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"Catch" Is Stupid


corona_wind

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Someone has to say it.

There is no motivation to avoid obstacles when you're rewarded for spamming enough VTOL engines to survive the death zones.  None of the winning ships have more than a button as logic, unless it's redundant copies of the same button, again, to keep working despite flying straight through death zones.

There should be fewer death zones and more just-plain-obstacles, of a sort that's difficult to brute force past.  That might encourage a little more sophistication in designs.

Why do VTOL engines work for anything but gravity, anyway?

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Yes, I completely agree, and I was the one who made that mode xD 

Initially when developing that mode, the VTOL thruster did not exist, and the danger zones were much more severe (meaning that if you flew through them, you got instantly destroyed). In that way you HAD to be clever with logic and do interesting things with sensors and the directional sensor. (But it was very hard to make something good :) )

Now that the VTOL thruster exists, that game mode really became something completely else and we have to think how we can revamp that mode completely (or maybe even scratch it). As it currently exists I also think it's simply a boring mode. VTOL = OP and we don't want modes which have a best solution.

No worries for mentioning that here, you're completely right :) 

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I think giving VTOL engines a really low exhaust velocity would solve their OP-ness without changing legit uses or breaking any saves.  They'd top out at 10m/s or whatever no matter how many you have but give plenty of thrust at liftoff.  They'd still be great for hovering craft and tiny 1-engine factory things, just not racing.

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Interesting idea about the velocity cap. Sounds like a good idea so that small satellites are still possible and solves the more = better problem :) I'll think about it and forward it to the team. Thank you for your suggestions!

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I think the simplest way to fix Catch (and it definitely does need fixing), would be to increase the maximum points for automatically winning to 10 or so.

I think 5 catches is right around the limit for what a dumb VTOL catcher can manage before it inevitably breaks to the existing death zones. By increasing the limit to 10, I'm pretty sure slower drones that actually avoid the death zones become dominant without any major mechanics changes.

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As an optional addition to this, it might be a good idea to disable decouplers. Otherwise it becomes a competition of who has the better harassment swarm rather than who is better at a deadly game of bumper cars. Don't get me wrong, I love harassment swarms, but it'd be nice if that was Sumo-only thing for the sake of variety.

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Interesting ideas. I'm not so sure about limiting decouplers, as they allow for many different tactics, and I'm not sure that is the right way to balance stuff. Increasing the score sounds like another good solution, which counters dumb VTOLs, but then the match might take quite a while :) 

Great suggestions here, thank you all for helping :) 

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