Please spoil secrets (information from above Floor -8, branch paths, hidden interactions and hidden hacks) as well as metagame-oriented strategic information (how to do certain tricky things, etc.) for courtesy’s sake. Try to mention what tier of secret something is instead of posting an unmarked black box (i.e. -10 Spoilers: ||You can take a branch exit to Caves, but it’s not always safe there!||
#Cogmind
jovial harness
sleek canyon
that is a lovely spoiler framework
jovial harness
I aim to please.
jovial harness
Yes
sleek canyon
hrngrnhrngrgnrhr
jovial harness
I think Luigi is the master of those arcane arts
sleek canyon
jovial harness
However, you need a magnifying glass to play Deck Cogmind
Because of how the fundamental framework of the game is designed
It’s all built on top of a text interface like a command prompt, so resizing the game means you need new font sizes for every character (sprite) in the game
jovial harness
that having been said I think Luigi probably has done a tutorial on getting it reasonably visible on deck since he plays on deck
warm hill
I should try cogmind again
I liked it but did not have the time to really make it click
jovial harness
Cogmind slaps
I will say, you probably should read Leiavoia's beginner guide to the game just to find your sea legs and start exploring/learning stuff
jovial harness
can we pin things here
http://leiavoia.net/cogmind/guides/new-player-guide.html
This is the best starting place for brand new players
plus the tips here are relevant even for seasoned vets tbh
jovial harness
http://leiavoia.net/cogmind/dataminer/
Also, the Data Miner can reveal interesting information about your run once you're done
it's also the best way to send people your scoresheet so you can brag
jovial harness
Data Miner is also genius in that it doesn't list things you don't run into
potent jay
wanna test and see if something shows up in the list again don't mind me
sleek canyon
Since it had been a while, this stream starts out with 10+ minutes of just talking to give a bit of a general status update, for those who may not be following in other locations like Discord, then we dive into a fresh run with no plan.
jovial harness
Sick
Thinking about the CPS tube/looting rework. RIP plasma cutter, but long live looting actually being an issue that has different approaches/solutions instead of one objective (and boring) answer
jovial harness
indeed
formal dagger
Anyway ||is there a way to tell whether a terminal has an assigned administrator?||
jovial harness
||Not really, but admins are usually found pretty close to their assigned terminals||
formal dagger
Right, but I found one about equidistant to two
jovial harness
guess :)
formal dagger
jovial harness
more seriously, just idle for a moment, ||the admin is tethered to their terminal so it will not be able to get as far from the assigned one as it will from the fake||
the one you're at looks good, could circle around and hit the other too tbh
and if you're fast you can just race it
formal dagger
I have never won a race with an administrator
Fortunately I did get the right terminal
formal dagger
||Should I have the administrator follow me, or does its bonus work at range?||
er, operator
jovial harness
||I believe you don't actually need the op near you to use its hacking bonus, but it also reveals stuff within its line of sight||
||such as traps, hidden doors, etc.||
sleek canyon
Cogmind talk!
Thinking of making a more general thread for rambling about traditional roguelikes. Maybe. The main channel can still work
jovial harness
Found an imp. signal interpreter on -9
that's a lucky siginterp
shame you can't load up reasonably good sensors that early
jovial harness
thinking I'm all noited out so it's time to return to Cogmind
sleek canyon
Godspeed mister beep boop
formal dagger
Do I run a garrison on -8
jovial harness
depends on your goals
what are you building into
got an alignment plan in mind?
formal dagger
I want to do a lot of RIF
jovial harness
then yes
you have to dive the garrison on -8
bring spare guns, armor, and treads
-8/G: ||Try to take a loop exit if you can||
formal dagger
||loop exit? From the garrison?||
jovial harness
||Yeah, it's preferable if you still have core HP and parts left to try to return to another -8/Materials because it'll have another Garrison||
||You can check if an exit will loop with sig interp||
/G branches: ||You can only loop once after you use a RIF installer, though, so you're capped at a maximum of two installs per level||
formal dagger
hmmm
Is it possible for a garrison to ||not have an RIF installer?||
Never mind, found it. Had to break a wall
jovial harness
Something to keep in mind is that G: ||Garrisons tend to hide a lot of things behind Phase Walls, which are also pretty hard to locate thanks to Garrisons having sensor scramblers||
||You can either learn the layouts from playing a lot, or you can run around tapping walls with a hammer||
jovial harness
@sleek canyon the upd8 news is in
Zoomable map
The impossible has been made possible
regal pawn
oh cogmind thread
regal pawn
too late
regal pawn
oh
jovial harness
if you upload it to Dataminer you can get a cool graphical representation of it
which'll help other people follow along with your run
jovial harness
it's hard to figure out at first lmao
regal pawn
ok so this one didn't get uploaded
jovial harness
Oh, right, yeah
you have to enable scoresheet uploads to the leaderboards in order to use Dataminer
jovial harness
I was interested in Dataminer's run overview so I could see what you were up to / what you built
jovial harness
so in that case; what did you build
I sense you probably went with legs as a first-time player
jovial harness
treads is "superheavy"
a bold approach!
what else did you build, I'm interested now
treads is a hard way to approach the game
okay spoil that
regal pawn
Spoilers: -5/W||arlord||
jovial harness
wow, this is a hell of a first run
uhh
I think the format would be -5/W||arlord|| or something like that
Damn, VCR? First run? Cogmind fuckin' gaming my dude
I'm liking the evolutions too, very spicy, 3W is strong.
regal pawn
Damn, VCR? First run? Cogmind fuckin' gaming my dude
||all of the good shit I got from the warlord stash||
jovial harness
yeah yeah yeah hell yeah
I can see that
You might want a little more infowar in future runs, you definitely do not need Hvy. Reactive Plating, ||Imp. Energy Mantle|| AND ||Thermal Barrier|| all at once
esp. considering that ||Thermal Barrier|| ain't doing shit while the mantle is up
regal pawn
oh is there a maximum on damage mitigation
jovial harness
not all mitigation types stack
regal pawn
aaaaaah
jovial harness
but more to the point the ||Thermal Barrier|| is regrettably Not Very Good
It costs a lot of energy to mitigate very little of an unthreatening damage type
kinda soggers for a rarity 9* prototype tbh
regal pawn
I still have no idea what's "good"
beyond the basic concepts of ballistics generating less heat and energy weapons generating lots of heat
and EM weapons doing weird stuff
jovial harness
don't worry according to MTF everything except utility shielding and armor plates is bad
(this is a joke. MTF is a major Cogmind community member who likes to say "X Bad" a lot to discourage uncritical play)
Do you understand how the alert system works?
jovial harness
Alert is a little more complicated than that
Whenever you take actions such as being spotted, killing bots, hacking terminals, and about a million other actions that are destructive to the facility, the Alert level rises
as breakpoints are hit, the facility will start to respond, dispatching more patrol squads, increasing network security measures and otherwise tightening control over 0b10 to make your life harder and shorter
managing the Alert level is a crucial part of succeeding in Cogmind; if you drive the Alert level up by killing tons of bots you will provoke an equivalent response that will overwhelm and crush you eventually
(Fair warning: Alert is not the only way 0b10 can respond to your shenanigans. If you fuck around hard enough with secret or sensitive elements of the Facility you WILL find out and Then You Will Be Sorry, Buster)
regal pawn
......can you feasibly use the ||humpback??||
formal dagger
I haven't even seen W||arlord||
jovial harness
ordered from lightest to heaviest, the propulsion types of Cogmind are:
Inherent: Your core can fly on its own. Quick but extremely bad at supporting great deals of weight.
Flight: Flight propulsion offers blinding speed, enough to outrun anything in the game except other fliers (prototype flight units will let you outrun fliers too), and the ability to hop over enemies, preventing them from blocking your path. Very bad support and horrid durability, extraordinarily evasive, guzzles energy and produces a great deal of heat.
Hover: Flight but less spicy. No hops, but Hover is still extraordinarily fast and won't break if an enemy so much as glares at it. Poor support, good evasion, hard on heat and energy capacity.
Legs: The all-rounder. Gimmicky due to their running function, which causes you to become less accurate but more evasive after getting some momentum. Profoundly cheap on energy/heat reqs, easy to acquire, and very durable, but cover a lot of your body so they get hit a lot. Legs also offer the kick functionality, which makes it easier to ram other bots out of your way.
Treads: Slow and heavy. Treads are more expensive than legs to run but extraordinarily durable and cover a lot of your body and offer a number of benefits, suppressing kinetic weapon recoil and giving you the most powerful ramming function: crush. Did I mention treads are slow? They're really slow. Also, multi-slot treads often come with the unique Siege Mode functionality, which can be toggled on or off by changing their power state once they're already powered on. Sieging makes Cogmind immobile but offers huge defense bonuses and even more recoil absorption.
Wheels: Gimmicky carrying prop. Wheels are MUCH faster than Treads, and despite their seemingly lacking mass support, wheels also suffer extremely little penalty from going overweight. Extremely fragile, very small. Mix with another prop type and alternate between the two for best results.
regal pawn
how does crush work?
jovial harness
you run into your enemy, and there's a %chance (based on the treads you equipped) that you either deal a lot of damage to them, or if their core is weak enough, they just die instantly
you cannot crush enemies larger than Cogmind
(Large or greater size)
regal pawn
what does getting prototype names actually do?
jovial harness
what, from termi?
it lets you know what prototypes actually are instead of just seeing Prototype Thing
regal pawn
but do I need to have those in my inventory or are they just globally identified?
jovial harness
oh its global
regal pawn
||so......not related to parts fizzling||\
jovial harness
No, it is
Well, depends on the context
Lots of things cause parts fizzling, ||Self-Destruct|| is one of them
regal pawn
what governs whether or not I lose a part when demounting it?
jovial harness
There’s a little “x” in front of the slot letter
But also
Only chips are destroyed by removing them
Unless a part fuses, anyways
regal pawn
||what does an active sensor suite do?||
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||It's every infowar function at the same time plus some bonus functionality like mapping travel probability and statistical POIs, at the cost of alerting every bot that gets pinged by it||
jovial harness
it has some REALLY arcane functionality actually
the purple overlay it puts onto the map shows you a statistical heatmap of where moving bots are likely to go when travelling, showing you which routes are inefficient vs which are efficient
but alas, everyone jumps you
formal dagger
Can there be a Garrison ||without an RIF?||
jovial harness
Can there be a Garrison ||without an RIF?||
No, actually
jovial harness
It's much easier*
*okay, hacking is a lot safer because it's an alternative to fighting, that doesn't mean it's EASIER because you have to do all sorts of different stuff but it is safer
have you accessed a terminal before?
regal pawn
yes
formal dagger
Hacking machines is the art of learning how to use the manual commands
All the commands available at the machines can be entered manually, and you can enter any command even if it isn't available in the list
I'll give you this one for free: ||index(terminals)||
jovial harness
okay sorry I got distracted
the most important things to understand about hacking are this:
-higher security levelled terminals have higher-tier access and therefore can get better information
-direct hacks (ones that are available from the terminal screen by default) are much easier to succeed at than indirect hacks (ones you punch in on your own)
to obtain hacking prowess I suggest keeping track of as many direct hack commands as you can and not only taking note of what commands terminals show you, but also what other things you could use in terminal commands
formal dagger
I didn't know that second one
jovial harness
it's in the guide!
formal dagger
Question
||I am rolling this Garrison but I can't find the RIF||
What should I try?
jovial harness
lol, sorry, fell asleep
jovial harness
Question
||I am rolling this Garrison but I can't find the RIF||
-6 and below/G||arrison: you need to try and find the phase walls||
regal pawn
||are phase walls the blue ones?||
also if I hack stuff how does that....help me?
because it's usually information or lore rather than directly useful stuff
regal pawn
but you just stealth your way around enemy bots?
jovial harness
Correct
Never fighting means never dying
(Also it keeps your Alert super low)
My maintaining an informational advantage with infowar systems, hacking, and staying one step ahead of your enemies, you can essentially ghost your way through the Complex unimpeded
Plus, once you get really good at hacking, you can scare up remarkable amounts of loot from nowhere
formal dagger
Lollerisms have you found the E||xiles||?
jovial harness
Peri I hate to say this
But that abbreviates to X due to a different branch being E||xtension||
regal pawn
Lollerisms have you found the E||xiles||?
||maybe?||
||I've found the warlord, zion, and the oracle||
formal dagger
X ||The exiles are after in the caves that you find on -9 or -8||
jovial harness
||I've found the warlord, zion, and the oracle||
Cogmind Gaming indeed
Did -4,5,6 DM ||Oracle give you any interesting data?||
formal dagger
Well
Not sure I'm getting out of this one alive
sleek canyon
Well
Not sure I'm getting out of this one alive
Escape to the surface in an air bubble
jovial harness
nah you got this
mortal pumice
i see a bunch of 110 speed bots with 2 melee blocking los of the ranged ones
can just core purge and core away
regal pawn
ok so hacking is a noncombat kinda deal
not "sprint up to a robot shooting at you to smack them with a datajack"
jovial harness
Datajacks can be helpful for stealth hacking, but they have a unique purpose that is ultimately unrelated to that agenda
mortal pumice
do you mean trap reprogram?
jovial harness
?
Datajacks are fantastic, you can (Datajack mechanics spoilers) ||jack non-hostiles and get tons of useful information even without RIF||
You can do all that and reprogram traps, they're lovely
got my plasma cutter, my datajack, and my katana that's all the weapons a cogmind really needs
maybe a hammer instead of a katana
that's kinda up to taste
regal pawn
||RIF?||
formal dagger
nah you got this
Update: I did not survive
jovial harness
Did you purge your kit and run for it?
formal dagger
No, because the only direction I could run in was also full of hostiles
jovial harness
||RIF?||
Sorry, I never expanded on this. ||RIF is a faction alignment you can choose; I won’t spoil how to do it or what it is, but amongst other things it greatly improves the functionality of Datajacks, and allows Cogmind to subvert the facility on a more fundamental level||
jovial harness
There are associated Thingies but it is not a part no
If you’re interested, I suggest ||snooping around sensitive parts of the Facility where you might expect to find a nerve centre for controlling combat units||
Damn, I wish I could discuss my runs and tactics in detail without spoiling everyone
formal dagger
Give me another year and I might get another win in
Then I'd be happy to discuss at length
jovial harness
lol
formal dagger
Was visiting X when corruption caused me to misfire and then the all killed me :(
jovial harness
Oof
That’s a great reason to unequip all your weapons if you’re corrupt in (spoilers: many different branches)||allied territory|| though
regal pawn
wait what difficulty should I be playing on?
jovial harness
any
sleek canyon
utilities good
regal pawn
how do drones.......drone?
like, how do I get them to do things and what do they actually do
jovial harness
Do you have a drone bay?
If so, deploy them by activating the bay, then I believe you can control them from space+X
regal pawn
but what do they do
jovial harness
Depends on the drones
Some are extremely fast for scouting
Some explode
Some kill
All extend your vision
regal pawn
are they good?
formal dagger
I have never used them because I thought you had to find drones on the ground before using them with a drone bay
jovial harness
Nope they come with
jovial harness
are they good?
Depends on the drone bay
Suicide drones in mode: explore instantly cause your run to end in a loss unless you’re ready to shoot your way through every bot ever built
formal dagger
Cleared a G||arrison in Materials like it was nothing||
jovial harness
Fuck yeah!!!
formal dagger
Reprogrammed some grunts that I found on the ground too
regal pawn
||broke into a garrison and uh there's some really nice gear here||
......this seems either stupid good or reasonably likely to kill me
formal dagger
Why not both
jovial harness
It’s alright
regal pawn
||Cetus is certainly A Place||
||I have no idea if R17 survived because I saw some guards appear and heard gunfire the turn before I left||
jovial harness
Ce||tus is fucked, lmao. Horrible place.||
regal pawn
Ce||tus is fucked, lmao. Horrible place.||
||I hit the terminal and have no idea what it actually does but I did it so hopefully it does something||
regal pawn
||the one with the code you get from the hacker on the floor before||
jovial harness
||Okay, yeah, that's the one. Very interesting.||
this would be one of those FAFO potential things
regal pawn
||research is quite the difficulty spike||
jovial harness
Yes, it is
Most dangerous facility section but also loaded with the most valuable and winning-est loot
mortal pumice
Treads
regal pawn
||.....ok I'm actually kinda stuck on first floor of research. I can't move anywhere without either eventually hitting something that triggers a reinforcement spiral. Also something shot out my tractor beam so my ability to win sustained fights is kinda questionable. I could try to double mininuke siege mode my way through everything until the floor catches fire but I don't think that's really a solution||
formal dagger
I say give it a try
jovial harness
there aren't caps that I know of but some forms of damage resistance don't stack the way you'd think
off the top of my head, I'm fairly sure that force fields soak damage before damage-mitigating utilities kick in
regal pawn
but something like a ||beam splitter|| would net me "full" value?
regal pawn
I'll be real, I don't think this one is survivable
it was not
augh it still didn't upload because I didn't realize I had to change my thing
jovial harness
this is a lot of weapon slots
might want to spoiler that image btw
a lot of people haven't been that high, or to that branch
sleek canyon
loller already did
jovial harness
Rogue is the theoretical "intended" difficulty, but Adventurer is fine too lol
it's a great way to get familiar with the various items and mechanics
argh still can't use Data Miner to process raw txt scoresheets
-3/T||esting is a WILD map, did you find anything cool in there?||
regal pawn
not really
better treads ig
oh actually yeah I found the IHST and BHTs but that's about it
also need to run more cooling/utility slots in the future
jovial harness
fair warning, going treads-only is REAL hard in Rogue mode
jovial harness
ehh
regal pawn
as is usual for this type of game
jovial harness
not really?
Optimal is whatever you're good at piloting, I'm personally good at sneaky hacker but other players are very skilled at combat builds
it's more that going ONLY treads is really rough compared to stuff like treads+wheels
regal pawn
I was so over weight that wheels were not faster than wheels
but yeah I get what you mean
maintaining stealth was challenging
regal pawn
two ||heavy mass drivers|| plus an AoE weapon
jovial harness
I'm not trying to criticize so much as I want to know the reasoning
Ahh
so the thing is
high-end weapons especially get VERY heavy and equipping more is extraordinarily taxing on your build
regal pawn
ah
jovial harness
comparatively, just swapping when you need a different tool is quite efficient
but taxes your inventory slot count instead
regal pawn
I was also consistently short on utility slots and I evolved a lot of utility slots this run
so I might go for fewer guns and even more utility
jovial harness
Utility is super super good
the best thing about playing treads is that you're not constantly hitting bwoinked with the demand for more and more mass support so you can keep evolving the slot type you want to evolve instead of the slot type you have to evolve
regal pawn
there was a lot of sitting by a chokepoint and killing groups 1 by 1
which I think is what I'm supposed to be doing
jovial harness
that is very much your approach if scrapping bots is the plan lol
regal pawn
and then I got hit by ||30|| bots at once, lost all my stuff and died
jovial harness
and then I got hit by ||30|| bots at once, lost all my stuff and died
||haha assault dispatch got your ass huh||
regal pawn
yup
jovial harness
this is why you do actually need ||double micronukes||
jovial harness
AMS?
regal pawn
||anti missile system||
regal pawn
the only way to get AoEs was to detonate them at my feet
jovial harness
I forgot that the ||assault support units|| get so rude at higher levels of the facility and higher Alert tiers
||they send some real bastards in the Assault ARCs at the endgame huh||
regal pawn
yeah
jovial harness
||You can actually alpha strike a full ARC and kill it before it can deploy its complement if you have superior sighting range and very strong weapons||
jovial harness
It's actually ridiculously hard to achieve lmao
you need a really good sensor chip to do it
jovial harness
there is but it's extremely spoiler-rich
I advise making your own
genuinely
taking some notes will do you some good
regal pawn
is there a way to move and shoot?
also is there a way to get schematics for a specific item
actually in general how do I make hacking reliable?
jovial harness
okay
regal pawn
I usually get ~2 tries on any given terminal and they're not guaranteed to yield fruit
jovial harness
moving and shooting is generally bad
when you move, your aim gets worse
when you run on legs it gets even worse
regal pawn
no I mean like mechanically is it possible
jovial harness
there is no one command that shoots and moves at the same time
you can either move or fire
regal pawn
ok
jovial harness
but remember, any combination of moves is just a permutation of how you spend your TUs
speaking of which: more weapons fired in a salvo = more time spent, base, with a firing speed modifier effecting the final TU expenditure
sleek canyon
what luna said, let me find the manual
sleek canyon
yeah don't worry
sleek canyon
I'm one of those mad creatures who likes reading manuals
Pick Up 100
Attach 100
Fast Attach 150
Detach 50
Swap 150
Drop 50
Fire 200
Ram 100+
Rewire 100
Wait 100
Move Varies by propulsion and mass
Firing more than one weapon in a single volley is more time-efficient, and that efficiency increases the more weapons you fire at once:
#Weapons Total Time
2 300
3 325
4 350
5 375
6 400
so here's the upshot:
- firing multiple weapons at once is more efficient than firing them one at a time, but after that you're stuck in a long wait. there's like a quadratic barrage efficiency thing
- you can basically sequence any actions separately and get the gestalt effect of doing them
- with the big exception of swapping and fast attaching
- pick up + attach = 200, fast attach = 150
- detach + attach = 200, swap = 150
so use fast attach (a over object on the ground) and swap commands (many UI methods)
jovial harness
winged misses an important wrinkle of how firing weapons work, though, in that there is a major complication based on the "delay" stat
sleek canyon
you basically quick slam shit onto you
jovial harness
each weapon you fire at base contributes TUs to your salvo in accordance with that chart, but additionally, for each weapon fired, the "delay" stat also goes into the final TU cost
sleek canyon
yes that's true, some weapons are just slow
jovial harness
the reason this is important is that there are both highly slow weapons
and more significantly
sleek canyon
As you can see, firing a huge volley has its advantages. You can fire six times as many weapons for only twice the cost, and every weapon beyond the sixth incurs no additional cost. Note that regardless of individual or cumulative weapon delay modifiers, the time cost of a volley can never be reduced below 25.
jovial harness
some -delay weapons that cause outrageous results
regal pawn
fast attach?
jovial harness
a on your keyboard
okay time for a lesson about guns
ever seen the earlygame prototype "Enh. Autogun"?
sleek canyon
anyway, the fire algorithm isn't too hard to memorize, it's basically one of those geometric series. The cost per shot is: 200, +100, + 25, +25, +25, +25 and that's it. you never go further than 400 as a cost
regal pawn
ever seen the earlygame prototype "Enh. Autogun"?
yes
sleek canyon
fast attach?
when you stand over an item on the ground, "a" immediately attaches it to you, from the floor
it never touches your backpack
jovial harness
This weapon is bananas stronger than its base form, Autogun, even though they're nearly identical
sleek canyon
that's fast attach baybee
regal pawn
ah
sleek canyon
oh wait actually before I forget: the purge command is also mega efficient
I wish it was on the manual
but it's like 100 TU or something to drop everything
regal pawn
it says that it's a free action
jovial harness
space+P immediately sheds your entire build in 0TU
sleek canyon
oh it's 0?
jovial harness
zilch
regal pawn
incidentally, is there a way to stop greens from sprinting over and whisking away all the loot
jovial harness
Many
jovial harness
yeah none of them are non-spoiler except for spooking them by taking a shot/swing
sleek canyon
like techniques range from just shooting the greens all the way to writing basilisk hacks on the walls
this is me being vague
regal pawn
ok but I can spook them by shooting at them
regal pawn
also should I be playing on rogue?
jovial harness
speaking of which: melee attacks have +100% to-hit on greenbots
ya welcome
they are ALWAYS sneak attacks on green bots
jovial harness
also *should* I be playing on rogue?
It's pretty damn jarring to go from Adventurer to Rogue
regal pawn
rogue it is
jovial harness
Rogue is the difficulty the game is balanced for
sleek canyon
I play rogue
jovial harness
everything else gets, like, occasional updates
sleek canyon
consequently, I die a lot
jovial harness
but also yeah many deaths swiftly approach on Rogue
Alert is a lot less generous, bots are more accurate and hit harder...
there's a lot about the game that gets much harder
some major figures in the high-scoring/extended/++ community are of the opinion that the other difficulties do a bad job of teaching you how to play because of how perversely stronger some tactics are on the other difficulties than rogue instead of all of them scaling neatly
regal pawn
yeah I figured as much
jovial harness
anyways, I said I'd explain hacking so I'll explain hacking for beginners (ie absolutely no spoilers, just the basics)
First of all, the anatomy of terminals
Terminals are a way to access the Facility's local and global databases, allowing you to learn more about the facility, download lore entries, bot descriptions, part schematics, and even the locations of the exits to the floor
But the way they allow you to access this information is limited on the surface
When you access a terminal, it'll display some significant starting information: the terminal's security level, and the commands that it directly accesses
The security level informs you how tough it's going to be to succeed at hacking it and accessing commands, but it also determines the tier of information you can access
Higher security level terminals have elevated access permissions, allowing you to penetrate deeper into the Facility's databanks and get more jealously-guarded information, such as higher-tier part and bot schematics, lore entries considered to be more secret, and more powerful information warfare hacks that tell you more about the level you're currently on
But they're also harder to hack, and if you fail a hack, the Facility will begin tracing you and you'll rack up some Alert
The terminal prompt will show you the percentile chance of succeeding at hacks before you execute a command
But besides the direct commands, which are the ones the terminal displays to you when you access it, there are also indirect commands
Indirect commands are when you just punch whatever you want into the terminal manually, and while less likely to succeed, this means you can do any hack from any terminal as long as you know how to input the hack you want
Try learning some commands by examining the direct access commands from a terminal to start putting together what you can do elsewhere (anything you see on direct at one terminal, you should be able to do at another terminal on the same level at the same access tier)
And use the tab button to cycle through autocompletes; the game will memorize commands you've used before and keep them in the autocomplete menu
Additionally some commands are NEVER direct hacks, and you need to learn them elsewhere to figure out what to type and what they do
Now, the thing is, after saying all of this you're probably thinking "okay that's all great but how do I actually SUCCEED at hacking, my %s are all crap and I never get lucky at terminal hacking, the numbers are very unfavorable"
the trick to this is that you need HACKWARE
Hackware is a class of Utility-slot parts that you can use to boost your chances at succeeding at hacks, or to reduce the chance that you get traced while doing so, and even protect you from critical failures while hacking which would feed back and fry parts of your build or corrupt your core otherwise
Hackware comes in two core flavors: offensive and defensive
Offensive hackware increases the %chance of success, while defensive hackware protects you from being traced and defends against feedback
To get hackware, though, you'll need to salvage it from a class of bot you're probably familiar with, but despise. I won't spoil which bots you need to hunt for that sweet sweet hackware prize unless you ask directly, but you might be able to infer from where they hang around...
There's some advanced hacking tactics, too, that are really spoilery. Like everything in this game, hacking runs deep, and there's stuff you can do to really improve your info-war game. Try stuff out.
jovial harness
Stack it
jovial harness
Stack multiple hackwares
regal pawn
can I just mount extras
jovial harness
yup
jovial harness
you can mount extras of many things
if one armor plate isn't enough to drop the vuln% of your critical parts, mount another
regal pawn
I did know about mounting extra armor
regal pawn
I guess I just missed the part of hacking suites where it said they stacked
jovial harness
note
regal pawn
que
regal pawn
actually question
with treads the important part is the recoil reduction and the durability
if I'm using energy guns do I actually need to be using the treads or do I just need them mounted
jovial harness
he's beginning to believe...
If you're using energy guns there's little to no recoil so yes you can use treads as armor and swap to something faster behind them if you want
the strat of using treads as makeshift armor plating is quite seriously core for speedrunning tactics
as attached but deactivated propulsion units have no weight
(they do have a drag stat which will slow down flyers)
regal pawn
on the topic of weight management, uh
between guns, armor, random utilities, I'm almost always overweight
and I don't have enough evo points to fix that
jovial harness
That’s a Johnny Sevenguns problem lol
Let me look at your Peak State and see what’s going on
holy shit you were equipping (-2/T||esting two graviton reactors and a quantum reactor||
that's like a billion mass just from 3 power units
regal pawn
well yeah I needed to run the shields
jovial harness
wait
holy shit
I can't tell if this is 
or not
you had your shields at full all the time
because your power output was that enormously high
regal pawn
....yes, that was the point?
regal pawn
shields consume a shitload of power in exchange for halving damage taken, I'm running the combattiest build ever, QED I need an ungodly amount of power
jovial harness
8 entire builds off of that much power
okay
so generally speaking the way people handle keeping their shields up is by using a power bank to charge their shields out of
jovial harness
yeah lmao
regal pawn
because you can do the floor trick
regal pawn
and they're not mainlining an entire floor's worth of energy to get through fights
jovial harness
you can just charge your shields out of those when you need to dig in and fight
dude forget an entire floor's worth of energy your build probably was enough to power the entire facility on its own
oh btw batteries in your inventory charge from your excess power
jovial harness
@mortal pumice this is Power Slot Gaming
the matter pods are actually very smart and good keep doing that
they don't weigh you down and let you maintain a matter pool to keep firing from
okay anyways no build needs 3 full-sized reactors unless you're planning to do something extremely silly
this is a general truth actually, the reactor size hierarchy is present throughout the entire game and understanding how mini and micro reactors differ from others is significant
to greatly simplify, there's various degrees of storage reactor (reactor with high energy cap) and generation reactor (reactor with high energy output) and more importantly there are miniaturized reactors, which are smaller and output less energy and more heat but in return they weigh significantly less which is very important because a lot of the mass in a build trying to be as light as possible is going to come from its reactor
regal pawn
question: when people reference half tracking is this literally running half wheels or is this swapping between wheels and tracks as needed
jovial harness
oh also there's the Fusion Compressor, which is dark sorcery that consumes mass in return for being a wack-ass strong but light reactor
jovial harness
question: when people reference half tracking is this literally running half whe...
It's both things at the same time
regal pawn
oh also there's the Fusion Compressor, which is dark sorcery that consumes mass ...
I did figure out how those worked right after they chewed through my mass pool
jovial harness
you equip both wheels and treads at the same time and turn the wheels on and the tracks off when you're out of combat, and switch into treads to fight
regal pawn
but it's not swapping tracks on when it's fighting time
regal pawn
sorr,y it's not pullling tracks out of inventory when it's fighting time
jovial harness
you just turn the wheels off and the tracks on when you fight
and then do the opposite when you're schmooving
there's a shortcut to toggle your propulsion units on ;
regal pawn
also ||this farcom stuff seems extremely powerful, what's the catch?||
jovial harness
||Do you really want to know or do you want to FAFO?||
||Also, it kinda does tell you||
regal pawn
I'll find out when i find out ig
jovial harness
X ||You'll get another warning if you take FC to the top floors||
I will say this, though, because it's very much worth knowing as a newbie
||FC is designed as a new-player tool to help you get used to the game and learn stuff, but the tradeoff for using it is that you can't access the true deepest depths of the endgame||
regal pawn
ah
jovial harness
||So eventually to explore the very end you'll have to leave FarCom behind and go it alone||
Oh, also, it has social consequences.
||Not everyone is cool with the guys you got it from. They're exiles from a specific place for a specific reason||
Oh, one last thing, and this is very much a general roguelikes thing that’s also Cogmind advice:
Just because someone or something else doesn’t want to fight you… doesn’t mean you don’t want to fight it. Usually you’re going to be fighting in self-defence, but sometimes you’re going to want to strike first. Just like not every enemy is worth fighting just because it wants to fight, not every unassuming bot that doesn’t want to fight is worth sparing. This isn’t like games which punish you for trying to steal from the shopkeeper with an inescapable death sentence; you can benefit from deception and outright violence.
regal pawn
||raid the vault, got it||
jovial harness
Good luck :)
regal pawn
I do need to break the mindset of "you're on a clock get through floors ASAP" that a lot of roguelikes encourage
jovial harness
it's funny because trad rogues actually encourage the opposite
i.e. sponging as much resources as possible from the floor before you're forced to leave
regal pawn
yeah it's been a while since I've played a trad rogue
jovial harness
Cogmind sits in the dead center - you're trying to balance an equation
you want as much as you can reasonably get from the floor, but what you can get and how much of it you can get depends on your build
and so does how far you can push your luck
regal pawn
I think this is the first direct combat gear I've gotten from these guys
and honestly, kinda tempted
combine this with the quantum whatsit and there's potential maybe?
regal pawn
ever seen the earlygame prototype "Enh. Autogun"?
so uh, ||I got a copy of this and the schematic, is it worth massing?||
jovial harness
||I'd make a few if you can, they're quite strong for a good few floors||
Don't like
use every fab on the floor
regal pawn
||......there's usually less than one fab per floor, right?||
......I got cheated out of an entire floor
goddammit
jovial harness
||......there's usually less than one fab per floor, right?||
||Factory should have like 4-6 per, lmao, not including l00pz||
regal pawn
oh I'm not there yet
jovial harness
there's zero in Materials
jovial harness
lol
regal pawn
this seems.....safe
jovial harness
HAHA YES
||Stealth Array! Because if there’s no one left to spot you, you’re always hidden.||
regal pawn
........I may have misclicked
and fired that point blank into a wall and a very sad excavator
jovial harness
LMAO
jovial harness
It's extremely safe.
mortal pumice
if there are no enemies then you are safe
jovial harness
if there is no facility you are safe
jovial harness
mortal pumice
by the way, i have published some fanfiction/parody erotica of cogmind. be warned it does contain spoilers for ||RIF|| https://archiveofourown.org/works/42369888/chapters/106398030
sleek canyon
LOL
jovial harness
Luigi is doing a stream right now on the Roguelikes server that's specifically aimed at teaching beginner players how to understand/play combat runs, with spoiler warnings
sleek canyon
ooh shit wish I saw this earlier
sleek canyon
jovial harness
oh, cool, sitrep saturday for the zoom changes
formal dagger
RIF ||code merge||
jovial harness
Niiiiiiiice
sleek canyon
jovial harness
Beta 13 probably dropping next week
jovial harness
now with zoom so you can play on Steam Deck
jovial harness
technically you should be able to do everything in the game with just mouse?
or most of the things?
this is the binding someone on the RLs server uses
sleek canyon
oooh ok. awkward, not qud level
jovial harness
Steam Deck support is not a priority*
*for now
not until Valve sends Kyz a Deck to test on anyways
mortal pumice
jovial harness
tis here
sleek canyon
jovial harness
It's time for me to get back into Cogmind
...after I finish with what I'm playing right now, lol
mortal pumice
It's time for me to get back into Cogmind
the temp slot parts are very cool
you'll get gun armor and be ready to rock 4x enh auto in -7F and then step on a single blade trap
jovial harness
wonderful
sleek canyon
sleek canyon
omg
jovial harness
beeg news
sleek canyon
oooh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MhRfYzoDw0 @mortal pumice posted some gameplay and commentary 👀
jovial harness
Run fast throw hard
mortal pumice
oooh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MhRfYzoDw0 <@82986432565612544> posted som...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEgH5RCSNbI&list=PLjKmvBBOPQbksK2tplrUB7qslsoQ5uhd0 there's a full playlist of that run
sleek canyon
ooooh
mortal pumice
you'll see
jovial harness
I won't because I'm at work and can't watch the video rn
sleek canyon
Run is with the special Cogmind April Fools Day 2018 special mode Launchers only, where all parts on the ground are replaced with random launchers. Pretty tough mode, but a lot of fun. UI is using the new modal option in the upcoming Beta 13 release.
jovial harness
finally got around to watching that Dosh review of the game
It both articulates a lot of my positive feelings about the game, and also, I just saw Dosh fall for the same trick that I did during an extreme lategame run and get fucking GOT
sleek canyon
jovial harness
caves outpost -_-
THE LEFT HAND PATH?
I simply would not.
If it were me I simply would not let that happen.
formal dagger
Concerning
formal dagger
yep
jovial harness
||I think that's an incursion variant Exiles which means you get a free Exiles prototype, no strings attached||
formal dagger
Well, I could if ||I figured out how to open the vault door||
jovial harness
okay, so, do you want me to tell you or do you want a hint as to how to find out
formal dagger
Is it possible to find out without looking it up in the wiki
formal dagger
okay, so, do you want me to tell you or do you want a hint as to how to find out
I have already gone to the next floor, so no
jovial harness
Is it possible to find out without looking it up in the wiki
yeah
try reading all the X terminals carefully next time you're in there, there's a cute hint
formal dagger
I did
formal dagger
Oh. I thought ||the code changes every run?||
jovial harness
It does! ||Unless the Exiles are forced to abandon the lab, in which case, it might still be set to an old code...||
||To be clear, it won't be a randomly-generated one, the code for opening the abandoned vault is fixed||
formal dagger
Ah, so if you want to get it the first time, you do need the wiki open
Unless the message archive is available mid-run?
jovial harness
||Do a normal FC run, you'll get the hint, then write that hint down||
||Then you're set for life||
formal dagger
Right, I have so in the past, but did not write down the code
jovial harness
Not the code you get for the vault
||When you get the vault code for a FC run, the dialogue includes a hint that is NOT the vault code, that you can use to figure out the code for opening the vault on abandoned Exiles seeds||
jovial harness
ah, yeah, there you go then
mortal pumice
It is time for a co-op run with @RU-N14 (Runia) on our shoulder!
https://www.twitch.tv/theyflower/
jovial harness
copper plume
Hey I just bought Cogmind and I was wondering if anyone had any good beginner tips for me
formal dagger
Flight hacker is a good way to get useful information and not-die
do not get into protracted fights if you can help it
go in the caves
you can identify the early caves entrances because there will be mining lasers on the floor nearby
jovial harness
Hey I just bought Cogmind and I was wondering if anyone had any good beginner ti...
check out Leiavoia's beginner's guide
copper plume
Hey so I've used ||Force(Tunnel|| a few times. I'm not entirely sure what it does? ||It's supposed to locate a tunnel, right? ||I haven't actually ever found whatever it located
jovial harness
[manual hacking] ||Force hacks|| are kind of a spoiler
As for what it does: ||It locates and adds a random floor above you to your map||
copper plume
Alright I will keep that in mind
formal dagger
It also ||identifies any exits that lead to the revealed floor||, right?
jovial harness
||that is what locating a floor does yes||
mortal pumice
wait so if you ||force tunnel to find -6 extension while in materials and then go to -6 factory the extension exit will be identified??||
formal dagger
yep.
mortal pumice
without a sigint?
jovial harness
pretty sure yeah
mortal pumice
Like just walk up to it??
formal dagger
iirc it will mark the position of the exits on the map as well as identify them
mortal pumice
Beta 14 is out
formal dagger
Me, with an incomplete beta 12 run:
sleek canyon
oh holy fuuuck
mortal pumice
The game does *not* want me to experience the new content
||Optimus|| did warn you not to stick around too long
formal dagger
It was like 20 turns
spiral temple
are ||hacks|| randomized each run? wondering if i sould save screenshots i took
formal dagger
These types of hacks are randomized, yes
mortal pumice
There are two of those hacks that aren't randomized but are instead the same every run. One of them is very different because it's a different length and the other is almost never relevant
And by almost never relevant I mean it will do something every run but most runs it does nothing very interesting
mortal pumice
Those two are ||IAMDERELICT to enter recycling from storage and //1234 to enter the exiles vault when they are attacked. You get one exiles item from the vault in that case||
spiral temple
interesting… i wont look at the spoilers but v interesting
spiral temple
is there a second exit to the caves ||you wake up in||?
formal dagger
Not that I've ever seen
spiral temple
gotcha. ty!
mortal pumice
is there a second exit to the caves ||you wake up in||?
||in theory death is a way to "leave"the map||
formal dagger
If you hang around long enough, does something show up to kill you?
jovial harness
yeah
spiral temple
how long is long enough? cuz i was there for ||4000 turns|| and nothing showed up
mortal pumice
it depends
||when an excavator enters a specific location it will trigger an infestation attack and an arc containing two demolishers wil pop out of the exit||
spiral temple
oh i see
jovial harness
jovial harness
formal dagger
I only watched the first few minutes of the first tutorial, but I did not find it useful or engaging
sleek canyon
Noted 👀
formal dagger
I found a 1 tile machine called a TF relay (?) What does it do, if anything?
jovial harness
new stuff
formal dagger
Is it worth destroying?
mortal pumice
Is it worth destroying?
if you break it you'll get sensors+sigint
it was moved away from watchers
there's also a lore about it
as a rule in cogmind any cyan blue machine does something interesting when destroyed
formal dagger
Ah, excellent. Thanks
I was wondering why I wasn't getting anything useful from watchers
mortal pumice
cogmind gaming
sleek canyon
ye
jovial harness
rather
mortal pumice
the change to assalts/exterms in new pathc is so good
formal dagger
In that they are more dodgeable?
formal dagger
Okay, made it past Factory for maybe the second time ever
sleek canyon
Proud of you!
mortal pumice
now the walls are purple!
jovial harness
formal dagger
Well, this was shaping up to be a good RIF run
jovial harness
you'll learn your lesson about alien tech eventually
mortal pumice
BLUE
sleek canyon
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/722730/view/547875764461109250?l=english let's fucking goooo
jovial harness
greatest yaul of all time?
if you don't know what a yauler is don't click but this is a surreally clean cargo convoy interception
sleek canyon
fuuck i gotta play more cogmind
jovial harness
as do I
south tinsel
As do I
mortal pumice
a well enjoyed tradition in the cogmind discord is someone just screen shares a run in a voice call and people hang out about it
Surely something which could be imported to PNET
jovial harness
We could do that yes
mortal pumice
I can't do a run like that this weekend because I'm at paxu
mortal pumice
@jovial harness would you please edit the thread to have a 1 week timeout?
jovial harness
Thought I already did
mortal pumice
The channel wasn't showing up before I sent that message
So it might still be on the default 3 day expiry
jovial harness
You cooked
south tinsel
I immediately died there to be clear
(||Factory|| level spoilers)) Dudeee the exit was five feet away
got the jackpot achievement lmao\
jovial harness
ARC’d
mortal pumice
was that a cargo convoy
jovial harness
They’re bad news.
jovial harness
Absolutely diabolical stealth
You can actually check their sight radii if you’re familiar with a bot’s model and parts for the record
south tinsel
This is a pretty cinematic way to lose
It does feel like accidentally letting a single one of your flight systems ends up becoming a guaranteed death spiral
sleek canyon
It does feel like accidentally letting a single one of your flight systems ends ...
Bird life
jovial harness
It does feel like accidentally letting a single one of your flight systems ends ...
The flyer lives by the wing and dies by the wing
You need to carry spare wings
You can always use purge and run for it though
south tinsel
I do carry spare wings but that only helps a lil
jovial harness
And you’re evolving Prop slots right
south tinsel
First upgrade is always +2 Propulsioj yeah
jovial harness
On -5/E you should have more prop slots on a flight build
Also what were you cooking with targ lol
mortal pumice
dont get shot
2 power flight with only 5 prop is not enough prop
you definitely want 6 or 7 prop by the time you get your second power slot
it's fine to be a little minus energy per move, you can always deactivate your prop and wait a few turns to recharge while outside of danger
south tinsel
you definitely want 6 or 7 prop by the time you get your second power slot
Six .... or .... seven....
mortal pumice
yeah less than that and you really don't need extra power generation
especially with study in the game
MAYBE you go double power with studied lgt. ions
south tinsel
(screenshot of entering a -5 lvl I guess)
I am so good at this game bro you dont even know it
jovial harness
Shift+P > naked level start true combo
south tinsel
I've been surviving off exclusively off from core upgrade heals
jovial harness
that's how you do it
sleek canyon
(screenshot of entering a -5 lvl I guess)
I am so good at this game bro you dont...
The pure transmission jammer naked entrance. Not just pornographic, pixelated as well
south tinsel
I am geniunely scouring through memory trying to find an enemy type I ever hated more than fucking Swarmers
jovial harness
Swarmers are an argument to have a reserve launcher on you
south tinsel
I had one, lost it to Swarmers
Also all my matter kept being fused by system corruption so by the end I was headbutting haulers for 3 bucks.
Geniunely lost a terrain scanner because tried to do a component swap without realizing I couldnt afford attaching the new part.
The Derelict Century of Humiliation.
jovial harness
Also all my matter kept being fused by system corruption so by the end I was hea...
STUPID LAME ASS MICRO CORE BITCH, WE FORCE MOVED YOUR DAD FOR 3 MATTER AND A TSCAN INTERPRETER
south tinsel
AND THEN WE HIT THE STAIRS
mortal pumice
I am geniunely scouring through memory trying to find an enemy type I ever hated...
There's some even worse bots
I won't name any names
There is always a worse bastard
south tinsel
This is like heaven chat... (-7||DSF||)
south tinsel
I deadass explored 90% of an entire lvl and found no exit
Survived ragebaiting a Beast for the 1st time tho
jovial harness
This is like heaven chat... (-7||DSF||)
it stands for ||Don't Set Foot||
jovial harness
I deadass explored 90% of an entire lvl and found no exit
information warfare is a bitch and then you die
south tinsel
Type shit desuwa
south tinsel
Save file transfers lead to some funny situations
sleek canyon
Lol
south tinsel
Lmao (-9/||Exiles||)
sleek canyon
The exiles are great
mortal pumice
hell yea
they are great
i remember murdering them every run back in the day for their sweet loot
but now there's other considerations which is really good
jovial harness
Hand it over
south tinsel
That thing