Give Flockminds a Tile Requirement and a Relay Progress HUD Icon

[MeggalBozale]

About the PR

Flock can currently create the relay in under ten minutes, less than five on at least Cogmap 1's bridge. This leaves little room for player/flock interaction (combat) to occur, as well as for the flockmind and flocktraces to engage with all the mechanics playing as flockmind has to offer.

This PR aims to change this by doubling the compute requirement, as well as requiring the conversion of 500 tiles, to spawn the Relay. 500 tiles is roughly the size of Cog1 medbay, or any roughly 22x22 sized area. 1000 compute is a lot, but encourages the use of collectors, which provide lots of compute in exchange for resources. Up until now, these buildings were useless due to the ease of obtaining 500 compute. Not anymore!
EDIT: Uh. WIP compute scaling. Ideally 1000 is cool, but maps like Atlas require converting half the map without collectors. Which is probably bad

The main bulk of the code, however, is to add a HUD relay icon, which shows flock members how close they are to completing the Relay. It updates with it, only diverging to show sparks at the final minute, rather than when destruction is imminent. I believe this gives flock a better heads up as to the explosion, so that they can change their strategy.

Why's this needed?

The fact that flock is able to create the Relay so fast absolutely shortens not only their round, but other antagonists rounds, too. I would imagine it to be frustrating to know your round has a good chance to be drastically shortened when flock spawn on the station, ruining any gimmicks you may have been planning. In truth, that's part of why I finally got around to opening this PR.

I would like to see flock have more time to expand and interact with crew. A feature presumably intended to prevent flock from stalling out a round is now choking them out in a way that is not quite fair to other players.

FUTURE CHANGES (if ever):

• Make flockmind less of a glass cannon, to lessen the gap between getting rolled and rolling as flockmind
  Proposed action: Increase health by 2x, reduce healing factor for drones by half
• Have flock do more damage along with stuns so they can actually fight crew

Changelog

(u)MeggalBozale
(+)Flockminds now need a certain amount of flock tiles (250) to create the Relay. They also get a HUD icon to show some information on how close they are to this objective!

[imawxome]

i think that the amount needed should be different on different populations and maps

[FlameArrow57]

Nice :p

Haven't seen Flock a whole lot recently, but thoughts are that for Flock rounds, seems best spots are either to spawn in a high compute area (which tends to have lower resources?) like bridge, or spawn in a low compute, mid/high resource area, producing drones instead.

Feel like this PR addresses first case more than the second? Higher computes seemed a bit hard to get to unless Flock was playing super well, IDK. Feel like increasing compute may not scale well with crew and Flock stats atm and the time Flock needs to survive. Can still be hard with lot of drones. Might suggest instead a "density scaling" thing where computers give less compute for higher computer-dense areas, which would account for both of those cases maybe?

Though if increasing Relay compute cost, could maybe change the point when Flock speech is revealed to silicons too, it's at code\procs\mobprocs line 1126, 250 compute might be a bit low?

[MeggalBozale]

Good to know. Yeah, personally, I dislike that Compute is the only goal for flock. I feel that tiles converted should matter more, perhaps even requiring both to reach a certain threshold for the relay. Since the relay is the end goal, it should require that all the qualities of a "winning" flock are met. Compute alone is a poor representation of flock process, and has sudden jumps should the flock enter a room with lots of convertible machinery.

I didn't want to spend a vast initial effort on a win-condition relay balance change without some of ^ that feedback above first, but now that you mention it, I think a few factors should also count (A && B && C) towards a win:

• Tiles converted.
• Flockdrones produced.
• People caged & killed (I don't understand what reward it gives flock in their current state besides one less enemy)
• Compute (W/ balance adjustment)

And perhaps as a last-resort anti-stalling method, the relay automatically will attempt to place itself after 20-30 minutes.

Another method to rebalance this would be to have a forced time limit on relay placement, but give players the option to place it whenever they want. On one hand, the flockmind has to be sure they're ready to face the onslaught of crew. But on the other, the player gets to have more choice over their round. Newer players might not know to place the relay, though a TGUI popup when it's possible might work. Not sure on this one, but I felt throwing some basic ideas out there could help stir discussion.

Please add the Input-Wanted tag if appropriate, balance changes are always tough and perhaps the forums should get involved. I won't do it myself tonight, just in case it's not necessary.

[ZeWaka]

consider also discussing in the flock project thread on discord

[amylizzle]

I am hesitant to approve such a big change to balance on Flock, as the win rate statistics are pretty much exactly where we want them, with about half deploying the relay and half again succeeding in transmitting the signal. Delaying the Relay construction will just have the effect of dragging out the part where a substantial part of the crew is already dead.

Having said that, Flock does have a problem where it seems to be a steamroll from either side, rather than a close run thing for the whole round which I do think is a problem. I'm not really sure how to address that though.

We should discuss this more in the Flock thread as ZeWaka said, and maybe test merge this one for a while just to see (it is not always easy to predict how balance changes will play out).

[MeggalBozale]

Sounds like a good idea, I don't have much I have to do for today so I'm available to whenever.

[amylizzle]

maybe mark as draft until changes are complete?

[MeggalBozale]

uuuubh how

[amylizzle]

top right - under reviewers

[MeggalBozale]

thanks 👍 didnt see it there