is to send the dwarves in the fight because the 3 upgraded Tesla towers guarding each side with a long row of Ice spikes, a steel door and a high brick wall right in between the Teslas and the spikes isn't enough to hold the front of the waves, much less the rest of it. And after the fight pretty much all the dwarves are low on health and have to sleep to recuperate health.

In my opinion, this is illogical. Such a high cost/maintenance tower that is so far in the tech tree should be much more powerful. It takes a fully upgraded Tesla tower around 10 strikes to take away a heart from a boss ennemy, and in the current waves i'm fighting there are dozens of them. Each of them takes a huge chunk of helath from anything they hit, even their own allies. All this seems like you want us to hate the towers.

Since you introduced the new ennemies, it's even harder. The shield skeleton receives barely any damage from Teslas keeping them occupied while others break down everything. I also tried to place a row of Teslas above the row of spikes, but the skeleton began targeting teslas directly instead of trying to break in, it didn't end well, even with brick walls in between.

All this makes me think you should not only give back to Tesla towers their original power, but make them even more powerful (this is true especially since you changed the waves to be increasingly harder as times passes by). Also, some kind of infinity upgrade could be nice. For example adding a small tesla tower to the fully upgraded tesla tower will add firepower to it, as well as durability.

[ReneMiner]

I think you need to place your teslas somewhat unreacheable for the enemies. And they are just meant to support your dwarven team, not to do all the job of keeping your house clean...there's probably a reason why one does not get XP nor drops from tesla-killed enemies.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=236487500

Agree, there could be some more different types like some paralyze-beam-tower that will stop enemies for a few seconds from moving and fighting or some sonic-blast-tower that throws enemies back for a few blocks every few seconds so they have to re-sort their bones or some light-tower that just will burn zombies, darkness-tower that will blind observers/beholders...(all upgradeable as tesla) - so the tower-defense-part of the game would be a little more important and diversified... all towers could need some "detector" that has to be crafted (like one needs a lock for a door) - zombie-detector made from zombie-brain and mithril, beholder-detector made from mithril & beholders eye, slow-down just needs "slow slime of a slow snail", sonic blast could need some sapphire (crystal) + mithril etc...
allround-detector, made from bones, chitin, zombie-brain, beholders eye, mithril and a few crystals that could be the "heart" of current tesla (instead of mithril only) to detect enemies...

PS. i play sandbox-mode mostly, so from this view requirements and crafting costs for tesla feel quite ok if it's the only available tower - for the quartz: it's not too rare, i'd like it yet if one had to wait for it to grow full size before ready to collect... but silver is always short, especially since one needs better tools now

[madks13]

I tried to place it the same way as you since i did that in another map and was pretty effective. The thing is, in massive waves, there were so much ennemies that they began to pile up : skeleton placing their shields up and other skeletons jumping on them the same way they do to "jump" over high walls. And boss ennemies going up is a bad thing, especially since they're so tough to kill.

Also i've seen in the latest patchnote that the skeleton AI was improved...all that makes me think the Teslas' usefulness is fading away.

Lastly, in the game description, it says TD is one part of the game. I don't know if you have played TD games before, or how many if you have, but i don't recall one TD of the few dozen i've played where towers were second damage makers. Even a game like Orcs Must Die or Dungeon Defenders that include characters that can attack ennemis with customizable weapons have towers are their main damage makers. So in my opinion this game has a bad TD system. Especially since there is only one type of tower with stats as i described in my first post.

[ReneMiner]

Previously the teslas were way too cheap to craft and too powerful- you only had to place a few of them like above and you were safe forever- that has changed now - but that does not change the fact that there's not that much of TD in game. I'm pretty familiar with TD-games and the tag at this game made me ask a friend to check this game out- I tried at his pc and finally joined steam myself just to get this game and it'll help me over the time until Defense Grid 2 will be available which will certainly not just be a play-around-strategy-sandbox-game with some defense-elements but some 100% high class tower-defense.

Craft the World could have gone a little more into that direction so one does not have to dig himself in the first 3 hours of the game or until tesla are available but could participate on the battles from the first wave on but therefor would be different types of towers or at least some healing-spell needed. Alchemy and life-potions are same as tesla- when you can craft them it's too late already to fight the first wave off and you dwarves are unable to do this without any support- even in the best available armor and using the best weapons there's no chance to succeed (except maybe in "Very Easy"-custom-game) before having life-potions.
So it's like: wait until you can craft tesla, and wait and wait and wait... finally can craft them- and: "What now?"

The good thing about this is, there's a timer shown on top of screen. If you get 6 swimmers you know when you can get a refund for them.

[madks13]

I agree with that : all the weapons used in automatic defense (towers, traps...) are available only after their usefulness expires. Traps for example, the first wood ones require wood, but to get to them, the player has to gather a ton of wood to build basic necessities first, and in a world like Desert, it's tough getting that much wood, which in turn stops the advance in the technology tree.

Also, traps description says it does damage, but even with first wave ennemies i don't see much damage done with traps, and they are used only once? It's a waste of resources to craft them. Same for wood/ice spikes, though they effectively slow down ennemies, they hardly do any damage. At the waves i'm having now, all ennemies are slowed down by much, but none of them is taking any damage trough the row of 7 ice spikes. It's plain weird, there needs to be some balancing in the damages, hence this post, because i consider that if they indeed change damage dealt by automatic defense weapons, they should begin with the most comonly used one : the tesla tower.

[ReneMiner]

Yes, the new spikes- they mess up the balance pretty much: cheaper, better effect and earlier to get as brick fences which I built a lot of in the games before there were spikes.
Now I'm not crafting fences nor using any fences that I might have got for free. I disassemble them to get the materials and use just these cheap spikes.
Traps and cages I tried out once- both seem to have no effect at all: traps simply disappear without doing anything and enemies go through cages as if it were just wheat.
Traps don't work as a trap is supposed to work: a bear-trap will not kill the bear but hold him at that place until the trapper comes back, a mouse-trap will kill the mouse...
I assumed the traps were just meant TO TRAP animals as sheep, boars and chickens etc. but the other creatures like zombies in the night destroy them, so traps are just a waste of time and resources imo - I never craft them since these don't raise the comfort level of my house nor would they hold goblin thieves intruders so they can't flee with my stuff out of my house.
To place them outside is just a waste of space wherelse some valuable berry-bush or tree could grow.

Back to the towers: there should be definetly more than just tesla. Maybe catapults that throw stones in the beginning, pimped with some oil or resin to greek fire later, evolute to some ballista that shoots giant metal bolts...silver-towers shooting beams of daylight to burn zombies and paralyze undead, golden towers so shiny the beholders/observers can't see my dwarves, also early slime towers that slow down or lead to slip for walking enemies... a few steps until finally the powerful towers (tesla) get invented.

[madks13]

I'm in favor of catapults. Once i was attacked by a single Goblin archer that destroyed my fully upgraded tesla from afar, since his reach was much greater than Tesla's. At the moment there isn't one tower/trap that is actually useful in battle except for the first few waves. I think this aspect of the game should be worked on asap.

[Ratsle]

I agree, we should have more types of towers that we can unlock earlier in the game. By the time I unlock Tesla tower I am just about ready to beat the map anyway.

[madks13]

In my map it was way before that. Ice world campaign : portal right beside my base, tons of gold coins by removing earth around the base, portal repaired before i even got to the second layer of underground. Wasn't even done with iron part of the tree.