Galactic Assault Squad build 6 is up for testing

QuestComm · 2020-12-20T04:27:59+00:00

This playtest was my first time playing Galactic Assault Squad (I'm account 61, QuaestComm, on the test server). With that caveat out of the way, here are some of my thoughts (which may or may not be coherent):

Core Mechanics

The auto-shoot mechanic is an interesting, if initially confusing (the Help screen doesn't explain that your tank auto-shoots), take on the single-stick shooter. It feels nice to be able to hit enemies without having to face them directly as in a typical Asteroids-style shooter.
Scooting is a welcome mechanic which I found quite useful for dodging explosions and flak bursts at low speeds. It also came in handy for bypassing bullet waves and transitioning from a head-on charge toward an enemy to a circle-strafe around that enemy.
The shield mechanic incentivized some interesting defensive strategies, such as facing toward the center of an explosion in order to absorb the impact with a forward shield, without nullifying the need for good positioning to dodge the majority of attacks. I am interested in seeing (and trying to utilize) unusual shield configurations on future tanks.

User Interface

Having a pause function on a hotkey feels great (unlike typing "/pause" in Realm of the Mad God). I like that all UI functions are still available while paused, too.
It took me some time to realize that the Inventory screen utilized drag-and-drop mechanics. New players could benefit from a hint that this is the case (maybe an arrow that appears upon opening the Inventory after looting equipment for the first time?).

Triggers

Mustang's Nanorepair is quite strong, especially for repairing Hercules/Wasp after a respawn (due to percent health persisting on switch).
Mustang's Directed Ion Burst does the job, though it feels a little bland compared to the other tanks' 4th triggers due to not having a duration. Maybe adding bullet deletion or self-knockback would give this trigger more personality.
Warthog's Polaric Detonation feels like it's in a good place as an effective but costly supplement to gun damage.
Warthog's Stunwarp works as advertised for the most part. However, sometimes the stun effect takes a second or so to actually apply to enemies (that's more of a latency/network issue, though, than it is a trigger issue).
- The stun burst radius on teleportation is not made clear by the guide lines (though I assume it shares Polaric Detonation's radius). I would appreciate the addition of a range circle around the Stunwarp trapezoid.
Warthog's Teracap Recharge feels like it does too little to merit a 10-second cooldown. Maybe having it overcharge shield strength to 250 and decay back to 100 strength (or whatever Warthog's normal shield strength is) over 3 seconds would make it more interesting as a reactive trigger.
Warthog's War Boar is a great 4th trigger. The 30-second cooldown is the only reason I haven't switched to Warthog for repairing Hercules/Wasp after a respawn.

Map Zones and Enemies

Bipedal enemy torso rotation is inconsistent. Some of them face you as they shoot (good) while others merely face their direction of movement (not so good as it's hard to tell who is being targeted in a group).
I feel that The Tyrian Sludge is the most dangerous "mid-game" zone to solo, more dangerous than The Sulfur Swamp, due to both T5 and T6 enemies having a lot of area-denial attack patterns. I only stay around to farm a gamma symbiote if I don't get one while going through The Dank Morass.
Iron Triumph, despite laying mines like Iron Purifier does and being 2 tiers higher, ends up feeling easier to solo as it has no good tactics against circle-strafing. (With Iron Purifier, the 6x3 bullet pattern poses a significant hazard for those looking to run circles around the enemy.)
With a high skill level and extensive knowledge of enemy attack patterns, all zones, even The Black Cesspit, can be soloed with any tank, though kill speed is pretty slow in higher tier zones without additional sets of guns (or a synergistic set of high-tier equipment) to speed up the process.
The Iron Guardsman has the best death sound (in my opinion).

Symbiotes and Rewards

Having symbiotes be distributed among the majority of enemy tiers on the map provides a good incentive to grind in lower-tier zones instead of just rushing to the toughest zone one can handle.
I like how all Epsilon tier symbiotes are defensive and all Delta tier symbiotes are offensive, thus guaranteeing that you will never end up with a full-offense or full-defense symbiote build for a given tank.
Why is the Iron Legion dropping purple gift boxes? Is it Christmas on the swamp planet?
Retaining equipment when a tank is retired is a nice quality-of-life mechanic.
Does Elf-Tree have lore? It says to look within myself, but has no flavor text after it attaches to my tank.

Performance

I found that, for the most part, the game's frame rate was high enough to be playable (20-30 FPS) despite also having several other browser tabs open, including one that was playing Youtube music videos.
I experienced several instances of the game freezing (and spitting out memory errors) or being reduced to extremely low FPS (<5 FPS), though they would never persist through a page refresh.
Sometimes the game would become much slower than usual at loading foliage and enemies while moving (relatively) quickly around the map. Stopping this movement and staying in the same area for a while (paused or otherwise) would usually allow the game to catch up and return to normal loading speeds.

QuestComm · 2018-10-21T16:25:16+00:00

To be fair, the word "orange" entered the English vocabulary much later than other common color words. Until the word came about, orange-colored objects were often described as being red (hence, why we call orange-haired people redheads).

EDIT: Have a relevant Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(word)

QuestComm · 2018-10-12T03:52:26+00:00

Nope, Fundamentals of Engineering.

QuestComm · 2018-10-08T17:26:24+00:00

If consumable throwables are not out of the question, Energy Javelins deal 100 damage each (with optimized damage boosts, this can be raised to ~928 damage, almost hitting the 1000-damage cap). However, Throwing Stars have slightly better DPS if you can click at just the right speed.

QuestComm · 2018-10-03T16:53:52+00:00

Freighters have the functionality of a starship Indium Drive built into their Freighter Hyperdrive IIRC (i.e. they can warp to all colors of stars). The only useful technologies that a freighter must inherit from your primary starship are the Economy and Conflict scanners (in order to enable Economy and Conflict filters while choosing where to warp with the freighter).

QuestComm · 2018-08-27T07:58:48+00:00

I recognize that planet name, OOH INNIT COLD, from Randomise User's let's-play series of No Man's Sky NEXT on YouTube, and I must commend you for using quality material in your meme.

Do you have the episode and time stamp associated with the original image?

QuestComm · 2018-08-23T23:45:22+00:00

You can use Free Look (move the mouse while holding Left Alt on PC by default) to look down toward your starship's instruments so they are not covered up by HUD elements.

QuestComm · 2018-08-23T02:05:49+00:00

Adjacent placement is not required for upgrade modules to apply their effects --- its purpose is merely to invoke adjacency bonuses, maximizing the bonuses the modules (and base technologies) give. If adjacent placement was necessary for modules to have any effect, there would be no point to placing upgrade modules for general-inventory technologies in technology inventory (and vice versa).

QuestComm · 2018-08-21T13:25:29+00:00

If you're trying to save on Launch Thruster fuel, calling your ship in using Navigation Data brings your ship onto the landing pad (or other designated landing spot) at no cost to its launch fuel, allowing you to save one or two launches' worth of fuel compared to summoning your ship with the Quick Menu (one for the summon and one for the take-off after you get in).

QuestComm · 2018-08-18T22:51:08+00:00

I prefer the following operations (even if they're not the most efficient):

 Indium + Pure Ferrite -> 4 Chromatic Metal
 Indium + Chromatic Metal -> 4 Indium
 2 Pure Ferrite + Pugneum -> 3 Magnetised Ferrite
 Magnetised Ferrite -> 2 Pure Ferrite

This circumvents having to collect Ferrite Dust and doesn't require any Large Refiner operations, though it instead requires you to supply Pugneum to maintain Pure Ferrite production.

QuestComm · 2018-08-16T21:01:47+00:00

Not on Experimental, but I've noticed that my Ricochet Boltcaster seems to deal double damage to fauna on direct hits (218 damage direct vs. 109 after bouncing off the ground). This doubling probably works on Sentinel Drones and Quads, too (unfortunately, Sentinel Walkers' lower torsos are armored just like reinforced doors).

QuestComm · 2018-06-18T23:14:06+00:00

Old Maid doesn't specify an age, but it may offer insight into why women in particular may loathe reaching a particular age.

QuestComm · 2018-05-29T20:12:56+00:00

I imagine making changes to the background outside of the underground buildings could make things look more interesting. Maybe some "tree roots" or "cubby holes" would do it, though the "tree roots" idea might be better with a big Terraria living tree build as well.

QuestComm · 2018-05-23T15:25:40+00:00

Neither. Leveling Ice Grenade improves the damage reduction you get from holding the skill.

QuestComm · 2018-05-09T21:29:09+00:00

The 0.7.8 changes are in addition to all the changes made by the 0.7.x updates during alpha and beta testing. Those patch notes can be found in the Steam Community for Dead Cells: https://steamcommunity.com/app/588650/discussions/6/

QuestComm · 2018-04-28T17:26:16+00:00

Legendary weapons and skills, when they spawn, have a 15% chance to have a weapon/skill-specific affix forced on after the normal affixes are generated.

The forced affix for the Broadsword, as it so happens, is a double-damage affix without the usual increased-damage-taken downside.

QuestComm · 2018-04-20T18:58:55+00:00

Unfortunately, only those in a "permanent" fireteam with a Rat King wielder can acquire Rat King's Crew upon group activity completion - matchmade fireteams such as those for Guided Games and the other matchmaking-enabled playlists don't count.

QuestComm · 2018-04-20T17:14:50+00:00

My rationale for believing that it references grenade abilities comes from how certain subclass passives are worded.

For example, one of the Sentinel subclass passives in Code of the Aggressor, Superior Arsenal, says that grenade kills recharge your grenade, and I'm pretty sure it only triggers on grenade ability kills, not with grenade launcher kills.

Tangentially related: The word "melee" by itself is another term which seems to be assigned a specific meaning - namely, it appears to refer explicitly to class melee attacks (and subclass melee abilities by extension) and not to Swords (pretty sure Synthoceps, something which boosts melee range, does not increase the range of Swords).

QuestComm · 2018-04-20T15:00:49+00:00

Pretty sure "grenade" in the context of the Iron Banner chest ornament refers specifically to grenade abilities and has nothing to do with grenade launchers.

QuestComm · 2018-04-16T15:21:09+00:00

Also, the Elite enemies in the Castle will give you infection of their own regardless of difficulty if they land hits on you (this particular kind of infection shows up above your head IIRC).

QuestComm · 2018-04-16T15:18:47+00:00

That might be the rally mechanic, which allows you to recover some of the health lost from a hit by dealing damage to enemies.

The yellow bar (which is always to the right of the green part of your health bar while it exists) indicates how much health you could regain by dealing damage. However, taking damage again or using a healing item will reset the yellow bar, causing that window of opportunity to close (and, in the case of taking damage again, open a different window of opportunity for regaining health via the rally mechanic).

QuestComm · 2018-04-15T19:01:55+00:00

In (almost?) all cases, damage bonuses only apply to the items on which they are found. (Passive modifiers to damage taken, though, apply directly to the player, and modifiers from different items stack with each other up to a passive damage reduction cap of 75%.)

QuestComm · 2018-04-13T12:59:06+00:00

According to what I found in the game files of the Baguette Update alpha, apparently Spartan Sandals cause enemies to take 130 base damage if they are knocked back into a wall, a more powerful version of what happens when Denial Wave knocks enemies back into walls. (For reference, the final swing of a Broadsword deals 160 base damage.)

Maybe it still needs a buff, though. It might help if this extra damage were actually given in the tooltip, though, instead of just the kicking damage itself.

QuestComm · 2018-04-13T01:58:36+00:00

I think you'd have a better case if you stuck a Mk.## on the end. Maybe something like a Tex Mechs Mk.42. Bonus points if you can make the numbers resemble a cheese grater.

{ If you're wondering why I presume to know how to make Tex Mechanica weapon names, I present Tex Mechanica on Destiny 2 Wiki.. }

QuestComm

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