Combat

Discussion was made, ideas were thought of and now thoughts are being post.

The age old discussion of repeaters. They are too powerful and make combat lop sided. Thinking of ways to make them more reasonable, and to help bring back balance and combat for other weapons could be to allow them only to Combatants with higher level of the Combat class are higher levels via a feat. And the argument "Anybody could pick up a repeater and use it" is null. Yes, the probably could, just like anybody could walk into the bridge of medium sized ship and move it move, or onto the bridge of a capital ship and start pressing buttons to do make it move or fire as well, but they both has skills attached to them. The skill attached to blasters is for a general use of energy based weapons, not specifically repeaters, so don’t try to bring that up either. If you want each specific weapon to have a skill, fine, but repeaters should be higher level still.
If that isn’t acceptable, somebody mentioned that repeaters would be too large most of the time for a holster (especially a hip holster). To help balance that thought, so there is no quick draw 8 shot, have the repeater unable to be holstered and when wielded have a small warm up time like a shield does. Not as long as a shield, because they take a while at times.

Also, discussion brought up the thought of Bounty Hunters and a way to make them feel more like Bounty Hunters, a way to increase RP maybe? Whatever, here is the thought anyway. Have a move at higher levels of Bounty Hunter that focuses on attacking or draining the movement of their target. This is mainly used to bring targets in alive (for torture, or for the pleasure of executing them). Gathorn brought up that this would be a bad move for the thought that BH would have an easier time perming people, BUT this move could only be used as an RP method to bring targets in alive. If somebody were permed with this move (though it shouldn’t effect them that way), or because of this move, they would be restored.
Another subject with poisons. Having a makepoison skill, allowing a player to make different kinds of poisons that could effect different things. Stats damage, slow health drain, increased movement when the person who is poisoned moves, or again, a poison that damages movement directly. Poisons could also be administered different ways. Getting somebody to drink some at a bar, etc. Again, most poisons should be used in an RP manner, not "I don’t like the way he looked at me, here comes some fatal poison with his drink."

This is an idea that was, again, brought it in a discussion. Adding a 3rd combatesk class. Something like a combatant, BH, and smuggler. The Assassin class. More focused on stealth, and high damage attacks. Maybe a few large damaged attacks in the beginning. Skills could be focused around increased stealth, sneak attacks, focus on weapons such as a blade or rifle (snipe assassinations ftw), sabotage/damage of weapons and armor, attacks that have chances of by passing armor, etc. This class is not a front line combatant either. The class is just an idea. Think about it and let it simmer on the mind for a bit.
Also on that note, a idea was brought up to use these three classes to help balance each other in some way. Assassins hold the upper hand on Bounty Hunters, Bounty Hunters on Combats, and Combats on Assassins. Or whatever seems to fit well.

As usual, I had more thoughts to post, but it took me too long to post what I had here so I forgot. I’m sure they will pop up later though.

Repeaters should have a ‘deployment time’, that is a 3-5 second period of time where a person won’t be able to fire the weapon once they’ve typed deploy. They can’t type deploy if already in combat. Deploy would increase the accuracy of the weapon by a lot. (As if it were one of those stands on guns in real life, which take time to set up IIRC)

The person can choose not to deploy before combat in dangerous situations ("firing from the hip") but at an accuracy penalty.

Repeaters when they first came in were..insane. You could dual wield them, meaning if you started combat, you won. No two sides to the story. Simple. Thus they were made one repeater only, and I agree that they are far too powerful. Blaster pistols and rifles are largely ineffective and pointless when you can just whip out a repeater. However, I think if snipe didn’t give a direction it said something more akin to "is shot from a distance" rather than "shot from the north", it’d balance that out and such. Repeaters accuracy should be lowered significantly, and blaster pistols should be immensely hard to miss with and suffer the damage loss. I could probably go into blades and pikes, and have never personally tried bowcasters… So I’ll stop there for now.

I largely agree with Slicerin on the first point, a skill to reduce movement in combat is unnecessary, and tips the balance negatively not positively. &quot;Trip&quot; may be a good addition, certainly not what you’re suggesting, in my opinion. However, the poison idea…I love it. It could be geared more to /smuggling/ however, they know spices, and are more likely to slip it into a hypodermic or drink, and would still NEED a BHer to poison weapons..thus their specialty. It’s more credible a BHer smart enough to steal ships or whatever is better with poisons than &quot;stupid&quot; whiphids too. (Although in EU, a whiphid female lead a smuggling organisation, you know. <!– s:P –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt="" title="Razz" /><!– s:P –>)

An &quot;assassin&quot; is a smart combatant, or clever BHer. Not a new class, I don’t think there is a niche for a new class right now. We have the basics and they all fit in very well. Kudos for posting your ideas though.

I know I titled this about Combat, and I am not trying to go off track, but you can’t call the Whiphids stupid if they have a higher int. The SW code is based off of the AD&amp;D, obviously, with some modifications. A stat of 10 is average for a base-line human. Anything below that and your IQ starts dropping below 100. The whiphids in SW are not technically stupid. They have a language, and a culture, and obviously we have seen them use advanced technology easily in the SW Universe. Their physiology is different then ares and their understand of basic may be completely different then their language and how they speak. Anybody who has learned multiple languages should know that each language has their own set of rules. Most oriental languages have an absurd amount of symbols and means because the language is so old and they are attempting to adapt it to modern standards, hence when most foreign people attempt to speak another other language, it comes out broken. This goes for any race.

Slicer, you obviously missed what I said in my post &quot;Anybody could pick up a repeater and use it.&quot; It’s in the first paragraph. I also said that argument is null, obviously because it’s more about balance, and not that &quot;anybody can pick up and AK and kill the person standing next to them.&quot; If the accuracy and damage were reduced, then yes, I wouldn’t have a problem with that argument, but that isn’t the case. I agree with Ranmyaku that lowered accuracy is best. A higher level combatant will balance out the low level of accuracy of a repeater. They are trained combatants. Here comes the Level 1 Combatant wielding a repeater with a +25 or more accuracy. Why did he need to train in combatant again? What classes do you usually play Slicer?

I agree with Ranmyaku about &quot;I think if snipe didn’t give a direction it said something more akin to &quot;is shot from a distance&quot; rather than &quot;shot from the north&quot;, it’d balance that out and such.&quot; Maybe have some of the skills get a chance of notifying the person in the room from what direction it came from?

I’m vehemently against any and all forms of wielding lag associated with repeaters (deployment time, etc.). ANYTHING close would not only be purely illogical (they were LIGHT MACHINE GUNS, not fucking turret-mounted vulcan cannons) but also fundamentally change the balance of combat towards attackers. As it is, it’s pretty damn balanced between attackers and defenders (assuming, of course, that the defender is actually at the computer, not faux-AFK by being in another window, chatting on AIM, or some such); giving attackers (who have the opportunity to utilize the deploy time) such a boon would break that delicate balance.
tl;dr = &quot;fuck no&quot;

-9000.

First of all… yes, anyone can pick up a repeater and use it, but to use it effectively they need [b:27nczefx]enhanced damage[/b:27nczefx] and [b:27nczefx]blaster mastery[/b:27nczefx] (level 115 combat). That is the level requirement attached to them. Beyond that is Flurry, which makes combatants formidable with said repeaters.

There is a very delicate balance worked out right now between hunters and combatants, and I can’t see why anyone would want to change it short of making it easier for themselves to kill people (and this is coming from someone who loses most of his battles).

I don’t see your reasoning for wanting to make repeaters even rarer, when a hunter can pick up a vibro-blade and dish out more than any blaster is capable of.

If you want to play an [b:27nczefx]assassin[/b:27nczefx], pick a high combat race and roll a smuggler, or pick a high smuggling race and roll a combatant. That’s the beauty of LotJ’s level system, there are extreme combatant types, but there’s also a lot of room for those off-the-wall characters who combine skills from different classes, and they can be very effective at it. All your suggested idea does is destroy that capability by pigeonholing players into NEEDING to specialize in one class, and really… what would an assassin class have? It’d take skills from combat/bhing and smuggling, and we all know people would just pick that instead, because they’d get the best of all worlds.

If you want to see more people using pistols/rifles/etc, suggest some ideas to buff them. Perhaps a pistoleer feat that gives the user repeater-number of attacks with pistols. It’d be worthwhile for the extra HR.

Also, on the topic of the mv-draining attacks… yeah, that would help people bring others in alive. That’s what [b:27nczefx]stasis[/b:27nczefx] was for on Forcers, and guess what they had to do with that? Yeah.

PS, RJ raises another valid point with lag time concerning repeaters, that would just lead to speed-ganking and give the defender little-to-no chance to defend themselves. Very against that idea, considering it’s usually trigger-happy douchebags who get the opening shot.

Removing the direction tag from sniping would make it a lot more feasible, but having played when sniping was 90% combat… that’s a whole other bag of mischief that most people won’t want to touch. But if you want to find out for yourself, that’s fine. =p

I would say I usually play engineers/non combat races, but I have proven so far this TL that I can stand my own on a hunter/combatant, so it’s not really a valid argument.

Weather or not you like it, you have created a thread based on all combat things, not a specific IDEA, meaning to post the relevant arguments from my standpoint is something I don’t mind doing. I agree with Avanga with the enhanced damage and such. I play an engineer that uses a repeater regularly, and always has, but I don’t hit NEARLY as much as other people, and I don’t even come close to hitting the same amount of time as my combatant. When it comes down to it, there is a good balance right now.

as for the int argument, on the SWRFUSS 1.3 18 is the max for stats from what I can tell. I have been fooling with it and can’t set a character up with more then 18 points in a stat.

Listen here kids: Repeaters being the way they are now are the only thing balancing the Combat v.s. BHer bit. Back in the day (before repeaters) a [i:186vdgai]Good[/i:186vdgai] bher would beat a [i:186vdgai]Good[/i:186vdgai] combat every single time. At the current level of balance it could go either way, and really comes down to player skill.

Why the hell are we trying to take player skill out of the question? Did Mudledde get his ass beat by a repeater-wielding combat main today or something? A deployment time is -retarded-, making them drain moves is -retarded-, and even whining about repeaters in the first place is -retarded-.

Yes, repeaters add attacks and yes, they have about 80 more AVdam than the standard playermade vibroblade. But they BALANCE the game.

Stop being a pussy and learn to PK before bitching about weapon balance.

Also, repeaters are brutal on mv anyways. <!– s:( –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_sad.gif" alt="" title="Sad" /><!– s:( –>

Thanks for your thoughts Andvari, and thanks for being so demeaning about it also. No, my combat hasn’t been bad, and no I haven’t been owned by a repeater-wielding main. What classes do you usually play?

&quot;A deployment time is -retarded-&quot;

Please, help me remove it from shields then.

&quot;making them drain moves is -retarded-&quot;

Obviously you missed where I said that is an RP skill used to take target alive.

&quot;whining about repeaters in the first place is -retarded-&quot;

Nobody is whining about anything. This is a discussion thread where we share thoughts and ideas.

Avanga, thank you. You were able to explain to me something that other people have not said, or I have not understood it the same way you stated it. It makes more sense now. You have made a good point about the assassin as a race/class combo, and good for RP. Though the assassin wouldn’t pull from existing classes, but help enhance what certain other classes have to offer, but point made with the race/class combo.

I would love to see more feats help focus in different things. Feats for vibro-blades and pistols. Rifles, etc.

Anybody know how effective other combat skills, like gouge and bash, are? I’ve used them many times, but haven’t seen any real effect with them on mobs, and PCs alike.

gouge is very useful in combat, and bash is as well. all dependent on how you use them in combat though, I personally wouldn’t use bash as a last resort, that’s stupid IMO because you lose the ability to do anything else for so many rounds. gouge has a loss of ability for half the amount of rounds bash does or something, they both lag you out if you spam them, so I wouldn’t advise spamming them. I won’t say what gouge or bash actually does, because that is IC, and you should be able to find out very easily.

No its not ic its a skill that is useful. Gouge blinds a player for a set amount of rounds. This will lower their hitroll it also keeps them from seeing should they be disarmed. Bash will stun the player, you will still trade combat rounds but they wont be able to kick, gouge, bash, aim, disarm, or anything else for several rounds. Bash has a downside that if you miss YOU get stuned. The way the code works its not an actual stun before someone trolls me but simple lag in combat.

This might be well received if people who actually knew and understand combat where making remarks. However, most of you, by the word vomit on this thread, have made it known you haven’t thought the issue out.