Rifleman Archive

The problem with mind damage, healing, specials, pets, etc is the entire combat system. Defense and offense are not balanced in PvE. Offense increases, but defense does not. Therefore the mobs will need higher HAM but cannot do damage proportional to their HAM. The game now solely focuses on damage.

Player: 1000HAM / 2000 Damage.

NPC/Mob: 10000HAM / 500 Damage.

I understand that the point of this system was to get as many people of varying 'levels' to be involved as possible. It is a concession made for the casual gamer. This seriously affects the end game scenario.

Here is a solution. I can work out the numbers and exact details for the devs if it is necessary.

Defensive Skills:

If HAM is to stay the same throughout a character's career, then defense needs to be increased. This can be done with defensive skills.

-Passive

As each skill point is used up either in an non-combat profession, elite non-combat profession, combat profession, and elite combat profession or base it on the actual profession. Increase the base defensive value of the character(this can be done with a % of damage prevented). It can be explained through a better understanding of cover, first aid, experience, ability to avoid damage. This means players that are more skilled will take less damage. Each type of profession may have damage reduction to a different HAM bar. Certain special combat abilities may be able to decrease resistance, as well as Poisons and Disease.

-Active

Introduce useable defensive skills to each profession. This is similar to the idea the devs have for TKA. Instead of attacking, the player can choose to: Counterattack, dodge, cover, defensive stance. Each skill will use HAM and may take XX seconds to activate and last YY seconds.

-NPCs and Creatures

Creatures and NPCs will also have these new defensive abilities. With increased defense(damage avoidance) their HAM bars can be proportional to the damage they deal.

-Status effects.

With static damage reduction and also defensive maneuvers, status effects will be more important. Poisons may do minimal damage but make a HAM bar unhealable. Disease may reduce the Damage reduction on a HAM bar.Stun may reduce damage reduction on Mind. Dizzy may reduce damage reduction on Action. Bleeds will no become more powerful because they are stil subject to damage reduction.

Revamp the entire HAM system:

As of now, the Action bar is pretty much useless, other than for specials. The Mind bar is too powerful. Healing is too powerful, except for Mind.

-Incapacitation

Only the Health HAM should incapacitate.

Here is what should happen when each bar goes to 0.

Mind - Stun/Dizzy effect(each time mind goes below 0), take wounds at 1% of damage below 0, XX% of damagegoes into Action HAM

Action - Posture down/Dizzy(each time action goes below 0), take wounds at 1% of damage below 0, XX% of damagegoes into Health HAM

Health - Incapacitate.

This even when mind is depleted of a friend is depleted a healer can still keep the person alive. Once someone is incapacitated, all Bars must be over 0 to get up. This will not necessarily make healers more powerful and players better, because of status effects that prevent healing. These will need to be removed before healing can be done.

This may cause incapactiation to last longer(since all 3 bars will be depleted) but I have proposed a mind healing solution and also regular stims can heal health and action

-Healing

Healing should heal Health 100% and Action 25-50% and Mind 0%

-Stims

Stims should heal for less damage. There will be no need for a 2000 heal stim. They should increase Action heal %. There should be a Mind Transfer type of stim pack or item/ability from entertainers. It will be an item/ability that costs XX mind to use and heal XX/Y amount of Mind. Y should be greater than 1.

-Pets

Pets will now have reduced HAM, in line with the revamped mobs. They will now be very powerful against weak creatures and not so powerful against very strong ones. This is not the same as before, where the Mob damage was optimized for Players and not pets, so 10k HAM pet at a low level can still take a beating.

A Level 15 non CH will not be able to tank a level 30-50 Mob anymore Creature handlers will be more useful.

-Droids

Droids are a big issue. The only prerequisite for a droid is a DE and for the non DE, money. There cannot be very powerful droid because a newbie player can get money and be overpowered. Either make high powered droids DE use only, or implement a certification system. This would be similar to the system used for damage reduction. Each box in a profession gives you points, each droid requires acertain number of points to be call/stored. This will prevent low level players have high level droids. Obviously DE tree should get a lot more points per box.

-Faction Pets

AT-STs will still have high HAM and defense, but now their attack will not be unbalanced, since players can avoid some of the damage and focus on dodge while their teammates take it down. Other faction pets will behave more like players and not have 10k HAM.

I believe without major changes to the combat system, this game will eventually become a huge hack/patched up mess in regards with combat. With each new 'fix' a new 'exploit' will be found. One day knockdown is king, next poisons, then melee, and so on.

-Tailors

Clothes should decay like armor, but without the protection. Every 10 points of damage sustained = 1 point of decay on the clothes or something to that effect.

-BE

HAM is not king anymore, it is status effects, defense and damage type. BEs should be able to customize pets with each of these attributes. I want a pet that is high defense low damage, etc. Getting DNA from creatures that have these attributes will be rewarding and challenging. Trying to find that one creature that has a high 'Counterattack' rating to use for a pet would be neat.

-Timers

Everything special ability should be on a timer on the caster, every status effect should be on a timer on the target. The times can be short, but it will prevent exploiting a particularly powerful ability with the help of a healer. This has been done to good effect in DAoC. Right now only healing has a cast timer and Knockdown/Posture change has a target timer.

These changes should make combat a thinking person's game. Coordination with support classes will be required to take down large game.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. This system would definitely need to be balanced, but I think it gives you an idea of what I am thinking.