Rifleman Archive

1) Whats the limitation on DPS for rifleman? A: Are specials use mind pool, which cant be healed only buffed with food and spice. When camparing DPS from other weapon types, I have never seen anyone tell the true story. Pistols/carbines/... Can use there high end specials continuely because they can hit a stim pack and restore thier pools. So, if your going to do a DPS study to balance classes, it would seem wise to include how long a rifleman can keep up with his specails.

2) I hear alot of talk about puting timers in the game for elite specials like ( knockdown, posture change, eyeshot). Noone likes timers and no one will agree on what the best time should be -ie 5 sec. 10 sec 15 sec ....1 hour... "I think the solution to this problem can be solved easily if you look at the riflemans profession restrains" Reasoning: Rifleman cant spam specials and have to really analzes what to do and when to do it with there specials. The reason for this is our specials use up mind pool, which cant be healed. this makes use real plan out our attacks and stops plan old spamming.
-Why not apply this to elite powerful specials as an alternative to nerfing effectiveness or timers. Make knockdown, posture changes, eyeshots specials use mind pool. the advantages of doing so are listed above-ie You can spam it endlessly, You have to use it wisely.

3) Rock, paper, sissors:

What happened to this? I was under the impression we got a dizzy shot to allow a carbineer to use his posture change. Working together or using tactics to do things that otherwise couldnt be done without each other. This brings up another go question: Why do people need rifleman, Carbineers, pistoleers.....? Their really isnt a reason to have diversity within your ranks. think about it. Have you ever really said, " We need xxx profession to make this happen" Ok, I will admit, You could say that about CH because of the tanks you need in this game or maybe a doc for the reserrection ability but thats about it.

-We sort of have some basic counters in the game but not many and not well thought out. Example: Rifleman have a 250% damage bonus done to them by melee, rifleman can shoot from a distance. In theory it is sort of a rock, paper, sissor kind of thing, but everyone can shoot from a distance, PvE -90% of the mobs are melee. It turned into a unrealistic penelty vs. "Roch, paper, sissor balance issue"
My example about changing elite powerfull specials to use mind damage does offer a good "rock-paper-sissor" balance to it" If your firing off multiple knockdowns, posture changes or eyeshots this will open the door for a rifleman to shoot the rest of your mind pool out.
Now we are moving into the direction of "rock-paper-sissor" balance. I dont know if any of you have played "starcraft" a game produce by Blizzard but they achieved balance by using this type of logic - "everything had a counter" Right now classes or profession are given specials without regard to "counters" . Take knockdown? How do you counter it? How is SWG suggesting to counter it? A: With adding a timer to it. This isnt a counter, its not fun or involves tactics it a plan old limitation, which causes people to not have fun or use tactics wisely. It doesnt seperate the good players from the bad. Its a plan old limitation. Why not use counters, as long as I know that a special can be countered then all I have to do is get the counter for it or include in my group someone who can. Know we have a reason for profession deversity within a group.


4) Without such logic as mentioned about, Why is rifleman the only class penelized with not being able to refresh there mind pool which allows them to countinue to spam specials like everyone else in the game. Are HAM cost isnt really the issue, its the ability of ever other profession being able to refresh there pools that are being used up by them spamming specials. Is are HAM cost to high? In this current system: Yes. Is it unfair and biased that every other profession can continuely uses specials endlessly and the rifleman cant? A: Under the current system: Yes.

You know. . . there's something in this post that I really, really like. It would requre the re-working of a LOT of HAM costs, but I think it might be one of the most important things every put up on this board.

Mind Pool Damage is really important, according to the Devs. Crucial. Critical. Worth all of our penalties, apparently.

Perhaps ALL Elite or Unbalancing style shots should drain mind pool, regardless of Profession. Headshot3, Bodyshot3, Legshot3, Knockdown, Eyeshot. . . and probably anything that lets you do bleed damage. Anything that powerful should require concentration. A drain on the unhealable Mind Pool. The lesser shots for each Profession would drain Action, Health, or both, accordingly.

That would require all fighting classes to plan their attacks and employ some basic strategy. I honestly don't think the Devs realized how frequently Doctors and Combat Medics would be spam-healing the entire group to recover HAM costs. Well, hopefully they realize it now, and also realize that everyone needs a shift to balance the game. And it's not a matter of changing everyone just to make Rifleman work. It's a matter of adding a huge strategy element to SWG that many people have complained it lacked.

I thought this was an interesting discussion and thought I'd bump it in case others missed it...

I really, really like the idea of all "super" special attacks requiring some sort of damage that isn't healable. However, I can see how this could draw some criticism from classes that cannot attack the mind pool directly.

How would suggest fixing that? Short of making every class only damage a mind pool.

Loth, I don't think there's a need to. Riflemen already have such huge disadvantages, all it would do would be to make out ability to hit for Mind Damage worth using. Non-Uber style shots would still drain normal pools, of course. This way other fighting classes would have to weigh the benefits of user their their Uber style shots on Riflemen (who get rocked by them more than any other class) against the danger of the Rifleman punking out their Mind Pool.

This isnt really rifle related as far as "elite" specials are concerned. All im doing is using the concept that stops rifleman from spamming there specials.

Why not apply that to "elite" specials. - no need to nerf the effectiveness of specials. this will stop the spamming without timers.