Hm. Okay. I apologise in advance for a ridiculously long post.
Honestly I think the Old Style Labs were hard and punishing when the Turrets were a thing and had a light radius to them. I am fairly sure that anyone here who remembers them will be like “oh, yeah, I died a lot to those!” after reading this line.
(Remember Zombie Grenadiers? Yeah, those were fun too, and nothing would say “yeah I am not even going to try!” better than 2 Elite Zombie Grenadiers cuddling up in the 2-Tile Bathroom spot in the Barracks, before one of them lets out a C-4 Hack that prevents you from closing the door!)
Adding swarms of Tazer Hacks which always hit your torso and Zombies that have no place in the lab (like seriously, where did those people live? Where do they sleep? Why aren’t all of them Scientists or Zombie Secretaries instead?) isn’t a good way to balance / add “challenge” to them. (still beats the random wandering SecuBots though!). Personally I think that “Hacks” should not be randomly wandering about unless they were deployed by either a Scientist of sorts (like the old days, maybe a Feral Scientist could do this?). I also believe “Hacks” could all be renamed to “Drones” to better reflect “Today’s Earth” technology.
As for Microlabs on the other hand, they feel like a slap in the face: if you go down the elevator, 2 things happen: you’re either immediately swarmed by zombies that picked up your scent and broke through the elevator (then they break the elevator controls and you’re stuck), or you open the door and immediately see 1 monster per Floor Tile and wonder if Bob’s Farewell party was being held at the lobby.)
MiniLab needs serious rework in terms of Population Density, variety and access (needs stairs / backup exit in case the poorly chosen method of entrance breaks). But I’ll touch on this in a bit.
From a player perspective (and I know that the dev side is a different “world” due to several things), this is what I think about “Old” vs “New”, things I believe could change to make them balanced instead of just getting rid of one and force the other onto players.
Old Labs: They’re the “mid-game” Supermarket, they have literally everything - quite literally, yesterday while doing some “research” I saw that it also has the Fractional Distillation Apparatus, which makes me wonder how “rare” it is, while it also makes me go “Good, I don’t have to kill my CPU in order to look at a Research Facility now!” . What if they didn’t? As in, would it be possible that, the same way we can make a distinction between “ice”, “regular” and “deep freeze” labs, couldn’t we make:
-
“Mutation Stations” - the one type of “Old Style” Lab that has mutagenic stuff in its loot table and a guaranteed mutagenic finale of sorts? No CBMs, no Barracks, books in loot table are limited to mutagenic stuff and applied science. Lots of chemicals in it too. As for monsters: scientist variants, technician variants, mutants and the usual prisoner containments, maybe a new variant of the prisoner containment).
-
“Dimensions Study Lab”: does not have mutagen nor mutagen related chemicals, low chance of barracks. Finales would be either the 2x Tear in Reality Finale w/Phase Immersion Suit, the “Hound of Tindalos” Finale, or the (rare/obsolete?) Finale where usually Flaming Eyes, Yuugs and Shoggoths are locked in a display cage. Higher chance of finding Phase Immersion stuff or at least several backup 5-Point-Anchors.
-
“Military Study” Lab: a Lab where it’s prevalent to see military themed things, Experimental Mutants, etc. Higher chance of Barracks, with a few new “end-points” based on Barracks, but swapping out the Armoury for other things like a Meeting Room or an Extended Resting Quarters (with kitchen, water source, etc) and a guaranteed Martial Arts + Random Rare Gun Related Book. (some food, some clothes too). Population would be Military related enemies, some scientists, some Techs, tons of Androids. Finales would be all weapons related: Laser Gun, Rail Gun, MiniNuke, Random Mech Finale, The CVD Machine Finale, The Nanomaterial Finale (and please, up the spawn rates for Nanomaterial Canisters, because they’re pretty much non-existent for so long), and one finale with some Prototype Cyborgs, Broken Cyborgs, Prototype Robots (similar to “that one” in the Hub01 quest) which protect something like Earth-Made “Bionics” of sorts, like Prosthetics, stuff that we could safely say “yeah they researched this!”.)
-
Reduce the number of 3x3 format rooms (or remove them completely, merging a few of those small rooms into other bigger rooms that have poorly used room);
-
get rid of the rooms with goo pits and fridges (or make them some sort of special trap room that doesn’t occur as often as it does);
-
have “Exposed Energy Conduit” Rooms integrated with “other” rooms, so that if a player wants to make use of them they still can but they have to plan a better route instead of just luring an enemy to a 3x3 section and dancing or a couple seconds.
-
Make it so that the “First Stairs Down” (from 0 to -1) is always a center room with the 4 stairs-up thing in the center, and metal doors to all directions.
-
All metal doors could be replaced by a variant that is smashable by a particular set of zombies (say Tough Zombies and upwards?) or by 2 or more zombies bashing at them (except Brainless, Child, Decayed and Crawling Zombies). This would make it so it adds to the “danger” of the lab itself, making it pretty much pointless to try and lock monsters in a room to “deal with them later”. Exceptions would be the “starting room” metal doors (which perhaps could be smashed by Tag-Teaming Brutes, Wrestlers, Hulks and Skeletal Juggernauts if a player tries to hide away from them.)
-
Fix Old Labs stairs (monsters for some reason refuse to “go up” from -1 to 0? Not sure if it’s on purpose or not but I’ve noticed it’s been a thing for a long time now).
-
Make “Stairs down” less common (maybe limit them to 3 or so max per Z-Level?)
-
Make Turrets immune to thrown items (or make it so it “throws them off balance” or something), which solves the “it’s too easy to exit from a locked lab” situation.
-
The Labs related to Prisons could always be a “Experimentations” Lab (where Zombies are not as prevalent other than Scientists, but there would be a various amount of different types of mutants (maybe Neutral ones, who knows!)
-
Research Facilities could very well be heavily infested by Nether Creatures vs High-End Zombies, with its finale always being the same: 2 Tear in Reality Finale.
"New Style Labs:
-
Add alternative entrance (Stairs down from the lobby or air vents from the side of the building perhaps?);
-
make the elevator controls unbreakable tiles;
-
balance the population (prevent “big boys” from being on the player’s face the moment they enter the lab), make it less cramped/populated. I don’t think 30-50 creatures per “map square” is realistic (we’re talking about a potential 480-800 monsters in a 4x4 lab? Seems a bit excessive, maybe the numbers are a bit exaggerated, but you get the idea: it’s overcrowded).
-
apply themes to them as well: some can be mutagen related, or just weapon research related. Give them something to stand out.
-
tone down the “OTHER” items rates a bit (stuff that have no use like Beakers, ladles, spoons, etc, they clutter so much. I get that they’re there for immersion purposes, but they often end up just adding to the visual and performance clutter when you see dozens of them.)
-
fix “glass shards”: every time I visit one of those labs, performance takes a hit because of the thousands of glass shards the game produces. Make them ammo instead. (this applies to a lot of other stuff too). Alternatively, make those doors drop 1 “Tempered Glass Sheet” instead.
All of this said, despite the issues I have with the MiniLabs (performance and density, the lack of anything meaningful to gun for, which makes them pretty much a “I can go elsewhere and get the same stuff easily” kind of thing), I still think they have a ton of potential and could be lots of fun - especially with the new secret variants that keep popping up (new - for me, I never saw the Secret Reactor Variant up until a few days ago, it looks a lot like the Hub underground).
And please don’t take this as me saying “how it should be” or “how it has to be” - these are merely suggestions/ideas from someone that’s played a fair few hours of the game. I fully understand this topic is a permanent work-in-progress thing in a quest for balance and fun.
Interesting. I haven’t explored much on level -4 (even though often a lot of labs show up there too). I am quote curious about one in specific that is some sort of hidden lab I’ve found in S4 that has a Pinkish L (Science Lab Reactor). They are marked as Science Labs and in this case it has 5 “Light Blue Ls” on -4 which is quite interesting. I haven’t been there yet, but judging by that particular tile, I assume it’s a rather difficult lab with environmental hazards.