CaveCricket48 here. Progress on Cortex Command is still rolling despite the unintentional lack of information, and with a new build around the corner, just hold on a little longer!
On my end of things, I’ve been working towards getting CC’s content balanced, in terms of gold cost, actor durability, and weapon damage. Keep in mind that this is the first pass-over, and by no means close to the final phase.
In the current and older builds, there were some serious issues with the cost of units, weapons, and crafts, where a cannon could cost more than a dropship. When a mob of enemies were coming your way, it was more economical and time efficient to throw a craft at them than to buy a soldier and a gun, and the soldier had a much lower chance of actually getting the job done. Now, however, pricing of items for the most part follows the pattern below:
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Weapons 0 – 150
Actors 100 – 250
Crafts 200 – 200+
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Pretty self-explanatory. The majority of weapons are cheaper than the majority of actors, and the majority of actors are cheaper than the majority of craft.
The pricing of actors is now more dependent on their durability and less arbitrary, taking into account GibWoundLimit and bleeding to come up with their gold cost, and then tweaking the value based on mobility and armor.
Damage for weapons has also been looked at to differentiate SMGs from assault rifles, balancing shotguns appropriately, and making sure everything has a sharplength that makes sense.
Previously, “SMG” and “assault rifle” weapons were essentially the same – one particle of damage per shot at a rapid rate of fire. Now, however, assault rifles fire two damage particles on their tracer round, allowing them to hit harder per shots fired compared to SMGs. The inconsistency also keeps them from stepping on the sniper weapon types too much, since sniper rifles still maintain a consistent number of particles per shot.
Shotgun fall-off has been changed to be less like snowflakes when they reach a certain distance, but still keep them powerful at close ranges. Now instead of pellets slowing down, they have a script where roughly 50% or 70% (depending on the faction) of the particles will randomly have their sharpness values set to 0 after a minimum period of time. This allows them to still injure enemies at long range without hitting with their full power, while still keeping them strong up close.
The sharplength of weapons now looks like:
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Handgun 100 – 200
Shotgun/SMG 150 – 250
AR 200 – 300
Rifle 250 – 350
Sniper 300 – 400+
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With “Rifle” being a rifle similar to a DMR, being useful for distances in between an assault rifle and a sniper rifle.
The next series of balancing passes will be to tweak things based on your feedback once the build is released, and then working to adjust actors’ GibImpulseLimit and ImpulseDamageThreshold to allow kinetic projectiles to deal health damage, instead of either exploding the actor or just shoving them. And, of course, modifying and adding new weapons to take advantage of the new damage method.
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21 Responses to “Content Balancing”
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Vlads -
# February 7th, 2014 at 10:22 am
Sweet, I can’t wait for it now.
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Meep -
# February 7th, 2014 at 10:42 am
Great Scott you’re still alive! It’s good to hear something more from you, and even more so the project being in development again. Will there be new fixes/features besides balancing?
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Dinberg -
# February 7th, 2014 at 1:05 pm
I knew it! Good going 😀
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haloman -
# February 7th, 2014 at 2:15 pm
it dosent seam the same iny more idk why
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Commander Blue -
# February 7th, 2014 at 4:08 pm
Hooray someday maybe CC will be out of the box fun and playable. Such a fun game.
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4zK -
# February 7th, 2014 at 4:28 pm
I totally support the new pricing. High prices on crafts wouldn’t even be that big of a concern when you get your money back anyway. Also, enough of guns being higher-priced than actors.
I’m also looking forward to raising the gib limits, the medic drone’s help will actually be worth something. I’d also adjust the sprites of the wounds. A bullet doesn’t really make a hole the size of a hand.
Also, maybe replacing some of the impulse-gibbing with impulse damage? As in, instead of exploding _outwards_ from the surface when falling a moderately long fall onto concrete, a light body would lose ~50 HP, and maybe a leg. A problem really with limbs not being affected by the fall is only the torso receiving the impulse, which is probably more of a hard-code issue.
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greasy neckbeard -
# February 7th, 2014 at 4:37 pm
great, can’t wait for linux users to get the full game
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Bugamn -
# February 7th, 2014 at 6:53 pm
Has the Linux version been fixed? It’s still not available through Steam and Humble Bundle’s version hasn’t been updated in a year.
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ZevN47 -
# February 7th, 2014 at 7:42 pm
Sweet! I’ve been lurking for an update for a while! 😀
Glad to hear you’re still tweaking things and they all sound very well thought out. Are you saying that prices are now going to be procedurally generated based on attributes of the weapons or are you just standardizing your pricing scheme? (I assume the latter.) Looking forward to more from Cave & CC!
TLDR: This is a great update guys! Keep up the good work!
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Iwalter -
# February 7th, 2014 at 8:44 pm
Good to hear some content is headed our way 🙂
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CaveCricket48 -
# February 7th, 2014 at 9:04 pm
@MEEP: Bug fixes are being worked on, such as the infamous map-seam bug, but it’s a bit iffy to fix since it’s difficult to reliably reproduce. Feature-wise, Steam Workshop integration as you already know, and as far as my memory goes.
4ZK: Gib wound sprite sizes noted. And replacing impulse-gibbing with impulse damage is the plan!
ZEVN47: Standardizing pricing schemes, yup.
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CaveCricket48 -
# February 7th, 2014 at 9:13 pm
BUGAMN: Data’s intending to make sure that all platform versions are working and released at the same time.
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sabasNL -
# February 8th, 2014 at 2:12 pm
I thought you guys stopped developing CC. Awesome to hear that you’re still working on it! The game absolutely needs some balancing, so I can’t wait for the next Build!
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Tyler Smith -
# February 9th, 2014 at 3:46 am
I was just wondering, and of course you get this a lot; will online multiplayer EVER be in Cortex Command, or is it just not feasible?
Otherwise, great work man. Keep it up!
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Koteng -
# February 9th, 2014 at 7:54 pm
Oh hey, it’s alive!
Can we expect new content soon, or will the next few builds just be bug fixing and balancing? -
CaveCricket48 -
# February 9th, 2014 at 9:06 pm
TYLER SMITH: It’s certainly possible, and several modders have made partially working online multiplayer before, but the methods either required enormous resources or were unreliable.
Right now, we’re lacking someone with the expertise to properly implement a fast, functional online multiplayer, and I can’t tell you whether or not we’ll get someone like that.
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CaveCricket48 -
# February 10th, 2014 at 4:24 am
KOTENG: There’s a small amount of new content, but mostly going to be bug fixes and balancing.
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Dinberg -
# February 10th, 2014 at 9:20 pm
Has anyone had any luck using a usb-over-ip type driver to connect a gamepad from another computer and play the game through online screen-share? At least, it should be feasible
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CaveCricket48 -
# February 10th, 2014 at 10:18 pm
DINBERG: You can see someone tried that here:
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Dinberg -
# February 12th, 2014 at 7:19 pm
Thanks CC48! Looks neat, but there is a bit of lag. Shame about the price tag!
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The_Blog -
# February 15th, 2014 at 3:06 am
Awesome!
Should make the modding and espacially BALANCING of mods ALLOT easier 😀
Looking forward to it!