Siphon Needle immortality in Endless Mode

[probably42]

Hey there, love this game! Very fun gameplay with an interesting story.

That being said, it's still possible to do literal "endless" runs in endless mode even after the 1.2 asteroid HP scaling change. I was simply trying to reach 10 minutes with Rascal and found out that you can become immortal with Siphon Needles + Revenge Protocol (alongside Duplicator Core for even more healing). As seen in the video below, I left the game running for quite a long time without doing anything and my HP never fell below 80. The asteroid health scaled a lot to the point where I can't destroy any of them, but they still can't kill me. (edit: I actually reached 158 minutes and still going strong, pretty sure this can go on forever)

I saw this mentioned in another issue (here), but thought it would be better to create a separate issue for this.

siphon.mp4

Maybe implement asteroid damage scaling as well? My suggestion: after the 10 minute mark, asteroids start dealing 1-3 extra damage per minute spent in the run (the first 10 mins don't count). Also add a cap to the extra damage (around 40, so 50 dmg per hit at max), so it starts to be very challenging (yet possible) to reach high run times while also preventing immortality.

I feel like it would be a good idea to add an "exit to main menu" button on the pause screen to prematurely end runs without having to kill the app. I don't think this should have to punish the player either (let the player earn the yen gained from that run and update the best record if the new one is eligible)

Also, a minor issue i noticed regarding a certain bar conversation (spoilers):

STORY SPOILER

The convo between Medic and Unit-7 that went along the lines of "your heart rate increased when Astro walked in" appeared before I had Astro unlocked (although every other pilot was unlocked). This happened on the very first "loop", so before I ever beat the 10 minute spaceship boss. I feel like this convo shouldn't appear this early and is kind of a spoiler for the last pilot. Unfortunately, I didn't take a screenshot of this happening.

And a minor question I have out of curiosity:

ANOTHER STORY SPOILER

Does anything interesting happen if you reach 10 minutes in a run as a corrupted pilot? I tried this, but was only able to reach around 7 minutes. It's extremely hard because both the asteroids and the normal pilot appearing at 1 minute deal A LOT of damage, so you almost have to play a hitless run without any upgrades all the way to 10 minutes while also having a limited amount of attempts. Eventually I just gave up.

Thank you so much for creating this game though! Very simple yet really fun and engaging. And huge respect for making it FOSS.

[PubDeer]

Thank you for both bugs! The 1.2 fix was still not enough, it appears! Clearly still needs work. I'm planning on releasing a 1.5 debug version with some knobs for people to tune both asteroids and weapons/passives.

Regarding your spoilers:

1. Great catch, will fix!
2. No, nothing. Would be a cool easter egg to maybe later fold in, but no plans for it now.

[probably42]

@PubDeer Alright, thanks for the response! Looking forward to more updates and the debug version. Good to know the answer to the second spoiler, though i would've liked to see something.

I have another suggestion, though it's unrelated to this issue:

Maybe add save profiles to the game, so you can start the entire game from the beginning without having to wipe your current progress? Something similar to what Risk of Rain 2, another roguelike, already does: