Pod Wars Feedback Thread

[Ikea]

Weapon variety could be improved, right now the best one dps wise is mark 2 lasers, arguably the SPES shotguns can be as good or better due to there utility against humans outside of pods. These are not the highest tier pod weapons. Buffing pod weapons like the disruptor array and the assault laser, and perhaps adding pod weapons like the grenade launcher or precursor pod weapon would add interest to the round. If I may suggest, pod weapons whose goal is primarily to breach areas, would be highly useful.

Some faster way to make pods would be good, perhaps a pod fabricator that, fabricates pods. These pods can be upgraded further with components from there. Some pod secondary's would be fun to be able to print, like for example SWORD recovery or SEED. This should encourage pod customization and make it viable.

More penalties for having your pod destroyed would be useful. If someone's in a pod and it gets destroyed, they can leave the pod taking minimal damage and run away to a safe cover. Having a pod explode while you are in it send you to orange + the already existing fire would be good.

Minor complaint, but when I see blast grenade, my brain goes to oh this grenade explodes, it does not which is dissapointing.

Speeding up the round would be good overall.

UBV had various tiles and was way too dark, this made it hard to navigate pods, and lead to pods getting stuck within the tiles.

Printable fanny packs would be good, especially for jetpacks.

[Ronnyfire]

I enjoyed the round quite a lot from the NT perspective.
Lotta teamwork holding Fortuna and such was very fun.

Adding Mutadone to the chem dispensers would be a godsend, i had to beg the gods to free me from Tinitus.

Making pods spawn locked with the player who finished its' PIN code would be great, since there was some pod theft going on.

Bigger pod bays would make building pods less... chaotic i think. Maybe with jumpable rails to delineate areas for individuals to make pods?

[Serrano]

1. I think the home bases should be a bit bigger, obviously it was more crowded than normal since it was the first time, but still I don't think there's enough space for so many people.
2. There should be somewhere to refill welders, for repairing your pod, or maybe have some welding fuel tanks that you can bring with you for mobile repairs. Or maybe just implement a different way to repair your pod alltogether
3. Pods should also be able to hold more than 2 people, maybe have a type of pod specifically designed for carrying lots of people at once, it was pretty hard to coordinate any kind of large attack because of transport.
4. Speaking of transport, I really like how you can scan for locations and have a little directional marker take you to the different control points, that's definitely something that you should try to inform players about better, because I know a lot of people had trouble getting around, maybe even add a minimap, but that would probably be hard to implement.
5. Everyone was very disorganized, obviously there were a ton of people, and everyone was very confused because it was the first test of the game mode, but maybe giving people different kinds of jobs like miner, field medic, commander, pod technician, and that kind of thing would help everything be more organized.
6. The robust syndie pod is kind of blue, and I was shot many times by teammates who thought it was an NT pod. A better way to identify team pods would be nice.
7. Having some utility items would be pretty nice, maybe give each pilot a token to redeem at a vendor like nukies get and let them choose from some things like extra meds, some kind of pod repair kit, a barrier, a better battery for your blaster, or whatever else.
8. Mining should probably have some kind of rockbox where all the ores can be stored, there were plenty of ores available, but it was so hard to find the one you were looking for because they were all over the place, or better yet, you could make all fabricators use the materials from the rockbox, so you don't end up with only 1 or 2 fabs that are actually stocked up.
9. Speaking of mining, I think the magnet shouldn't be able to pull in crates or artifacts because they're probably not gonna be used and it slows things down to have to move them out of the way to use the magnet again.
10. While building your own pod is fun, making a super beefed up pod is pretty pointless, since most of the fighting for control points happens on foot, and it takes a while to get all the materials you need. There wasn't all that much actual pod battling, so maybe there could be an extra control point that can only be captured in a pod or something like that.
11. There wasn't any real reason to go to any of the smaller locations like cheesy chuck's, so all the action only happened in the control points, maybe add some extra supplies in these locations, or have something like a supply drop every few minutes at one of them.

[Lythine]

It was pretty fun! I don't think I have a full understanding of every part of the gamemode, but I have a few thoughts of what I have seen:
1. For being called Pod Wars, I don't think I had one pod vs pod battle through the entire round. I didn't see much use in making pods with superior firepower because it wasn't useful in most cases; especially considering how most areas are limited in places where you can attack other players in a pod. It didn't seem useful to make pods with superior armor either, as you'd likely use it to get to one of the capture points and then leave it outside, where it would be shot when you're not looking and destroyed.
2. Additionally, it was pretty bad that the default pod weapon was less powerful than the weapon you start with.
3. It felt very much like getting a csaber won you an area. It was very hard to counter. Most people only have the pistol they start with, which can be deflected. The csaber will generally fall into the hands of a more skilled player over time, as it'd get taken off of whoever dies with it. It's a lot more threatening compared to the other things I've seen you're able to get in a crate.
4. It felt like it took an extremely long amount of time to get back into the action. The cloner was pretty fast, but it still left you in 30s stun when you popped out. Combine that with how huge the map is and how slow the pods are, and it took a good 5 minutes to get back into the action, but perhaps that's a reasonable punishment for dying.
As for thoughts on the capture points:
1. The NSV Reliant was a very, very small area with literally nothing in it. Our team had it the entire game only because the squad defending it obtained a csaber and set up many barriers. It was so small that every entry was barricaded by the end, an the csaber took care of any projectiles coming in. Maybe it would benefit from being a bit bigger?
2. Fortuna is massive, the capture console is pretty deep in the center, and there's an entire medbay with a chem dispenser that can instantly dispense beakers of styptic and silver sulfadiazine. Compared to the NSV Reliant, this is an entirely different place to defend. It seemed like there was always at least one guy near the medical chem dispenser for the entire round, and it was easy to jump them as they usually weren't paying attention. Made it feel kinda like a slow-paced nuke ops round.
3. UVB-67 was an absolute nightmare to attack. Most fights happened in the corridors, outside entirely, or the room with the control console. It lead to some very interesting fights, but a lot of friendly fire.
Still had a blast and would love to play it again in the future. Makes me wish there was a seperate server specifically for these fun alternative gamemodes.

[Zonespace]

One issue I feel is that there's not enough loot on the map, since the crates from a point dry up after the tier 3 drops. Generally, I noticed that less people were interested in guarding UGV once the tier 3 crate dropped, and the remaining defenders were pretty quickly drying up on gear, either after being consumed or spaced. I'd like to see random tier crates coming out of a control point, maybe every 10 minutes after the tier 3 crate is given out?

Also, rest in piss C-saber drops from tier 3s.

[Drewmajor11]

I'm going to add another thing if points were a thing considered, it could be done with points from kills, mining and capturing and the harder the task the more points, and whichever task is being done the least gives more points to those doing it. Also UVB was painful with all the blood slipping and barricades, having a way to get anti slip shoes could be nice.

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Oh yeah also the csabers weren't that bad, most people you could wait for them to briefly drop their guard by watching chat then magdump them until they put it back up, although I 100% understand why it would be removed and unwanted.

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Default pods being faster would be nice too since I literally just ended up going dual pistol jetpack and shredding small pods while going faster or the same speed.

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Ok last thing, you can also just make silver sulf beakers and carry them in your pocket then splash to almost insta save yourself from burn crit.

[millichips]

0/10 no botany

[Froggit_Dogget]

yea instead of removing csabers, there should be more stronger weapons. There wasnt much variation between gear; and pods were tough to make. Getting kills should eventually get you stronger gear for your current life.

[Eagletanker]

Didn’t play the actual mode, just from discord discussions. It seems the mode would be improved with a more solid CoC and a dedicated logistics section. Maybe give like a 5 minute “warm up” phase, with a few posters in the main hallway where you can pick a squadron or chose to take logistics/medical section and to get organised with a plan. Having a coc with three radios (team, squadron, command) would probably be useful for organisation and coordination as well.

[unfunnyperson]

Some way to manufacture handheld firearms would be fun to have. Perhaps at the cost of rare minerals such as starstone or uqil in exchange for things like predator revolvers or riot shotguns.

[nefarious6th]

After A Second Test Round, some Thonks:

1. teamkilling is still a huge issue i dont even know what to do about it at this point but i had three nt people crit me this time........cringe
2. it feels like if you dont capture first, you automatically are destined to lose; NT lost all three control points in the first 5 minutes they were released then took two back and held them for maybe 30 or 40 minutes while consistently Losing points, and held one until about 70 minutes while also consistently losing points, like i think at no point in the round despite capture control majority were we ever net gaining points; maybe the control point rework needs to be tweaked but now in the other direction again
3. whatever is going on with the north cordon wall flinging you back is terrible, like i get it, meant to force you to the fight, but i lost my backpack and welders to that when chasing Nerds up there and could never get them back because i kept getting flung away
4. afk problems! like 30 people in base were Not There! was really sad since the people who were playing put in their all and did fantastic and i wish there was a way to kick/even numbers out so that we could've had many more active players on the team because we were a well-oiled machine. maybe an indestructable cryotron unit in each base?
5. is there a way to repair turrets? would probably be Very Nice if we could repair or print/reinstall turrets at the base since we lose 3 or 4 and there wasn't anything to do to fix them, that i knew of. maybe limit the number of turrets that can be operational at a time and make them only buildable on base? not sure what the intent is with them so idk what best solution is.
6. everyone seems to be pretty well over it by minute 70 these past two rounds. maybe shorter round time overall! while engaging, it reaches a particular point of Unfun and No Progress for those of us who are doing med/repairs/mining

this was fun, again. felt better this time with lots of folks really trying their best!


edit: another thonk, please never make me spawn as nt again i am syndicate only from now on ty :^)

[AlyasGrey]

Aight... so I've full observed and recorded one round then partially played another so here's my list of things...

First, gotta figure out a way to balance pistols vs. pod weapons if you want the meta to be fighting inside actual pods.  Right now it's exit pod and shoot.  Maybe give pods ballistics and increase pod resistance to energy weapons?  Not sure.

Second, mining ends up being halfassed and completely borked.  One of the issues I've seen is players who are either trolling or don't know better emptying mining fabs completely of important materials.  Maybe have all fabs on the main station pull from the same pool of materials?  Or give all fabs a slowly regenerating pool of some basic materials(borhum/claretine/molitz/cotton).

Third, the pod paint schemes create situations that are just way too confusing.  Either add some sort of transponder that clearly labels the origin of a pod as NT/Syndicate or just get rid of non-team specific paint jobs on pods.

Fourth, beacons need to be indestructible... period.  Otherwise every round is going to turn into grab point and destroy beacon.  Having them down severely limits the scope of combat as teams just aren't likely to be organized enough to travel long distances in a coordinated manner.

Fifth, the rounds are clearly dragging a bit.  I'd suggest either increasing point decay as a function of total minutes already played.  OR, and this is a bit of a wild idea, a hail mary of some sorts perhaps in the form of a fourth control point with a special weapon that only activates at 30 minute intervals that destroys one of the base dishes when fired.  The new control point would not directly contribute to point decay in the same way as the other three points and would ideally precipitate a large fight every half hour when an alert was given that it was open to be captured.

Sixth, I didn't witness this myself but apparently getting stranded is an issue for the podless.  So how about a PDA program that sends the player back to their main base?  It would need an action bar of at least ten seconds to prevent folks from just using it to run away.

[Mysticmidgit]

I think a outpost system that has a thing like the Mining Shuttle would help people who are podless/jetpackless get around

[Katzen]

I think at 30 minutes the game should be in some way move towards tying up within the next 10-15 minutes. It's currently taking way too long.

[Ikea]

Custom robust pod/putt sprites would help a lot, the base of the pod is blue which makes things confusing.