Destruction Lab #02 - What if the marbles reflect weapons?

Welcome to 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 marbles reflect weapons? When the weapons hit the marbles, they will flip sides to the other team and change direction. You might notice some other changes too - feel free to point them out in the comments.
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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: Uplink & Castion - Euphoria [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds
Free Download/Stream: ncs.io/Euphoria
Watch: • Uplink & Castion - Eup...
Song: Jonth - Collapse [NCS Release] Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds Free Download/Stream: ncs.io/Collapse Watch: youtu.be/
Song: Anikdote - Turn It Up [NCS Release]
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Watch: • Anikdote - Turn It Up ...
Song: MIDNIGHT CVLT & The Brig - Can't Escape [NCS Release]
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Free Download/Stream: ncs.io/CantEscape
Watch: • MIDNIGHT CVLT & The Br...
#marblerace #coredestruction #unity

[@DqwertyC]

It doesn't look like the marbles are pushed at all; that could be an interesting comeback mechanic, where having a large attack also means pushing more marbles into your enemies side

[@Shadygit]

I was going to say the same thing- simulate it so that the bullets have mass to interact with the mass of the marbles

[@joinvortexleague]

Yes this would have been nice to try

[@jaredloveless]

@@joinvortexleague I'd like to see that.

[@RubTheCat]

Can't wait for the destruction lab effects to be combined with others

[@grantgholston]

Ricochet really is the agent of chaos in this mode. Seen them switch between colors so much more because of their bouncing mechanics

[@somepersonontheinternet.]

Honestly this is a mechanics that i can see realistically making it´s way to the next season even in it´s current state, even a couple reflected proyectiles mean nothing in the face of a barrage of any kind, it is for the most part some trivial but rather very nice looking visual flair to further enhance the vieweng experience. it also just looks cool af.

[@2RyuGo]

Here I was looking for something to watch while I lunch! Thanks for the video. This series rocks. E: This could be the basis for a new weapon or shield buff - instead of marbles, I mean. Have you done - or plans to do - one of these where the structures can be damaged - mainly the shield/weapon pipes?

[@joinvortexleague]

Yeah lots of potential there I think

[@Telnaior]

The +5 bucket and changed design to push marbles into weapon slots more often made it very very very difficult for marbles to multiply up in the way we usually see - I think I only saw one or two triple-digit marbles all game! This also kind of broke the healing formula. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but it made the game progress really incremental (with slow-and-steady progress rather than big bursts) in a way that I'm not really sure was better. Maybe it should be easier to land in a multiplier bucket but the multipliers could be kept smaller? The actual headline feature of marbles reflecting weapons barely made a clear difference, but it basically only reduced the effect of big attacks once you finally built up to them and forced the game to stay very close throughout. I don't know if it's needed given how satisfying and easy it's been to pull off huge comebacks in the vortex league so far. All in all I don't think this one's a winner, but the experimentation is very cool! Fun (spoiler) fact: Both destruction lab games ended at precisely 14m28s!

[@JustAnotherCommenter]

"What if all weapons spread?" Spread shot itself would proliferate mid-air as a rework.

[@Mathematica-Commenter]

I like it!

[@Dark_Slayer3000]

Fascinating!

[@mocliamtoh573]

Fun experiment! I hope next time, the colours are more colourblind friendly though.

[@joinvortexleague]

Good to know - sorry about that! Perhaps a small icon on each of the weapon would help? Pattern as well as colour.

[@Shamitako]

Suggestion: Have a crown for the biggest marble on each side (you can have a center zone that counts for both sides, to keep the suspense of when a big marble gets stuck up top or falls in the mixer), oftentimes I want to just watch one side and following the big marbles is a fun way to do that, but if the other side has a big crown marble that's taking a long time to go into a weapon bucket, that can be difficult. I like the new shield look, it's just kinda neat. I'd love to see shield style vary by arena, the way the upper mixer does. I think this mechanic is really hit or miss. It's really satisfying when a marble shoots up in the middle of a cluster bomb and it suddenly wipes a chunk of the attack, but most of the time it's just hard to follow and I just lose track of where the reflected projectile went. This could make the basis of a fun point-defense weapon, I think. With the +5 being there I feel like +1 is just even more sad than it was before lol *Love* just having an alternate design for the feeder, the old one is fine but it was getting very repetitive. Have you thought about doing more complex feeders or even asymmetrical ones? That might bug some people on grounds of fairness, but personally my favorite part about this type of video is watching the internal mechanisms play out, so I think it would be cool if teams had distinct mechanisms. Different mixer styles could be interesting as well, though there's less space for that.

[@gavinf69420]

I think this would work better if marbles were clearly marked to be on left or right side. Like it would need a new spawning method and marbles would spawn as Left or Right team and push themselves toward their own team. The new base shape was fun too

[@strawberrypupper897]

The idea feels intuitive, yet honestly turns the reward of preparing an attack into a punishment. Would make more sense if balls destroyed projectiles like other projectiles do.

[@deadersurvival4716]

But that, in itself, creates a new reward for timing and preparing more than one attack at a time.

[@strawberrypupper897]

@@deadersurvival4716 There's no real way to time things. It's just a question of if your attack was lucky enough to happen when the pusher didn't feel like ejecting marbles. This is, in the end, a game of luck. So why turn luck into bad luck? Why not simply turn it into neutrality?

[@deadersurvival4716]

@strawberrypupper897 To be fair, that's not a good argument for removing it, simply making the negative weaker. And the reason is quite simple, and the same reasons that bullets block each other, to create a more dynamic match. Plus, the negative fairly well negates itself. Even if you're struck by poor timing, most ammo will destroy each other, eliminating them anyway. It really only makes a difference at the end of a chain of attacks. Yet again rewarding massive attacks while punishing weak ones more severely.

[@Sivanot]

Ehhh. This is really difficult for me to follow what's happening, personally. I think it would be much more interesting if marbles simply destroyed attacks, and the momentum was transferred to the marble.

[@buwumet]

exactly this. the multibomb was especially terrible because in a stream, one reflected shot meant losing out on the entire attack

[@squishmellow3]

does this mean its possible to bypass the shield, by having a friendly projectile reach you, and then having a marble bump it? also, while we're at it, what about a marble poisoner weapon, where it launches a marble towards the enemy with its previous power, and whatever it lands in becomes an inverted version of it? (eg. healing becomes shield drain, weapons repair enemy shields, etc)

[@joinvortexleague]

I stopped marble rebounds happening within the bounds of the same shield, but before I did that, this would indeed happen.

[@ThatNerdGuy0]

I would personally prefer having the +1 upgrade over time instead of having a +1 and +5 also for the next experiment could you add shield overhealing as a mini experiment

[@joshuabrumm1051]

Not sold on the reflect. I do like the +5 for ramping marbles. And I really like the double hex design for the shield. Gives it a bit more visual pop

[@SandmanDP]

Maybe a test could be done where higher value balls produce single higher damage projectiles

[@JustAnotherCommenter]

charged shots/marbles in short.

[@alexbanks9510]

I feel like marbles should lose 1 point if they are hit. And 1 point marbles disappear and respawn at the bottom

[@team_lila]

Marble lab idea: attacker vs defender (on side has good stuff for defending (and reflecting), one for attacking)

[@RubTheCat]

6:35 a marble got a plus 1 without going through the elevator

[@bunnyThor]

From my observation, it seems like all this really did was prolong things, but not in an interesting way. A few balls falling through a spray of projectiles didn't so much turn the projectiles back at the gun, but rather back at the spray, neutralizing it. It's not so much an interesting development as it is a random nerfing. One solution that would keep some ball interaction, but feel less arbitrary, would be having only balls over a certain value reflect projectiles. Maybe anything over 16. This would make balls other than the Crown balls worth watching. Especially, as others have proposed, the balls (in this case just the over-16 balls) have mass that reacts to being hit by projectiles. Having 5% of the balls bouncing off of things while the other 95% just fall down makes those 5% very interesting to watch. And speaking of interesting to watch, I was pleased to see the clot at 13:29 in the pink hopper. I didn't realize that could happen, so I was immediately fixated on it, wondering if it was going to clear itself or if Pink was just hosed.

[@Mathematica-Commenter]

I like this idea. Another similar thing you could do is keep all marbles reflecting projectiles, but have the marbles get launched by projectiles, with the value on a marble determining its mass.

[@Gamingdogmochi234]

I think the healing is a little weak for the bases so maybe try upgradi the healing

[@strawberrypupper897]

What if cluster split viper shots? Minimize wasted clusters due to colliding with the wall.

[@team_lila]

#TeamPegasu- oh wait wrong series Jokes aside, wounder how this will go, intresting idea for sure

[@mathematicalgamer7692]

love the shield design, but i think pink had too much of a better loadout than blue. Blue's rocket weapon wasn't that good, while homing and spread are arguably the best ones available.

[@thedragonslyr1]

I dont like the +5 addition. Now less marbles fall into the multipliers which leads to less large numbered marbles

[@kenzoru8153]

What if the bullet durability relies on marble's count? (if marble contains 202, then the bullet has 202 durability)