[Squad] Hydro Leviathans

[tosx]

I've gone ahead and added a provisional v0.08 mod to the download folder; changes listed in first post. I left v0.07 next to it until I get enough feedback or playtime to decide if I want to go this direction.

[sara2]

I've been using all of your squad mods lately and I just wanted to post how fantastic they all are tosx, really just outstanding work on all of them. They are all an absolute joy to use and the achievement unlocks and such are just such a fun little bonus. Thanks for putting in the work to make these, I adore them all.

[tosx]

glad to hear, and thanks for saying!

[Rithaniel]

Rithaniel, that's a fairly elegant suggestion, but I do worry it's on the strong side. With the water damage "always on" it's doing slightly less than max Prime Punch damage, but also pushing 2 additional tiles and making water. It also removes something I considered a feature and part of their theme: using water to indirectly damage enemies who normally aren't affected by it.

That's actually a good point: comparing it to the Rift Walker's punch. Though you can balance that with the number of cores the upgrade requires. Like, if you replaced propeller with an ability that grants damage even if the target isn't above water, you could increase the cost of that ability to 3 cores from 2.

Though, you also mention wanting to keep the focus on use of water, so an alternative might be "+2 damage to all targeted tiles," so now the middle deals 5 damage to targets above water, 2 damage to targets not above water, and 2 damage to the side tiles.

[tosx]

Finally had some time to play with v0.08 some more, and test out some v0.09 changes. Thanks Rithaniel and narD for the suggestions, I ended up implementing some of your ideas.

• With v0.08, I found myself still ignoring Dowsing Charge propeller upgrade and Cargo's second range upgrade.
• Also found myself grabbing other weapons to handle damage and give Cargo more options late game.
• So I made 2 big tweaks: +2 damage upgrade for Dowsing Charge (regardless of water) and giving Cargo a sideways push upgrade. The weapons may be a little less elegant, but it shores up their late-game weaknesses.

With v0.09, I got pretty close to a 30k run with default weapons; still ran into one Detritus map full of hornets that they couldn't handle, but Rift Walkers couldn't have handled it either. I also updated the Torpedo achievement (if you had it unlocked before, it will still be unlocked).

[TheBoardsCousin]

Is the Far Line Charter's mech squad? I know this was made before then, but the color scheme and water theme does make it seem like they could be closely connected.

[tosx]

Retroactively yes. The sub unit's color scheme is intentionally somewhat close. HL would map to Far Line and Mecha Ronin would map to Watchtower.