Thoughts of a SA tester

[Farseli]

Hi again from the SA thread. I thought I would start a thread here to shed my thought about the game as it currently stands and as we continue playing it.

Just to start, man you are lucky that goons are such sperglords. This is the first time I have ever used a spreadsheet for a game and I did some happily just to make creating a pod easier. I now have a 3 page spreadsheet with perfect interaction so that when I change any of the components the rest of the stats on my pod will update accordingly. Basically, I hate you for revealing that I had the potential to find spreadsheets FUN. Jerk.

About the invading forces, I'm wondering how inter-faction relations are going to work. I like how each one has some history and flair though so that's a great touch.

Overall though, this looks really fun! I'm just being super impatient because I wanna see some destruction! I'll field some questions over at the SA thread so that everyone can see your answers, but I just wanted to show some love back over here for you as well.

EDIT: I totally forgot you explained the areas. I DID have a question about them though so I'll ask in the thread.

Return of the edit: Or not. The questions got split up and turned into other stuff. Anyway, like I said, I post more once we get the rounds going and then more missions.

Son of the edit: I just thought of this now. I know that you don't have all of the different component types fleshed out too much yet (what with some super specialized types not having been made yet) but having pre-built parts is almost silly since anyone being serious about this is hand crafting their pods and min-maxing their parts anyway. In the end, you'll have hundreds of different parts all slightly different from each other.

If you ever make a program that lets players quickly create parts and build pods, it might become a better idea to only catalog special parts that don't follow the standard rules.

[Gravedust]

Wow you really have my back in that thread, thanks a lot. I have to run in 30 seconds, but I'll respond to any part of this that wasn't covered on SA when I get the chance.

[Farseli]

Well thanks for bringing this to us! I saw that your registration date on SA is really recent! I see you first started posting in the Battletech and the B-17 threads and after reading through all 3 of the test missions in the airship thing I can see you really love games with lots of numbers and stuff getting blown up. I'd say that the only thing missing in Battlepod is probably that the pods can't take component damage (but that's a good thing since this is intended to be a little more simple).

I've always wanted to get in on the ground floor of something like this though so being in the first mission and running an entirely custom pod is going to be a thrill. I'll keep trying to help out too since just from what I've read of your other game and all the info of this I say you've got talent. Also, I love your art! Oh I think my favorite ship from that might have been the Karma Charger. It looks so sleek and awesome.

[Gravedust]

Thanks.

To answer your question regarding prebuilt parts; I sort of figured there would be three levels of people wanting to participate

• Peeps who just want to run around and blow stuff up.
This is who the default pods are for, just hop in and start shooting.

• Peeps who are a little into pod design.
This is the target market for the premade parts, you can just bolt things on and take them off and all you really need to do is add or subtract size and cost, and figure out your Size, Cost and Mobi. There will be a little inefficiency, but you still get a custom pod with a minimum of effort.

• People who are more into Pod design
Which is what the build formulas are for, people who really like to massage numbers and get everything -just so- and don't mind doing some math and such.

Anyway, to acommodate group 2 I'm probably going to add more to the prebuilt parts list, but I won't add every custom part that gets developed since that would clog things too much. I just want all the bases covered in a basic fashion.

Anyway.. At work gotta run. Feel free to ask about anything else that crosses your mind.

[disastranagant]

I think the size-mobility-jump jets feedback loop gets a bit much. I'm probably gonna wind up writing a program for pod design simply because of it, since every little change winds up needing adjustments to how much jump and mobility you need. I can't just look at a set of equipment and know where speed and jump can be while fitting those last few pieces of armor.

I just spent an hour fucking with equations trying to get a specific case with armor in terms of size and cost (since jump and mobility are both naturally in terms of size), only for it to blow up in my face and give me a complete nonsense value.

[Gravedust]

Yeah, that's why flat Mobility has no Size associated with it. For Jets they do sort of need to add size size to be balanced I think.

I too tried to make an equation to figure out what amount of jump to add to get to a certain size that would be prefect.. and then I gave up and just winged it. =P

Usually when I'm messing with jets if there's a speed I know I want I'll assign a target Size for the pod that allows the jets to hit that, and then sort of build the pod to that specification.

So if I want a Pod that'll Jump 4, I know my target size is 150. So I start with the jet and then build around it.

[captainbravo]

Jumpjets are a strange beast. Honestly, unless I'm specifically making a strategy around the jet, trying to eke as much movement as possible, or need a way to fuck around with cost/weight numbers, (Since Jumpjet miniaturization is the most efficient on the board) I just fit the jets to a move 1. The only reason I give something jumpjets is so it won't be stuck in behind a wall or a cliff or something. It's close, don't get me wrong, but base mobility barely edges out the cost of the jets.

[disastranagant]

I punched my figures into Wolfram Alpha. It gave up. Good job.

[disastranagant]

Dec 5, 2011 13:08:31 GMT -8 captainbravo said:

Jumpjets are a strange beast. Honestly, unless I'm specifically making a strategy around the jet, trying to eke as much movement as possible, or need a way to fuck around with cost/weight numbers, (Since Jumpjet miniaturization is the most efficient on the board) I just fit the jets to a move 1. The only reason I give something jumpjets is so it won't be stuck in behind a wall or a cliff or something. It's close, don't get me wrong, but base mobility barely edges out the cost of the jets.

I have a design that can either do 10 move or 8 move 5 jump, so I'm trying to see how much armor I can get on the latter.

[disastranagant]

I think I'm swearing off jump jets. They're a major headache and he's gone out of his way to make them as shitty as possible on the board.