Machinery: my first big incremental game

[LouigiVerona]

If you are a fan of incrementals, you might enjoy!

 

https://louigiverona.com/machinery/0.99.1/

[Womp the Cat]

this thing is surprisingly addictive. I don't think I have ever played an incremental game before unless adventure capitalist counts as one? gonna keep at it for a bit.

[Dark Pulse]

Been playing a lot of NGU Idle lately, so more of this is always good.

 

I'm pretty late in that game though - on SADISTIC difficulty, starting to crack into the Breadverse.

 

14 hours ago, Womp the Cat said:

this thing is surprisingly addictive. I don't think I have ever played an incremental game before unless adventure capitalist counts as one? gonna keep at it for a bit.

Yeah, that counts.

Edited February 3, 2022 by Dark Pulse

[Dark Pulse]

Some quick thoughts from playing it...

• It's not very intuitive at all that you can switch between different types of power generators. In fact, it looks like they are just readouts until you click them. Something should be done to make it more obvious.
• I thought that the Research Lab bonuses were passive bonuses reached for hitting certain amounts of energy, since the boxes lit up and un-lit when you fell below it, so for awhile I was trying to keep my energy above those numbers as they lit up. It took a fair while until I realized I could click them to gain the bonus...

I'll leave a few more as I get further. Takes a bit of time to get to Nuclear.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Dark Pulse

[LouigiVerona]

I was extremely surprised that it was not clear that those are tabs. What I did some time ago was to make sure that all clickable elements show a pointer cursor when you're over them. I am not entirely sure yet what a better solution could be, since if you just started playing and it was still not clear that you can click them, I guess a pointer cursor is not helping.

 

Thank you for the feedback!

[Dark Pulse]

13 hours ago, LouigiVerona said:

I was extremely surprised that it was not clear that those are tabs. What I did some time ago was to make sure that all clickable elements show a pointer cursor when you're over them. I am not entirely sure yet what a better solution could be, since if you just started playing and it was still not clear that you can click them, I guess a pointer cursor is not helping.

 

Thank you for the feedback!

The cursor change is very subtle though - so subtle it can be easily missed. And that was my problem, really. Maybe a little icon? Maybe expand the view a bit? Maybe a more obvious cursor change? I'm admittedly on a 1440p monitor, and I obviously haven't unlocked some of the Antimatter stuff (pushing to the 50 Antimatter unlock now), but it seems like there's a fair bit of vertical space that could be used.

 

 

Of course, if any of this space does eventually get used up by the unlocks, then disregard that. :P

 

HOURS LATER EDIT: Yep, that's taken up by a feature later. Guess that can't be done.

 

One other way I could think of, albeit it'd be possibly immersion-breaking, would be that if the player ever gets enough energy to make a purchase on the other generators, make them glow if the player has nothing upgraded in them. This doesn't solve the problem of that a player might be trying to grind out Electric way later than they should be jumping to Plasma, but at least it does eventually hint "Hey, there's something here, click this."

 

Alternatively, you could set up a tutorial mode if it's baby's first time, and that could be as simple as demonstrating there's four types of energy, and that they'll have to click the Research Lab researches in order to "claim" them, since the glow right now just says you can buy them, but that's also what threw me off. So in that sense the UX is a little unintuitive, and for incremental games like this, intuitive UI/UX is everything.

 

Some further suggestions...

• Visual change for the chevrons in successive generations, since they're producing WAY more power, but also are moving just like the others. Maybe the chevron changes. Maybe the speed is faster. I understand that it's a balance between using CPU time and animation, but if it can't animate faster or something, it should at least animate DIFFERENTLY to make it stand out more that this is Gen II/III/MCMXCVIII. I realize the generator name area does update (Electric II, etc.) but it also feels like this is something that could quickly get missed once a player is going way higher on Generations.
• Research upgrades seem kinda lacking. It feels like Power bought through the actual generator you're running is always going to be the straight-up better buy until the Research cost is so cheap it's practically a freebie. I understand that they can't be too powerful, but given the choice between dropping, say, 16 Trillion on a 1% Power upgrade or 44 Trillion on a Generator Power upgrade, the generator will always be faster. Yes, I know that the Research bonus is across the board - still doesn't really solve that the Generator Power options are almost always the best buy.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Dark Pulse
So that space was used after all. Buggeration!

[LouigiVerona]

I would agree that Generator Power options are always the best buy. But you can simply buy your Research when it becomes the best buy, as you said. Meaning, I think it's ok if not everything is absolutely useful at every moment. I think Research Lab breaks up the monotony and adds more things to look forward to.

Also, the most important bit about the Research Lab will be the Lifeforms, and then you will have ample reason to buy more!

[Dark Pulse]

12 hours ago, LouigiVerona said:

I would agree that Generator Power options are always the best buy. But you can simply buy your Research when it becomes the best buy, as you said. Meaning, I think it's ok if not everything is absolutely useful at every moment. I think Research Lab breaks up the monotony and adds more things to look forward to.

Also, the most important bit about the Research Lab will be the Lifeforms, and then you will have ample reason to buy more!

Too bad that seems to be literally the last upgrade in the game at the moment, seeing as it takes 5 Billion antimatter to unlock the Lifeform Scanner. :P

 

Having now begun to crack Tier III generators, I'm admittedly kind of wondering what the point of the Power Limit auto-upgrade is. I've never seen it kick in. Obviously the Charge limit auto-upgrade kicks in when your power would fill up (which is smart, lets you idle the game for longer), but how the hell does it know when to buy power? I thought it'd be "turn one or the other on," but you can't turn the Charge auto-buy off, so how does it know when to buy Power?

 

That 3000C temperature needed for the foundry is kind of evil, by the way. I've seen it generally top out around 3420. Meaning that of the capacity of this thing for heat, the player needs to put like 95% of it into it. Which I guess makes sense for a foundry, work ain't gonna happen until the stuff is near the right point, but it also means if the player does need to turn below 10% of their energy being siphoned off for it, they don't have much headroom until it shuts off. I dunno, maybe this value could be tweaked a little.

 

(Yes, I'm aware you can make it get up to temperature faster by virtue of even more energy put into it. Since the game seems to tick along at roughly 2 ticks per second, this still means it doesn't get down to a non-silly time until you can put about 14-15% into it, since it goes 1500 -> 750 -> 375 -> 187.5 -> 93.75, so basically what I do is boost it up until it's on, then slam it back down to 10%.)

Edited February 6, 2022 by Dark Pulse

[LouigiVerona]

So, the game is actually pretty short. You can beat the game in 4-5 days, if not even quicker.

 

The reason why these numbers seem so huge is because in our minds we always think about linear processes. So, you are at, say, 5k and you think - my god, it will take ages to reach 5 billion. But actually, you can reach it very quickly, because your production growth is pretty much exponential.

 

Power Limit auto-upgrade kicks in when the power tank is full, exactly the same way as the Charge limit auto-upgrade kicks in when the battery is full. When your power tank (or energy tank, I don't have an official name for it, the main progress bar), so when your power tank fills up, a power limit upgrade will automatically be purchased.

 

The reason you might want to turn it off sometimes is if you want to trigger the overdrive. Because by default if you've got it on, the overdrive bonus will be partially spend on the Power limit upgrade. Similarly, if you have Research Lab auto-buy on, triggering overdrive will spend it on buying research lab items first.

 

In terms of the Foundry, yeah, it forces you to keep your battery at at least 10%. It is not a problem in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases.

[Dark Pulse]

5 hours ago, LouigiVerona said:

So, the game is actually pretty short. You can beat the game in 4-5 days, if not even quicker.

 

The reason why these numbers seem so huge is because in our minds we always think about linear processes. So, you are at, say, 5k and you think - my god, it will take ages to reach 5 billion. But actually, you can reach it very quickly, because your production growth is pretty much exponential.

 

Power Limit auto-upgrade kicks in when the power tank is full, exactly the same way as the Charge limit auto-upgrade kicks in when the battery is full. When your power tank (or energy tank, I don't have an official name for it, the main progress bar), so when your power tank fills up, a power limit upgrade will automatically be purchased.

 

The reason you might want to turn it off sometimes is if you want to trigger the overdrive. Because by default if you've got it on, the overdrive bonus will be partially spend on the Power limit upgrade. Similarly, if you have Research Lab auto-buy on, triggering overdrive will spend it on buying research lab items first.

 

In terms of the Foundry, yeah, it forces you to keep your battery at at least 10%. It is not a problem in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases.

So then the Power limit upgrade is bought if, and only if, your Power bar is manually filled up and it's ready to up the multiplier?

 

If so, that's a bit strange, but it'd explain why it never really seemed to do anything to me. Naturally you need to up the power level to push, but if it will only auto-buy in one case, then it's not really doing too much unless you're already on the precipice. I've never had it auto-buy power even when I'm well above the point I could buy it, and it's most definitely on.

 

[LouigiVerona]

I mean, the point of this is so that you can leave it running and not worry it will stop because the energy tank is full.