Limit of different skills: currently 12.
With any redesign to fit more buttons on the panel, this limit becomes oddly arbitrary. It has come only from the UI restrictions. Since 14/15 isn't much more than 12, I'd love to get rid of this limit.
One alternative is to keep only 12 buttons, and sort, producing such abbreviated gaps. That's already much better than unsorted panel. But it would maintain the strange number of 12 buttons for 14/15 skills.
Enforce ordering without gaps: That's the first thing I tried, and I have working code that does that. Then I felt the problem to be in the strange number of skill panels.
ccx:
Hunch about too much space allocated to non-skill buttons: Thanks, interesting feedback. I'd have imagined them more important.
Future-proofing: These days, I'm actively discouraging ideas for new skills. Looking back at the past 5 years, I have regrets about having implemented the runner, despite people liking it. The batter is a must-have. The runner only makes sabotage better, which is strong enough without. Should the game ever get more skills, which I consider unlikely in the next 3-5 years, then another UI change is in order. And people would then have to live with 20 skills allowed at the same time, or re-impose a limit of skills per level, then fix existing levels.
New skills would increase the burden on new players. For experienced players, the single-hand hotkey layout is already full, and can't take additional unique keys well at all. You don't want to put distinct skills on the same hotkey. If you put similar skills on the same key, then they're probably similar enough to cull one from the overall design.
If I got to cull skills without people revolting, I'd cull L1-exploder first, then runner, then floater.
Climber stays in, it is amazing and makes excellent use of the rodents-navigate-pixel-terrain core idea. Everything else gets eaten by the clam.
-- Simon