Game News Underrail Dev Log #55: Global Map

[ciox]

That would basically turn Quick Tinkering into a single tile of permanent Force Field every 2 turns. This would be prone to abuse as well. You could surround yourself with bear traps and become completly invulnerable to melee, you could cut off entire sections of a map, etc.

What that should lead to is enemies detecting your traps if they are able, and turning a corner to enter cover and stay there if you try to do any rubbish like that, which would leave you to end turn until combat ends and go disarm your traps, which would instantly train you not to do said rubbish in the future against intelligent enemies.

 

[Fenix]

Maybe traps that set should have detection debaff for them, like in Minesweeper? I mean, if trap had another trap in surrounding 8 tiles, it's much easy to detect.
I hope you'll undersyand what I mean, I want to sleep immediately.

 

[Tygrende]

You can use a Crawler Poison bear trap to immobilize+stun someone in a chokepoint for 5 turns total.

4 turns. Crawler poison kicks in after 2 turns and lasts for 2 turns, one turn of bear trap immobilization is effectively lost.

The only thing you're doing is nerfing a fun ability into being unfun by tying it to a huge cooldown

Right now Quick Tinkering allows the player to keep an enemy immobilized for an unlimted amount of time because the cooldown is lower than a bear trap's duration. A cooldown of 4 or 5 turns would prevent this. How would that make this ability unfun? Unless you spam it every 2 turns to keep enemies stuck in place for the entire fight, it shouldn't affect your playstyle.

What that should lead to is enemies detecting your traps if they are able, and turning a corner to enter cover and stay there if you try to do any rubbish like that, which would leave you to end turn until combat ends and go disarm your traps, which would instantly train you not to do said rubbish in the future against intelligent enemies.

And how is the AI supposed to figure out when it's a good idea to hide behind a corner and when it's not? What if I WANT them to hide? The point of cutting off a part of the map is obviously to fight a single enemy/group of enemies without worrying about others coming to help them, so it's beneficial if they stay behind a corner in this case. An incomplete circle of traps could act as a saferoom in case the player gets low on HP, just get inside and close it with a single trap to make enemies run away. It would still act as a permanent Force Field, just for different purposes.

Or what if there's no corner to hide nearby and I have a sniper rifle? My point here is that unless you make a really sophisticated AI, being able to permanently block tiles is always going to be prone to abuse.

 

[ciox]

You can use a Crawler Poison bear trap to immobilize+stun someone in a chokepoint for 5 turns total.

4 turns. Crawler poison kicks in after 2 turns and lasts for 2 turns, one turn of bear trap immobilization is effectively lost.

The only thing you're doing is nerfing a fun ability into being unfun by tying it to a huge cooldown

Right now Quick Tinkering allows the player to keep an enemy immobilized for an unlimted amount of time because the cooldown is lower than a bear trap's duration. A cooldown of 4 or 5 turns would prevent this. How would that make this ability unfun? Unless you spam it every 2 turns to keep enemies stuck in place for the entire fight, it shouldn't affect your playstyle.

What that should lead to is enemies detecting your traps if they are able, and turning a corner to enter cover and stay there if you try to do any rubbish like that, which would leave you to end turn until combat ends and go disarm your traps, which would instantly train you not to do said rubbish in the future against intelligent enemies.

And how is the AI supposed to figure out when it's a good idea to hide behind a corner and when it's not? What if I WANT them to hide? The point of cutting off a part of the map is obviously to fight a single enemy/group of enemies without worrying about others coming to help them, so it's beneficial if they stay behind a corner in this case. An incomplete circle of traps could act as a saferoom in case the player gets low on HP, just get inside and close it with a single trap to make enemies run away. It would still act as a permanent Force Field, just for different purposes.

Or what if there's no corner to hide nearby and I have a sniper rifle? My point here is that unless you make a really sophisticated AI, being able to permanently block tiles is always going to be prone to abuse.

To get the effect you want you would need a cooldown of 5 turns at least. Changing an ability's recharge time to be 2.5 times as long would probably impact someone's fun yes.

I think your fears of the whole map being walled off are greatly exaggerated, how many turns would it take to accomplish this in a battle? How do you survive that long? Let's look at a few maps because I find it unlikely you'll be able to trigger such effects outside of doorways.

They do make me think though that a solution to avoid even these unlikely events would be for detected traps QT or otherwise to be stepped over only by AIs that can detect them, Sure Step style, that would be pretty balanced.