The Celebration will be Twitched

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
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george moromisato
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I'm talking about Nethack and Transcendence tomorrow at the Roguelike Celebration in SF. You can watch the stream here:

https://www.twitch.tv/roguelike_con2

I'll be on at 10 AM Pacific time.

The full schedule is here: https://roguelike.club/schedule.html

I'm on Track 2; you can watch Track 1 at: https://www.twitch.tv/roguelike_con

The event will also be recorded, you'll be able to see it later too. I'll post those links when I get them.
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Xephyr
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Would have loved to have been there - Looking forward to watching the recorded stream, though!
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AssumedPseudonym
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 Same here, but that’s seven-in-the-morning on my end of the continent. I won’t be alive, let alone conscious. …Coherent is right out. Have fun, though! ^.^

EDIT: …D’oh. Other way. Right. Yeah, that’s 1:00pm for me. I’ll be there. ^.^
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Xephyr
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Here's the recorded stream. (George's is the first talk)

Loved the anecdote about your dog, heh. Going to catch up with some of the other talks.
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NMS
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Nicholas Feinberg's talk was great. To boil it down to one sentence: If you want your game to be fun, don't allow players to improve their chances of winning via easy, repetitive actions.

Transcendence is better at this than a lot of games in its various genres, but there are some tedious ways of gaining an advantage, such as farming station reinforcements; waiting for friendly stations to restock their currency and/or reactors (in cases where you can resell them at a profit); and sitting on the sun with solar panels or armor to refuel.
george moromisato
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NMS wrote:Nicholas Feinberg's talk was great. To boil it down to one sentence: If you want your game to be fun, don't allow players to improve their chances of winning via easy, repetitive actions.

Transcendence is better at this than a lot of games in its various genres, but there are some tedious ways of gaining an advantage, such as farming station reinforcements; waiting for friendly stations to restock their currency and/or reactors (in cases where you can resell them at a profit); and sitting on the sun with solar panels or armor to refuel.
100% agree with this and Feinberg's talk. We do have issues we need to fix. I'd love to have a rough priority on which of these exploits are most problematic.
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Sitting at stars for free fuel is the biggest one. I consider solar armor the only viable armor for most of the game (up until Ares positron cannons become common), because I save so much money, can play at a much more relaxed pace (instead of trying to beat the fuel clock), and I hoard all fuel as a commodity to be sold.

Ingenuity spamming. When combined with sitting on stars for fuel, player can enhance everything after enough time. I frequently take breaks, or alt-tab out and work on a mod while the powers recharge. If solar refueling stays, then Ingenuity could probably be changed to something like Jettison hack - powerful guaranteed results, but only usable a limited number of times.

Farming late-game piñata enemies for items, especially Ventari and Ares.

Maybe: Teraton fabrication. May be less of a problem now that shops have level-based inventory, and jumpdrives may not appear early enough for player to get it and skip to the end.

Mining can be very tedious, and with free fuel, the only cost is time. Worse, if a rock does not spawn ore, player may not know if it is because the rock has no ore, the weapon failed the difficulty roll, or if the weapon was not powerful enough to break damage threshold.

EDIT: Minor: Player can donate low value of meds to one of the CSCs for Europan Vodka. This is a reliable way of building up food for the Teraton fabricator if player is desperate for disposition-raising items. Not likely to happen, but a possibility.
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Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
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JohnBWatson
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NMS wrote:Nicholas Feinberg's talk was great. To boil it down to one sentence: If you want your game to be fun, don't allow players to improve their chances of winning via easy, repetitive actions.

Transcendence is better at this than a lot of games in its various genres, but there are some tedious ways of gaining an advantage, such as farming station reinforcements; waiting for friendly stations to restock their currency and/or reactors (in cases where you can resell them at a profit); and sitting on the sun with solar panels or armor to refuel.
Nail on the head. Easily the best improvements that could be made to Transcendence match up perfectly with that. Farming reinforcements(Send them in groups, add a spawn limit), kiting(fix AI range bug and reequip some particularly exploitable ships), solar panels(maybe have them work realistically, providing auxiliary power(thus reducing drain rate when powered up) rather than outright refueling the reactor, which would add strategy to how the player uses them) are some particularly bad offenders. Armor repair could use a full rework as a mechanic, IMO - short term, perhaps repair equipment could rapidly repair damage immediately after taking a hit, like in some other games.

With regard to mining, deposits were definitely the right way to go. Just expand the hints system and competitor table into the late game(Borers aren't much of a threat in Eridani, let alone Sanctuary), possibly add some drawbacks to the Black Market to make the miner hold competitive relative to the smuggler's hold, and mining's pretty much perfected.

A major part of the problem there is that there's enough money in the game through other methods that many people don't really see any reason to mine, which reduces the number of people playtesting that content.
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Another thing. Desperate Escape is near-immortality. If I use either Desperate Escape or Shatter, and I have not resurrected yet, I will stop and wait until Desperate Escape recharges. Getting Auto-Sustain for a few seconds instead of death means I can use an escape item (jumpdrive, gem of contrition), run away to safety, and wait until the power recharges. Desperate Escape makes permadeath very easy to honor because it eliminates sudden death by combat. Moving on before my immortality power recharges is kind of stupid.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Another free fuel exploit: CSCs. By the time Ares Positron Cannons appear and force me to give up solar armor, CSCs appear. I grind missions until I get free dock services. Free fuel is the biggie. Perhaps the Fleet should charge something. Maybe a token 10%, but something to prevent abuse. (I do abuse CSCs free fuel.)

Also, perhaps Sisters should dock more attitude points if player refuels tens of thousands of credits worth of fuel. I can donate a few fuel rods worth about 750 credits (for one attitude point), and the Sisters will refuel my thirsty endgame reactor for tens of thousands of credits of fuel at the cost of one attitude point. Player with jumpdrive can easily jump to Eridani or Heretic via Elysium to dock with Sisters. Admittedly, not a problem in Eternity Port due to no Elysium and no guaranteed Sisters.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
JohnBWatson
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PM wrote:Another free fuel exploit: CSCs. By the time Ares Positron Cannons appear and force me to give up solar armor, CSCs appear. I grind missions until I get free dock services. Free fuel is the biggie. Perhaps the Fleet should charge something. Maybe a token 10%, but something to prevent abuse. (I do abuse CSCs free fuel.)
Hate to say it, but that's entirely correct. My solution would be to reserve free fuel for the highest rank(free repairs can remain as they are), and alter the mission system so that missions aren't just provided on - demand. At minimum, some sort of timer mechanism should exist to add immersion, and systems with no Ares activity shouldn't provide missions.
Also, perhaps Sisters should dock more attitude points if player refuels tens of thousands of credits worth of fuel. I can donate a few fuel rods worth about 750 credits (for one attitude point), and the Sisters will refuel my thirsty endgame reactor for tens of thousands of credits of fuel at the cost of one attitude point. Player with jumpdrive can easily jump to Eridani or Heretic via Elysium to dock with Sisters. Admittedly, not a problem in Eternity Port due to no Elysium and no guaranteed Sisters.
I'd call that a bug. Might want to make a ministry tag.
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If free fuel should be abolished for CSCs, it should be for all ranks. Maybe have higher discounts for higher ranks like for Militia, but never entirely free.

As for missions, they might need to be stay on demand because it is easily possible to have only one CSC available to give missions. (I played several games where I had only one mission-giving CSC in the game.)

As for Sisters, they could just refuel up to halfway at most, possibly less, enough for the player to go somewhere to buy more fuel.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
JohnBWatson
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Maybe there's a compromise that can be made here. On - demand raids by Chasms that have no hope of damaging the CSC and chains of dreadnoughts showing up one by one in pre - Juno systems can be immersion breaking and harm replayability(because the mission sequence is nearly identical every time), but you're right that restricting missions to a timer or giving a hard limit could cause balance issues. Perhaps it would be best to have some believable missions be available on - demand(like scouting and cargo delivery), and have others require that certain criteria be met. After all, being told thrice in a row to escort a Scarab to the CSC to refuel it starts to feel a bit unbelievable - it could definitely use a timer. Similarly, creating three communes out of nowhere so that there's something for the player to kill can feel unsatisfying. Relaxing the upper level limit for some missions and providing them when no higher - tier missions would make sense seems like a reasonable way of accomplishing this.

Ideally, missions would be entirely based upon the system in which they take place and have noticeable, if incremental effects on both the system and the war effort as a whole. That's more of a long - term idea, however.
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