Destruction Lab #01 - What if the shield were made of marbles?

Welcome to a new series of video on here - Destruction Lab! Each video in this series makes experimental innovations, some of which might work their way into the next season of Vortex League.

For this video we ask - what if the shield were made of marbles? What if each shield shard dropped a marble when it is destroyed? You might notice some other changes too - feel free to point them out in the comments.

Weapon Info
* Clusters are slow moving, but break into bomblets when they hit something, including enemy weapons.

* Ricochets fire 2 projectiles at a time, and bounce around until they hit something, or a set amount of time has expired.

* Rockets are fired rapidly, but take time to build up speed using their thrusters. Not very accurate.

* Saws can drill through an opponent’s shield and reach the cannon even if the shield is previously unbreached.

* Spread shot fires accurately but in a spread of 5 separate shots.

* Sticky bombs attach themselves to the opponent’s shields. After a set amount of time, they will explode. If they are hit before they explode, they misfire and deal zero damage.

* Swarms fire rapidly but inaccurately, but home in towards the enemy’s cannon.

Healer bot
Healer bot duration is determined by the marble value using a non-linear formula.
Time in seconds = 1 + 0.5555556 * LogBase2( marbleValue ) + 0.038 * marbleValue

Music
Song: MELO.KIDS x EMDI - My Love [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds

Song: Max Brhon - The Future [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds

Song: Facading - Take It Down [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds

Song: Jnathyn - Dioma [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds

Song: Spitfya x Desembra - Cut The Check [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds

#marblerace #coredestruction #unity

[joinvortexleague]

Thanks for watching! If you would like to see more of these experiments on here please do drop a like or comment to let me know.

These experiments won’t change the rules of Vortex League mid season, but some of them will hopefully shape the next season.

[Isegrimism]

Aw yis, experiments! Some ideas:
- In the endgame there always is a lot of marble buildup. How about a narrow path that speeds up attributes in general by the marbles value, like shooting speed, accuracy, ...
- The different arenas feel kind of samey at times. How about pressure plates that activate flippers on the opponents side of the board?

[PlayerW.O.N.]

Not sure if these are even possible but here’s a few ideas for lab tests:

1. What if each team had more weapons? (Pretty self explanatory, just give each side one or two more weapons.
2. What if each team had a unique super weapon? (This one is a little more complicated. After some time, a new slot opens up and marbles that land it it charge a bar based on the marble power. Once the bar is full, a massive weapon is fired and this weapon is unique to each team like the stadiums are.)

[NotMadA.]

Weapons interact with the marbles
E.g. a lucky marble bounce can block a shot, then said marble will be sent flying


Edit: another idea. Not sure if you did it with this one but make the multiplier always go up (so there is no limit). Also in the later stages the +1 doesn’t really do much so maybe make the +1 increase on a timer as well.

[somepersonontheinternet.]

It is actually a very balanced anf unique idea to give teams a benefit as their shield wears off, it keeps the games on a better more even pace whilst allowing for massive number buildup, i think it could even be further developed into unique benefits each team as the shield wears off, making them more distinctive and also spicing up games, seeing how the perks interact with one another.

I genuinely don´t know what to feel about the acid tho, it´s scary.

[SocialNomad]

Here's my 2 cents:

1) Marble shields
I like it. I don't *love* it, but I like it. I think given a few iterations it could work really well for next season. My main reason for liking it is that it provides a "natural" comeback mechanic given that you've now taken a lot of damage so now you get to shoot back a lot. The most significant drawback I see is that it floods the arena with too many marbles, but that can be solved by decreasing how many marbles get sent into the arena by the spinny thingy at the bottom. If you want some inspiration the video "Core Destruction × Multiply or Release or Repair - Marble Race in Algodoo" by MIKAN is well worth a watch IMO.


2) Acid pits
Yeah, nah, that's a no from me. To me it feels really bad when a large marble gets lost in a pit. I understand why they're there given that the marble shields easily causes a flood, but there's better ways of solving that problem I think.

3) Higher multipliers
I don't really have an opinion on those themselves, but I do think that the +1's feel very week as the game progresses, so it could be worth trying to buff those as an experiment.

[streamusdarkwater]

If more experiments are being tried in the future I’d like to see some tweaking to the healing mechanic.

My personal idea being replacing it with a temporary shield that requires being hit with the number of projectiles equal to the value with a cap around 150 or 200

[gwenmcgarry]

I like the idea of there being ways to upgrade weapons, the core, and marble attributes/multipliers, and each team has some slightly different values in how it directs the marbles, thus leading to different strategies beyond base weapon loadout

[cheapcheese.]

I know you probably get it a lot but i still think more weapons is needed. Either new weapons or make attacks able to merge to make a combined ability or something

[team_lila]

Experiment ideas:
- what if all weapons fired at once? (all unlocked weapons are fired at once)
- what if All "counts" are used at once (balls with 20 for instance INSTANTLY fire 20 times, but definitly will need stronger shields/Cores)
- What if Marbles dont disapear (never consumed by anything)
- What if the whole arena was 1 big shield (conversion style. if a ball hits a Shield part, it converts it. Healing drones Have the same Area of affect and act as normal regenning the players shield)
- Blocker (the middle now collects balls and whoever's side inserted more is the only one allowed to shoot (both can heal and level balls), this is unaffected by Ball multiplier. when someone is not at shooting, their plates will be blocked off, increasing the chance of balls going into "the pot")


are they good ideas? no not at all... or maby they are? Thats why its a experiment

(might be edited in the future with more ideas)

[degebs]

Holy crap, experiments on ideas. This is exactly what we needed.

[trinstonmichaels]

Yes the marbles are definitely great to witness.

[Juanlimiau]

Oh this balances big swings, this was such a great idea. I hope to see another tournament with this new mechanic

[Nintuo]

For the next you could do that the cannon don't wait the attack to end before shoot, for example if it is shooting a bunch of clusters and still remain 50, when another weapon ball enters the cannon it will shoot both instead of doing a queue

[ShineSun-zxlp]

This is very cool and I like this vedio and you should make more of it

[marsbar]

I like this one. Very dynamic and interesting

[WillowEpp]

Fffff, lost my comment twice!

I really don't like the acid pit because it defangs the comeback mechanic a lot, make it a portal to the mixer instead _if you must._ Better, though, IMO, would be to get rid of it and just only add marbles when the numbered segments are hit.

Ideas for later:
- Increase base marble value over time
- Increase plus-chute value over time
- Teams always start with their "signature" weapon for adding personality
- Preseason "draft" for secondary and tertiary weapons seeded based on previous season placement.

[epsilonthedragon]

Ooooo, innovation on the formula! You love to see it
Maybe in the future we can get type mixers or weapons triggered by specific colors or something

[Catmanking-zb]

After seeing this I think cluster bombs might need a little nerf? I was thinking make it take 2 bomblets to destroy other projectiles, that way it hopefully isn’t quite as suppressive. But it is your game and clearly you have some good ideas so do whatever you want :)

[RdMouse-bekp]

PLEASE remove the acid pools they ruin it