Hello there and happy new year! Starting up with another round of Mandrillian tweaks (I promise this is the last "big" one for Mandrillian mechanics)
During all these years of development, I managed to balance the game around the idea of "close call situations" (say, getting a killshot on the Mandrillian right as it was about to connect a hit). While this is pretty exciting for the VR player, turns out "getting shot in the face repeatedly" was not as engaging for PC players, especially newcomers going against a more experienced friend.
The problem with tweaking this is that just making the Mandrillians have more health would turn these situations into the VR player getting outright killed, so I had to find something that could keep things tense for both sides without turning it into a slugfest of the Robot and the Mandrillians trading blows.
After some iteration (and there's probably some more iteration needed), this is what I've ended up with.
STAMINA-BASED DAMAGE REDUCTION
Mandrillian's 6 stamina points now act as a sort of regenerative shield that reduces damage taken by a little bit; at full stamina there's up to 30% protection, and then a sharp falloff. This means it's smarter to wait until you have full stamina before charging against the Robot.
To play around with this, the Robot has a chance to take away stamina points from the Mandrillians by dealing damage: there's a high chance of stamina loss when hitting limbs (guaranteed with harder hitting weapons), and a lower chance when hitting the face, all of it also multiplied by the projectile's own damage value. Until now, limb shots were basically wasted bullets (at least until limbs go critical), so hopefully this will bring up some tactical plays in some situations.
UPGRADE SWAPPING
Mandrillians can now swap upgrades without needing to die. Until now, there were especially jarring endgame situations where players had enough points to buy beefy upgrades but did not have the means to buy them unless the Robot killed them.
To swap your upgrades, go back to the Vents and get away from the vent entrance; you will get a text popup telling you the Upgrade menu is available (A on controller, SPACE on keyboard). You won't be allowed to swap upgrades if you don't have full stamina, if you are burning/poisoned, or don't have enough points to buy the cheapest available upgrade. You don't need to be at full health, but you won't get any health back from it.
This one is quite the game-changer, letting Mandrillians be way more reactive with their strats, like quickly swapping to a jammer to defuse mines, smoke to obstruct a sentry turret's targeting, a healer to bypass poison clouds, etc.
BACKING OUT OF UPGRADES
This one is a very small QoL feature. After buying an upgrade, you used to be locked into it while you selected your spawn. Now you can simply back out of it (B on controller, R on keyboard) before spawning, getting a full refund.
FULL CHANGELOG
- Mandrillian stamina now acts as damage reduction (up to 30% at 6 points and then a steep falloff)
- Mandrillians can now lose stamina when taking limb damage or heavy head damage
- Getting shocked now takes away all stamina points from a Mandrillian, but shock duration decreases depending on how many stamina points you had when you got shocked
- Increased base stamina recharge initial delay by a couple seconds across all modes
- Upgrades can now be swapped on live Mandrillians by going into the vents; you will get a little text popup telling you if it's available (A on controller, SPACE on keyboard)
- You can "back out" of upgrades by pressing B on controller, R on keyboard at the spawn selection screen
- Sentry Turret magazine back to 20 bullets from the previous 15, as Mandrillians now have many ways to counter it
- Adjusted shrapnel effective distance for c4 and grenade launcher explosions, as it was too easy to get domed by a single fragment
- Standard Mandrillian respawns reduced to 10, to account for increased survivability
- Infestation Challenge time limit increased from 20 to 30 minutes
- Fixed sneaky bug that caused stamina to not recharge if you quickly tapped the attack button without actually starting the charge
- Made Main Menu stamina recharge speed the same as the "fast" recharge speed for Mandrillians
- Improved the feel of WASD menu operation on Mandrillian upgrade/spawn selection screens