Early Blueprints: Empower the Axe

[IronCartographer]

In the Beginning was the Axe. Or at least, that was the first unnatural thing born unto this previously undisturbed wilderness...

We've seen many efforts to improve the early game building experience, including personal roboports given at the start, basic bots with lower tech requirements, inexplicable yet convenient auto-placement zones, and even a nano-tech emitter tool. Discussions of how best to introduce early blueprints to the base game are ongoing.

Shall we throw another idea into the ring?

Empowered Axe.png (72.47 KiB) Viewed 4575 times

Make the axe slot selectable as a weapon, and 'fire' with space to quickly revive ghost images, starting nearest the cursor.

Optional: Automatically switch weapons to the axe slot when the player builds or starts mining [a structure].

Steel axe reduces the internal cooldown between placements allowing faster auto-building, compounding its already satisfying upgrade experience.

The melee attack, generally discovered only by accident upon running out of ammo, could become a deliberate mechanic at the player's discretion--or at least a much more readily discovered source of amusement.

Mods could even replace the sound effect for the melee attack and introduce light sabers or something. Long reach via hand-held tractor beams? Possibilities!

Edit: Auto-equip only when mining, and clarifications.

[Extrien]

SONIC SCREWDRIVER!

[IronCartographer]

No, no, not the old repair tool... Point and "shoot" building of blueprints/ghosts, with nothing more than the axe!

...Although adding repairs to it would be a good idea.

[<NO_NAME>]

[Harkonnen]

Automatically switching could lead to undesired problems when you mine turrets during turret creep.

Steel axe builds even faster? - building is always instantaneous

Melee attack is interesting option for early game. I like it

[IronCartographer]

True, that could get in the way while turret creeping and is not necessary for the idea to work--it just adds to the immersion, if you will. With the combat rebalance one could argue it would be just enough discouragement to keep people using other, more satisfying combat mechanisms. Still, purely optional.

Building faster = Lower cooldown between auto-repeated build actions while holding the fire key (spacebar).

Aim the cursor somewhere, and as long as you hold the hotkey, it repeatedly finds the closest blueprint to where you're pointing and builds it. Like the SMG's auto-targeting of biters, but for ghost images to build. This way you get the satisfaction of the structure building 'thunk' sound, and it goes even faster with the steel axe--but is still limited in range and speed compared to personal roboports.

Early-game melee? Interesting. I hadn't actually run the logic backwards like that. Probably not relevant for normal gameplay, as biters shouldn't show up until you've got real defenses. For a campaign/scenario though? Hmmm...