PSCD 0.7.9 - beta demo!

[kadakithis]

That will be perfect, also when I got into a conversation with Mario the background was grey and labeled "Canteen/mess hall (where soldiers could eat)"

[jack1974]

Ah yes, I just got that background, need to add it to the game I uploaded 0.7.6 now which fixes the crashes. Tomorrow will add that background (it's quite nice too).

[Franka]

All missions completed on Hard with no major challenges. I did use an overpowered deck for the final mission though.

I see that you've added notes to what happens with your deck in certain missions. Mission 5 stands out now, for having no notes, and for being really easy if you choose the Wall option, and pretty damn hard if you don't.

In the rescue mission we’re told Spiked Iron-Vines is good against Orbis. Not only are the Iron-Vines Organic so they take double damage, the Orbis are also flying so they don't have to hit the walls, so that’s some pretty bad advice.

In missions 8 & 10, the enemy has no life points. They should, it gets really boring.

Some mission info buttons still refer to "Alex Nelson" when playing as Diana.

Card analysis coming soon.

[jack1974]

All missions completed on Hard with no major challenges. I did use an overpowered deck for the final mission though.

OK good, same as me then. I am thinking to just have the upgrades 0/1 and 1/1 for all cards, except the walls only 0/1 0/1. Adding more attack to turrets is probably too much, when playing on Hard I was always using them and was too easy I think.
Or I can increase the upgrading costs too. Or make enemy tougher of course. Though in general the first 10 missions shouldn't be too difficult even in Hard settings. From mission11 things should change though

Some mission info buttons still refer to "Alex Nelson" when playing as Diana.

Ah yes the mission 5, I'll change them

In missions 8 & 10, the enemy has no life points. They should, it gets really boring.

Yeah I'm thinking that I'll always have enemy HP on all missions, otherwise defeating all enemy becomes too much.

[Franka]

Franka’s here to bring you the scoop on the newest cards and the newest changes!

I’ll only be looking at cards in the deck builder this time, and not so much at cards that we’ve already covered in the last version unless the change did something interesting. Now that we can get a lot more stars, you don’t have to watch out as much for what you upgrade. I’ll be making recommendations and commenting on things that don’t seem to work the way they should or as described.

Wall: Currently gets +1 Attack on gold, I don’t think it should.

Cannon Turret: This is now a good card, and probably one of the first cards you want to upgrade to gold. It will be the main Wall you should always be using.

Laser Turret & Flamethrower Turret: If you upgrade these to gold, they might possibly, maybe, at some opportune time be worth it, but the cost means that at this point in the game, you probably can’t play them.

Battle Drone: The upgrade scheme is interesting on this one, you definitely want to silver upgrade it now.

Recruit: Since it discounts all resources by 1, it currently makes most organics free to play. But since it gets put on a random unit, it’s really easy to waste it on something that just dies. The cost is negligible though. I think you can probably break it by playing your entire hand of big guys on turn 1, since it also reduces the credit cost by 1.

Emergency: No matter what you get, it’s worth 1 credit. You may want to make some notes on what “common” means.

Recruiter: Population is actually a resource you can often use more of, and Recruiter can be upgraded to 3/4, which is ok. But since you also get the Recruit card from the same character, the ability loses most of its use.

Force Field: It’s pretty good now, but expensive since it requires multiples of the same resource.

Optimization: Yep, this is a good card. You have Battle Drone (and later Robo-Ant) that are great targets for this.

Hacker: While the ability is situational, you can upgrade the Hacksaw to 3/6, which is pretty mean.

Unoptimal Balance: It only works on enemy units, making it a really bad, situational card. If this worked on your own units, you could probably break it though. I think this card should probably do something completely different, but I don't have any ideas right now.

Excavation: This looks better than it is. If there are a lot of swarm decks (lots of small guys) later on, maybe it will find a use. I haven’t managed to prevent my opponent from summoning anything yet, so that was a wasted card in my deck.

Gambling: Well, you can’t really lose with this card, other than the deck space. It’s not very useful yet, but maybe when we get more expensive cards. Right now, I'd want it to also draw a card before I'd put it in my deck.

Apex-Rahn Berserker: I want to like it, but I don’t. Even at a fully upgraded 2/4 this guy is going to need a lot of help to stay alive long enough to use his ability. Plus he’s expensive. Matrick Mercenary is so much better.

Domesticated Boragrub: This seems better balanced now, you might actually want to play it.

Steroids: This became a good card with plenty of obvious uses (and Franka approves of the card title!). Since we’re going to do something about Inner Force, we won’t talk about abusing that combo and breaking the game just now.

Vaccine: The only reason you really want this card is that it lets you go over the HP limit, and that it works really great with Spiked Iron-Vines.

Doctor: 2/4 at max upgrade and heals one random organic. That isn’t very impressive, but healing can be part of a good deck. In this case, you can further heal Spiked Iron-Vines, and that is good!

Rebuild: This doesn’t work the way I think it should, since it only makes a basic un-upgraded copy of your Wall. When I Rebuild my Gold Wall, I expect another Gold Wall!

Demolition Squad: These guys are notable for upgrading to 4/4, and for saving you a lot of time against Walls. You even get to choose what to hit, I think this will be useful later.

Hard Discipline: It’s cute, and it works on, you guessed it, Spiked Iron-Vines! If it didn’t, you can go compare it to Assault, and see how bad it actually is.

Customize: It’s a useful card now, especialy since it costs Personnel, and your robots don’t usually use that. Plus it works on your turrets!

Reinforce: Great for boosting turrets, but sadly a non-combo with Unoptimal Balance (but let’s see if we can get Unoptimal Balance fixed to do something useful, shall we?).

Engineer: More useful than Doctor IMO, since Walls are great to heal.

Stun: Might be worth playing now, especially if you have some Sharpshooters.

Recon Unit: Better now, but there are probably other characters you want to upgrade to 3/4 first.

Inner Force: Hoo boy, here we go! First of all, this gives attack equal to your max health, not your current health. Second, note that this is permanent. Now see that unit Graciela has called Mindcontrolled Elk? Yes, if you upgrade that sucker, it becomes 7/7 with Inner Force. Now give it some Steroids and it can attack twice a turn. Not good enough for you? Try our favorite upgraded Spiked Iron-Vines, now you have a 6/6 Wall that regenerates and kills anything that looks at it wrong. What are we going to do about Inner Force? Let’s make it not permanent, shall we? If this is until end of turn, it’s still crazy good, but at least it’s not completely broken. It probably needs more work than that, but it’s a place to start.

Mindcontrolled Elk: Even just at 2/7 upgraded stats with no ability, this beast is really good. On top of that, it charges, it bounces big guys off the board temporarily, and it’s Organic, which opens a whole bag of tricks. It doesn’t even cost credits. Also, you get credits for throwing units on top of the deck instead of killing them, but that’s probably an unintended bug.

Covert Operations: Invisibility just isn’t very good, except on the units it’s meant for, it’s just as often a bad thing as it is helpful. Random Invisibility is even worse. Maybe this should let a unit bypass Walls instead?

Bounty: At least the cost is fixed so it might have a use now. I still haven't managed to get it to do anything worth a card slot though.

[Franka]

If you're having trouble beating down the sad little creatures in the first side missions, I made a quick, very efficient Mizuki deck that beats them fairly easily (do the Assault mission last):

Cannon Turret x2 (upgraded to gold)
Battle Drone x2 (upgrade to silver after first side mission)
Automated Repair Device x3
Optimization x3 (don't play these on units you just summoned, that doesn't work well since they can't attack yet!)

Go for reducing opponent HP to 0 and happy beating!

[jack1974]

Thanks for the feedback, already did some changes. Unoptimal balance was meant to work on ALL cards indeed (enemy or friend) so was a bug.
I see I need to tweak some stuff, like the Elk and Inner force are clearly too powerful (and bugged since shouldn't consider max health).
Will do another update today with some fixes and also adding that missing background.

[Franka]

The second batch of side missions can be beaten (on hard) with our previous deck, but we add 2 Unoptimal Balance for the Assault mission only (!), and play one of those on the enemy Missile Turret, then kill it with one of our Battle Drones. You need a little bit of luck with your starting hand, but it's definitely winnable. Don't put Battle Drone into play until you're ready to kill the Missile Turret.

Cannon Turret x2 (upgraded to gold)
Battle Drone x2 (upgraded to silver)
Automated Repair Device x3
Optimization x3 (don't play these on units you just summoned, that doesn't work well since they can't attack yet!)
Unoptimal Balance x2 (play one on the enemy Missile Turret)

[jack1974]

Haha I am planing to make Hard battles harder too. The main problem it was that even if I added more cards on hard, the limit was still the enemy HP and resources (enemy use only a "rarity" resource). I asked Anima to change it so I can tweak normal/hard difficulty so CPU can summon units faster and have more HP, that should make quite a difference.

I've also added the VN Mode

[jack1974]

Just updated, the bonus credits with the elk and the mizuki unoptimal balance targeting bugs are still there, but I added VN Mode, so those who wants to check only the story, now they can