Cogmind is my favorite game that I'm absolutely garbage at, I've been following the development cycle of it for probably over 10 years now and it's a huge component of why I love roguelikes as much as I do.

But fuck me that game is hard. I have a fairly comprehensive, wide and deep pool of knowledge about a semi-majority of the content in the game, but... I just can't stay alive. The attrition kills me, every time, I don't think I've ever made it past -06 or so on my best run. Pro advice always consists of "Oh just don't get into fights" but that's a lot easier said than done when you've got half a dozen swarmers on your tail that are faster than you are, are all busy calling backup, and are peppering you with 18 shots a round as you fruitlessly attempt to seek cover.

Anyway, yeah, great game. Love it to death. I'm real bad at it. It seems like probably most people are real bad at it, and there are just a couple of mega wizards that make the game look easy in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us. Especially doing things like wheel or leg builds, in my experience that's just slow suicide that is locked in the moment you decide to commit to it, they're just outright too slow to manage. I find that this is a game where you have to be faster than your opponents, no matter what, it is a hard requirement of survival - therefore, I do not survive unless I equip flight units. So I equip flight units and then I can't carry anything because their carry weight smokes dong, so I die to attrition because I get my parts shot off and don't have backups. So I get frustrated and do a legs build that's strapped down with four shotguns and then I die to active combat because I can't escape anyone.

Point being, if you're any good at Cogmind, I'd love some pointers or some advice on how you play. I've dabbled in this game for nearly a decade and I'm tired of being so straight up bad at it. I feel like I've been misunderstanding some fundamental principle of how you're supposed to play the game, and reading pro guides on the internet hasn't really filled me in on much other than a) try to avoid fights when possible (okay, fair, but this definitely isn't always possible) and b) other people always seem to find cooler loot more consistently than I do. Guides will start off right out of the gate like "okay, first thing's first, find a datajack and some hackware and get some flight" and I'm like, brother, I'm in -07 and I've found one datajack and two flight units in the whole game so far. You want a [Lgt. Assault Rifle]? I got those. Not much else.