[Squad] Paradox Core v0.03

[tosx]

Hailing from a future more distant than any other Squad, these Mechs bend time and space in combat.



Lancer Mech
Rift lance: Damage and push an adjacent tile. Mech can teleport up to 2 tiles first by damaging itself. (1 damage. Each tile teleported deals Mech 1 damage.)
- 1 core: Reduces the damage the Mech takes when using this weapon by 1.
- 3 cores: Increases damage by 2.

Oblivion Mech
Oblivion Strike: Artillery attack that damages 3 tiles, pushing the outer tiles. (1 damage. Outer tiles pushed outwards.)
- 2 cores: This attack will no longer damage Grid Buildings.
- 3 cores: Increases damage by 1.

Traveler Mech
Chronostasis: Push a tile and cancel enemy attacks. (Range upgrades allow it to target through obstacles.)
- 1 core: Extends range by 1 tile.
- 2 cores: Extends range by 1 tile.
Temporal Tear: Open a rift that time-travels past enemies to the present for the rest of the turn. Damaging past units damages their present selves. (Affects all tiles.)
- 2 cores: Mech can attack again after opening a Tear.
- 2 cores: Restores Mechs to the health they had at the end of the last player turn.


Some notes on past units:
- When targeting the Tear, blue glows show the location where enemies were last turn. Mousing over those spots will show the corresponding unit in the present.
- Past units have a faint blue glow and a custom trait. Selecting them will make their present self glow orange. Damaging them will damage their present self. They arrive with whatever HP they had last turn.
- Past units fade just before Vek emerge, so they can block queued Vek attacks but not spawns.
- Past units don't grant pilot XP and are not affected by Psions (code-wise, they are Minor units). Past Psions do still provide a buff to present units, and armor from Psions reduces damage transmitted from their past selves.

Code: Select all

v0.03
- Tear can now track stable units, but still not burrowing units (should almost never matter).

v0.02
- Fixed mech movement sounds, and improved the Chronostasis upgrade tooltips a bit.

Download - requires mod loader to function.
Mod Loader - originally made by Cyberboy2000 and continued by kartoFlane.

[tosx]

I also just updated my other 6 squads to use KnightMiner's palette library. You only need one mod with the library enabled to get the palette functionality, but this also cleans up the palette names for each of them. Zero Dawn also got a minor fix for its secret reward (an animation had stopped playing properly).

[narD]

30K play video .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbcKkDdV82c

[Bepoest]

Shockingly good work.
The sprites are terrific, their design conveys the futuristic backstory effortlessly.

This squad plays on vanilla ITB themes but brings a surprising depth. It's a well rounded team, I particularly like that the weapons do complement each other very well but do NOT depend on one another to function: very good integration in the weapons shop and in custom squads.

In particular:
- Rift Spear strikes me as an unassuming but brilliant gem design by squeezing so many tactical options in such a small and elegant package. It really highlights the futuristic and high tech idea of the squad.
- Temporal Tear is really unique and quite solid. Another home run on the squad's theme. Looks fairly balanced as far as I can tell, rarely being the default option but when it becomes relevant it can bring a real wow moment. I really appreciate the polish on user experience and information clarity for this weapon.

[tosx]

Appreciate the kind words!
And thanks for the videos narD

[Bepoest]

Very fun cascading effects. Drench both an enemy and its past reflection in A.C.I.D. and you can deal very impressive damage to it.
With Bots'n'Bugs:
- Armored Roaches are rather resilient to Temporal Tear shenanigans, as their armor efficiently cuts down rippling damage.
- You can fire Temporal Tear when there are Alpha Swarmers around, if you want to enjoy absurd numbers of Alpha Swarmers.

[tosx]

Armor does make for some inconsistency headaches. I thought about making damage transfer through armor, but the psions bork that up slightly by not giving minor units armor (which past units are).

So yeah Roaches unfortunately double-dip. Maybe I'll eventually try to get armor a bit more consistent, but not sure how.

That reminds me; I apparently hard-coded the Tear to ignore stable enemies, but now that friendlies don't time-travel I can't think of much reason for that. I'll do a bit of testing and hopefully update the mod soon.
EDIT: Turns out Burrowers have a lot of issues that would require more substantial changes, so for the time being they'll continue to be immune to the Tear. I did update the mod to allow stable, non-burrowing enemies to be tracked (for use with ItW, although such enemies will rarely be summoned).

[AstroNuno]

The Mechs are so cool! It was fun playing with this Squad! They don't seem too OP, but it was a bit difficult to decide were to divert power. But I finished the game with minimal damage. Thank you for the mod!