PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Blake_]

Nonsense there is never enough space to carry stuff and we're adding more and more items so if you don't have a problem now you probably will at some point. Don't use the drone if you don't like it. We didn't want to make it so OP everyone wants a drone so we disabled the weapon mods it has, for the first version at least.

Why bother ? Intellect is ok. Making the drone a vehicle unlocked in a quest would be best. Like the Fallout New Vegas drone follower one.  Putting it under intelligence will -as you said- force you guys to delete its killing capabilities, which sucks.

I'm actually confused that with all the easy-peazy possibilities that Fetch quests and Clear quests have on their on, you guys didn't pursue them yet (items/ notes with lore instead of supplies, kill a specific target, steal something... etc). I guess there is too much food on the plate already for a20.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Or else? =P

Or we will boycott 7D2D.

No, scratch that. We're grown adults around here. We would mancott it.

(Not taking sides here, I just thought I had to pipe in someway or another. )

Why bother ? Intellect is ok. Making the drone a vehicle unlocked in a quest would be best. Like the Fallout New Vegas drone follower one.  Putting it under intelligence will -as you said- force you guys to delete its killing capabilities, which sucks.

I'm actually confused that with all the easy-peazy possibilities that Fetch quests and Clear quests have on their on, you guys didn't pursue them yet (items/ notes with lore instead of supplies, kill a specific target, steal something... etc). I guess there is too much food on the plate already for a20.

Because everyone would start using the Robotic Drone for its killing capabilities and that would possibly create balance issues. Unless you want the 5 attributes to be 5 strict classes instead where if you pick one you cannot use any other weapons from other "classes". I don't think anyone would want that.

 

[Diragor]

Nonsense there is never enough space to carry stuff and we're adding more and more items so if you don't have a problem now you probably will at some point. Don't use the drone if you don't like it. We didn't want to make it so OP everyone wants a drone so we disabled the weapon mods it has, for the first version at least.

I think that really good. I like your idea of the drone as a kind of support. And you said no weapon mods in the first version at least. Maybe just maybe you have some plans adding it for late game. Like the legendary weapons that are planned. it could be a hard boos drop item I am so curious which way you'll go while heading towards gold

Pretty much this. It's too tedious and confusing to upgrade your base with the insane current block upgrade path. It's just over designed. Simple is better.

So will the iron blocks disappear? Just wanna ask they are too expensive anyway^^

When you simplify the block upgrade path, will you change the amount of materials that are needed to upgrade a block. Cause thats what I would like. It seems a bit broken to me that we now only need half the amount of materials to build and upgrade cause the between blocks are gone. hope it gets buffed

 

[Khalagar]

The drone is just a pack mule and has no weaponry for this very reason. He can heal you if you sacrifice a mod slot for the healing mod. He can boost your stamina recovery speed with the teddy bear mod, has armor and a headlight to light your way when mining, etc. Cargo mods are stackable so I imagine most people filling her up with cargo mods.

Can you release any info yet or early ideas on what makes the drone special for Int builds over the other builds? It seems like every build is going to want the pet drone following them just for the storage or healing etc, is anything in the int tree going to give it some extra oomph or utility for the perk investment of having the junk line maxed out?

 

[Outlaw_187]

I agree with what someone said above about getting the lore into the game. 

Would be a perfect time to start introducing things like "the Duke is coming" warnings, notes left from victims of the wasteland, etc....

 

[Robbing Zombie]

Any news about the water overhaul? How will the water behave after the overhaul etc. I fancy digging a moat around my base and running the water in from a lake or the ocean 

 

[TSBX]

Moving forward with new builds and back-porting optimizations to the current build is exactly what they've been doing for a long time, which is the right way to go. It's not like the two builds are so divorced that gains in one cannot be supported in the other (generally speaking, I'm sure there are caveats to that).

 

[Urban Blackbear]

I really like the way upgrading blocks work now. Are we really just going to be making concrete blocks and putting them down in a finished state in the future? This is just my 2¢ but I like having the system be a little more in-depth and complicated. I agree that blocks should probably not down-grade when they reach 0 HP but not everything needs to be simplified. On the fence about waiting for concrete blocks to cure but I like being able to lay out a base in rebar and filling them with concrete.

 

[Roland]

Are we really just going to be making concrete blocks and putting them down in a finished state in the future?

Not if you don't want to. There will still be an upgrade path to it albeit a shorter path than we now have.

 

[Falcon197]

So if R Concrete is gone. What happens to rebarframes ? are we supposed to lay out our bases with woodframes and upgrade all the way ? just curios 

Not gonna sugarcoat it: rcon being taken out earns a downvote from me, because while cutting out r-con and rebar frames is on the one hand a huge time and resource-saver, on the flipside it kills some of the immersion with heavy construction projects and limits base hardening from a process perspective.  The group I play with rolls with mass concrete production and relies on rcon as a stop-gap because it is easier to mass mine and process stone with multiple mixers while we work on steel production in preparation for reinforcing rcon blocks to max tier.

I won't discount the possibility that I'm doin' it wrong, but as the main builder for my guys who's made the exact same massive base for the last 3 alphas, getting the structure upgraded to steel always takes longer than going from normal crete to rcon, due in large part to the additional skill points in INT required to fully unlock steelworks.  Forcing us to rely on basic crete in the interim presents a significant balance shift favoring the horde.

I understand the reasoning behind the move, but if it's not too late to pump the brake on the decision, I wanted to add my two cents to the melting pot of opinion.

 

[meganoth]

Not gonna sugarcoat it: rcon being taken out earns a downvote from me, because while cutting out r-con and rebar frames is on the one hand a huge time and resource-saver, on the flipside it kills some of the immersion with heavy construction projects and limits base hardening from a process perspective.  The group I play with rolls with mass concrete production and relies on rcon as a stop-gap because it is easier to mass mine and process stone with multiple mixers while we work on steel production in preparation for reinforcing rcon blocks to max tier.

I won't discount the possibility that I'm doin' it wrong, but as the main builder for my guys who's made the exact same massive base for the last 3 alphas, getting the structure upgraded to steel always takes longer than going from normal crete to rcon, due in large part to the additional skill points in INT required to fully unlock steelworks.  Forcing us to rely on basic crete in the interim presents a significant balance shift favoring the horde.

I understand the reasoning behind the move, but if it's not too late to pump the brake on the decision, I wanted to add my two cents to the melting pot of opinion.

The only sure fact is that concrete and rconcrete are simplified into one concrete. How many hitpoints this new concrete has is a totally different question, it might get the HPs of concrete, rconcrete or any value inbetween.

Going back just a page I see Madmole even said about this: "Yes, but I think we're buffing the basic concrete to be as strong as the old r concrete. ". Changing HP values of materials is such a trivial thing even developers can do that between two coffees

EDIT: In general, when developers make functional changes to a game and they think the balance is correct at the moment then they will make the functional change in such a way that the balance is preserved or equivalent to the state before.

 

[MechanicalLens]

The only sure fact is that concrete and rconcrete are simplified into one concrete. How many hitpoints this new concrete has is a totally different question, it might get the HPs of concrete, rconcrete or any value inbetween.

Going back just a page I see Madmole even said about this: "Yes, but I think we're buffing the basic concrete to be as strong as the old r concrete. ". Changing HP values of materials is such a trivial thing even developers can do that between two coffees

Might I make a suggestion? The HP for the new concrete should be 6969... For reasons...

 

[faatal]

Moving forward with new builds and back-porting optimizations to the current build is exactly what they've been doing for a long time, which is the right way to go. It's not like the two builds are so divorced that gains in one cannot be supported in the other (generally speaking, I'm sure there are caveats to that).

Many of the a20 optimizations will move to a19 easy enough. I'm even thinking we upgrade a19 to Unity 2020.3, since it was not hard and some optimizations, like mesh baking, need newer Unity versions.

 

[Perlin_Worm]

And I thought wet concrete blocks were an intentional strategic design which comes in the form of a penalty for throwing up concrete blocks(in weaker form) during hoard night. Guess it was just an accidental strategic design. 

 

[meganoth]

Many of the a20 optimizations will move to a19 easy enough. I'm even thinking we upgrade a19 to Unity 2020.3, since it was not hard and some optimizations, like mesh baking, need newer Unity versions.

Important: Players need to build the new cooking workstation before they can bake meshes !

 

[MechanicalLens]

Important: Players need to build the new cooking workstation before they can bake meshes !

At this rate the player will need to read a book on how to use a cooking pot and grill.  Oh wait...

 

[BFT2020]

Many of the a20 optimizations will move to a19 easy enough. I'm even thinking we upgrade a19 to Unity 2020.3, since it was not hard and some optimizations, like mesh baking, need newer Unity versions.

IMHO

If TFP can do this without taking away resources towards future Alphas, then great.  If not, then why do it?  The basic understanding is that Alphas are changes / improvements / prototypes over previous Alphas.  Ultimately you guys are doing all the hard work and we are benefiting from it, but I and others would support whichever direction you guys go with A19. 

 

[Morloc]

Wet concrete is just a dumb simulation thing and never added any value to the game and eats CPU to calculate when it dries so it really wasn't worth the sim factor for the CPU it ate.

So 100? timer checks against the like 750,000,000,000 instructions per second the CPU is churning out? I'd have never guessed that'd have an impact.

I probably @%$#ed when forms were added, and then I was sad to see them go. Now I'll be sad to see wet concrete and rebar frames gone. I suppose I'm not unhappy to see concrete reduced to one version. I almost never used regular concrete. I am happy that block reduction will be going away. There's a precious few things it's cool for, and the rest is very, very annoying.

-Morloc

 

[Blake_]

Many of the a20 optimizations will move to a19 easy enough. I'm even thinking we upgrade a19 to Unity 2020.3, since it was not hard and some optimizations, like mesh baking, need newer Unity versions.

So that's what all the testing branch updates were all about. As much as I understand the commercial value of a20 being optimized and having a big impact, optimizations on that scale released sooner rather than later will always have a positive impact on the game as a whole in every marketing aspect, both for new players and "old" ones. 

That is, as long as you think it's easy to port and doesn't introduce too much "paperwork" then go ahead. I won't mind the map restart if the game behaves 15% smoother in every instance. Last patch 2-3 months before a20 exp is indeed a sweet spot and keeps the crowd interested.

 

[SnowDog1942]

Many of the a20 optimizations will move to a19 easy enough. I'm even thinking we upgrade a19 to Unity 2020.3, since it was not hard and some optimizations, like mesh baking, need newer Unity versions.

Now there’s a plot twist Id never see coming.