Tech Specialists
Special Abilities
Modify or Replace Overcharge (L3) to a Melee Ability
Right now, Techs have no active melee abilities, despite having passive powers that bump Melee (Weapon Tweaks / Second Attack). This makes melee Techs vastly inferior to ranged ones.
If we can modify Overcharge to use either your melee or ranged weapon, whichever is better (by the same principal as [pc.weapon] is determined), that would be awesome. Otherwise, revise to be a melee power and give existing Techs the ability to change when you patch it.[a][b][c][d][e][f]
Fen: Charge Weapon - 15 energy, adds +level (maybe buff to a more complex int-based formula once we have a feel for balance) electric-type damage to your melee strikes for the duration of the fight.
Modify Power Surge/Deflector Regeneration (L4) to Restore Energy
Tech Specialists have no means to restore Energy in combat, unlike the other two classes. Which is lame.
We could switch these powers to 1/encounter, and have them restore enough Energy to get off a couple Volley/Overcharges. Would make the ability more or less equivalent to Second Wind. Which is good.[g][h]
Fen: Switch to once/combat (no ENG cost)[i]. Buff the heal over time one - change /4 multiplier at end of formula to /3.
Replace Weapon Hack
This one's my fault. They're good in theory but I don't think the enemies we have right now justify them at all.
Couch made a good point on the forum: these abilities are really niche right now. It might be better to transfer them to passive abilities, just to free up space on the abilities bar:
Weapon Hack: Replace with a passive chance to lock enemy Energy weapons for a turn per turn, based on Intelligence. (10 + 1/5 INT%?). Still not many enemies use Energy weapons, but by L7+ they're becoming more common, ie. Nyrea on Myrellion, enemy robots, Void Pirates, etc.
Just get rid of this shit, replace with Charge Shield.
Fen: Charge Shield: Grants buff that lasts for combat or until it procs twice? Chance of blinding enemy when shields are impacted. Can do intelligence/2 damage if struck by a melee attack.
Smugglers
Perks
Special Abilities
Low Blow (L2) Should Do More Damage
Does like 2-3 damage per hit on a melee smuggler. Compare to Tech's Overcharge, that's lame. Shoot First is sooo much better right now.[j][k]
Should do full melee damage (100% vs. Ovch 150%), making up for its being more reliable. Possibly boost to 150% or else add in Extra Attack at Level 8.
Fen: Against foes with balls exposed (or who are wearing armor that exposes the crotch), add physique/2 extra damage. If they have basketball+ sized balls, add full physique damage.
Stealth Field Generator (L4) should dump Aggro
On top of having the Evasion boost, SFG should de-prioritize the PC when in groupfites. Makes logical sense.
Fen: Do the above.
Mercenary
//Note: I haven't tested Mercs myself. Just going off reports for this one.
Perks
Aggo Management
Opposite of Smugglers: have Mercs draw more enemy aggo, letting them shield vulnerable Anno/Kara/etc. from getting blasted.[l][m][n]
Fen:Ignore ‘dis.
//Reminder for later date: add Taunt ability[o]. Have said Taunt work outside combat too (ie, put a debuff down)
Special Abilities
Power Strike is Inferior to Rapid Shot
Rapid Shot stacks with Extra Shot. Power Strike doesn't. Boost its damage by +100% at Level 8 and that should sort it out.[p][q][r][s]
Fen: Ye, do this.
FOR REVIEW:
Class Abilities 9-12 Draft
Savin's current mockup of the next bracket of abilities. Will cover Uveto (9) + next story planet (8-11 probs). Probably shouldn't implement anything here 'cept maybe Level 9 (assuming Uveto's coming soonish), but I'd appreciate feedback.
//New Status Effect: Sundered. The target's Defense bonus from armor has been reduced by half!
Fen: This seems fine. - save stat should probably be reflexes.
Mercenary 9
Fen: Reduces the effectiveness of Sunder on you by 50% (resulting in a 25% armor nerf instead of 50%).[v][w]
1A. Rending Attack: When you make a Power Strike, you leave your enemy's armor Sundered for a short while, decreasing their Defense.
1B. Suppressing Fire: When you use Rapid Fire, your barrage of attacks leaves your enemies Staggered for a few turns, decreasing their combat effectiveness.
2. Giant Slayer: While your enemies have more Health than you do, you gain a bonus (5%?) to Critical chance.
Fen: +5 crit against enemies 7’ or taller. RIP, Kaska/KhorganMech
Smuggler 9
Perk: Survival Instincts. Once per fight when you're below 50% of your Health, you immediately recover from any Stun, Stagger, or Knockdown effect, and your Escape chance increases to 100% -- assuming it's possible to escape in the first place.
Fen - Once per fight. Escape chance is only for the round following the proc. If you don’t run then, you’re fucked. It should be flashy enough that the PC knows that this is the round to run if they want to run.
1. Alpha Strike[x]: Your first attack in any combat is a guaranteed Critical hit.
2. Desperation: When you're below 50% Health, you gain a bonus 5% to CritChance.
Fen Note - Seems groovy
Tech Specialist 9
Perk: Advanced Shielding: Your Shields gain a Defense value, much like armor, which reduces incoming damage. This bonus Defense is equal to 10% of your Intelligence.[y]
1. Drone Control: Any drone you control (whether you made or acquired it) gains a bonus to accuracy and damage equal to 10% of your Intelligence.[z]
2. Deadly Shock[aa]: Your Paralyzing Shock ability now deals a moderate amount of Electrical damage in addition to its stun effect.
Fen: Seems alright.
Mercenary 10
Perk: Single Minded[ab]: Your Willpower increases to the maximum for your level whenever your Health drops below 50%.
1. Lunge: Your melee attacks can affect flying enemies normally, and your basic attacks also have a very low a chance to stagger grounded opponents. //(5%[ac][ad] chance of pc.physique()/2 + rand(20) + 1 >= target.reflexes()/2 + 10 check to apply sunder)
2. Bigger Guns: You can use Heavy weapons without needing to meet the physique requirements.
Fen: seal of approval. 8======D
Smuggler 10
Perk: Cloak and Dagger: When you hit with a basic attack, you gain a small bonus to Evasion until the start of your next turn.
1. Can Opener[ae]: When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon, or strike a blinded or stunned target with one, you have a chance of Sundering the target's armor, which reduces its Defense for several rounds. //(physique vs reflexes. Standard “+10” type difficulty check)
2. Mag Binders: You throw a set of magnetic, semi-guided restraints at your enemy, potentially stunning them for 1-3 rounds and dealing light shocking damage. Stacks with extra shot for any bonus ranged attacks.
Fen: Seems groovy.
Tech Specialist 10
Perk: Rapid Recharge: You regain a small amount of Shields back on any turn you don't take damage.
1A. Dampening Field: Your Gravidic Charge deals more damage (vs. primary target), and the gravidic field lingers for 3 rounds after detonation, dramatically lessening the damage dealt by kinetic weapons -- both yours and enemies'! (Fen: 50%? Might be OP. Fuck it. Let’s try it)
1B. Lingering Burns: Your Thermal Charge deals bonus damage (vs. primary target), and has a chance to keep your enemies burning for 2 turns if they didn't have shields up.
2. Linked Emitters: While your shields are up, you gain a bonus 5% Critical chance with all energy weapons.
Fen: Kay
Mercenary 11
Perk: Helldiver[af][ag]: Gain 10% resistance to thermal damage.
1. Sturm und Drang: You fire one inaccurate ranged attack at your target, with a chance of stunning for a round on a hit. After the shot, you leap in and deliver a full basic melee attack set with a greatly heightened chance of landing a Critical hit if the target was stunned.
2A. Overhand Blow[ah][ai]: You leap into the air and come crashing down on your foe, dealing heavy melee damage with a chance to stun the target for a round. (Copy/paste power strike damage adjustments)
2B. Stunning Power: Your Power Strike ability now has an added chance to stun the target for a single round.
Fen: Kay
Smuggler 11
Perk: Die Another Day: Once per fight when your Health drops below 33%, you automatically drop a free Flash Grenade and recover a small amount of Health and Energy.
1. Twist the Knife: Your Sneak Attack & Aimed Shot can cause the target to Bleed for a round if the target is already Blind, Burning, Stunned, Staggered, or Sundered. (1 round bleed for 20% of one sneak/aimed attack damage)
2. Scoundrel's Flair: When you're wearing light armor[aj][ak], you gain a bonus to Sexiness.
Tech Specialist 11
Perk: Shock Absorbers[al]: Your mechanical tinkering has given you a 15% Electric resistance.
1. Sentry Defense[am]: Once per fight, you can throw down a stationary sentry drone (stacks with Drone Control) that engages your enemy with an electrical arc cannon. Each hit from the sentry has a small chance to stagger its target. The sentry lasts until the end of combat, and acts as its own character in the fight. //High ENG cost (30-35?); Sentry draws more aggro than PC?)
2. Shield Bubble[an][ao]: When you use Power Surge or Deflector Regeneration[ap], you grant shielding to any ally that's fighting alongside you[aq][ar][as][at] (even if they normally don't have shields). (They gain 50% as much as the PC.)[au]
//Fen says okay but forgot to write it down D:
All Classes, Level 12
Perk: Boundless Reserves: Your base Energy increases to 150.
1A. Melee Specialist: Your bonus melee attack becomes a full attack rather than a flurry attack.
1B. Ranged Specialist: Your bonus ranged attack becomes a full attack rather than a flurry attack.
2. Whichever level 8 flurry perk you didn’t take.
MY NAME IS FENOXO AND I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE o~~ C======3
awww yissssssss
[a]NPCs use the same implementation of Overcharge as the PC does now.
I'd sooner say we should add an entirely new, melee-focused ability, and then play around with the perk tree and slot it in early-ish.
[b]I mean, I *guess* we could roll this in for NPCs too, but I'd still much prefer a new ability.
[c]I just don't know *where* we would -- Volley/Overcharge is the *only* active offensive ability Techs have until Level 8 other than the disruptors.
[d]I'd rather toss Volley than Overcharge. Overcharge is more mechanically interesting and ties into the energy weapons theme.
[e]Agreed.
Keep Overcharge for PCs, leave Volley in the code so NPCs can use it, and figure out a L3 melee tech ability to replace Volley then?
[f]What about combining both talents? Say making it a setting, that takes a turn to convert. Like how we do with drones on standby/attack mode? Gives Tech a strategy and some modifiable preservation.
[g]I'm not opposed to adjusting this to once per combat (and boost its effectiveness if necessary) but leave the techies distinct from the other classes in that manner.
[h]Being reduced to normal attacks or spamming Rest isn't a particularly interesting niche.
[i]Is there any way this could: not be once per combat; consume energy instaid of restoring? Techs want energy regen, but hypothetical energy regen isn't worth this damn much.
[j]Low Blow can stun for three rounds. Overcharge only stuns for 1 round. Low Blow also uses 5 less energy per use.
Low blow is fucking amazing. If we had it do an actual decent amount of damage, it should probably cost more.
[k]Fair point. It just seems weird to kick a nyrea or a zil boy in the dick and do 2-3 damage with maxed Physique.
Maybe just give it a boost vs. dick-wielding enemies, kinda like with Kaska? :P
[l]I'd say this would be better as an activated ability we can throw into the mix at higher levels - something akin to WoW's Taunt or what have you.
[m]That's the swing that I was going for when I built the baseline ~target selection~ stuff.
It doesn't work of aggro or damage or threat- the idea is weighted random, using status effects on potential targets to influence the chance. Some effects can then override it entirely too (f.ex Focused Fire on a target will force all NPCs on the other team to attack that target).
The baseline target stuff is dirt simple, but it served a purpose until we could have a discussion about what do for that.
[n]@Fen: Ye, though that seems suuuuper niche. Would probably want to have it as a perk-power like Second Wind; maybe on top of another level perk (ie, like Smuggle-waifus get 2 at level 7(?) since they're both so small).
[o]Could this possibly grant damage reduction or something to avoid simply increasing damage to the player (considering it looks like an active skill, that kinda sucks), or maybe enrage enemies, increasing their damage but reducing their accuracy?
[p]I approve this, though we need to make sure the tooltip can be updated. Is that possible?
[q]Yeah; iirc the info for perks/abilities that gets displayed in game is getting pulled straight from the perkdb, so keeping up to date is p. trivial. I'll just make a few tweaks to how the description itself is stored so it can be generated on demand (ie include perk effects, up-to-date energy costs etc)
[r]Why not just allow the passive melee perks for Mercenaries (i.e. Bloodthirsty, Cleave and Second Attack) to work with Power Strike?
[s]Once Mercenaries hit level 12 and the flurry shot becomes a full attack, ranged Mercs will benefit far more from Rapid Fire stacking with Second Shot than melee Mercs will from getting the extra damage from Power Strike, especially since Rapid Fire would work with Concentrate Fire and Armor Piercing, whereas Second Attack, Riposte, Cleave and Bloodthirsty might as well not exist.
[t]@Gedan - would it be possible to restrict this effect to armors from the "Armor" category and not in the "apparel" category?
It would be quite silly for mercs to get defense on their suit and tie because they're buff.
That or we should add an item flag to tag "heavy" armors with.
Also keep in mind mercs already have 15% resistance to kinetic damage at this point from Tough and Tough 2.
[u]Yeah; I could either cheese it entirely, or probably a better idea, would be a new item flag to make it explicit.
[v]Isn't that rather narrow in application? The enemy has to actually deal damage to HP (not shield), apply Sunder, and even then the difference is merely a quarter of your defense rating (which, at least going by current gear, is rather minor). Add the diminishing returns for having resistance from Tough (since defense, I believe, is calculated first), and the total effect is negligible in even the rare instances it would apply.
[w]Sunder seems like it will be used by a small niche of enemies, and not exactly useful even against those. Why not make it so the first attack an enemy performs after breaking your shield deals reduced to no damage, or making the defense boost apply when not wearing defense-granting armor, like "Hardened Skin" or something.
[x]Seems like this would work a little too well with Shoot First. What about treating enemies as Blind until you attacked them, like if you snuck up on them? That way you could get the bonus from Sneak Attack/Aimed Shot, without the first round of combat also being the last round.
[y]This is good.
[z]You may want to consider how this will affect drones like the Lust version of Siegwulfe.
[aa]Problem: overcharge/volley are already vastly better crowd control. While this arguably has utility for a ranged tech as adding some extra damage for those rare situations when stun is necessary and enemy is blind immune, this bonus is spurious compared to a simple 10% damage increase.
[ab]Is this a joke?
[ac]Stagger is kinda weak debuff. I'm not sure it warrants mere 5% chance to have a chance to apply it.
[ad]Would be interesting if it Tripped them instead, or if it added a certain percentage of your weight to the chance to apply the status. Maybe add Penetrating damage or weapon flag onto melee attacks?
[ae]Not saying its useless, but it would be shittastically situational. Consider changing to resistance towards equipped damage type down.
[af]What if instead you "counterattack" any enemy that manages to damage you, with reduced accuracy? Or as befitting Merc's violent nature, "No Mercy" or "Cruelty", where you deal increased damage/have higher crit chance against stunned or immobilized opponents? Or something that isn't completely bland.
[ag]In DnD, there's a special action called "Coup de Grace" that allows you to deal massive damage to prone/helpless opponents. Maybe something along those lines?
[ah]So how is this different from Headbutt?
[ai]This is just a placeholder in case the character didn't pick up Power Attack. Which means if you don't mind waiting until level 11, you can get both Power Attack (via this) and Rapid Fire.
[aj]Are there light armor/heavy armor flags that effect combat? Or is it based off of the description i.e.Black Void Modified TS-T Armor Plating Mark IV?
[ak]Might as well also apply to nude PCs.
[al]Can this grant electric resistance to shields instaid? If shields go down, you're pretty much shafted anyways.
[am]Does this make it so Shield Techs can repair drones like Tam Wolf or other (insert drone here) now?
[an]So this only works in those few combats where you have a tagalong? And only provides some protection for them?
Kinda weak really.
[ao]Maybe in single combat it could add a secondary bubble shield to the PC? One that would have to be destroyed before the PC could be further injured, instead of some attacks finishing both the shield and causing physical damage when that's depleted. Potentially, that second shield being up could also synergize with the earlier perk: Rapid Recharge, where since the main shield wouldn't be taking damage, it could repair until it took damage of its own?
[ap]Weren't you getting rid of one, or both, of these, as listed above? Shield Bubble... its seems as much trouble as Weapon Hack without a constant tag along, if not a even worse skill.
[aq]I was unaware that TiTS was a group vs group combat RPG. I was fooled by the fact that 99% of all fights ever is Steele solo vs [baddies]
[ar]This is a tech ability, a tech will almost always have drones so they don't fight alone.
[as]To the best of my knowledge, the only drones available are the attack drone at lv2 (crap), equippable drones (crap unless you have attack drone, but still inferior), and sentry defense (mutually exclusive). Are there other options i have overlooked?
[at]You are correct that those are the types of drones (except that you don't have the two forms of Seigwulfe in there). But that is NOT the point I was making. The point is that the ability to grand shielding to an ally is a better ability for techs IF it can affect drones. In order for that to happen though I suppose drones would have to be targetable.
[au]Could this be applied to the sentry in Tech 11-1 and/or the standard drone in the accessory slot, if they are in fact a targetable combat character?