Kinsman

My custom campaign has been getting bigger over time, and since I like to use Storylines for slice-of-life or ambient events, my Storyline count is getting bigger as well - it's currently around 140, compared to the default campaign's 90. I'm beginning to worry about how my important events are getting lost in the shuffle - and even setting them to 'Often' or 'Very Often' doesn't make them rise up as often as I'd like. I don't really know how effective the frequency settings are, but if they work in some absolute way ("Often is 2x as likely"), what if they worked proportionately to the amount of events total? (I.e. If there are a great many events, the program knows that Often and Very Often have to be stronger.) I suppose the opposite of those, Rarely and Very Rarely, would need to become less effective as the number of events grew - or else those events would become completely invisible as the database grew.

I have a number of Storylines in my game that are just slice-of-life moments; a character going about their day, small crimes, ambience. Could we have Balance Of Power +/-X changes as an effect? I'd love to have some game effects attached to my ambient events. "Iron Woman retrieves a lost balloon for a child: +1 Balance of Power" "Rioting downtown again, I hope that villain in control of the Downtown is defeated soon: -2 Balance of Power" That sort of thing.

Suppose the combat had a warm-up start - Whoever goes first starts with 1 action, then the opponent has 2 actions, and so on until the max limit of actions is reached. Combine that with no-rerolls for the first turn, and maybe it balances. If how combat starts does get changed, it might be a good idea to make it a database setting. (I just like turning on the AI and watching fights, so the advantage of going first is just an interesting detail to me.)

I wanted to reorganize my characters and their power systems - moving them away from Activation Rolls and into something more deterministic. But I ran into some limitations. * Could you add Token Spend powers for other types of power, such as Boosts, Defenses, and Outstmarting? I wanted to use one of the emotional Token Types (Resolve, Inspire..) as a way to unlock limited charges of the more powerful supports, like Lure into the Open or Give Re-Rolls. * Could you unlock the 'Usage Limit' field for Defensive powers? I wanted to give out an emergency power 'One Last Dodge' (Elusive, Usage Limit 1, low Health only) to a character, but I couldn't.

Thank you for accepting the suggestion. Do you think it would be a good idea if the tendency to use certain actions or not were written as traits? Defining 'a healer' might be hard for the AI in some cases. You could set it up as a series of Positional Powers: "Focuses on Healing" : This character chooses healing actions more often than other types. "Focuses on Support" : This character chooses support actions more often than other types. "Focuses on Attacks:" This character chooses attack actions more often than other types. ..and so on, for other categories as well.

I had another thought about the AI. * Can we expand the 'Streamline Encounters' setting to be 'No/Villains/Villains And Hero AI' ? If we are streamlining Hero AI, then rerolls could be decided on in the same way villains decide on rerolls. EDIT: There are moments during the villain turn when a hero needs to Activate a defensive power or whatever, and while you might be picking AI during your turn, you wouldn't have a chance to streamline those moments. 'No / Villains Only / Villains, and Hero AI / Villains, Hero AI, and Hero Reactions' ?

So my campaign is mostly street-level heroes and martial arts, and I wanted to give each character a wide variety of the Melee Physical attack. Previously, I had it so that they had a basic move and then a few others that were more powerful but had an Activation Roll. After a few games, I decided that all the 1d6 rolling was too distracting, and decided to rebuild everyone's moves based around Usage Limit instead. One of the other things I wanted to do is create some color by giving fighters functionally identical, but differently-named moves. I ran some test combats between a Hero attacker and a punching bag Villain. In the first test, my attacker had 4 identical moves (High Punch, Low Punch, Quick Knee, Side Kick) that did 1 damage, unlimited usage. I noticed that the attacker would always use the last attack that I added in character creation (which was Quick Knee), each round. My next test was to give most attacks a Usage Limit of 1, and make Quick Knee a reliable attack when the others ran out. The computer still went through the list, and picked the Quick Knee each time - so I guess the AI doesn't consider the Usage Limit as a reason to make a move more choose-worthy. My third test was: Big Punch (2 Damage, Usage Limit 1), Big Bonk (2 Damage, Usage Limit 1), Side Kick (1 Damage, Usage Limit 1), Quick Knee (1 Damage). In this test, the attacker chose Big Bonk, then Big Punch, then Quick Knee each round after. Side Kick was ignored. I wondered if the AI was in the habit of always unloading the best moves as long as it can, and did one more test - adding several more mannequins that only had 1 Health. Big Punch and Big Bonk, at 2 Damage and Usage Limit 1, would be a waste on them, but the attacker went after the little guys first and was all too happy to use the large single-use attacks to blow them away. So anyway, some suggestions please: * Could you make it so that if the AI sees there are multiple moves that are functionally equal, it picks randomly between them? Or alternately: could you shuffle the list of moves each time before the AI considers them? * A more open-ended suggestion: Could you make it so that the AI understands that a powerful move with a Usage Limit should be valued more than a move you can always use? Front-loading all your power moves at the start of a fight might be a good idea most of the time, but not always. Finally, I wanted to mention something I noticed when playing. I had a healer character who was meant to be the team's main support. She had a basic healing ability (1 Pt. Heal), a healing burst (2 pts., 3 targets, Usage Limit 1), and also a support Action called "Come Over Here!" (Outsmart to Lure Into the Open.) I don't think my healer ever actually healed. The AI would always be thinking that using Come Over Here was more valuable to the fight than healing someone - even if my team was low on Health. And maybe that was a good decision on the AI's part - but I want my healers to heal, even if they have useful side abilities. So one more suggestion: * Could you make it so that powers of a character have a Frequency - that I could make Come Over Here something rarely used (even if considered a good idea?) * Or - alternately - what if there was a difficulty mode called 'Random' or 'Card Game' or whatever. In this mode, after making decisions about what non-actions to use, actions are chosen at random? This would apply to both hero and villain AI, since it's a very different way to play. Also, perhaps in this 'Random' mode, AI decisions about whether to use a non-action or reactive power with a Usage Limit could be a 50-50 choice? The same logic that decides when the Villain AI wants to use Rerolls or not, could be used here.

So, I started up a campaign on CBU yesterday. I finished a playthrough with about 30 or so characters and 3 locations last night, and I'm working on more content for the 'Season 2' restart. These suggestions came from my observations. * Could you add a 'Villain Redemption' quest that mirrors the 'Hero Corruption' scheme? Turning good can be just as interesting as turning evil. * Could you add requirements for Reactive Events: "Specific (Scheme/Quest) Named X (Succeeded/Failed)" ?

I just discovered CBU today. I was thinking about the previous game and thought about looking it up, and it turns out I'm just in time to catch the new version! I was playing the demo today and just bought the full version. While I was studying the game, I had some suggestions: * Could you make it so that a Reactive Event that has text attached to it shows up in the Past Issues log? Important things can happen in a Reactive Event, just like in a Storyline, and it would be good to preserve them in the game's history. * We can always use more Requirements and Events: "Heroes Won The Issue", "Villains Won The Issue" Neither would be true if the issue had neither fighting nor puzzles, but this would be cool for characters who lose confidence after a loss, or go into training montages, etc. "Balance of Power Changes X Points" If we have the ability to write our own database, there's nothing wrong in allowing players to do this as well in Events and Storylines. * And finally, could you make it possible for Storylines to have Reactive Events as their Precursor or Not Following settings, and vice versa?