The Force Next Timeline (important post on page 6)

There are quite a few examples in the EU of particularly skilled, non-force warriors being able to stand a chance, if not overcome, a skilled force adept.

In Lotj there are coded reasons why this will never be possible without some degree of cheese involved. Ie. Grenades, injection needles, grab/subdue spam, or generally anything involving an exploding ship.

The mechanical reason why low level force users auto win in stand up combat has to do with the nature of lightsabers and parry. Parry allows deflection, and redirection, of blaster bolts making the blaster wielder effectively shoot themselves into oblivion.

Standard melee weapons are destroyed by lightsabers on contact. It wasn’t that long ago that the IMMs made a change to force pikes that allowed them to withstand 3 strikes from a lightsaber before blowing up. Even with that change, melee weapons are destroyed before they make any meaningful impact on a non-forcer vs forcer fight. I even tried using this tactic last TL with a stack of 20-30 forcepikes to test it out. I don’t think I scored a single hit.

There are already the means in place to make melee combat, at least, against a forcer somewhat more interesting and that would be the introduction of cortosis. I’ve personally never had cortosis and it has always been a rarity in game. It is usually a reward for some crazy in game event or given to special apped characters. That being said, even with cortosis there are mechanics that favor the force wielder such as spell buff/debuffs. Examples would be carnage, senses, and foresight. I would cite Vitality(light) and Fury(dark), but they are basically the spell equivalent spice/stims. Then there is force grab.. where a forcer just snatches your cortosis weapon out of your hand. Lololololol

Theoretically, a warrior with cortosis and melee mastery could reasonably win against a padawan/apprentice, because the novice force user would not have lightsaber mastery or senses/foresight. The basis of effective stand up, round based combat is having weapon mastery in whatever your chosen weapon is. Honestly, padawans/apprentices SHOULD be a little easier to beat because they have no idea what they are doing yet.

Basically, cortosis is the only way to stand a chance without the typical cheese tactics, but it has generally been safe guarded and excluded from the game world except for a very few exceptions. Making cortosis more accessible is one way to shift the power by the tiniest fraction without totally reworking how forcer vs non-forcer mechanics work. Even with cortosis, it would be a task to beat a force master in a stand up duel unless you had a group of cortosis wielding hunters. That’s where the balance issue comes in and the question comes up of: If we introduce cortosis and make it more available, how accessible should it be?

I like the idea of cortosis being back in the game to an extent. It would be nice for the everyday soldiers to have a shot at living against a jedi/sith. Having a blade that does crap damage but doesn’t fall apart and can block a saber would be nice in the sense that you could at least shove and run or maybe team up with a few soldiers and roll the dice.

Is cortosis the only mineral in SWU that was Saber resistant? I thought there was another, not impervious, but would hold up briefly in direct melee before failing (say about 10 direct strikes/deflections).

Also a “simple” change could be that yeah adept (non knight/master stage) could deflect blaster shots but not redirect? Not sure how the ability is coded, if separate or same skill.

Looked it up, was kinda right. There were several.

For limited use on armor as a coating like cortosis: Ultrachrome
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ultrachrome

And for weapons as a protective coating not as effective as cortosis: Songsteel
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Songsteel

Both would loose effectiveness against Saber attacks as a stand up fight progresses and eventually fail but would give a bit of an edge against non masters

Cortosis, Phrik, Beskar (Mandalorian Iron). None of these would be made available to anyone save through something very shady or something very special. The last time I saw anyone having anything lightsaber resistant was during the Dathomiri time when a Gand got his busted by Force Pull/Throw. Forcers are a special breed of favorites here and are heavily unbalanced to check everyone else without having any checks to themselves besides each other. While I agree that Forcers should have some kind of innate combat advantage, having to rely on “cheese moves”, as Xavious so eloquently put it, to have some kind of check against the norm of Forcer trolls isn’t exactly fair. I also feel that the level bonuses of the Force classes need to be reworked or removed completely and replaced with some kind of passive and/or active bonuses similar to feats. In general, Force classes were just a natural progression of a Jedi’s/Sith’s natural talents rather than being a method of min/maxing like it is here. A great majority of the Forcers will be some variation of an Espi Main Guardian because that offers the most in terms level spreads. This should not be the case at all.

It hasn’t been mentioned before AFAIK in this thread but Consular needs to have its +10 lopped off so there’s some balance between the subclasses. If there’s one change made, it needs to be that. It’s already incredibly OP with its 35 FP per level and massive amount of extra diplo/leader for CHA gains, so otherwise keep it the same.

You guys know that if you can effectively do something IC, it’s not ‘cheese’, right? People have listed a bunch of ways to take on forcers, and unless a force user is master level, they really aren’t the juggernaut/gamechanger that a lot of you seem to think they are. They get a boost to combat which anyone with a bit of creativity can counter with effect, it just takes the willingness to actually try, which is the real problem that you guys have listed. Basically it seems like instead of ‘you have a chance to win’ you want ‘You’re probably going to win’ as the assurance before moves are made. Take chances, stagnation comes from the players, not the code. But I do support a complete overhaul for the forcer system, ala something like what Ralen has been pitching. Unfortunately, at the moment we don’t have a dedicated coder to do something like that, we just have a few guys that can do minor changes and patch-ups.

When I describe a tactic as “cheese” I’m drawing inspiration from what is considered cheese in the competitive gaming world, in particular Star Craft 2. The methods I described earlier are definitely Lotj’s version of cheese plays, in my humble opinion. That doesn’t make them any less viable or make anyone less of a player for using them, but they are still very unorthodox, niche tactics that only work in a particular set of circumstances.

You’re absolutely right that forcers aren’t unstoppable death machines. In fact, the whole melee aspect of lightsabers makes it a pain in the ass to run anyone down while wielding one. You can flee and evade a forcer all day long if you don’t let them bait you into a no taxi area with 1 exit/choke point.

All that being said, forcers still skew and disrupt ground wars between combatants that I think would be a lot more interesting without any forcer interference. Try to conduct a base raid on an enemy base when they have a forcer with parry. Go ahead I dare you. I’m sure that will go over swimmingly. You could have a group vs group ground battle when a forcer all of a sudden comes in and rescues someone and sends 1000 blaster bolts flying at the enemy group, decimating their whole squad.

This is all fine and well. Forcers are supposed to be strong. It’s only a huge problem when one side has forcers and the other doesn’t have any. All I’m asking for is another era like this Era 1 where ground soldiers can go at it without being concerned about forcers. Let them have at it without some dude with a lightsaber dropping in and feeling like a tough guy because he can negate practically all opposing forms of damage, redirect damage, and destroy other melee weapons on hit.

Really I just enjoyed the break from forcers in Era 1. I would also like to see a little more forcer counter play possible. One quick fix to balance forcers a bit would be to make parry a level 90 skill or something. It’s also not a lot to ask to have a few pieces of cortosis floating around SOMEWHERE every now and then!

I did actually enjoy seeing a no Force first half of Era 1 and would like to see more of that.

I personally think that pikes and blades should be made immune to saber breakage. It would go a long way toward fixing the weapon imbalances and give them a role again.

I wouldn’t say immune, but a bit more resistant then they are currently, say 3-8 hits without any sort of enhancements, and if a limited supply of some weapon imbuing material is introduced a minimum of 10-15 hits before saber destroys it, but never immune.

10-15 hits is still too little. As a career forced I never want my opponents weapons to break.

Let me say this. The EU(or what was the EU, if you believe it gone) spoke of lightsaber resistant materials. When it spoke of beskar, though, it always talked about how it would barely scratch the surface. Maybe some materials could be saber immune. Those should be the RARE materials. The less rare materials should be the resistant, like what Storm is speaking of.

IDC either way to be honest. I’m not in the habit of fighting Forcers unless I am one myself. There really should be some kind of check to lightsabers, but it isn’t going to break my heart if it never happens (probably won’t happen). Could pretty much go with a rock-paper-scissors way of thinking. Lightsabers beat pistols/rifles/repeaters/bowcasters, pistols/rifles/repeaters/bowcasters beat blades/pikes, blades/pikes beat lightsabers. That’s really an oversimplified way of looking at it, but that’s the general gist. Of course, the best way to fight someone with a lightsaber will still be another lightsaber just as it is now. Same with blades/pikes so you can deflect other blade/pike attacks. This is just another way of looking at it.

Why not just tweak the parry code. If I come at zero one v one he reflects 90% of what I send at him (if I have 120+combat) 2v1 drops his reflect rate to 75, 3 to 60, 4 to 50, 5+ to 40%. A skilled combatant using projectiles should get some hits, a former in that scenario would still mess up groups of two and three pretty well but it wouldn’t be instawin

Beyond three and a forcer would be hard pressed to hold ground.