New Weapon Booster: Accumulator

Early Access
1

I am doing some preliminary work on a new weapon booster (tentatively named “Accumulator”).

The basic idea is that you “charge” a meter in some way (example: by kills, by damage caused, by collecting food), and when the meter is fully charged, you double-tap to increase the firing rate (similar to Overdrive). While the rate is increased, the meter slowly drains. When it drains fully, the rate goes back to normal, and the charging cycle begins anew.

Although this looks reasonable on paper, I’m having trouble selecting a proper metric which will charge the meter in a way that would make it competitive against the existing Overdrive. The examples I gave above come with some non-obvious shortcomings:

  • Charge by kills: Can’t charge during bosses (unless boss spawns “pointless” enemies, but this is rare)
  • Charge by damage caused (absolute): Problematic because enemy health depends on difficulty, so easier difficulties will charge much faster.
  • Charge by damage caused (percentage): Can charge based on percentage of damage caused. Solves problem above, but doesn’t help with bosses.
  • Charge by collecting food: Again, doesn’t work with bosses. Also introduces an extra skill element (because food can easily be missed)
  • Charge by time elapsed (automatically): Possible I guess, but rather uninteresting.
  • (new) Charge by projectiles hit: Wildly inconsistent results based on weapon used.
    Any thoughts?
41 Likes
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What will the weapon look like in the game?
Is it will be in version 105 ?

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will this booster disable overheating for the entire duration or reduce the overheat rate instead
charge by collecting food sounds like a good idea to give food another purpose besides keys and its medal

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When coming up with the overdrive rework, I considered an approach where after you hit an enemy, you start charging for the duration of your weapon’s firing period, perhaps with a 1.2x or so multiplier for some leniency. Essentially, a time-based recharge, but only while you’re dealing damage.

The issues with this approach are:

  1. it’s convoluted
  2. it actively discourages bursting, since condensing your shots makes you accumulate less charge for your shots

Food collection is probably not a very good idea, since that means that the booster will be completely useless in some mission types. I’d say some form of damage-based charging would be preferred, but I’m also not sure how exactly the two variants you proposed would work, or why they would have the issues you listed.

Edit: Additionally, a purely time-based recharge is a no-go - in a lot of waves, you could simply leave a single chicken alive and wait until you recharge (which was the main reason for the convoluted approach above), or even just wait at the start of an easy wave if you don’t want to miss out on a multikill.

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Not really, it renders this booster useless in many missions. Comet chase, supernova, retro invaders, meteor storm, very much in boss rushes and double teams too. That leaves just the squawk block, chicken invasion, darkness, droid raid, feather fields(partly. You can get 0 chickens if you’re unlucky). That’s less than half of missions. Granted chicken invasions are more common than other stuff, but it’s still a huge amount of missions where food-based booster would be useless. If it wasn’t for these missions, maybe it could be more interesting, but currently it feels like a no-no

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I have this idea (Dependence on shooting): When we shoot without overdrive, the counter starts to discharge every 4 seconds, and when with overdrive, the counter discharges every 2 seconds (the only thing I can think of)

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So, what is really special about the Accumulator?
It just looks like Overdrive that hardly works.

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(i personally) Dont care if uninteresting! if it’s automatic hell yeah! :sunglasses:

1 Like
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This booster has a big flaw: it’s not as user friendly as overdrive is.

Overdrive can be activated at any time but Accumulator can’t. This puts the second at an huge disadvantage because the player may not be able to use it when needed… while it is possible with the other one.

For this reason I don’t see Accumulator being used in space race, when speed is the key.

We also need to consider that the game’s player types of killer-archievers want fast and easy to use mechanics with deep strategy involved; Proof of this statement is how the weapon balance program is still ongoing to this day.

So this is how I think Accumulator should work:

Charge bar refills (very slow) over time but the player can fill the progress of the bar by obtaining points. More points obtained equals more charge obtained.

This will help making the booster viable in every mission, boss or wave and also reward more skilled players thanks to stuff like early bird, multikill and peckhing order.

The fact that the bar slowly charges is a way to trigger the player’s brain into thinking: “I must help to fill it!”; making the user more involved regardless of the results or how much useful the feature actually is.

Then I think that this booster must be activable at any time, but the duration and fire rate boost is based on how much the charge bar is filled, following an exponential curve.

I’m not a matematician but I know that with the curve being an exponential, the effectiveness of the booster will have low and similar values on the first charge progress and become way stronger at later progress with less wait time needed.

An example I have in mind is how paragon towers works in the game btd6:
These towers are summoned with a sacrifice and, based on how much the player sacrificed (money spent by player and kills done by towres placed), the game calculates a level (from 0 to 100) for the paragon.
On the first 39 levels paragons are strong but not amazing; after hitting level 40 the paragons get an huge power boost and every level starts to make a difference. A level 70 paragon is amazing in terms effectiveness and almost overpowered.

Anyway why did I choose btd6 as an example? Because both games share the same player types, despite being different genres, so I think that inspiring how a mechanic works from that game may be good for CIU.

The only thing I think my vision for this booster may be not optimal is how using the booster, wich requires points, will make gaining points faster, allowing to enpowering the booster on the long term.
So I end this post pointing this “problem” that may actually be an interesting dinamic, if balanced correctly.

2 Likes
10

great,now add this booster into CIU

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11

are you iA’s mother ?

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please at least tell iA your opinion regarding how accumulator should be charged instead of “it is cool add now” which doesn’t contribute to the conversation at all

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@EnticalMintian @ordinary_ryxt @uncachero9960 Please do not start another long as hell arguement i’m begging you… For the love of God.

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New Booster ???
I Hope You Will Not Make Us Dissapoint,IA

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IA never disappointed me from the first day I played CIU.

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i am just send request to IA,not control IA

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“I force my favorite game developer to add things that I like”
“No, I am not his client, nor his director, just a regular player”
“I’m just HeLpInG him”

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Is there will be rarity with this new booster?

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No.

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Presumably it’ll shoot faster(or maybe it’ll depend on how much it’s charged), but well, you will need to fulfill the required criteria to use it.

1 Like