Wannabes and Gooftech (Patreon)

Wow have I been busy lately. Tons of design work going into future releases, followed by lots and lots of coding to make this stuff a reality, all a very vague way to say good progress is being made on some fun content for everyone :)

In the meantime there's also been five patches to 16.1, about one per week since it was released, the last of which came out at the beginning of this month. It was mostly minor stuff that could wait, but each time there was something that forced my hand to actually get a patch out rather than wait who-knows-how-long until the next full release.

Actually... I was planning on releasing something specifically on 4/1 this year, but I've recently had to accept that I simply cannot make that deadline while ensuring this thing is as good as I want it to be. So funny date is out the window, quality being more important than deadlines, after all!

The future is bright, however, and I know as part of that future players are always eager to discuss and vote on "optional features/content" coming to the next major version, in this case Beta 17... Well, the usual voting list could come later, but for now I have something perhaps rather unexpected: voting on something else!

First, some background...

Wannabes

Historically in the world of Cogmind you have common derelicts, and the Unchained which evolved out of some of them, but what about those who exist in some state between the two? One would expect that just as there are fans of the Heroes of Zion and other powerful derelicts for good, although generally evil the Unchained might have their own following, even other derelicts who see them as role models, aspiring to one day become equally powerful and join their ranks.

These are the "wannabes."

Aside from the lore implications and opportunities, more importantly wannabes can serve multiple roles from a mechanics and balance perspective.

Unchained are clearly at the more extreme end of powerful threats trying to challenge you, or at least just kick you out of areas in response to your behavior, but there's clearly room for dangerous but somewhat less extreme unique hostile NPCs, kinda like the inverse of others you meet which tend to (normally) be friendly, e.g. 7R-MNS, VL-GR5, and others. So this is one area we can use such NPCs, found in various locations under different circumstances (to be determined).

That said, the original reason I started considering the concept of "wannabes" actually has to do with Hexidium. This is the Unchained HQ you should be able to visit in Beta 17 for yet more interesting lore and tech, but who is there?

From a balance perspective, if it's a bunch of the Unchained themselves, well... you are probably in for a very very bad time, even more so as it's out of the way and you have to even get there first (attrition!). Lucky for Unchained-fearing Cogminds everywhere, to be honest I don't think it would be architecturally reasonable to enable meeting most Unchained outside their normal conditions (hunting you in 0b10). Theoretically doable, yes, but not worth it in most cases, especially again considering it's a rather different operational environment than they're used to when tracking and fighting Cogmind.

We may eventually see some there, it depends on implementation needs and particular Unchained, but I believe it will be more interesting and realistic to prioritize a different sort of inhabitant for that map, these "wannabe" fellows. This way we can develop a more "acceptable" power level for Hexidium while keeping it fresh. (I've previously brought up this topic on Discord--I like the description Infomantis coined for them: "discount Unchained" :P)

They're not really Unchained, but they are meant to be unique, and have their own (simple but unique) personalities. One of the best ways to make bots truly unique is of course via their parts/tech.

"Gooftech"

Wannabes aren't true Unchained, after all, but their tech may be interesting, or weird, but not really top-tier. Heck, most of them probably have strange drawbacks, features that could be loved or unloved depending on the situation, or simply have other limitations--in general think Exiles parts.

The Unchained of course recognize that their fans/underlings/potential recruits may be short a few marble bearings, and are using unique and sometimes effective but generally worse tech than their own, so I imagined that they dub the special parts used by wannabes as a sort of "gooftech." Just a random name that popped into my mind one day :P

This is where you come in.

I've always got more of my own ideas than I can ever implement, but I know players appreciate any opportunity to provide more direct input on future content, so now is your chance to get some gooftech (and therefore wannabes built around it) added to Cogmind! As many have discovered, I do also indirectly accept and adapt ideas that emerge from random discussions, such as on Discord (if/when the right opportunities present themselves), but this is a much more direct method that we've actually done once before, ages ago.

If you have an idea for some part that we could add for these folks, drop it in the comments on this post!

General notes on part/mechanic design and suggestions:

From a player POV (because in the end we often want tech to be usable by the player as well), one might consider builds that don't normally work too well, but might be interesting with the right complementary gear--superheavy legs combat (instead of treads), slow treads melee, ...whatever.

Technically player use is not a requirement here, however--even more interesting ideas are possible when the player does not have access to certain tech! Or as in the case of Unchained themselves, they can have neat tech but also when Cogmind uses it the effectiveness is somewhat reduced in one way or another. This allows for greater design possibilities.

In this case the mechanic needs to be usable by / meaningful to an AI-controlled bot. Ideally something that does not require unique AI to use, just the regular features/behavior.

Unlike the last time we did something like this, there is no per-person submission limit, but if you want to submit more than one idea, please do so as separate comments to aid organization.

However, please do not just spam comments with many simple/short ideas: Try to do your own pass on what you consider with regard to feasibility and power level based on what you know.

If you're not sure, just list it in the comments and I can provide feedback about feasibility. If possible I could still of course make an effort to do what's necessary to integrate a concept in a way that's suitable for Cogmind, if the original idea doesn't quite fit.

As for voting, if there are few suggestions that work and I can manage to fit them in, I may just do all/most of them, otherwise I'll set up voting in a later post to cull the list a bit and/or at least see what everyone wants to prioritize.

On the simple side, as an example from my own notes:

MK-SMN uses a weapon named Hellshot, a long-range sniper rifle that also causes thermal melting damage over time. Sometimes, however, the shot gets stuck in the barrel for a moment, failing to actually go out and hit the target, somewhat melting the weapon itself (integrity damage, and in that sense it's akin to a special sort of less-reliable vortex weapon).

Historical note: This sort of mechanic/part voting process is in fact where treads siege mode originally came from! That was only one mechanic that was going to be added, against which all other submissions were weighed in voting, whereas this time around we have an opportunity to see multiple additions so it's not quite the same scale, but we'll see.

Other News

The GSG forums now require an account to even view. The level of AI scraping has just gotten too bad to keep them public, but as a private forum it sure works a lot more smoothly now :D (more info on that in the relevant announcement... if you have an account there--in short, it's still the place for more permanent announcements/sharing threads and bug tracking, as well as of course any REXPaint discussion)

7DRL 2026 just came to an end a week ago! Over a hundred new games to explore, many of them probably roguelikes :P. We had/have sharing threads on r/Roguelikes and r/RoguelikeDev, and you can also find links there to sign up as an official reviewer if you want to help with that effort. Post-jam activity also continues on the #7drl channel on our Discord server. During the event I shared some highlights as I was following progress in that channel. Being even busier than usual working on Cogmind at the moment, in the near term I won't be playing and sharing those like I've done many times in the past. We'll have to see if/when I can get around to that later on! I completely missed 2025, the first time in ages, due to health reasons keeping me from streaming, but at least for now I've been able to get back into it (with shortened stream times), so there is hope!