We’ve been having a lot of debates about how to implement monster&guards in 0.9.0. We wanted more options, more variety and more challenge. We made some significant steps, for example by connecting the size of the monster threat to the tech tree as well, instead of solely to the amount of colonists. But now we had to turn our general ideas into specific guards/monsters/weapons/ammo, and that turned out to be pretty hard to do right.
We kept running into some problems:
- How do guards select which monsters they attack / prioritize? Do players have control over this?
- How do we prevent the gameplay from becoming repetitive “unlock stronger guard”-cycles?
- How do we give players a fail-safe system that saves the colony if guards can’t handle a new, stronger wave?
- How to differentiate heavy damage early game weapons from middle game medium damage weapons?
- If we provide more guard-options, how do we prevent the guard-menu from becoming too cluttered?
Just today, Zun suggested an idea that I had rejected in the past, but which does seem to solve quite a lot of the problems we encountered. Traps! Disclaimers: we’re not 100% sure about this, it’s a very new idea. We’re going to think about it during the weekend, and we’ll read your responses here under the blog, and we’re open to discuss it on Discord. No guarantees it'll get implemented! But it does seem rather promising at the moment.
Early game traps could be placeable items that get triggered when monsters pass over them. These could be "damage-weapons" like bombs, but also things like caltrops or poison devices, to slow monsters down or to damage them over time. We're considering a dedicated "trapman"-job - a colonist who maintains and re-arms the traps.
Later in the game, the trigger could be a separate item from the weapon, something like a pressure plate. You would be able to configure the pressure plate to only be sensitive towards certain enemies, and you'd have to connect it to a specific weapon.
Traps enable a lot of new strategies. For example, at the very start of your monster funnel, you could have traps that poison and slow down the strongest monsters. At the end of your funnel, right before your banner, you could place a bunch of explosives. If your guards fail to kill any monsters, they’ll be defeated by the bombs and you will be clearly notified that you’ll need to upgrade your defenses!
It solves the player-control-over-prioritization problem in a relatively intuitive way, it prevents the guard menu from becoming too cluttered - it would be helpful in a myriad of ways! But is it the right solution? Should we keep exploring alternatives? Should we release 0.9.0 without traps and without trying to find an elegant solution for the problems mentioned above? We’re probably going to make a definitive decision at the start of next week, so this is the right moment to give us some input. Let us know your opinion, it’s sincerely appreciated!
Bedankt voor het lezen :D