Possible changes

There has been a lot of discussion on other threads about improvements that could be made. I thought it was time to start doing some of them. So here is my list of what I am seriously considering:

Adrenaline Masters:

New ability. Energy Shield. If damage taken would take you below 50 health, the damage comes off your adrenaline first. So most of the time this ability does nothing, and only acts to try to stop your health going below 50. Might help AMs survive just that bit longer - if they haven't used all their adrenaline on the rod

Allow AMs to fire a projectile from one weapon, switch to another weapon, and get the magic from the new weapon applying to the projectile when it hits.

Beam. Reduce the timer down from 3 secs to 1 sec. I cannot remove the timer entirely or people will code a macro that just fires it 5 times - getting around the 100 damage limit in DM. Damage to be set to 7 per adrenaline rather than 6.

MegaBlast timer - reduce from 60 secs to 30 secs.

Slightly more xp per second from the Invulnerability sphere

Engineers:

New ability. Rapid Build. When maxed will half the time it takes to recover from building stuff. Once an Engineer dies, there is no chance of managing to rebuild a base in the later waves at the moment.

Add a extra wall structure. Low Wall. Four small blocks in a line.

Reduce the alt-fire strength from 20 down to 10, but increase the effectiveness against vehicles. So it will heal turrets etc slightly faster, but will damage monsters slower. Shield healing will be approx the same. This is how I should have coded it in the first place. The beam length will still be short.

Allow a third sentinel at level 100. In practice due to the points, this will mean an option of 3 defense sentinels - which tend to help everyone to some extent

Slightly reduce the no-damage timer on shield regen from 5 to 3 secs. 5 secs is a long time in a battle to not get hit

Slightly up the power of the Ball Turret from 45 to 50 to ensure it is slightly more powerful than the Energy Turret.

I thought about reducing the 'post-healing' delay on turrets before boosting and sharing xp, but decided against it. It felt like it would be rewarding people who just hid

I want to replace the Paladin with something else. But I don't know what yet. This is better dealt with in another thread. I am not sure Druid would want to use stuff from another mod, without explicitly getting the authors permission first

Medics:
No changes. At the moment, this is probably the highest xp scoring class, and probably the hardiest. But I can't bring myself to nerf it.

Weapon Masters:
No change yet. I am aware that high level WMs are perhaps a bit underpowered, but haven't decided on anything yet. I think more discussion is required. It might end up with increasing the power of Enhanced Damage as a possibility.

These changes should make AMs and Engineers slightly stronger, although that may change depending on what we replace the Paladin with.

Please let me know if you think these changes will be beneficial or not. I do not want to make things worse. But do not just say yes to things that make your character more powerful - let's try to keep the balance.

what about getting xp from linking a vehicle? I never use vehicles because they share no xp so there is no incentive to heal someone else's vehicle.

Trooper wrote:

what about getting xp from linking a vehicle? I never use vehicles because they share no xp so there is no incentive to heal someone else's vehicle.

I am not sure. The main reason for using a vehicle rather than a turret is that it moves. And if it is moving, you may have difficulty keeping up with it on foot. I would prefer using multi-player vehicles like the Hellbender, where a number of players get into it. Turrets are always just one player, and are static, so it makes more sense for them to be linked. Sound reasonable?
In particular, I am not sure about letting players link to a very powerful vehicle like a paladin.

Everything here seems reasonable and balanced... except I do disagree with one thing...

Szlat wrote:

Reduce the alt-fire strength from 20 down to 10, but increase the effectiveness against vehicles. So it will heal turrets etc slightly faster, but will damage monsters slower.

IMO i don't think reducing the alt-fire damage is a good idea for example how would you kill a metal titan if you only had a link gun or how would you go through the shield of a queen. The point is it would take twice as long. I'd say leave it as it is, but everything else sounds good to me, well at least that is my opinion.

Also for the 3rd def sentinel maybe make it so you would have to be a little higher of a level to make it ex: 125 or 150 somewhere around there

some people use the hellbender side seat as a turret. what about for a driver. can the driver of a helbender get xp for the side and rear gunner's shots?

also I think deducing the link dmg is a bad idea. the wms and junkies can pick whatever high dmg weapon they want and use their resupply. medic weapons are the same as a vanilla +6 so they got power. nerf the engi link then engi will suck.

junkie energy shield should be an artifact in my opinion. that way in one circumstance you can take the health instead of adren but then switch if need be. I could be saving for a mwm but if I keep getting hit then I will never be able to make it because it will keep knocking it off

Szlat wrote:

New ability. Energy Shield. If damage taken would take you below 50 health, the damage comes off your adrenaline first. So most of the time this ability does nothing, and only acts to try to stop your health going below 50. Might help AMs survive just that bit longer - if they haven't used all their adrenaline on the rod

50 seems like it would be a bit high for low level AMs with no hp bonus yet. They may never be able to build up dren to do anything useful. Why not make it 10. You can argue that if they dont have the hp they shouldn't buy it, but if they accidentally buy it, they are stuck with it. Then again you could put a hp requirement to buy it.

Beam. Reduce the timer down from 3 secs to 1 sec. I cannot remove the timer entirely or people will code a macro that just fires it 5 times - getting around the 100 damage limit in DM. Damage to be set to 7 per adrenaline rather than 6.

Another approach to cool down timers is to reduce the damage while a timer is in effect: first shot is full damage, second shot is half damage, 3rd quarter...etc, when timer resets, the full damage is then restored.

Add a extra wall structure. Low Wall. Four small blocks in a line.

I would love this

Reduce the alt-fire strength from 20 down to 10, but increase the effectiveness against vehicles. So it will heal turrets etc slightly faster, but will damage monsters slower. Shield healing will be approx the same. This is how I should have coded it in the first place. The beam length will still be short.

I am sure that there will be more complaints, but the alt-fire is stronger than the shield gun attack.
I would recommend though going to 15 for now and not making it too drastic of a change to where the gameplay drastically changes. (It is a pretty substantial nerf)
Can the eng link gun damage be configurable in the config file? This way the damage can be adjusted without a version change?

I thought about reducing the 'post-healing' delay on turrets before boosting and sharing xp, but decided against it. It felt like it would be rewarding people who just hid

any thoughts on adding a visual effect to differentiate power boosting from healing when a turret is linked?

I want to replace the Paladin with something else. But I don't know what yet. This is better dealt with in another thread. I am not sure Druid would want to use stuff from another mod, without explicitly getting the authors permission first

Maybe Road can finish the mech walker.
Can a ceiling limit be added to the flying vehicles so that they cant be abused? I know that would be a tough one to test for issues, but as far as i know, the out of bounds message works almost too well with vehicles.
The raptor makes for some really fun battles with warlords and titans.

I like the ideas.
I think getting the scoreboard changes added to the server will help identify balance issues too.
Player score and xp are indirectly related (I can get alot of xp and a low score and vice versa.) I think too much attention is on the high level classes and not the average classes. I suspect once the scoreboard shows xp, we might see one class getting more xp than other classes in the same level range.

Elite wrote:

IMO i don't think reducing the alt-fire damage is a good idea for example how would you kill a metal titan if you only had a link gun or how would you go through the shield of a queen. The point is it would take twice as long. I'd say leave it as it is, but everything else sounds good to me, well at least that is my opinion.

I knew this one was going to be the one I got complaints about. The other 5 changes for Engineers make them stronger. If it had been like this from the start, no-one would have minded, and they would still have been happy for the infinite and better vehicle boosting. The engineer can pick up other weapons and use them against things like metal titans - their free weapon doesn't have to be perfect against everything. I will keeping thinking about it - I may take greg11's suggestion of 15 instead of 10 as a compromise.

Elite wrote:

Also for the 3rd def sentinel maybe make it so you would have to be a little higher of a level to make it ex: 125 or 150 somewhere around there

ok.

greg11 wrote:

50 seems like it would be a bit high for low level AMs with no hp bonus yet. They may never be able to build up dren to do anything useful. Why not make it 10.

ok.

greg11 wrote:

Another approach to cool down timers is to reduce the damage while a timer is in effect: first shot is full damage, second shot is half damage, 3rd quarter...etc, when timer resets, the full damage is then restored.

Interesting idea.

greg11 wrote:

Add a extra wall structure. Low Wall. Four small blocks in a line.
I would love this

Is 4 the correct number?

greg11 wrote:

any thoughts on adding a visual effect to differentiate power boosting from healing when a turret is linked?

I'll have a think, but as I said before the difficultly is replicating the info back to the client.

greg11 wrote:

I suspect once the scoreboard shows xp, we might see one class getting more xp than other classes in the same level range.

I suspect you are correct.

the small block idea is useless to most people. almost every monster can just step over them so I don't see what use they are. the only thing I can think of is a step to see over a higher block but even that isn't needed

Trooper wrote:

the small block idea is useless to most people. almost every monster can just step over them so I don't see what use they are. the only thing I can think of is a step to see over a higher block but even that isn't needed

I know many engineers that set small blocks instead of large.

Many monsters won't cross them. Skarjj are one of the few that jump them, but many times they don't.

They are easier to shoot over (especially with a turret)

They don't disappear when a player crouches by them, and they are tougher to trans.

They are much quicker to build

They are easier for other players to jump over
They are very effective at slowing down monster raids

Szlat wrote:

Is 4 the correct number?

Sounds ok, I think i usually set 3 for most openings (about the same width as a wall.) If an area can only handle 3 then it will still set the 3 and leave the 4th out, correct?

greg11 wrote:

If an area can only handle 3 then it will still set the 3 and leave the 4th out, correct?

Yes. It treats them as individual block spawns.

Any other shapes people want? (Not a staircase!). I notice I haven't got any that mix large and small blocks. Go out and play with your lego

sniper wall-4 across the bottom 2 on the side 4 across the top.

threshold- a front porch type desighn. highwall-with a doorway,6 blocks to make 2 side walls and a top to prevent monster projectiles from above.

enclosed wall-totaly enclosed wall with 1 window.

Trap wall-nest wall with a lid.

solid wall-a big solid wall...

sentinal safe-small block desighn to hold a sentinal

block slab-a slab of block used for flooring or cieling

pillars-blocks that stand on end to form pillars

block bar-a longated block about 3-4 blocks long

small block walls- small block desighnes as you have for the big block desighnes.

i have a bunch of desighnes but i cant get druids rpg to work for me so i can just log in a engi and mess around with no monsters. just lego build and screenshot. anyone help me out so i can build me bases and screenshoot them?

possible diffrent wall desighnes

Mystic, it looks like you have been having fun

There are already 6 wall constructs in the artifact list. I think we have to be careful about having too many of them, as it will take too long to find what you are after.

The 6 already there are wall, high wall, nest wall, curved wall, tall nest wall and square wall. Are there any of these we do not want? Personally, I think I use wall and curved wall most.

I was thinking about putting a low wall in, using small blocks. Unfortunately in my test most monsters seemed to get over it - skaarj, krall, mercenary - even the pupae. However, I don't think the floor was entirely flat, and I think the very slight deviation was sufficient to allow them through. I will test more on a flatter floor.

So Mystic, there is no chance of getting all of those. Any particular favourites? (But remember, it can't do structures with floating blocks where you have had to trans a supporting block out)

i know bro, im just posting as ideas, i dont expect them to be put in,, i just hope they influence in some way or spark ideas or something.

put in what you want

,but if i had to choose i would say the first pic the 5th pic and the last, but whatever is fine with me.