As a continuation of things to be seen aside from Multiplayer, we’re here to show some new functionalities to PvE tech nodes.
I mentioned it this in the comment section of this post, but I rarely remember that Quantum Break is even a thing. It’s a useful mechanic, so I’d like to remember it’s there while I’m actually in a fight.
Any tailoring that can make these mechanics more useful and reliable is going to be well received. I might even remember to start making use of them. Currently, my approach to every mission in M.A.S.S. Builder is dedicated ranged builds. I only tend to fall back on melee when it’s almost time for the boss fight and I’m trying to conserve ammo for that, or I’m feeling cheeky.
Now that I look at it, base QB is pretty slow. I’m not sure I’d risk it during certain boss fights. Not until I got really comfortable with the timing at least. Alternatively, why not just use the node upgrades? It’s something I need to check out when 0.9.0 is finally released. For now I’m pretty committed to the run and gun style of combat.
Here’s something I found especially interesting about Vermillion’s post today, though.
Thus sub-units that can modify the number will come into play in 0.9.0. As much as we wanted these type of nodes to exist before, we did not have the time to code them into our game until now, and we’ve added a few 10% here and 20% time reduction there to a lot of nodes focusing on defenses while also providing a choice to lower it by 50% with drawbacks as well.
I like the idea of demerits showing up as you begin to ‘overspecialize’ in a given area. It’s very Armored Core-esque and balanced, at least when it’s done right. Whatever these drawbacks are, they should be something that some players will want to avoid, while others will want to lean into it for the extra challenge.
This is also going to be available in PvP, so I think it’s important for people to be able to decide whether they want to cover up their weaknesses with more balanced builds or lean heavily into their niche and embrace the danger.
It’s only a couple of minor changes, but I’ll try to go over them really quick.
General
In general I’m going to be quantifying my progress in whatever areas I can. That means that if I’m in a stage of an active project where I can gauge the work left to completion, I’ll post a progress bar highlighting the current task directly beneath the project that task is tied to.
Now for specifics.
Lydia’s Golden Treasury
I want to get that 1st draft finished up this month. I know some people prefer to use word count plugins to track their writing progress, but chapters don’t have specific word count goals. They can range anywhere from 6k to 12k words.
Posting my current word count isn’t as precise as judging how many scenes I’ve got left to write and basing my progress on that, so Lydia’s Golden Treasury and any other written projects will just get progress bars.
Fleeing Victory
I’m not working on this at the moment since there are much bigger priorities right now, so I’ve taken it out of the Current Projects section. The same thing will happen to anything that gets temporarily shelved. Likewise, it’ll go right back up once I start working on it again.
Artorius and Remnants
These are the two most serious and challenging projects on the list by far and I’m not sure I’m going to have any interesting updates for these over the summer. While neither project requires it (debatable), both would benefit immeasurably from me brushing up on my digital art skills again. Among other things.
While I’d like to do that, making artwork can be extremely time consuming, especially working alone. It could easily take up more time than the rest of these ongoing projects combined. I still want to do it, but it’s something to approach carefully. Just diving in is going to lead to a burnout and I can’t have that right now.
Space Engineers
I added the logo so all of those progress bars at the bottom are clearly tied to Space Engineers.
Admiral Hipper
There is one major and one minor change I need to make to the Hipper before she’s ready for prime time. The major change is the main drive (engine). I need to finalize the design with a fair compromise between PCU and aesthetics. The minor change is the ship’s scripts, its suite of ‘software’ essentially.
The Hipper class is intended to use the same scripts across all of the different hulls. That means finishing the scripting portion of this isn’t a high priority and doesn’t necessarily preclude the ship from becoming a full workshop upload. I would just need to update the blueprint on the workshop later on with the final tweaks.
All of that to say the ship is near enough to 100% that I don’t think it needs to be on the projects list anymore, same as the Cosmo Messer.
Closing
That’s the update in a nutshell. I’m going to be as precise as I can with the progress bars wherever I use them, but ultimately, they’re just progress bars, not timetables.
Have you ever just slept for well over twelve hours for no obvious reason?
So many missed opportunities today
The fact that my last dream before waking up was a dream about working on one of my Aeon projects just made it worse. It was surprisingly realistic, though, even after waking up and scrutinizing what I still remembered.
I guess the takeaways are going to be figuring out how much of that dream I can transfer over into the real world, and of course, setting my alarm tomorrow.
Clan Battles went well enough, especially in the beginning. I even got a few more replays to record for video footage. It’ll probably be ancient by the time I get around to making something out of it, but building up the habit of getting footage is just as important.
Anyway, I was mostly hopping between the Yoshino, Daring, and Smolensk. I played the Khaba once but the reduced maneuverability compared to the Daring was too jarring for me to adjust in just one game, especially on a contested cap.
I don’t have a 10pt commander for her yet, but I also purchased researched and purchased the Halland before hopping off of WoWs. I took way longer than it should, mainly because I’m researching multiple DD branches at the same time, but that’s one more ship off the to-get list.
GBO2
I would have made a post about it much sooner, but I didn’t even think to log into the game to see what suit was coming after the Delta Plus.
It was really annoying in the moment to have accidentally predicted the next suit.
GBO2: Delta Plus Arrives | The Praedian Records
The Delta Plus is finally here. The update actually happened last night (Every Wednesday), but I was too worn out from Clan Battles to really dive into that.
Notice the ‘green gif’ featuring the Kshatriya.
BEHOLD!
This was a little too soon for me. I was hoping for one or two more MSV entries before they pulled out this monster. I’m not spending money on the game right now so I didn’t have enough tokens left from my Delta Plus attempt to have much of a chance of rolling it. That said, all rolling for mobile suits in this game does is give you ‘early access’ to the suits since they can be bought a few months down the line in the MS store.
So basically I’m not too broken up about it. Just a little frustrated having two MS I really like coming back to back. That’s a token drainer, especially if you’re going through a free to play phase.
Closing
That’s all for now. Depending on what unit comes out tonight I might post about it tomorrow. Otherwise it’ll probably be something project related.
A couple of my external drives are getting full, so I’m hunting down all the bloatware and other useless junk that’s never going to get used and cleaning those drives out. That’s been roughly half my day.
The other half was fitful sleep because my sleep schedule went up in flames. Again.
It’s always interesting what you can find from the far off year of 2016.
Anyway, this is just a small note for the blog on how this week’s starting out. I also want to mention that there’s a Space Engineers project I’m looking into. I need to do some research and testing first, but it seems doable and just barely worth the time needed. There won’t be any details going up about this potential project until I’m fully committed, though. There are one too many IPs involved for it to be anything marketable, but the experience could be worth it.
