Platform/New Race Idea: The Molemen

[rich shell]

New Faction/Platform: The Molemen

Scouted for their impressive digging prowess, the Molemen have joined the workforce, ready to bring Drill Core Inc. to deeper depths than before with their specialty: "Tunnels".

Inherent Characteristics:

Special Traits:

- Molemen cannot fight without upgrades (see *Academy*)
- "Tunnels" can be created through a special interaction menu ("B" to open?), and can be up to 5 blocks in length (upgradable, see *Academy* for details)
- "Tunnels" are dug by Molemen at a rate of 250% normal digging speed. You can create priority "Tunnels" in the same fashion as selecting priority blocks.
- Drawing a "Tunnel" through an ore block will drop the mineral inside the "Tunnel", and turn the ore-block into regular dirt.
- Creating a new "Tunnel" next to a pre-existing one requires one empty block distance in-between. Destroying a block from inside the "Tunnel" takes 1.5x normal time.

Daytime:

- Incapable of carrying/retrieving minerals during the Day cycle, although minerals can still be retrieved by other means during the day (such as the Drone Carrier)

Nighttime:

- Incapable of digging or creating "Tunnels" during the Night cycle
- Gains the ability to carry/retrieve minerals
- Traversal speed increases by 50% when travelling through "Tunnels" at night

Platform Specific Buildings:

Academy:

- Allows you to train Molemen & upgrade their base stats (Laboratory equivalent)
- HP / Visibility paths remain the same, but MiningSpeed, GuardDamage, & MovementSpeed trees are replaced with the following: TunnelLength, TraversalSpeed, & CombatTraining. (see *New Research* for info)

Burrow:

- General Building
- Allows the player to recruit more Molemen to the workforce. (Barracks equivalent)
- Only 1 base Moleman available at first, additional options unlocked through Academy/Platform Upgrades.

Seismographic Stabilizer:

- General Building
- Reduces the appearance of terrabors in the mine at night by 10%

Cannon Station:

- Active Nighttime Ability building
- Fires Cannonballs that knock enemies upward
- On ability use, a Combat Mole will man the cannon & automatically attack enemies within a range of 16 blocks. Reusing the ability when manned will demount the mole
- If player does not have a Combat Mole, using the ability will instead cause the cannon to fire at the nearest group of enemies within a range of 11 blocks (ability recharge rate slower than if manned)

Insecticide Turret

- Turret
- Fires a noxious cloud of gas that kills bugs dead. Cloud lingers in the air for several seconds before dissipating, dealing AOE DOT damage to all enemies in range
- Upgrades affect DMG

New Research Options:

Tunnel Length:

Tunnel Upgrade 1
- Increases the length of "Tunnels" by 1 block

Tunnel Upgrade 2
- Increases the length of "Tunnels" by 2 blocks. "Tunnels" can now be placed through bedrock at a cost of 4x blocks.

Tunnel Upgrade 3
- Increases the length of "Tunnels" by 3 blocks. Creating a "Tunnel" through bedrock now only costs 3x blocks

Tunnel Upgrade 4
- Increases the length of "Tunnels" by 4 blocks. Creating a "Tunnel" through bedrock now only costs 2x blocks

Traversal Speed:

Tunnel Upgrade 1
- Increases the speed at which Molemen traverse & create "Tunnels" by 25%.

Tunnel Upgrade 2
- Increases the speed at which Molemen traverse & create "Tunnels" by 50%.

Tunnel Upgrade 3
- Increases the speed at which Molemen traverse & create "Tunnels" by 75%.

Tunnel Upgrade 4
- Increases the speed at which Molemen traverse & create "Tunnels" by 100%.

Combat Training:

Combat Training 1
- Combat Moles can now be acquired through the Burrows building at an additional cost. Can be set to man Cannon Stations at night

Combat Training 2
- Combat Moles deal 33% more DMG overall, and can fire Cannon Stations 50% faster.

Combat Training 3
- Combat Moles deal 66% more DMG overall, and can fire Cannon Stations 100% faster.

Combat Training 4
- Combat Moles deal 100% more DMG overall, and can fire Cannon Stations 150% faster.

---

I personally believe there should be more things a player can do during the Night cycle, as having to juggle both defense & mining (or in this case, retrieving) at night is really engaging.
Thus, the Molemen were born.
Of course, if there's anything that needs tweaking, I'm open to suggestions. This is just some general idea I had.

[whole rivet]

That's certainly different and creative (I certainly like how Vanilla Molemen combine Miners and Carriers by using day/night cycle)...

...but between how high mineral density is and how rapid Cavern Gnats' spawns (and how long the spawning range is) are at 8.+ difficulty, I'm having trouble visualising playing them in a way that makes good use of Tunnels and does not force me to recruit Combat Molemen (...Molewomen?) immediately as a standard opening.

Molemen would certainly allow you to speedrun Coal, but I'm not sure what would be the advantage (all these resources left behind, so no real way to utilise all of the extra Turret mounts) aside from finishing the mission quickly.

Also, an idea:

maybe "Combat Molemen" would be just your regular Molewomen, who are naturally much bigger and much more aggressive than Molemen?

[rich shell]

Good point. Having just barely played a couple of Diff 8 maps myself, I admit it's rather difficult to keep those buggers in check with how many can pop up at once.

The bug rocks are a bit of a tricky thing for this idea. Having Molemen creating Tunnels means they can potentially reach the Swarmnest without needing to dig through any of the blocks surrounding it, but as a trade-off, they destroy blocks from inside the Tunnel at a much slower pace. Kind of evens the playing field, but that's just the source-block, not the actual bug rock.

Probably the best solution to that is to also have them kill the bugs inside the rock as they Tunnel through it, but those blocks receive a similiar speed debuff so Molemen can't just eliminate the obstacle outright.

Alternatively, as you mentioned, having Combat Molemen right from the beginning to deal with the bugs could be better as well. Perhaps having them trainable but with an additional fee, which can then be removed with Combat Training 1?

[rich shell]

Tbh I wasn't really giving any thought to gender when I used Molemen. Just sounded better than Molepeople, though that could be a good way to distinguish which are Miners/Guards at a glance.

[rich shell]

Forgot about the resource bit.
The idea was to have players Tunnel through any ore blocks they can (or mining the block if unable), and then cart those resources back to the base at night.
They definitely have good potential for coal-sniping, but I don't see how that would remove the need for clearing most of, if not all, the resources in the section. You'd still want to grab everything, which is why the ore would drop as an item into the Tunnel to be carried back later in the night.

[whole rivet]

Oh, I apologise. (I have had an ample opportunity to feel like an idiot lately.)

I certainly saw:

• Creating a new "Tunnel" next to a pre-existing one requires one empty block distance in-between. Destroying a block from inside the "Tunnel" takes 1.5x normal time.
  but somehow, I completely blanked out on:
• Drawing a "Tunnel" through an ore block will drop the mineral inside the "Tunnel", and turn the ore-block into regular dirt.

That last bit certainly helps them in speedrunning, I think?

I think I'm starting to see the big picture.
They can effectively dig some blocks at [6 blocks at the cost of {5/2.5 + 1.5 =} 3.5 blocks =] 171% speed at baseline (and it gets better), can skip Bedrock more efficiently than Resonant Laser, and can potentially circumvent some dangers by denying them air blocks, but are hamstrung by the need to operate at night and are more reliant on vision to maintain efficiency (Block Revealer and Radar become suddenly much more important).

[rich shell]

Precisely. They'll nake other, IMO lesser-used, buildings more useful.
I also toyed with the trade-off of having them be completely blind but have a "Danger Sense", of sorts, that puts red warning symbols on dangerous blocks (Magma, Bugrock, Swarmnest), and then having ores be vague outlines rather than visible.
But then they would feel too reliant on the radar/blockrevealer imo.

[whole rivet]

Yeah, the "Danger Sense" bit feels more like

extra challenging one-off challenge
than
a viable platform,
one out of two,
for the next two fiscal quarters of Early Access

IIRC, people hated playing the first Arkham Batman game when they rationalised themselves into never turning Detective Vision off, so I don't think it would be a huge hit if all that beautiful varied pixelart got replaced with Vague Blocks of Vagueness. 8P