Protection (GREEN)

In general, the abilities introduced in the first campaign are the ones I first put in the game, while the other ones I added later when I came back to it with new ideas after a break. Protection is the exception. Repair Swarm had its place originally, but players were being confused by it because it works in a slightly weird way - they were doing things like activating it when they were nearly dead, expecting it to repair them immediately. I realised that if they'd had Protection instead, it would have done exactly what they wanted then - Protection was the ability they were intuitively wanting to use - so I swapped them. It seems better to have the easier-to-use stuff introduced first, and the more confusing stuff later. An improvement! Hooray!

MEAD IS THE FINESTMOST OF ALL BEVERAGES

Star Attack (GREEN) and Blog Explanation Procedure

There's not much to say about this ability - it's been in there from early on, has changed very little, and is very easy to understand how to use - so instead I'm going to provide an explanation for these posts.  People have told me for a while that I should start a blog, so finally I got around to it, but had no idea how to start writing in it.  I'd put the name Mighty Vision as the blog title (being an ability in the game I'm working on), was staring at it trying to think how to start writing, then I thought "alright, it says Mighty Vision there, so I'll just write about that".  So now I'm writing a series of posts about the Vertex Dispenser abilities, mostly as an exercise to get me into the swing of writing things at all.  I'm trying to say something interesting about each one, whether it's how it changed during the design process or how it can be used in the game.  There are currently 28 abilities in total, so that determines enough posts that by the time I'm through I'll doubtless have levelled up.  And maybe I'll have gotten around to releasing the game, so the things I'm talking about will make sense to people other than myself and the few who've tested it.

Boobytrap (RED)

It's good to scatter these unpredictably, because the point is that your opponents don't know where they are and die by setting them off (or else get discouraged from capturing territory when wounded; win/win).  This makes Boobytrap another good candidate for automation (Alt+X), because it'll essentially just place them randomly, and has the advantage that it uses them immediately when the energy bar is full, so you'll get slightly more of them out overall.

I like to find corner cases, and try to make them interesting - this is Nethack's influence showing through.  (Of course, Nethack takes it way too far; they made the interesting corner cases too powerful and broke the game, then tried to rebalance in light of them, thereby making them essential knowledge.)  My original implementation of Boobytrap was a simple binary state, using the ability again on a boobytrapped vertex would have no effect.  This wasn't really acceptable - not only is it less interesting than it could be, but if someone accidentally does it, their use of it would be wasted!  So first I just made them stack, but it got a bit weirder after that.

Vertex Attack (RED)

This one's a very situational ability, because its effectiveness depends directly on how many adjacencies there are between your vertices and enemy vertices.  Usually such adjacencies are short-lived, because the faces on either side will attack each other - generally territories stabilise to solid regions of faces separated by a gap of at least one vertex, a kind of 'no-mans land' between.  So often Vertex Attack will have a fairly small effect, but you can control it, try to set up situations to maximise it.  It'll also depend on the level - if there are mostly open faces, there will be more adjacency because the faces aren't attacking to get rid of adjacent enemies; on some levels like the torus there is generally a lower ratio of perimeter to amount of territory, so less adjacency.

I've just run a couple of tests to measure the effectiveness on a few different levels.  In a game on a sphere, all faces initially present, Vertex Attack made an average of 12 attacks each time it was used (about 24 points of damage, as each attack does 2 damage on a hit), but this ranged from 1 attack on a very poorly timed use to over 20 when large battles were going on, and over 50 when Expand Edges had recently been used.  On the torus, with most faces closed, an average of 10 attacks - slightly less, because of the smaller perimeters.  On a sphere with all faces initially open, an average of 20 - it's a very powerful ability in this case; one time it made 54 attacks without Expand Edges even having been used!

So it seems rather powerful for such a low level ability; situationally it's doing over 100 points of damage.  But I don't believe it's overpowered; its average damage is in the mid-twenties, which is comparable to Roaming Mine or Boobytrap, and it's only doing the really high damage on specific unusual levels or in a combo with Expand Edges - and combos with white abilities can be expected to be strong, since Damage All is regularly throwing out hundreds of damage points on its own.  Plus it'll sometimes do almost nothing, and you don't always know when it'll be most effective because the adjacencies might be out of sight.

Local Capture (RED)

There's not really much to say about this one - it's pretty straightforward, new players seem to easily grasp what it does and how to use it, it's been in the game in pretty much the same state since the very beginning.  The only change from the original is minor; it used to only capture whole faces, but now if it can't capture an entire face (because another player owns some of the vertices) it will still take all the vertices and edges that it can.

The thing that is interesting about Local Capture is that (like Close Gaps and Expand Edges) it works on the basic game mechanics rather than creating some new type of object, so it only really makes sense in the context of Vertex Dispenser.  Some of the abilities could be more or less directly translated to lots of other games, things like "fire a missile that homes in on enemies" or "damage all enemies on the level".  But "capture adjacent faces" is only meaningful because territory is good to acquire and hold onto for various reasons, and faces are units of territory which automatically attack.

Roaming Mine (RED)

There's some quite interesting emergent behaviour that came up with Roaming Mine, that makes it potentially a very powerful ability.  Its movement algorithm is as follows: sort adjacent vertices into three lists; enemy, neutral and friendly; then select a random element of the first of these lists that is non-empty, and move there.  Simple enough - it'll basically move about at random, but it would rather go towards enemies (and damage them), and it might as well steer away from friendly territory - it's more likely to find an enemy elsewhere.

But what happens when there's a hole in the middle of your territory; a neutral vertex (or a few) surrounded by friendly vertices?  The Roaming Mine will always prefer to move into the neutral area over your vertices, so it'll get caught, never finding its way to an enemy.  So there's a risk that they'll never do anything, staying stuck in this hole forever.  But the cool part is: this is actually an advantage.  It allows you to focus your attacks to maximise effect.  When a solitary Mine trundles off and does a small amount of damage, it might end up having no effect whatsoever, if perhaps a Repair Robot fixes things up before another attack is made in the same area.  But if you save several of them up, trapping them all in a hole, and release them all at once (perhaps by capturing the neutral vertex they're stuck on), then they'll burst forth like a swarm of angry bees and do all their damage in one go.  Much more effective!

I liked this strategy so much that I made the AI check if a gap in their territory had a Roaming Mine in it, and if so not fill it up, so that when I'm playing with AI allies they won't mess up my plans.  Useful.

How can it be countered?  A well-placed Pulse Wave could take out the whole lot in one go.  Charging in and releasing them yourself before too many are saved up could help - especially if you soak up some of the damage with Protection or Fortification.  And you could always try doing the same thing yourself - hoarding up your own arsenal ensuring mutual destruction.