Keeperman wrote:

Keeper vs keeper =

Indeed.

Actually, since you mentioned keeper vs keeper, it got me thinking about Brogue (an awesome game which I’ve recently downloaded and started playing) and how the ally system in that game compares to the one in KeeperRL. I have to say, the team battles in Brogue are quite fun, a lot more so than those in KeeperRL. Obviously, Brogue has been around a lot longer and there are far more interesting tactical options in that game because there are more systems in play, but I think that one of the aspects that makes Brogue more enjoyable is that combat takes place in digestible chunks, whereas you have these gigantic battles in KeeperRL.

This situation reminds me of the difference between new XCOM and DOS XCOM (XCOM Apocalypse, especially). In the DOS game, you could bring a platoon of soldiers to missions whereas the remake limits you to six soldiers, even though it both games you still fight roughly the same number of aliens permission. I think the reason that they did this is because it starts feeling like more of an RTS-style-game-of-numbers and less of a squad based tactics game once your squad increases beyond a half-dozen members. Taking on five pods of four enemies with a single fireteam is more interesting than taking on a gang of twenty enemies at once with a dozen soldiers, at least in games with complex inventories.

In KeeperRL, I still think that the gigantic battles can be fun, but their outcome is mostly decided by macro-strategy. Most of the time, you’ve either won or lost before the battle starts, and if you can’t win, then the best you can do is to run away. It would be nice to have a few more missions that enforce a smaller team limit, which might even be a single creature, so that inventory management becomes a more dominant factor. Just some sort of mission where you can nibble away at a numerically-superior force would be a nice touch.