[Squad] Root Outers

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Djinn
Posts: 33
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2018 1:22 pm

[Squad] Root Outers

Postby Djinn » Tue Feb 28, 2023 5:19 pm

[SOMEWHERE, SOMEWHEN, IN MERIDIA]
All things considered, I’d much rather stay here in my garden. That’s hardly a unique feeling here in Meridia. I’d be shocked if anyone wanted to be pulled away from their work to deal with an incursion of impossibly giant omnicidal insects. Hell, I could do without their much smaller cousins infesting my research specimens.
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But we haven’t got a choice. Any of us. The Vek are here, and they are coming. Director Lacroix has ordered that all research be turned to driving them away from our idyllic shores. Harvesters, propagation equipment, pesticides, novel and dangerous plant cultivars… and my work, too. The Vek on Meridia are strange, mutated somehow from the normal strains that infest the world. They blend insectoid and phytoid characteristics in a way unique across the rest of the Vek metaspecies. And so my team and I began to look into why.
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And, in time, to build a monster of our own.

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Hailing from the forested isle of Meridia, these bio-engineered mecha call upon the very forces of nature to strike down the Vek.

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Glade Tango - Swap positions with adjacent target, dealing damage to their impact point.
    Fertilizer (1 Core) - Places Forest in mech landing site.
    Forest Footing (2 Core) - Deal an extra damage if mech attacks from Forest.
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Lumber Cutter - Charge forward, dealing damage to all adjacent tiles.
    Cutting Edge (1 Core) - Mech may instead target own tile, taking 1 self-damage and hitting adjacent tiles twice in a row.
    Clearcut (2 Core) - Deal 1 extra damage to tiles containing Forests.
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Root Tremor - Sends a root burrowing towards a foe, bypassing intervening targets and curving once. Leaves a trail of Forests in its wake on all flat earthen tiles.
    Forest Fury (2 Core) - Attack and trail deal 1 damage to enemies on Forest tiles.
    Range +2 (1 Core) - Range of attack increases by 2.
DEVOUR
The Beast is truly another breed. The Beast has their ‘Repair’ button replaced with Devour, which allows them to consume an adjacent 1 HP Vek - or building! - to heal and clear status effects. This does not consume your action, allowing the Beast to savage a group of mortally wounded Vek before or after they move - as long as it’s before they perform an attack! Additionally, the Beast will not gain the Popular Hero or Invulnerable traits on level-up (not applicable to them).

Download them here!

ACHIEVEMENTS
Comes packaged with achievements - some are tricky, but all are doable!
Forest Breathing - Create 10 Forests in a single mission
Deforestation - Cut down 10 Forests in a mission level with Lumber Cutter
Greens and Proteins - Devour 5 Vek standing on Forest in a single mission
Completion of all of the above will unlock a Secret Pilot to be found in subsequent Time Pods!


THANKS
Thanks to the ITB Discord for making this dream come true, but especially Lemonymous, Tosx, Truelch, Hedera, NamesAreHard, GenericCorporatePilot n°2005, and others I’ve shamefully forgotten! I’ve been kicking this squad idea around for the better part of two years, and it was only thanks to your help I managed to get it out there!

UPDATES

Code: Select all

1.0
- Initial
1.1
- Tweaked HP and Move values for a few of the units, making Prime slightly faster and hardier and nerfing the Beast's HP.
1.2
- Removed a lot of unnecessary dependencies on old files, which should improve stability.
1.3
- Fixed all the many many things I broke by doing 1.2!
1.4
- Added all weapons to Weapon Deck.
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AzureLazuline
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Feb 15, 2020 6:47 pm

Re: [Squad] Root Outers

Postby AzureLazuline » Sat Apr 22, 2023 6:42 pm

This squad is super cool, it's one of my favorites now! :D
Usually having a damage-only mech is just frustrating (and you still do wanna give it a second weapon at some point), but being on the same team as a Beast makes it a lot more useful, since that basically gives you a +1 cap on how much HP you can take out with "one action" as long as the Beast's positioned correctly. That's a really interesting interplay between those two units, in a way i haven't really seen in any other squad. I love the backstory with its own artwork too, it's really cool that you went through the extra effort!

I do have a few nitpicks if you do another revision, but none of them are major, and this is already great!
  • Sylvan Mech should be able to suplex friendly units and boulders and such too, since i noticed it has more "dead turns" than normal, and it'd let you set up devour combos so it interplays with the main themes of the squad more. This game generally doesn't restrict targets like that, so it really caught me by surprise when i went to do it and it didn't work.
  • Sawblade Mech's cutting edge ability does 2x to forest tiles even before you get Clearcut, which is probably a bug.
  • This is a bit more vague... Sawblade Mech's default spinning attack is cool, but it seems to get almost completely obsoleted once you get the cutting edge upgrade, which is much more powerful but not as fun. I don't know if there's a real way to keep the default one relevant though... my first thought is that maybe the tile directly in front of it when it stops can be damaged *and* pushed, but that might change too much? This is all just vague musing though, i don't know if there's any clean solution here... Sawblade Mech fine as-is, but it just feels like the one thing that's not quite perfect.

Whether you do an update or not, thank you for your fantastic work here!
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Djinn
Posts: 33
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2018 1:22 pm

Re: [Squad] Root Outers

Postby Djinn » Fri Apr 28, 2023 8:19 pm

AzureLazuline wrote:This squad is super cool, it's one of my favorites now! :D
Usually having a damage-only mech is just frustrating (and you still do wanna give it a second weapon at some point), but being on the same team as a Beast makes it a lot more useful, since that basically gives you a +1 cap on how much HP you can take out with "one action" as long as the Beast's positioned correctly. That's a really interesting interplay between those two units, in a way i haven't really seen in any other squad. I love the backstory with its own artwork too, it's really cool that you went through the extra effort!

I do have a few nitpicks if you do another revision, but none of them are major, and this is already great!
  • Sylvan Mech should be able to suplex friendly units and boulders and such too, since i noticed it has more "dead turns" than normal, and it'd let you set up devour combos so it interplays with the main themes of the squad more. This game generally doesn't restrict targets like that, so it really caught me by surprise when i went to do it and it didn't work.
  • Sawblade Mech's cutting edge ability does 2x to forest tiles even before you get Clearcut, which is probably a bug.
  • This is a bit more vague... Sawblade Mech's default spinning attack is cool, but it seems to get almost completely obsoleted once you get the cutting edge upgrade, which is much more powerful but not as fun. I don't know if there's a real way to keep the default one relevant though... my first thought is that maybe the tile directly in front of it when it stops can be damaged *and* pushed, but that might change too much? This is all just vague musing though, i don't know if there's any clean solution here... Sawblade Mech fine as-is, but it just feels like the one thing that's not quite perfect.

Whether you do an update or not, thank you for your fantastic work here!


Hey, thanks! Let's address these comments while I'm here:
- Yes, that's a good idea outright. I'll remove the targeting limitation, not sure what my logic was in having it - I think it made more sense with an earlier version of the weapon.
- That's odd, thought I fixed that... I'll look into it!
- Eh yeah that's been an ongoing issue but overall I think I like it as is, with the ability to pick between modes as needed. Overall I think Sawblade is pretty well balanced all things considered, but if I think of something particularly clever I'll let you know!