Press Tab or F to switch between techs + display active tech in HUD

I have only found 2 techs thus far, but switching between them either when combat (birds!?) or exploration
requires me to do so can be slow and sometimes dangerous/frustrating (birds again!?).
Assigning Tab or the F key to scroll though the active techs could be really useful. Also, I was surprised that you can only
use one tech at the same time, so scrolling through them very quickly may not be intended by the devs?
If so, I suggest that when switching between techs with a button, you cannot use a tech for 0,5 ~1,5 seconds, so that you cannot
more or less use all of them in rapid succession. This cooldown can be visualized by the same graphical effect you see when you smelt and ore for instance. Additionally, the active tech could be displayed somewhere between the character portrait and the item bar?

I am really loving the game thus far! Great work! Your dedication to this game is inspiring, keep it up!

 

I think it is a balance thing that you can only use one at a time, even though they have unique triggers (like jumping twice for Pulse Jump or double tapping a direction to dash. I have only ever had Dash and Pulse Jump, and don't really see them as OP in tandem, but I know there are some pretty powerful techs out there. For the most part I stick with Pulse Jump, but if I am trying to quickly traverse a planet, I'll put the inventory screen in a corner and click to swap between Dash and Jump as needed.

Glad you are loving the game; me too!

 

Yeah I agree - I think that you can only have one active is probably due to a lack of variety in the active techs and a swapping cooldown would be great.

 

I use the speed dash mostly, because I find myself quickly exploring the planet to find things of interest. Planets can be huge and sometimes a dungeon or village can be exactly at the other side of the planet, so I find myself rushing. I indeed think it is a balance thing that you can only have one active at a time, which is fine by me, hence the cooldown. Switching between techs itself should NOT be limiting the gameplay experience right? (dying when switching in nasty situations etc.)

 

Yeah, a keybinding for switching tech's would be nice.
I've only ever seen the dash and jump techs though, you guys sure there are other ones?

 

There is little to no reason why using all four equipped techs should not be allowed. The only feasible restriction I can see is only allowing one "transformative" tech, like Morphball, the Mech, etc., as there's no elegant way to overload the keystrokes for those (since right now they all use F).

 

I am not so sure about that, balance wise, but I still have found only the speed dash and double jump, keep getting these same techs in the beta sector. Regardless, if you are not allowed to use them all at once, at least provide quick switching right?

 

Considering the pretty substantial energy costs on techs now, I doubt allowing them all to be active would be a real balance issue. I think Kyrosiris has it right; the techs are limited because there's currently no way to deal with two techs that have the same trigger active simultaneously. In addition to the F to use techs, there are a handful of techs that are triggered off of jumping that wouldn't work well together.

 

@Epigenety: First I want to say is that you got me excited at the title of your thread, I thought that you discovered these were shortcuts for switching tech! That aside, I think tab is quite the elegant solution for tech switching if the devs continue to not allow us to use all the techs at the same time (which is what I would prefer honestly), but at the very least having the ability to switch quickly between them would be nice.

As for other techs, before the first character wipe I had come across the morph ball and gravity field techs. The morph ball is used by pressing the F key and the gravity field allowed me to fly as long as I held down the space bar. I flew so high at one point that my character started to freeze (far quicker than on any of the coldest planets).

 

Sorry for the confusion !

Actually, I did not even know F was already in use for certain techs? It certainly doesn't trigger Pulse jump or Speed dash. I don't remember it being in the explanation of the controls in the codex. Also, for some reason that entry is now gone in my codex :s ?

I still think it is safe to assume we all want to be able to quickly switch techs, with or without cooldown