Issues with the lunar affinity + suggestions + possible rework.

[CourierS]

Hello, I am writing this post merely a few hours after the patch as dropped, so my knowledge is definitely not complete compared to others hours later, but I feel like posting this quickly is important as like the title suggests, the lunar affinity is very underwhelming for what is supposed to be a reward for killing a major milestone boss. Even if the minions work perfectly (which they do NOT), they are a very underwhelming reward and they actively harm Wx players who spec heavily into the chassis portion of the tree by locking you out of skills you spent insight towards

This post will explain the issues with Wx-78's lunar affinity right now, potential tweaks that will make it able to match up to the shadow counterpart, and a potential rework that will make them significantly better if the time allows it.

Problem 1#: Currently, the AI is bugged and a little bit scuffed

As of now, the lunar minions, calling them vessels from now on, follow closely to the player. As of now, even if they are equipped with tools, they will only work on objects they are physically touching.

This is an easy fix as I feel like this is more of a bug with the minion AI than a conscious decision; making them work similarly to pig, where they spread out and work on similar objects would be preferred.

Combat is mostly fine on the other hand, they follow your cursor and leave when you stop attacking. I do think the vessels should have a tiny buffer before moving back so if you animation cancel, or rapidly attack between multiple foes, they don't pitter patter in place, but otherwise I'm fine with this.

However, the AI doesn't work the best with circuits as with the spin cycle, they will allegedly break if you have the circuit but they don't have a spin cycle compatible weapon. They will also not strategically use gamma circuits, instead instantly using and unusing them.


Problem 2#: The Cost

In order to properly use your vessels to their maximum potential, you have to equip them with 2-4x the gear used. This would be a fine; a costly but powerful progression for WX but the current execution with their AI and their upkeep make the cost way too cost inefficient to be worth using over the shadow affinity.

Additionally, the tradeoff for the lunar affinity is that lunar vessels cannot be teleported to. The trade of wasting the player's insight for speccing into the skill tree area (as alot of the chassis skills rely on interacting with the inactivated chassis which is impossible) is something I believe should be changed.

Finally, when a lunar vessel is converted, you physically cannot change their circuits, which is odd for a character who's identity is based upon flexibility.

Not the mention the biodata used to craft the converting tool, the tools, the circuits to place on the chassis.

I find the cost way too much.

Problem 3#: The UPKEEP

Each individual vessel has their own stats to maintain, their hunger, their health, and their sanity; having a vessel die will only refund the player with added equipment and circuits, not the gizmo used to make.

Each individual vessel has a 1:1 durability usage as the player, so when going on a expedition for logs or rocks, the player has the consistently craft new tools which is extremely resource intensive.

Each individual vessel has to have up to date armor and rain gear, unless the vessel has enough hardy circuits, they will likely die to rain or in the middle of fighting a boss.

Overall, for the slight benefit of Maxwell minions, the upkeep in making sure they don't implode on you is too much compared to shadow affinity.

Problem 4#: You lose them instantly when relogging and other assorted game ruining bugs.

 When quitting and rejoining the world, every single vessel you currently have is instantly killed. Additionally, when a chassis is first possessed, their entire inventory dissapears.

Ultimately, the perks of using the lunar affinity is not worth the cons of using the affinity, the trade off of chassis teleportation, and the shadow affinity.
Light Suggestions
The listed suggestions are small tweaks that don't take a lot of time and help the lunar affinity massive. It's not required to have every suggestion implemented

•  Allow the ability to use the circuit extractor on vessels, editing and taking out their circuits. The vessels would likely run on infinite charge as they are gestalts.

•  Reduce or completely negate the durability usage for vessels

• Have the AI of the vessels disengage when you do in order to sync their kiting with yours and prevent unnecessary damage. Overall fix AI jank.

• Reduce or remove the hunger drain for each vessel or make it so that food items have a multiplier on them.

• Possibly remove the planar damage penalty and make it so that greater gestalts and above get a planar damage multiplier for progression sakes

• Possibly add a slight passive health regen to mitigate tedium

•  

Rework Suggestion

As the shadow affinity is excellent for confined encounters with its damage buff and passive harvesting around chassis, the idea for the lunar affinity rework is to make it exceptional for long distance micromanaging.

For basekit, lunar vessels have an inventory, it would however be smaller than the player's (3-5 instead with equip slots instead of 15.) Instead of manually equipping and taking off a tool, the player can access the inventory and place tools, armors, clothing, food, and weapons in their inventory. Depending on the situation (in combat or in presence with specific objects, they will automatically equip the right tool for the job.) In combat, armor would take priority over rain gear if they both take up the same slot. Food would be consumed as long as it does as the healing does not exceed max health or hunger.

Similarly to Pikmin, Wx-78 Lunar Vessels have two modes, following, and dispersal. These modes can be toggled by right clicking your player avatar on the map (or through a redial menu please klei). In actively following mode, they work similar to what they do now, passive minions that you cannot teleport to, but help with combat and work. However, they cannot pick anything up.

When the vessels are in dispersal mode, they will no longer follow the player, but they will gain a mini map icon and the ability to freely move them around already discovered terrain with the use of the mini map.

When a move command is ordered and the vessel walks there it and fully stops, they will pulse a radar with a radius similarly to Maxwell's post rework minions and get to work, doing all possible work (picking, chopping, mining etc etc) as long as they have the tools and the inventory space to do so. However they cannot fight.

Wx can freely teleport between vessels if they have the skill, however the gestalt has to take time to travel to the newly inactive chassis, so you cannot instantly travel back.
As a fluffy plus, transferring consciousness is somewhat faster.

However I don't think this is feasible within 4 days.

Conclusion:
As much as I like the concept of the lunar affinity, having minions as the worlds most arrogant robot, the current implementation is overly tedious, resource intensive and buggy to where the shadow version easily eclipses this version which is unfortunate as I believe affinity skills should act as capstone skills which dictate how a build should be made, not have one option vastly outweigh the other.

I know that with the release coming out Thursday, these changes are not very easy to polish and release before the deadline, but my chudlings deserve the greatest.

 

Edited April 13 by CourierS

[Baark0]

the mere thought of gearing up 4 vessles with 4 level 3 shadow mauls, only for the mauls to break because the minions dont realize they need to stop attacking when the weapon gets to 1-2% durability is single-handedly making me not want to ever pick the lunar affinity

this beta feels like it couldve used another week or 2 in the oven