Swap Bar
The key feature of Random Access Mayhem is the Swap System, the ability to Swap between the game's set of Hosts at will or upon death. Holding the Swap key (Space by default), will slow the game down and allow you to swap into any bot your cursor is over when space is released. Holding the bar for 2 seconds will begin to rapidly drain it
There are two bars, the segmented bar is your Local Juice, while the longer wired bar is your Global Juice.
Local Juice is the bar you will find yourself drawing from most of the time, swapping while still alive drains a single segment or 50% worth of the bar, while swapping post-death will take a segment and a half or 75% of the bar. This bar is also displayed above the controlled bot. There are two ways to restore this bar:
- Time
- While in combat and only in combat the Local Juice will refill slowly. Despite the possibility of staying in combat as long as possible to indefinitely regain the bar, this is not recommended because the time spent here could be better spent killing enemies, although in emergencies patience is always a strong tool.
- The only time in-game where energy will regenerate outside of combat is after the CPU is defeated as to avoid softlocks after defeating the boss.
- While in combat and only in combat the Local Juice will refill slowly. Despite the possibility of staying in combat as long as possible to indefinitely regain the bar, this is not recommended because the time spent here could be better spent killing enemies, although in emergencies patience is always a strong tool.
- Kills
- Killing enemies directly fills the Local Juice, with this being the main method to refill the Local Juice to continue swapping. This can be enhanced by Trickshots involving swapping, which increase the amount each kill fills the Local Juice, although new players may find themselves needing to play safer and getting used to the Swap System before they can fully utilize this.
When you don't have any Local Juice the game will start to drain from your fallback bar, the Global Juice. This is your fall-back, containing five extra swaps to be used when you're out of Local Juice at 20% each. If you find yourself dead and unable to find a new host, it will also revive you for a hefty cost (although it will still revive you if you have any juice left at all). This bar cannot be replenished through normal means, with the only way to restore the bar being the shop, with a purchase costing 3600 Fitness to restore 50% of your Global Juice.
Tips
- Check out The Basics Guide for some extra tips on the Swap System.
Trivia
- Originally the Swap System was one single bar that constantly ticked to Game Over, (similar to Decay except the timer lead to the end of the game), this is pictured in the programmer art.
- This was built for the more Arena based game-mode of the alphas and combat demos, this ended up not translating well to Roguelikes since it was a constantly hanging fixture of failure led to extremely unforgiving gameplay. Which led to the current Swap System we have now.
- Originally the GOLEM ALPHA tied upgrades to the swap system, with every 3rd bot you swap into gaining an upgrade. This was removed because it led to an inability to build craft and bot "maining" that the devs didn't want happening.