Been enjoying the game a lot so far. I've read and agree with a lot of the comments on the bulldozers wrt them being slow and expensive. However, I do still like them quite a bit, for three reasons.
- The bulldozers are more efficient at delivery. Even before purchasing the guzzler, they deliver ore more directly into the maw, or at least, without the possibility of the ore falling in front of the maw where it'll need to be picked up again. One thing that irritates me with runners is that their accuracy never improves, and the guzzler only compensates for that so much. You can easily get in an infinite loop where runners are picking up and delivering the same ore over and over again. it feels very stupid.
- I've noticed that when a runner picks ore up, the mountain can no longer reclaim it. However, when the runner delivers the ore into the maw, the second the ore leaves the runners hand, the mountain can reclaim it again. (This is also true for gorilla arms, and is a big reason why i hate it so much). Since runners delivering ore can throw it all the way to the top of the screen, that means a very long period where the ore has been delivered by the runner, but does not count as having been claimed, as far as I can tell. This ore either contributes to the ore count putting other ore at risk of being reclaimed or is at risk of being reclaimed itself. With this in mind, the bulldozers delivering ore more directly into the maw is an advantage worth considering despite the expense and other disadvantages.
- They're cute. I'll say it. They look like little dogs, and that's adorable.
Now, despite my appreciation for them, they still need a fair bit of work. Here are some things that frustrate me about them:
- Others have mentioned how expensive they are. I've played all the way to level 100 a couple of times, an I've hit the point as early as level 40 where the restriction on what upgrades you can buy is the amount of mithril or souls. The bulldozers being so expensive worsens this balance dramatically.
- The fact that they have no dodge as far as I can tell coupled with the fact that a rest/repair cycle does not restore them to full health even after full upgrades means they can easily spend more time stunned than operational.
- In the late game, there are often so many falling rocks that it fully negates the health regen over time.
- It's unclear how they are supposed to protect nearby runners from falling debris, and I honestly don't feel like it's working much.
- The rock-busting laser also feels very ineffective for the price (so do the other rock-busting turrets tbh)
- Them not being affected by runes feels unfair with the current limited upgrades and the limited efficacy of those upgrades.
I don't know how to fix all of these, but I have some thoughts for some of them
- I would honestly rather have them rest for longer and set out at full health than have them set out more frequently at partial health. Maybe a "repair cycle" lasts for a certain number of seconds and repairs a certain amount of HP, and repeats until the dozer is fully repaired, with upgrades increasing the amount of HP and speed of cycle until a fully upgraded dozer only takes one cycle to be repaired. These cycles would need to be shorter by default in order to not feel unfairly long at the end of full upgrades, but you could balance it with other upgrades—a dozer that takes less damage sets out again sooner. Heal over time is another model that would work well, I think.
- Like the runners, they can take damage while resting/being repaired. This needs to go away, I think, regardless of whether you change the way repair works or not. At the moment, a dozer can conceivably go in to rest and take more damage than it is repaired for. A repair shed as a possible upgrade, perhaps.
- I agree that a dodge chance doesn't make narrative sense for a bulldozer, but a deflector shield or something like the runner's beard aura would be a great upgrade. As other have said, it's easy to get to a point where all the health upgrades don't matter because you just have too many rocks reaching the ground, even with robust defenses.
Thank you again for the update.