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The battle hardened did not replace drones. It rather completed them. During the first game, its definitly worth to upgrade drones first. I used fighters up to mark 3-13 in combination with 3. million EXP in battle hardened for beating the game. I used a upgraded guradian (mark3-10) and 2 fighter (the mark 3-13) and 5 million battle hardened to kill boss from last unlimited. I was then preparing 3 mark 3-25 guardians and aprox 30-40 million battle hardened for killing secret boss, but then battle hardened was gone and so did my hope to get enough upgrades in an useful amount of time to kill it (what means, before the grinding becomes too boring). So i begun newgame+. Now im stuck there (now level 10) and i dont have many hopes to pass even the half way, before grinding bores me to leave.
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I think the battle hardened was not so bad, as it seems. It was well balanced at least up to 40 million EXP (invested AND saved). Then it goes slowly into overpowered, but only very slowly. One needs to get 100 million EXP to overpower the ship too much. And i dont believe, that many player get so much. I made until now maybe 60 million EXP from which i wasted 20 million into wrong or unused drones. I play really alot and i still needed a week for this.
Since the cost of Battle Hardened does not increase, and the cost of upgrading drones do, it would eventually make upgrading drones not worth it. The only reason it existed in the first place was to give the player an upgrade that could not be maxed, and the drones do exactly that.
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Cygnus is right. I got just 3 mark 3-25 guardians and 3 mark 3-13 fighters, which i took from last game. I needed a week to grind for these. Now i can decide between too few firepower and too few armor. The lack of firepower makes late levels too full of enemies. I would prefer to have a possibility to go to the normal game back (allows to waste time until newgame+ is rebalanced).
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the NG+ difficulty feels about right, but there feels need for some tweaking with the power of the ship. i have 847 armor and 37% armor regen and i'm getting wrecked by tier 3 drones. i understand it's meant to be able to do some bullet surfing but when the screen gets loaded with tier 3 bullets, you're bound to get hit by a few, and at stats this high it still means almost instant death in this situation. perhaps a possible solution would be to make the cost increase per drone level a bit less. all 3 of my drones are already above level 200, the lowest being 221 and the cost to upgrade is 8.9mil. they'd need to be at i'd imagine level 500 in order to survive, and even given the significant exp increase you gave new game+ enemies, it still takes a good number of rounds to complete just to get one level. it would simply take way too long to get strong enough to hold one's own. instead, maybe you could allow for further boosting of stats as if playing the game the first time through?
I haven't really tested the NG+ difficulty levels, I just gave the enemies the same increase per tier as in the rest of the game, but that does mean that their power increases exponentially, and I knew that it would become impossible at some point, but if not even the first level of NG+ can be completed I think the power curve of the drones do need to be toned down a bit.
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I get nothing but slowly falling stars, music, and a cursor. No AdBlock, latest version of Chrome and its built-in Flash.
You are right. I must have done something wrong. I will try to fix it as soon as possible.
EDIT: The game was trying to read something from a save file that did not exist. It should be fixed in a few minutes. =)
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I'm REALLY enjoying the character development between the pilot and the ship. Especially the part about dehumanization in war.
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well the thing is i actually follow the boss, essentially ramming the mines and absorbing the damage instead of killing them, so i don't get the exp. i've watched the counter at the side of my eye as i did it to make sure that it wasn't the mines. 5 minutes before typing this i just got 4 times the experience that i normally would from the secret boss kill, and that wasn't the first time. sometimes it's twice the amount as well.
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I finally did it. The minimum damage to beat Level 39 is 20. So much is required to prevent flooding the screen with enemies and bullets.
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What kills this game is the UBBERLONGLEVELS,the upgrade system and everything was nice,but to much longer and sometimes you pass around 90% of the level to in the last 10 seconds come 948928459428598 shots and you die.
Existing levels won't be getting any shorter, but I have been thinking about adding more variety and making the game less linear, so that there are always several levels to choose from to progress and not just a single bottleneck all the time.
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does the secret boss give experience based on how long it takes to kill him? because one time he gave me one amount and then another time he gave me twice as much.
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found something like elshog. noticed a major slowdown when on the third endless mode. after positioning my guy in the middle of the screen to farm exp, i took my cursor off the window. everything started to slow down like crazy and there was nothing extra on the board like there normally would be, and at endless mode 3 level 20 that's like everything
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The difficulty of endless modes increases not continously. There are certain combinations of enemies, which are deadly (when repeated, which occurs often). These combinations cannot be killed before they fill upt the whole screen with bullets, even if one after another is targeted and no own bullet leaves the screen and rate powerup is online. These combinations can occur at the beginning of unlimited or late. It dpends on luck.
Yes, it is random, but deadly waves are less likely on lower levels and more likely on higher. The endless modes are supposed to kill you anyway, sooner or later. =)
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In response: First endless mode, around 350,000 earned EXP it became unbearable. It seemed to me that somehow, missed enemies keep cluttering the buffer or something, because I missed a lot of enemies along the way. Slowdown occurred only with enemies on screen, and did not persist through dying.
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an option to view the scenes again would be great, so one could do a sort of new game + by playing the levels in order again. also, maybe an extra endless mode which just makes it forever harder and harder to survive, with more and more enemies spawning based on some formula and not a fixed amount per level. i mean the current endless modes are fine, but after you get past the level 19 wave and you aren't dying, it's just a matter of how long you want to sit there and farm exp before you get tired and eject
Going through the game again as powerful as you are at the end would be boring, but introducing a new game+ with enemies with boosted stats would be a good idea. Making the endless modes past level 20 (which is the highest level, it gets decreased to 19 every time you die) even more lethal would probably also be a good idea. I am thinking of remaking the endless modes into something more interesting in the future.
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Salvaging seems not to work as described and expected. @EMCEW I made the invincible achivement in the second unlimited mode 2 hours ago. The weapon achivement seems to be impossible. I never reached half load of even one weapon powerup. @Amberhelix: I was now after many trys able to beat level 39 with 16.5 damage + 14.5 shield regen and lot of optimal timed occurring powerups and lot of luck.
Salvaging works by rolling a random number up to 500, and if that number is lower than the enemy exp value you get a powerup. Salvaging increases the exp value for this random roll, so an enemy worth 250 exp would drop a powerup 50% of the time, but with 100% salvaging he would drop 100% of the time. And sector 38/39 will be getting easier in the next update, I did make them too hard. =)
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When I hack my xp so I can pump up a drone sufficiently that my salvaging is over 2000% you'd think the indomitable and invincible achievements would be easily attainable, and yet they're still impossible. You might want to reconsider the way those two achievements work.
Achievements are supposed to be skill based, not "Hey, you won the lottery".
You can get both those feats on the endless modes, especially if you keep going to level 20 when things start getting really crazy. I've also gotten them on sector 38-39. So it's not impossible. =)
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@elshog, nothing slow here, but it does loop at level 19. also is it possible for projectile stat higher than 1 on any single drone?
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Endless mode can't be beaten because there are too many slowdowns in the later levels. By the pattern of that slowdown, I suspect that there's a memory leak somewhere. Please check on that.
I haven't experienced any slowdowns, but it sounds bad. Could you be more specific? Which endless mode did you play? What was the pattern that makes you think it is a memory leak? At what point did it slow down? Did the slowdown persist after dying and restarting? Did it persist after restarting the game? The more details you can give me, the better.
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I made it from level 32 to 36 without any death. But i cant pass since 2 days the levels 37 and 38 due lack of firepower (i got all upgrades, and 15.45 atack + 1.25 drone bullets). Even the correct drops do not help. Can anyone do these levels without trying more than 10 times?
You are right, the last two levels do still rely too much on getting lucky. But you should have it easier not going all out attack, since you need to be able to take a lot of damage. Thinking about it, I may have accidentally made them too hard when I first tested them because of a bug that made the player do too much damage with the Battle Hardened feat. I need to test them again.
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Nice update. But i fear, that i accidentially consume one of my drones, in which i invested already millions of EXP. I suggest some kind of lock funktion. I would do following: A button in the menue, like the update or consume butten. One clicks it, and then one clicks the drones. The locked drones have then another text color (or some other visible sign) and must be unlocked (another click on lock button) first to be consumed.
I don't want to get rid of them, just make getting them less important, which I think the latest update did, though it may still need some more testing. =)
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This game is nice, but some things are not really good: 1. Regen and enemies coming immediately after killed whole group. This can be exploited by letting one of the enemies alive. Without this tactic regen is often useless, because enemies accumulate then to deadly amounts. 2. Firepower and luck. Many parts of the levels can only be done with the dropped powerups from the enemies. The own maxed firepower is simply not enough to clear such areas and to prevent accumulating of deadly amounts of enemies. If a area depends on such things, dont let it depend on luck. It leads to frustration. 3. Enemies spawn directly after last kill. This is a bad combination with regen, but its also a bad combination with common gameplay. Flying to the right wall and killing the last mine leads often to a immediate collition with a rocket. One second time should be at least given between spawns.
When there are no active enemies the next wave is sent so that you don't have to wait. I'm not going to make the game any slower, but regeneration can be exploited in that way, as you say. I don't think it's a big problem, but you did give me some ideas about how it could be fixed. The reliance on powerups is something I would like to change a bit and I am looking into it right now. =)
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bug: sector 27, after the enemy waves, there's nothing. the game effectively stops and you're left to do nothing but eject
That's my fault. I will update to a new version as soon as possible.
Edit: And now it is fixed. There was a positive number that should have been negative. Sorry about that. =)
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feels like apogee's 1994 pc title raptor:call of the shadows, and that's really saying something. add a sorting button to the drones. pushing on to level 20, that's my only complaint so far. the pace is indeed slow like others are saying, but that's really not a bad thing...it just makes for a longer game, and more satisfaction when you finally get somewhere. kudos on going the hardcore route with this game rather than casual. BTW to the players, there are actually infinite upgrades, it only depends on how much you want to put your mind to it. that's actually one of the defining points of this game.
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Having powerups drain over time is kind of a slap in the face considering the frequent (long) pauses between waves. If you really want that feature (to make the Indomitable feat more difficult?), you could at least slow it down. Like, by half. That would go a long way towards addressing the complaints about needing drops to survive.
If I am going to change the need for powerups I am leaning towards reducing the rate at which they drop and making the player stronger in general, like troglodytic suggested. But I have no definite plans right now.
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why does this game have a 3? it's clearly deserving of way more. clearly there's a lot of work put into it, and the author is regularly updating.
people's main gripe is the length of the levels. seriously? you guys are really gonna knock off 2 points because you don't like how long the levels are, and ignore the ingenious simplistic yet complex design, the fantastic upgrading system, and a story packed with cerebral humor?
i'd give this game a 4 at the very least, but i'm giving it a 5 to do my part in evening out the bias from people mad about the level length.
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Have you considered changing the next/prev buttons on the dialog and map windows to be more visually distinct (i.e., different colors, larger size, pulsing effect)? Perhaps have the close dialog box give a visual cue at the end of a conversation. Also, the speed at which the menus slide on/off screen feels sluggish. I also really want to echo the concerns over level length.
Making those buttons more distinct might be a good idea, but I didn't think anyone would have trouble finding them, since in the first dialogue they are the only buttons you can push, so you learn what they look like and what they do. But having them flash initially was something I also thought about.
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I might go so far as to say you could change the salvage chance upgrade to a firing speed upgrade that tops at, say, 50%
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I would give this a 4/5 easy if success didn't become so reliant on getting drops. You just can't put out enough damage to keep up with the relentless waves without a boost, which should not be completely randomized.
You make a good point, and I would like to rebalance the game to rely a bit less on luck and more on skill than it currently does, but that would take a lot of time, and I need to see how the next update turns out first. =)
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Also, the one bullet fired when you change direction goes off the wrong way. That is, I'm sliding right to hit one guy, which I know I can kill in one hit. I move to the right spot, and I'm already pulling back because I know that shot will take care of it. However, for no reason that shot goes much wider than any other shot before or after it. Don't say it's momentum, I didn't suddenly get faster just before I changed direction.
Also, the levels are too long, and start out too boring. (I'm hoping that if you hear it enough, you'll realize that customers are worth listening to. BTW, I am an expert in software design. When a developer says, "No, all those customers are wrong, and my way is better." that's a sign of a developer who needs a reality check.)
Yes. Momentum is wonky sometimes, but I find it manageable. I think I will look into it in the future though. And about who's way is better: I'm not looking to please everyone. At least not with this game. =)
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The levels are too long, and even when I have no hope of beating the level, they start out too boring. I think you might start to think, when you have so many people saying that the levels are too long, that maybe they are right. More loot drops won't help. The problem is that a level starts out too slow and boring, and I sit through a long time of that, then suddenly it's too hard. A level should have just one wave of easy, for warm-up, then drop into the basic difficulty for that level. It might have waves of more and less difficult, but stay within a factor of two of the basic difficulty for that level. That is, the max is twice as hard, and the min is half as hard, so there's no more than a X4 spread for any level.
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Okay, might have overlooked the keyboard controls before, they're helping a ton. Way easier to aim and dodge, imho. Would still be nice to have a list of the pick-ups described; scatter is counter-productive without a few attack upgrades.
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Still no speed up with the last update while comments of users and especially the two tops talk about too long level and too slow pace ? I decrease my rating from 4/5 to 3/5.
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There seems to be a bug right now with the background. It appears white though it should be black. I don't know why that is, and it is only like that on Kongregate.
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Yeah, failing a long-ass mission at the end to not have enough funds for any helpful upgrade murders ALL the fun. B-a-l-a-n-c-e
If you have problems getting enough experience, are you playing on Easy? You get three times as much xp that way. Though I'll probably rename the difficulty levels in the next update to "Normal", "Hard" and "Death". I think that might be more accurate. =)
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I'm not annoyed by the pace and long levels so much as some of the hitboxes. The player's hitbox seems larger than you appear, but hunters' hitboxes don't include their "wings." Upgrade prices and /or experience gains per kill should be re-balanced: takes a lot of kills to earn that first attack upgrade.
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I like this game, the more i play it ,more fun i have with it. You should probably imrove graphics a bit (or rather add some ;p) to make it more popular. At the begining it doasnt seem interesting.
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Agreed VERY much with Zappan, these levels are way, way, WAY too long. Constant feeling of "FFS MORE mobs? Really?" Shorten things up and increase the $/mob ratio if you would. I mean hell if you really need to you could even add more levels, but having each level be so very long just kills this, specially if you're playing in hard and screw up. I know hard should be hard, np with that, but atm the levels are so long hard turns into ultra-lethal "/
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Nice game, yet, way too long levels, and way too slow paced in my opinion.
Speed it up a bit, since even at max(?) speed, 7.875, it's as slow as a snail...
I am working on putting in a random loot system, and that loot would be able to speed up your ship further, among other things. The length of the levels will not change however, but having loot drops here and there would surely make it feel more rewarding. =)