I'm gonna have to agree with battle-brain-bots.

the best defense is a good offense right? how can you be completely offensive if you can't take your brain along with you for the assault?

the whole reasoning behind this is that you can keep your brain bot close by your main offensive force without having to worry about your brain's hidey hole or the battle killing your brain. of course a heavy brain bot would be costly, maybe even cost more than one brain to deploy or something. this isn't necessarily having anything to do with using your brain in a fight, the only reason why it has lots more armor and better guns is for its own defense so you can keep him close by.

also i think that brain bots and the like shouldn't actually ever take damage unless the brain tank is hit.

I think you're exagerating the weakness of jetpacks a tad bit much.

Step 1, stop using heavy troops on offense in steep terrain.

Step 2, stop equipping light troopers with artillery weapons.

Step 3, marvel as you can suddenly cross nearly an entire map without touching the ground.

Jetpacks changed purpose, they weren't made objectively worse, I'm guessing Data didn't want them to be for "flying" but, hmm... I don't know... jetpacking? lifting a moderate distance off the ground to climb a mountain or reach a bunker? as several builds ago you could never touch the ground while jetpacking which is far more ridiculous in my opinion.

Additionally, blunderbuss does not 1 shot silvermen, sorry, but it just doesn't.

My thoughts exactly. Then I tried it out in Firing Range. Holy s***.

Oneshotting silvermen with a blunderbuss confirmed, aim for the head at about 3-4 meters. The closer you are, the higher the chance of an instakill, but you usually get it even at 3-4 meters.
That said, if the silvermen had carried guns, they would have taken some of the damage, but still.

@Asmageddon Its true, I only started playing this at b25/26, sorry for disagreeing harshly, don't know what previous builds are like. Which also means that the new transition towards use of groups of weaker actors didn't really hit me that hard.
Vanilla actors have jetpacks that can lift them enough to travel a smallish distance before running out of juice. It is sometimes irritating cause it makes troop movement slow and sometimes impossible with things like browncoat heavies, but it does, in its own ways balance everything.

I find the weapons sufficiently powerful though. You can't do as much without other actors supporting you, but 3 coalition lights with assault rifles can tear apart many things.

Deployments are customizeable, go into Loadouts.ini and change stuff there, its fairly simple. You can change which things get deployed like CQC, Mech, Sniper and such.

Also, you must make really really awesome bases in order for you to be able to insta kill enemies.
The reason why you start with a smaller amount is so that your bases build up and later become awesome. You can't build epic bases with 2000 gold, but you can build awesome bases with 2000 gold Per round. Starting/earning more per site/round would be a nice to add I guess.

I dont crash drop ships together, I let them drop in, and I proceed to dig down quickly and set it on dig AI.

They shouldn't be getting weaker, Data should be focusing on fine tuning them now. Got to find the butter zone, where they aren't super fragile, and where they aren't OP. An option would be to increase everything's power, durability, etc.

I must greatly disagree against strong brains however. If you make them as strong as a light coalition soldier, or maybe inbetween light and heavy, or even make them come in giant mechs like in the intro, players will start using them in their assault force or stop bothering to defend them. You're probably saying "thats the point" however thats a bad thing. They'll die quickly with an explosive to the face, a slip up, a loose actor crashes into you, something bad will inevitably happen and your game will be cut off short. And if you DO bother to defend it, the attacker will have a terrible time trying to destroy your brain.

I also echo the sentiment for having some sort of "combat brain-bot" or commander that you can risk keeping with your troops. One of the things that attracts me to the game is that it is fairly open ended with playstyle/approach, and with the current setup there are basically only TWO paradigms for managing the brain:

1) burying it deep in a bunker with fairly static defences

2) if you don't have a bunker, having it bury itself in a hidey hole/gold mine and hope nothing bad happens while most of your troops are on the offensive.

So really you have only one option: burying your brain

It would be nice to have some sort of other option, especially if mechanics could be added where the brain adds buffs to actors it is close to. Also the fragility of the brain+dropship/rocket insertion against an even remotely defended site is an excessive Achilles heel in my opinion. Regardless of if you want a more powerful brain or not.

Asmageddpn provoked alot of retaliatory discussion with his inflammatory post. I would really appreciate it if i could get some attention to my list immediately before it? I spent alot of time taking notes and playtesting the recent release to make that list. Do you think the devs read this thread?

Tanelorn, I agree with a lot of your points, and I can't really find any to contest. The ones I really like:


This is a problem I usually only run into when playing a tech with swarm tactics, like dummies or the Combine mod. Still, I think mass AI settings would be a good idea. Goes with point 7, too.


Same here. The only time I've ever actually won a game was after I'd destroyed all the AI brains and deployed the last of my own. I won because I controlled all the maps, not because I'd eliminated all competition.


I think that dropships should get more armor and rockets should get less. So you'd have expensive but stable transportation, compared to quicker but weaker deployment.


This is something sorely needed, I think. Buying presets one by one is annoying, but buying individual soldiers and weapons en masse is tedious. If we could buy presets in bulk, it would make things a lot easier.

I hope they read this thread. Feedback is very important and helpful while developing something. Almost everything should be given some thought.
to your list:

1. I don't entirely support that idea. Starting with just a brain bot and working up from there is fine with me.

2. Maybe clean up gibs and dropped weapons and stuff. Could reduce clutter, though it isn't really that important to me.

3. That needs adjustment. Im not sure how this could be adjusted other than deleting actors and refunding them if they aren't within a certain locus of x off the farthest extensions of your base.

4. Manual? Naww, check the forums and play the tutorial.

5. I think the people friendliness of base design is ok, until you accidently place something and you can't move or delete it. Waste of money and irritating to OCD people.
Maybe for actors, there can be something like the buy menu where you select an actor and weapons that he'll have, and then press buy and place the actor with equipped shiz.

6. I would like instead for the default to be Sentry, not brainhunt. i'm trying to organize my base defenders when I realize that my diggers have already stormed and suicided in the enemy base.

7. Sounds complicated. AI coding always sucks to make.

8. instead, how about being able to select multiple actors and set all of their AIs. Changing ALL would be problematic when you have diggers or defenders.

9. Fairly realistic on the human actor's part imo. The crab walkpath does need some adjusting.

10. idk about that one, obviously needs to be fixed if it happens though.

11. That can be found in a .ini file in Base.rte LoadoutsP1.ini (or P2, P3, P4) though a before game thing could be fairly useful.

12. idk how that would work code-wise, but in campaign mode, that would most definitely make sense.

13. Seeing what you are switching to, yes. Whole backpack, uuuuhh meh I can see it getting fat looking.

14. No, they start cooking when you click. Its like CoD and BF3 and Crysis where you hold until desired and let go so you have a controlled explosion timer, more or less.

15. Naw, maybe a little, but theres a thing called a Hotzone, and in military protocol, you don't land close to one unless you have a special insertion vehicle, like a drop pod or a detaching jeep, etc.

16. Could be handy. I have all these presets of individual soldiers, it would be nice to send em all at once or in certain groups.

17. Maybe, if so, that would be in the out-of-battle preset maker if they make something like that.

18. Yah, pretty complex dude. Just don't allow any hand helds to work after the win condition is completed. Cant really prevent this.

For number 8 i intended it as you are proposing it. Either by multiple select and set ai or with a group setting menu (squad based)

Group selection could be handy now that CC took a turn towards more RTS gameplay.

I've always thought that to keep it squaddie, issuing orders to other clones should be done like Mehman did in this mod, in which you pressed a key and nearby actors either followed you, held ground or went brainhunt.

In my opinion that's the best way I've seen for controlling multiple soldiers in CC, and probably the one that fits better the style of CC.

concerning the whole dropships being weak thing...

the untitled mod actually addressed this really well. if you download and play with the dropship in the mod you'll notice that there are armor plates on the most vulnerable parts of the dropship.

basically, why the ♥♥♥♥ aren't drop ships armored in the first place? in fact with all vanilla dropships the only place you can really shoot that won't take health away from the craft are the bay doors.

I Don't want to be rude but, please, stop promoting lazyness in the dev team. It's easy to found "camarilla" groups amongst veteran fans of some games; in special those with very long development cycles or indie games. They act like the devs are close friends (and in many cases it's true, and that's fair), but you know what? They choosed to make games for a living, this is not a hobby for them, they are charging money for it.

Suggestions like: "manual? naahh, AI coding? meh, accesible menus? just edit some files yourself." won't help to finish this game sooner, at all. Nor help people wich just arrived to the forum to find the answers they need to start playing..

Sorry if I sounded like that , however I was worried about the complexity of some ideas. A lot of ideas being thrown are more mad maxing then actually feasible things. Either that, or some ideas aren't too clear.

Let me explain my answers that you chose cause I don't want to promote lazy dev teams either,

A manual was suggested, and its great and all, but there is a tutorial mission which contains all of the basics to Cortex Command. Anything in the manual would be the basics, plus some tips and slightly more advanced things they would suggest you try out (like a tip saying "all is not lost without a weapon! Try 'meleeing' enemies!") but anything more complex would be more like spoilers and complete walkthroughs rather than something in a manual. Learning to play cortex command imo is awesomely fun and something i'd like to relive.

7, what he suggested was an autonomous AI switch depending on surrounding actors. This is complicated, as I said, not just in coding, but the idea. Also, not even RTSs do that. Since you don't have that many actors to your disposal, any kind of group control should be selectable, not automatic. Automatic would mean overriding microing, for example I want 2 actors to stay behind and prevent any dropships from landing too close while the rest continue their assault on the brain. If Automatic, the rest of the group would walk away and the 2 sentries would then follow, with a kind of hive mind. Complicated, unnecessary and ruins microing imo.

11, I was informing him of the possibility to do so currently in case he didn't know, however I support his idea of adding an in game editor because some people might also not know that and they would be inconvenienced. Even though I know about this .ini file, I don't even bother to change it, and I do it in game. The editor would allow for quick preferences to be preselected and it would make the first 30 seconds of gameplay go faster.

18, What he suggested was imo mad maxing. I don't even know how many people actually use that phrase, but really, his idea was quite complex. He suggest percentages and watnot, but if you were to do that, what if the attacker required additional oz? He would be digging and finding his profits to be 100oz for that huge bunch of gold he just mined, and what would he do with 100oz? The gold pixel income idea isn't bad, however in one game you mine 1000oz of gold, and later you find that area to be generating 3/4 of what it did earlier. thats a "wtf" moment, and it just makes the player feel bad, it doesn't improve gameplay.
Imo its true that its not possible to prevent gold milking without somebody peering over your shoulder and calling it out for you. The most you could do without inhibiting gameplay and happiness is to just disable devices after the win condition so no mining can be done afterwards, but still allow for clean-up and repositioning.

again, sorry if I sounded that way, lazy devs are no fun.

No need to feel sorry pal, it's a civilized discussion what we are having here

It's not your suggestions that worries me, but the general "don't mess with that... it's okay the way it is... it will be too complicated..." mood that fills some threads in this forum.

It's the devs work to stablish what should/shouldn't work or be feasable, not customers (we are customers, remember?). Customers/players work is to throw ideas to the devs until they make this game the marvel it has the potential to become; and to kick them in the ass (in a totally amiable and polite way) until they finish their work, if possible, in the next decade.