Wyvern talk

[TheSnacker]

I was hoping that Waveney would start this, but I might as well.

I started looking at Wyverns, and they definitely have problems at the moment. I'm just going to list what I have found so far. Feel free to add to this list, or give suggestions on what we should do to fix some of these.

1. Prices of dragon upgrades need to be adjusted. Even losing to Lords has the 16th Adamantite armor out of reach. Wyvern are meant to allow up to 24, which would basically be impossible. I think some of the others go up by a factor of 5 each time. The math on that works out much better. Also, the three bite upgrades are still far too cheep.
2. Once you get above 1 strength potion, there is an option to use it when fighting a Redundaknight. It doesn't do anything at the moment though.
3. Wyverns seem to need more boosts. Running tests and numbers, they will barely be able to take on Lords, just like how Wyrms are barely able to take on Barons now. They should be able to at least push through the Lords section with no problem once fully upgraded.
4. If you have infinite bonemeal, shadow feeder doesn't run, so you cannot get infinite goats back if you spend them.
5. Need a way of getting more coal.

I know there was more things that struck me as off. I will update this as I think of them.

[TheSnacker]

Okay, looks like there are no other comments, so I guess it is time to move on to proposing changes:

1. I'll just repeat this one. Correct the price increase of dragon upgrades to be 5 per, instead of 20 per. That will make things affordable. I also suggest that the starting price of dragon upgrades to be about 1,000,000 ^ DQ level / 1,000. That should make the final upgrades for any new tier be pricey but possible.
2. Using a Strength potion on a RedundaKnight should obviously do something. The question is: should it give you a better chance at winning, such as 10xstats, or maybe do something more interesting, like make it so that you don't die if you lose? The more obvious answer is likely the best one, but that brings us to...
3. Wyvern boosts. We might want to add the reraise or whatever potion to Wyverns. I think that sounds interesting. Might want to have some harsh price attached though, like losing a healthy portion of your gold. Speaking of gold, I think that one really useful and logical upgrade would be to give dragons more gold digging power, rather than just give them a standard defense boost upgrade. I vote for the name Glimmer, with an effect similar to Sparkle.
4. It seems that it does run, it just doesn't do so easily unless you set CDSP to low power, which is hard at high levels. I'm going to suggest a nerf here. Cap GDLP at the square of Panther Rush, and possibly release Panther Warp that allow you to get the c squared.
5. May want to save this for Dragons. It may be the third of the digging boosts, with a name like Smolder.

[eternaldensity]

I think it's worth linking to this from Reddit to get more input.

[LuminousLeopards]

I'd be wary of getting in the way of any planned development from Waveney, but it's looking more and more like we're on our own.

1. Instead of refactoring, why not keep the cost as is and introduce different mechanisms for increasing defense as the Dragon Queen level increases? Then the later AAs would become feasible as later stages are unlocked, maybe only a few each time you get to the next tier of Dragon. If having an essentially unbuyable Adamantine Armor in the shop is the concern, we could fiddle with the maximum number unlockable at each stage.
2. Raising attack and dropping defense might be an option. IDK.
3. I believe this is what some or all of Flight, Magic, Breath and Marketing were intended to help with. Gold was never supposed to be spendable (Dragons hoard it), but if we want to officially begin development away from Waveney's plans that may be moot. It's still kind of an interesting concept, though, having a resource which passively helps other boosts without being a spendable Stuff itself.
4. I like the perversity of needing to manually Rift for Goats once GDLP is high enough. This is, after all, a game meant to be obtuse and taxing on your patience and sanity. But yeah, Infinite Bonemeal shouldn't be attainable yet. It would be easy enough to create yet another boost that triggers Shadow Dragon. Make it cost WW Bonemeal per activation and suddenly it's an ugly grind, but an ugly grind with an end.
5. I have a boost already worked out that would help with this.

My own 2 cents:

1. Dragons dying at all is bad juju. It's frustrating and encourages savescumming. A boost could be introduced pretty easily that would help with this--eg something that could resurrect Dragons at some cost, unlocked once enough Dragons have died. Or something that banishes defeated Dragons to the Minus World. Or a Stuff attainable only from Dragon corpses. Or all 3!
2. More broadly, there just needs to be more to do. Having just gotten out of the month-long This Sucks grind, which was a sort of bottleneck to the game, having something other than fighting and waiting for clutches to fledge would be great. Since so many resources are already at infinite and most of the currently non-infinite ones are tied closely to digging and combat, either the Dragon saga could be expanded, or an entirely new section of content could be created to be tackled alongside it. I think there have been mentions both of Dragon combat in the Minus World and of introducing the TaTpix.
3. From Demi-Gods onward, physical attack and defense will go infinite unless a big integer library is imported. Of course, getting a NaN result from combat could result in Mustard Experience...
4. More badges are needed.

[eternaldensity]

Zombie dragons!

So, This Sucks sucks... yeah that could do with some improvement.

[TheSnacker]

1. Capping the AA level at 16 is fine, but if it kept going up by 8 each time, with no conceivable way of actually getting that high, that would just be silly. Still, I am definitely in favor of adding new ways to increase the defense of dragons.
2. I think I'll just go with the obvious: Boosted stats for just that battle.
3. I wish I knew Waveney's plans. He said he would make a post detailing them, but never did. Anything anyone knows about his plans would be greatly helpful. I'll ignore using gold for anything though. It might be funny however to have the game say "You survive, but at what cost?" Either way, I like the idea of adding Glimmer, though depending on what testing reveals about how useful it is in boosting defense, I may just add a booster for Ooo Shiny as well. I want to make it so digging good is competitive with winning it from battles, and I want people to be able to get enough that it boost defense enough to balance the bite boosts from wyrms, but I don't want people to win the two gold badges instantly with one boosts, so there is some balance required.
4. I don't oppose introducing a fancy little mechanic for getting over that last gap to getting infinite bonemeal, I would just prefer that it be intended. What to do about it is a question for a little later. Right now, it is more a question of: to cap, or not to cap. Sounds like the idea is to cap.
5. Please, do share.
6. (Adding your list to the bottom) I like this idea. We could add a necromancer or whatnot and have him store the dead dragons, that you could then fledge to the underworld (minus newpix), which could give you any number of new interesting boosts and items. The majority of that will have to be for another update, but I might add the Necromancer to this one.
7. Honestly, I think that if we were going to add a bunch of new and interesting things, we should do so in the This Sucks period. I would love to add something there for people to do, and of course for those of us already past that to partake in, but just need some ideas.
8. My sudo plan for that was to make a boost called something like "Transcend the Physical" that would make the attack and defense portions of the fight moot, as long as the attack and defense of both parties were infinite. That would give you need to still put in sand and glass to allow it to stay infinite, and give the attack and defense boosts some use, even at that stage, all while avoiding having to do an overhaul of the battle mechanics or whatnot.
9. I agree. More badges!

[EPSIL0N]

These ideas seem reasonable so far.

[LuminousLeopards]

@waveney any input? Would you care to post what you have planned out, perhaps as a separate thread?

[dfriedenbach]

Hi everyone. Is there a consensus on how to move forward with wyverns? I've got a LOT of free time for the next month and some newly acquired JavaScript skills, so I'd like to see if I can help get wyverns released in that time (and maybe lay some groundwork for future development). I'm a bit nervous about making any gameplay-affecting decisions, though.

Just looking at the scaling for dragon opponents, I see that the difference in power between opponents of id n and n-1 is roughly Fib(n) orders of magnitude, which is kinda nuts, and it's only gonna get worse after wyverns... but then I suppose this game has always involved some crazy power curves.

I'm not sure I like the implications of that for a combat system like this, though. It means that we'll need ever-increasingly numerous or powerful boosts for our dragons to keep up, since base dragon power's order of magnitude scales linearly. Then you end up with a fairly binary system where the opponent utterly crushes you until you get that last boost or two that lets you utterly crush them (or if you manage to balance right, makes it a fair fight).

I feel like a revamped power curve, along with a rework of the cost-scaling of attack/def boosts, and a use for dead dragons(and/or ways to revive them) might make things more interesting, overall, but I'm not sure what that power curve would actually look like.

[LuminousLeopards]

Hey. I have most of it planned out (until Wyverns at least) and most of what I've planned out coded, but I've stalled over the last month or two since I've been intensively learning Powershell for my Real Job and I feel guilty doing any development of SCB while I have that on my plate. I'll see if I can finish up a few things and post an update tonight or tomorrow.

I'm not sure I like the implications of that for a combat system like this, though. It means that we'll need ever-increasingly numerous or powerful boosts for our dragons to keep up, since base dragon power's order of magnitude scales linearly. Then you end up with a fairly binary system where the opponent utterly crushes you until you get that last boost or two that lets you utterly crush them (or if you manage to balance right, makes it a fair fight).

This is the main problem with combat right now, yes, and I've done quite a bit of planning with that in mind. Thing is, there are quite a few different elements as things stand, that in an optimal combat system you'd need to consider/balance (attack, defense, hide times and whether to attack or hide, whether to use Breath, one-time potions/boosts, chance of finding loot, etc), and ideally there would be a few different strategies for doing so, just like in an actual RPG. So I don't think combat itself necessarily needs to be fundamentally altered, just made more interesting and complex. Breath and Magic should help things greatly.

Losing dragons will become less painful, and eventually maybe something that you want ^__^

If you want to help out though, you're more than welcome. There are lots of open issues, probably the best way to get the hang of GitHub and the code if you don't have much experience with that. And I definitely don't want to commandeer the overall development--if you're interested I can definitely put the plans I have so far into a Google doc or something. Since there's no way to PM here that I'm aware of, shoot a message to http://www.reddit.com/user/LuminousLeopards/

[eternaldensity]

Never feel guilty for not working on Sandcastle Builder. Anything is generosity that I'm thankful for.