Random Mode Thoughts

[zypher`IM]

Enjoying random mode quite a bit, removes choice paralysis at the start so its perfect for me. The wheel could be faster, or a speed setting for it.

I do think that you should only be able to get 1 keycard. I also think that the extra stronghold item trinket should generally just give you access to those items, but its even worse to land on it here.

I think getting 1 free reroll on the first turn might be a decent way to even out the rough start when you get captains that sort of rely on trinkets.


I dunno how the stats shake out overall, but I feel like the stronghold faction is the weakest and its probably tied to two things: armor gains being weak and not having a damage boost. Getting a bad trinket layout on them is almost always not getting to 10 (I'm current into emerald 3 in random mode), while a federation or factory run I can hardly pay attention and make it. Armor gains seem to be roughly half of health gains, but don't actually trigger twice as fast, and you're never going to get enough armor boosters to bridge that gap. They also feel weirdly weak to debuffs that aren't rust (and kragg is actually weak to that too lmao), maybe they could use a crew or building that converts other debuffs to rust?

Related to that, hack is insanely overtuned. You can grab a network router, do nothing with it, and have it be half your damage. Same with the observatory thingy for federation. And since it doesn't have travel time, it can win a lot of close fight.

For example, here is a recent battle against huz (6a12c0fb104689a92ea78269). He is maybe doing a bit of a meme board, but he has 3k hp on day 12, healed 950 and generated 400 armor. My 9 hack that I put on him did 2.1k, while my actual weapon (railgun) did 1k and a variety of slug/crackling/acid was the rest. This ship didn't even make it to 10 wins, and it really should have gotten smashed in this fight too.

[Logovore]

I think a big part of the difficulty is it looks like non-random boards are in this pool. I haven't asked, but some combinations of captains and trinkets too frequently seem optimal. Granted, there are definitely random boards in there. To fix hack, I don't think it should consider activations beyond the first, as it currently counts every burst, which makes items that were viable in the demo, completely unplayable, or, at best, passable for a turn 13-14 win. This way, a larger ship with more items is more vulnerable to hack, while a smaller, tighter ship is less. Hack would serve as more an equalizer than a punisher for using items. I think we should at least playtest Kragg gaining % armor instead of flat. If he gained 1% per rank, he would only gain 1 per tick in the early rounds, but then he would start scaling like the other captains. Granted, he gives free upgrades, which is very, very powerful. Overall, I have total faith in the dev to balance after this current season!

[Fresh Produce]

The network hacker thing is definitely way too powerful. It can be a win con with almost no investment.

The stronghold faction is also hard in random. The tribe mother is okay since her 3x show up buff is strong, and the drum is a carry item. However, I normally sell my captain first thing if I get glutton, and Kragg takes a lot of luck to get off the ground. Trying to build around his table is a trap.

If I get one of the factory guys, I just assume I am going to win the run. They have such easy access to so many win cons without touching their rare stuff.

The other two factions feel pretty good.

I have been climbing the random ladder pretty easily just by buying resistances and buying the network hacker every time it shows up. I think I am about 1120 right now.