Rifleman Archive

I posted this in response to a post on the Swordsman board. Since the same things are being said here, I felt it was best to give a counter suggestion to the possibility that Headshot and Mindshot were being taken way. I just cannot see this happening, not that the alternative is better, but here are my thoughts:

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Gimperial666 wrote:
HEres what i read is going into publis 8....

The second aspect of the Combat balance will be the HAM redesign. A very critical part of the overall combat rebalance is the change to the functionality of the HAM system. This change will allow a greater ease in balancing overall HAM costs for weapons and special moves. It will also allow Mind to be removed as a special damage type and place equal emphasis on Health, Action and Mind pools for both abilities and damage.

Ok for those of you who dont know what that means lets show you the scary part alone:

It will also allow Mind to be removed as a special damage type and place equal emphasis on Health, Action and Mind pools for both abilities and damage.

Ok there goes what made our class unique among the brawlers...Right out the door

So were geting gimped like ive never seen before, and rifflemen too... The thing that REALLy burns me is that theyre not looking at the classes for another month.
So were going to be down to 2 count em 2 useful moves at master level for a while........ Hit3 and aoe3

...anyone else woried by this?

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As a Master Swordsman and Master Rifleman, this concerns me greatly, but people on the rifleman boards and here are reading far too much into what they are saying, and, at the same time ironically, not enough of what they are saying.We read that it is being "removed as a special damage type" and assume that to mean that they are removing specials that do mind damage. But if you read the next sentence, they specifically state that they want to "place equal emphasis on Health, Action and Mind pools for both abilities and damage."

This is important to read together because we already know that the proposed HAM changes will charge HAM costs from specials temporarilyagainst the max value of the pool. Thus, it will no longer be assessed as healable damageand will have to repair on its own. This means thatall HAM costs, not just those hitting mind,will become unhealable (though they will all repair on their own faster). This places an "equal emphasis on Health, Action, and Mind pools" with regard to costs associated with "abilities." But they want to do the same for "damage" now. Right now, mind, for all practical purposes, is still unhealable. Combat medics can heal it, but only at the cost of wounds to their own mind. Muon gold and foods only temporarily boost mind stats, cannot be used more than once every so many minutes (13 in the case of muon, 3 of which are a dangerous downer period), and you can only take so many at once (1 at a time in the case of muon, usually 2 at a time in the case of brandy, and so on). This makes mind a "special damage type" in that it is still, for all practical purposes, unhealable and treated differently than damage to Health or Action.

Also, if they were to take away specials that hit mind, they would have to give us specials that hit something else, but then that does not put equal emphasis on all three pools regarding damage (i.e., mind alone would be untargetable). So that is not what they would do. Alternatively, they would have to remove all specials that attack a targeted pool, and, again, they are not likely to do that, nor does it even suggest that above.

Therefore, I think the only reasonable conclusion is that they are going to make HAM costs unhealable, but make mind damage from combathealable. After all, the only real reason to make mind unhealable is to keep people from healing themselves from the damage from their own specials, and then healing the mind they used to heal themselves, allowing someone to spam specials all day. With the proposed HAM cost changes, this will not be possible, so there is no reason to assume that they are planing to remove mind as a targeted pool and every reason they are going to make mind damage the same as all other kinds of damage, that is, healable.

Now Swordsmen and Riflemen should be concerned about this because their highest damage weapons come with tremendous HAM costs (both the advanced component PH and advanced component T21 can have HAM costs over 100). This is of concern, because one of the payoffs for taking such high HAM hits from my own specials was that I could attack an unhealable pool, not so if mind is going to be healable. That sounds like it is a major problem that will need to be balanced within this combat system revamp if they are making mind healable.

So we do not need to worry about out targeted pool being removed, but that does not make this good news either.

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LLJK_Griz,

I did not observe the change myself when it was on TC, but what was described on this board was what I said, that HAM costs would be deducted from the maximum damage. Additionally, that it would repair over a set period, 25 seconds. So if you had 900 mind, and you did a special that deducted 100 points from mind, it would drop you maximum mind to 800 then repair the max value at a rate of 4 points per second (100 points over 25 seconds). Because it was deducted from the maximum and no longer assessed as damage, all HAM costs would become unhealable.

The only discussion I personally ever saw with regard to HAM coming from another bar altogether was a suggestion made by someone on this forum, but I never saw any indication that this was ever considered in development. They may have, but I would doubt it would be implemented that waysince it would require revamping the entire HAMsystem (HAM costs associated with each weapon and with each special would become completely moot). By comparision, deducting the HAM costs from the max value is a relatively minor change, notmuch different that turningHAM costs into a mini spice downer.It would also make SWG just like virtually every other game on the market with a Manna or power bar. I do not think they would be willing to abandon this unique concept so quickly.

But either way, HAM costs from speicalswill be unhealable. That creates equalization with resepect to abilities. But they also said they wanted to equalize with respect to damage. The only way I can see them doing that is to change mind from a "special damage type," meaning make it healable like all the other pools. I do not think the CM mind heal ability is going to fit that bill because it would make healing mind different, read special, than the other pools and, therefore, contrary to their stated goals.

Of course, who knows what they are thinking, but I do not believe this portends removing mind targeting specials. That makes no sense to me.