My thoughts for Servo alpha

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you're enjoying it.

Yes, the AI player is "not yet ready for primetime" (to be nice). It will be getting better, but each iteration on the gameplay sets it back. So, for a while, it's going to sorta stink.

Got it on the health bar numbers. The way those are presented right now is a subject of much debate internally.

Any specific suggestions for how we show the target for your servo? Is your servo selected when you envision this or is "always on"?

Some type of walls are on our list to experiment with. We want the game to be fast, so we just need to be careful we don't turn it into a slogfest (well, once we fix the sloggy parts that are in the game now;).

Do you use the pilot powers at all?

Any specific suggestions for how we show the target for your servo? Is your servo selected when you envision this or is "always on"?

For targeting info was thinking of when the servo was selected only. Maybe put it in the tab that pops up with player abilities?

Do you use the pilot powers at all?

Yes, been using them all although I don't get a chance to use Blinks much.  I recently received  a +1 pet part that help with Hauk so now I can control two bloomspawn at once. Really helps in those co op battles, just  grab two of the purple Royal Kraxx's  :)

I'll use Reece's power to destroy all the mines near the enemy, plus it adds bloom so you can't go wrong with it.

Auger

Talking about the pilot powers, i'd like to be able to use powers from every servo selected and not to have to select a specific one to use his powers.

Are you some kind of RNG God?

Funny you mention that I opened a crate last night after I posted that and got an epic drop. 

Maybe it's tied to level?  I'm level 5 now so maybe they'll give you better stuff?

Auger

Your dropship level does define the level window of parts you can get. You can't get Level 10 parts at Level 1, that sort of thing.

But, rarity is a different vector than part level. There are plenty of each rarity gear at each level. Well, unless we goofed. The intent is that each gear level has an equal distro of rarities. Anyhow, given how the drops work, the rarity roll is independent of the number of parts at that rarity. If we don't have enough rare parts, the failure case is that you keep getting the same one not that you get less rare parts.

yeah I got a Artisan at lower level say 3-4 i think definitely get more powerful base weapons the higher your rank nice way to work in gear/loot 

I actually got Artisan and Priceless mixed up. Grats on the epic drop though!

Can i please get a order of rarity of drops as in whats worst to best...

Also im new but wrapping my head around this. Even if i have all these epic and artisan items, the one i should choose is the one that relates to the build im doing? e.g i'm currently just equipping what ever has the ^ arrow. So would be great if it had more of a tool tip like diablo from blizzard has, so you know just how much you are going to fenga their papits.

There are a few things that affect an item

-Item level, which goes from 1-5

-rarity, which starts at common (white) then better (green), artisan (blue), epic (purple) and priceless (gold)

-Quality, which is given as a range when you loot the item, once looked at in sell parts screen/hangar you can see the final roll, higher is better

However, the part you want to use is the part that lets you make the servo play the way you want. Bigger numbers are meaningless if you don't use that number on that servo :p

You want a servo team that compliment eachother, this can be done in various ways, there isn't really a meta best build so far in beta 3, and there may not be at this point because part variety is getting real good.

For example my current trio in coop is:

2x assasin rifle champs with frag grenade/ammo box combo on shoulders, ranger ruckus modules in cpus, swap out assasin rifles for wide shot rifles for more aoe over less burst, piloted by Reese and Hauk

1x hybrid tank/anti armour drill champ, armour plates on shoulders, highest armour legs and torso I got, dual epic or priceless loader drills with trample, piloted by blink. could replace this with officer pistols if you don't have trample drills but officer pistols are rarer lol. also has soldier firmware 2.0 in both cpu slots

Reese leads, Blink 2nd, Hauk 3rd.

The tank runs out first, mitigates up to 90 damage a hit and does a bunch of trample damage, the other 2 fire off grenades, snipes, orbital strikes and use pet to control problem creeps. When the tank gets low it can teleport away to a beacon/dropship. good damage mitigation, great single target dps and mediocre aoe damage. swapping out the rifles for wide shot ones improves the aoe at the expense of single target DPS but makes it a little more rounded. I then either back them up with soldier drones with building damage tech or behemoths with aoe tech to improve performance against lots of small targets and buildings

I have another variation on that theme for PVP, this is just 1 build though, there are many, and we don't even know all the good ones yet. Try come up with something cool with the parts you have and don't be afraid to try something new.

That clears it up, cheers heaps. so i guesss per game you get say 3 servos you can drop in. and its a matter of making a combo that you would like

I posted on the form in steam if theres any multiplayer, the video said yes, but i have been unable to find a match and i've searched for up to 40+ minutes

It takes two to tango - the community is rather small at this point.  There is a community even scheduled for tomorrow, which would be a good time to play some multiplayer games, and you might want to join the Servo Gamers steam group to find other players: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/servogamers#events/132081229359435999

Yeah unfortunately at this stage MP is dead without arranging a game, but there are people that play at the play with devs night so it's not like we're unwilling to have a game.

There's a few things holding back MP pop atm IMO

- Fear of resets, especially when the game launches and everything you've done in beta disappears. This means people who are interested in seeing the game but not interested in playing the heck out of it for serious are generally lowish level and only show up to MP events, they aren't putting a ton of effort into finding games and loot, which is perfectly understandable and probably the best approach to take to beta

- Inversely, those like me who want to play regularly for things like loot end up level 10 and can't have a satisfying game with low levels, we arrange games occasionally to playtest the updates, there is only a handful of us. If we were to queue PVP you probably wouldn't even be matched against me because the game wouldn't be fair for you. I can do coop with low levels fine but like I said, low levels aren't that interested usually in playing MP beyond a few games every update to see what changed. That can be found during play with devs night so no need to ask people for carry runs. People interested in reaching level 10 tend to do a lot of solo as well, because it is always there and pretty efficient for xp and credits.

- Self reinforcing aversion to queueing, you hit find match and no one shows up, you conclude that no one is going to queue but you, and stop queueing, because no one is going to sit there looking at Finding Match dialogue for hours. And so the next person won't find someone when they hit find match, which means the next new player doesn't find one either. If everyone knows no one is queueing they just don't queue which perpetuates it. To break out of this we need a huge reason for everyone to play again, such as the official launch

I wouldn't worry too much about low MP pop now, this happens in every real beta (I don't mean the perpetual beta some games seem to be in). At launch it will be easier to level, people will be playing and any rewards will be permanent. When early access started it was actually possible to find a game any time, this stopped about a week later when an update required a reset of the profile database, making everyone level 1 again with all their shiny loot gone. At launch that won't be a problem.

In the mean time BonusXP are doing their best to offer multiplayer event nights, so far all the nights for beta 3 have been a huge success. I'll be at the event Thunder (Graham) just linked if you want a coop game then, but the best events are play with devs nights.

All i can say is good job gents, but for me its kind of limited doing single player games, I work a 4 on 4 off 5 on 5 off roster, really prefer the interaction.

But i completely understand everything and such great detail.

Theres something i would like to know, will this have servers or will it be like demigod peer to peer, because i honestly feel if it is peer to peer for us Aussie it will die before its begun.

I'm not sure how i partake in the event, I have been searching for a while now.

The event is on in about 8 hours, mate.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/servogamers#events/132081229359435999

Check the time/date on it, it should adjust it so it shows what time it will be on in your local timezone. When it gets closer to that time, join the group chat for that steam group (either click enter chat room on the steam profile for the group or by click on it in your friends list in steam under the 'groups' tab) and see who is in there, ask for a game etc.

Also, from now until after that event is over I will be in the group chat for anyone that wants to do some coop. I can be in there more often if people want to use the group chat more, but usually when I go in there outside of an event it's just me

btw do you mean, like, a list of lobbies people are hosting as opposed to just match making or are you worried about the quality of connection between players? I rarely have problems with connecting to people across continents on my ADSL2 connection, playing from Queensland. 2 examples, first play with devs night when alpha started, Graham (Thunder), who lives in the USA, played with me, from Australia, then someone else from Europe, then tried playing someone from Michigan. The guy from Michigan was the one that ended up giving him network troubles. Myself I have played with many people but the worst experience I've had was trying to play with a mate that is about 3 minutes walking distance from where I am now. He was playing on a craptop that couldn't run the game at 60fps, lol.

Technically speaking, the networking is (AFAIK) your typical peer 2 peer lockstep arrangement, pretty much every RTS uses it. The game currently has the option to find a match via matchmaking or you can host a lobby with start server, which is fully exposed to the steam friends invite system, you can invite others and people can use join game on you to enter it without an invite. This is an early implementation, I can't remember all the plans BXP have for it but IIRC a list of lobbies to browse was on the wishlist and a lot more options for the lobby. It already seems to use steam sockets for connection (though they could be using the unity raknet implementation or something) so there is proper NAT traversal, no port forwards required.

We're using Steam's services, yes. Though, yes, we also have a Unity implementation, too, but that's turned off in public builds.

Ideally, folks use matchmaking to find games once the population is high enough. But, arranged games (invite over Steam) work just fine, too.

for skirmishes putting a time limit kinda ruins the fun for me, just putting that out there