levelup idea

Discuss the sequel to Planet Stronghold here
Seloun
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Re: levelup idea

Post by Seloun »

Weapon skills felt more like a perk than actual skills. Since you can only use one weapon at a time, there's not a lot of benefit to spending points into multiple weapon trees, especially if you're part of a group. In principle you gain flexibility by being able to use different categories of weapons, but this is a pretty small benefit unless the weapon types are drastically different and you can't resolve it by replacing party members. The opportunity cost of learning a new weapon type tends to be too high (though this can be moderated with diminishing returns).

What might be better for the weapon skills category is more general skills that apply to whatever weapon, e.g. Accuracy, Armor Penetration, Burst Fire, Damage. Some skills are more likely to be useful for a certain category of weapons, but with variations within each weapon category the value of the skills become a lot less of a no-brainer (rapid fire sniper rifle), especially if there are diminishing returns.

The tree idea is interesting - it makes me think of how Heroes of Might and Magic did their skills (three options per level up) though it wasn't really exclusive so much as deciding the order you got stuff. Exclusive choices are a very cool idea (fundamentally games are about making decisions) but I'd imagine it'd be difficult to make the choices really interesting. One way to do that neatly is if each level had a theme, so you were choosing from an alternative way to do the same thing, instead of overspecializing (sort of like modern WoW talent trees). So on one level you might choose between Heavy Armor proficiency, an active Dodge skill, or a passive evasion bonus (self-defense grouping); another level maybe you pick between a new Aim attack that makes the target easier to hit, a psionic power that reduces target's evasion, or an active ability that provides the party an accuracy bonus (party accuracy grouping). Another level might have you choose a second weapon proficiency (beyond the one you have already; conveniently there are 4 groups)

Secondary skills also seem to suffer from the problem of specialization; why would you not specialize in just one secondary skill? And if there's no reason, why is it a skill system at all instead of just being a perk/trait?
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jack1974
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Re: levelup idea

Post by jack1974 »

Seloun wrote:Weapon skills felt more like a perk than actual skills. Since you can only use one weapon at a time, there's not a lot of benefit to spending points into multiple weapon trees, especially if you're part of a group. In principle you gain flexibility by being able to use different categories of weapons, but this is a pretty small benefit unless the weapon types are drastically different and you can't resolve it by replacing party members. The opportunity cost of learning a new weapon type tends to be too high (though this can be moderated with diminishing returns).

What might be better for the weapon skills category is more general skills that apply to whatever weapon, e.g. Accuracy, Armor Penetration, Burst Fire, Damage. Some skills are more likely to be useful for a certain category of weapons, but with variations within each weapon category the value of the skills become a lot less of a no-brainer (rapid fire sniper rifle), especially if there are diminishing returns.
Yes that's what I'm trying to design right now. We agreed with Anima that the speed of actions will NOT be dependent on any skill, since it would lead to "cheats" or exploits like the speed skill cheat of Loren :mrgreen:
But the example you posted is a good idea, I am trying to come up with something like that.
Seloun wrote: The tree idea is interesting - it makes me think of how Heroes of Might and Magic did their skills (three options per level up) though it wasn't really exclusive so much as deciding the order you got stuff. Exclusive choices are a very cool idea (fundamentally games are about making decisions) but I'd imagine it'd be difficult to make the choices really interesting. One way to do that neatly is if each level had a theme, so you were choosing from an alternative way to do the same thing, instead of overspecializing (sort of like modern WoW talent trees). So on one level you might choose between Heavy Armor proficiency, an active Dodge skill, or a passive evasion bonus (self-defense grouping); another level maybe you pick between a new Aim attack that makes the target easier to hit, a psionic power that reduces target's evasion, or an active ability that provides the party an accuracy bonus (party accuracy grouping). Another level might have you choose a second weapon proficiency (beyond the one you have already; conveniently there are 4 groups)
Yes it would work like that, each choice would be mutually exclusive and give different bonuses. Anima made an example by email, speaking of a possible sniper choice upgrade "One that increases the damage, one that decreases execution time and one that gives a cover evasion bonus."
Seloun wrote: Secondary skills also seem to suffer from the problem of specialization; why would you not specialize in just one secondary skill? And if there's no reason, why is it a skill system at all instead of just being a perk/trait?
Well of course there's nothing bad in specializing in ONE secondary skill. You can't have all characters specialized in 2 or more secondary skills. That I think is normal. You might want to pick one and maximize his Medicine so can heal a big amount of HP using medikits. Another one maximize the Science to craft powerful items, and so on. In this case the strategy becomes who you pick to be a specialist of what. That is fine, I'm more concerned about the skills directly related to the combat, and that's why replacing the weapon-category skill with more generic skill that can apply to all weapon types is a good idea IMHO.
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jack1974
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Re: levelup idea

Post by jack1974 »

What do you think about this:
Image
This way, there isn't a preferred skill but depends on player choices. You could have a sniper that specializes in Aimed shots and fires a single deadly shot, or another that specializes in Burst and can shoot twice but doing less damage each (and also has very low chances of scoring a critical hit). Of course then there should be balancing in the game for the various weapon types, but I think with the new skills there should be more choice.
Of course, like ALWAYS happens in RPGs, people trying and trying might come up with some really good skill distribution but trust me, "a perfectly balanced RPG ruleset" doesn't exist. It's just a myth, but nobody has ever seen one in the real life :lol:
I didn't show it to the coder yet so maybe he could tell me that some of those skills make no sense with the way the RPG system works, or is better to change them this way, and so on, so for now is just a sort of preview/idea :)
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jack1974
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Re: levelup idea

Post by jack1974 »

Also thinking to replace Psionic with Willpower or something more generic, so maybe can have something that non-psionic class can use too. A bit like in Loren you have SP, which can stand for Spell Points and mages use it to cast spells but also Stamina Points and non-Mages use them to perform special moves. PP could stand for Psionic Points but also Power Points? :mrgreen:
Seloun
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Re: levelup idea

Post by Seloun »

Something to note is that the most recently described skill set doesn't seem to cover weapon accuracy (this isn't necessarily a bad thing; it just means accuracy would have to be balanced through gear or talents), so there's some design space there. I still think the skills feel a bit too narrow; bonus damage from elemental weapons still seems to create a dichotomy of elemental weapon user/non-elemental weapon user.


Agility: The value of going first in combat is very dependent on the amount of crowd control in the game and the average combat length. If combats tend to be 4 rounds, going first is a lot more valuable than if combats tend to be 40 rounds. The downside to tying going first to a stat like this is that the skill ends up being very binary; I'd either completely focus on it (for e.g. someone with a good CC) or just dump it (for your average damage dealer), though combats composed of a wide variety of enemies at once will reduce that effect.

Tactics: A flat bonus damage stat ends up being more interesting because it interacts with the multi-fire mechanic well. It benefits everyone, but it benefits burst fire mode more, and it benefits rapid firing weapons more too. But everyone still wants the stat regardless of what weapon they're using; they just value it differently (but not zero).

Burst and Aim are probably reasonable categories as long as everyone has access to them (how does it benefit psionicists?). I would probably make the bonus more dependent on what the attack mode is trying to do instead of just damage, though. This requires thinking about exactly when someone is supposed to be using Aim versus Burst fire.
- Are you supposed to use Aim on 'hard' (high armor) targets? On evasive targets?
- Burst fire manages aggro; should it also be a high damage option?

One possibility might be to have Burst, Aimed and Called shots (instead of Burst, Normal and Aimed):
- Burst acts like now, additional round, accuracy penalty, but also lowered damage per hit. Increases threat (should be fixed value to interact with Tactics and not a percentage). Used for aggro control and for soft targets.
- Aimed would be the most accurate attack, and generally the best choice for evasive targets with average armor. Reduces threat (also fixed).
- Called would increase enemy evasion by percentage, but would guarantee a crit on hit. Useful for high armor targets.

In that scheme you'd also have as skills something like:
Assault: Increases damage per shot (helps Burst/Multifire weapons the most); improves psionic damage/effect
Precision: Increases crit damage as a percentage (helps Called the most); improves psionic 'riders' (if there are any; sort of like the debuffs attached to spells in Loren)
Accuracy: Reduces evasion penalties from Called and increases accuracy in all cases (also affects psionics)
Tactics: Increased threat control (more from Burst, less from Aimed, affects psionics depending on the nature of the ability, e.g. protect might add threat to the target, healing might generate less threat - this should be a fixed value according to skill rather than a percent modifier)

Strength is a pretty good skill, though some of that depends on whether or not in-combat armor swapping is still going to be allowed (if so, it's a -very- good skill). Trading in combat should probably be impossible to make this meaningful. Alternatively, it could control the number of uses per combat for consumables (consumables should probably regenerate between combats, either every combat or during rest periods - this is a separate issue, but that allows you to balance combat around consumables; thematically the character has access to supplies and effectively unlimited amounts of consumables, he/she just can't bring the pharmacy in a pocket) to represent the character can bring more grenades/medkits/whatever.

Dexterity: DW bonus seems way too specific (what if I use two handed weapons?) Might also govern non-weapon item effectiveness in general.
Endurance: HP bonus is probably fine, if unexciting. Maybe have it also provide bonus against AE attacks so it's not just a tank specific stat (though in principle you get some of that just by having more health, it makes it more valuable than just the health to non-tanks)
Psionic: Psionic points, psionic regen, and maybe psionic power durations.

Non-combat skills could all influence a category of non-weapon items. Medkits, psy-regenerators, grenades, and probably some other general offensive item category for Charisma (maybe 'everything else'). The effect should probably be relatively small.
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jack1974
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Re: levelup idea

Post by jack1974 »

Seloun wrote:Something to note is that the most recently described skill set doesn't seem to cover weapon accuracy (this isn't necessarily a bad thing; it just means accuracy would have to be balanced through gear or talents), so there's some design space there. I still think the skills feel a bit too narrow; bonus damage from elemental weapons still seems to create a dichotomy of elemental weapon user/non-elemental weapon user.
I need to ask the coder and do some more tests, but I think that including an accuracy skill would give too much advantage, same as an evasion skill (indeed for Agility I'm not sure if to give a bonus to evasion).
Seloun wrote: Agility: The value of going first in combat is very dependent on the amount of crowd control in the game and the average combat length. If combats tend to be 4 rounds, going first is a lot more valuable than if combats tend to be 40 rounds. The downside to tying going first to a stat like this is that the skill ends up being very binary; I'd either completely focus on it (for e.g. someone with a good CC) or just dump it (for your average damage dealer), though combats composed of a wide variety of enemies at once will reduce that effect.
I think has quite some weight still, even for long combat, for example if you can throw a grenade at first turn and hit two enemies, or use a psionic power to buff the party, and so on. It could really change a battle. Then of course depends on the power of each single item/psionic action available (like everything else). I wanted it to influence also evasion slightly so it could still be very useful in any case, but we have to do more tests (evasion seems to be the most important thing in early combat tests)
Seloun wrote: Tactics: A flat bonus damage stat ends up being more interesting because it interacts with the multi-fire mechanic well. It benefits everyone, but it benefits burst fire mode more, and it benefits rapid firing weapons more too. But everyone still wants the stat regardless of what weapon they're using; they just value it differently (but not zero).
Yes, true I might change this to a damage bonus than only elemental bonus.
Seloun wrote: Burst and Aim are probably reasonable categories as long as everyone has access to them (how does it benefit psionicists?). I would probably make the bonus more dependent on what the attack mode is trying to do instead of just damage, though. This requires thinking about exactly when someone is supposed to be using Aim versus Burst fire.
- Are you supposed to use Aim on 'hard' (high armor) targets? On evasive targets?
- Burst fire manages aggro; should it also be a high damage option?

One possibility might be to have Burst, Aimed and Called shots (instead of Burst, Normal and Aimed):
- Burst acts like now, additional round, accuracy penalty, but also lowered damage per hit. Increases threat (should be fixed value to interact with Tactics and not a percentage). Used for aggro control and for soft targets.
- Aimed would be the most accurate attack, and generally the best choice for evasive targets with average armor. Reduces threat (also fixed).
- Called would increase enemy evasion by percentage, but would guarantee a crit on hit. Useful for high armor targets.

In that scheme you'd also have as skills something like:
Assault: Increases damage per shot (helps Burst/Multifire weapons the most); improves psionic damage/effect
Precision: Increases crit damage as a percentage (helps Called the most); improves psionic 'riders' (if there are any; sort of like the debuffs attached to spells in Loren)
Accuracy: Reduces evasion penalties from Called and increases accuracy in all cases (also affects psionics)
Tactics: Increased threat control (more from Burst, less from Aimed, affects psionics depending on the nature of the ability, e.g. protect might add threat to the target, healing might generate less threat - this should be a fixed value according to skill rather than a percent modifier)
Hmm that is not a bad idea indeed. Since in this sequel we have movement order and different speed for each attack, should be possible to balance Called/Aimed shots also by adding more delay to them. I'll think about it but seems a good suggestion, thanks :)
Seloun wrote: Strength is a pretty good skill, though some of that depends on whether or not in-combat armor swapping is still going to be allowed (if so, it's a -very- good skill). Trading in combat should probably be impossible to make this meaningful. Alternatively, it could control the number of uses per combat for consumables (consumables should probably regenerate between combats, either every combat or during rest periods - this is a separate issue, but that allows you to balance combat around consumables; thematically the character has access to supplies and effectively unlimited amounts of consumables, he/she just can't bring the pharmacy in a pocket) to represent the character can bring more grenades/medkits/whatever.
Yes it would work exactly like that. We've been playing XCOM a lot :) And the idea is that before each mission you outfit your character, and even if you have unlimited ammo/items in the barracks (maybe except for some very rare items), you can bring only a certain amount with you. Strength would change that amount, so a strong character could bring a bazooka and 6 missiles while a weaker one could barely bring a sniper rifle :lol:
Seloun wrote: Dexterity: DW bonus seems way too specific (what if I use two handed weapons?) Might also govern non-weapon item effectiveness in general.
Endurance: HP bonus is probably fine, if unexciting. Maybe have it also provide bonus against AE attacks so it's not just a tank specific stat (though in principle you get some of that just by having more health, it makes it more valuable than just the health to non-tanks)
Psionic: Psionic points, psionic regen, and maybe psionic power durations.
Yes need to find a better general use for Dexterity beside dual wield. If I go with your suggestion and replace the first 4 skills with Assault,Precision,Accuracy,Tactics, I could remove Agility and Dexterity would have those effect (better initiative and maybe a slight evasion bonus) which would make it very interesting. As for Endurance yeah it could also add some resistance to the hits beside giving more HPs.
Psionic I think regen rate should be already a good bonus (beside determining the total PP amount).
Seloun wrote: Non-combat skills could all influence a category of non-weapon items. Medkits, psy-regenerators, grenades, and probably some other general offensive item category for Charisma (maybe 'everything else'). The effect should probably be relatively small.
Not sure I understood what you exactly means with this? I think the last 4 non-combat skills are still useful in combat, since Medicine=amount of HP healed, Science = better crafting or get enemy info, Charisma could be used as party buffs with Rally/Taunt etc and Sabotage influence the effectiveness of grenades which would be one of the few Area Of Effect attack, maybe beside some Psionic abilities.
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Pace675
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Re: levelup idea

Post by Pace675 »

I have been quite on this for awhile watching the debate from the shadows so to speak. But I think it might be time to throw in my 2 cents. You can use the tried and one of the proven methods used commonly in games. Like attribute points one level, and skill points for the following level. Also if you want to spice things up for later one (This is assuming that there will be a level cap) You toss in an advance ability tree for the levels for 20 and above. So that would net a player 30 ability points to spend on the tree. With the tree depending where you want to focus it would take 4 points per tier of the tree to unlock the next level, with the 30th point to unlock the last of the tree.

With using a tree method a player can fine tune their character and potential unlock new powers/abilities. By using this approach the player has alot of control how their character grows and evolves,
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jack1974
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Re: levelup idea

Post by jack1974 »

I am already planning to do that indeed. On each level up you get 2 skill points, and every 3 levels you get a choice-tree (so not a skilltree like Loren). As for level cap will be level 30, so you have:
- 30 x 2 = 60 points to distribute to skills, and each skill will be 0 to 20 (but in some Classes I might put a lower level cap to balance the game maybe).
- 30 / 3 = 10 choices to make, divided into: 4 will be skills boost choice (pick one between Dexterity +3, Endurance +3, Charisma +3 and so on), 3 will be extra actions you can unlock (Suppression Fire, Smoke Grenade, etc depending on Class) and 3 will be unique perks for each character.
Everything is still WIP of course, since 3 x 3 would mean 9 unique perks each character, and considering there are 8... 8 x 9 = 72 unique perks is definitely too much, so will need to reduce that number :lol:
But anyway that's how it will work, need to fine tune the numbers but the system will be that one since I think is the best one for this game.
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Re: levelup idea

Post by Seloun »

jack1974 wrote:
Seloun wrote: Non-combat skills could all influence a category of non-weapon items. Medkits, psy-regenerators, grenades, and probably some other general offensive item category for Charisma (maybe 'everything else'). The effect should probably be relatively small.
Not sure I understood what you exactly means with this? I think the last 4 non-combat skills are still useful in combat, since Medicine=amount of HP healed, Science = better crafting or get enemy info, Charisma could be used as party buffs with Rally/Taunt etc and Sabotage influence the effectiveness of grenades which would be one of the few Area Of Effect attack, maybe beside some Psionic abilities.
I was just making the association of possibly Medicine = better in combat medkits, Sabotage = better grenades (those are already planned, I believe) and adding Science = psy-restore items, which would sort of thematically suggest Charisma should also control a type of consumable.

WRT Initiative, I don't disagree that initiative can matter a lot even in long battles, but that generally requires debuffs (in particular CC) to be very powerful. Generally though you need either short battles (which is really short hand for combat where attacks tend to do large chunks of health in damage, even if the battles tend to actually be long due to e.g. strong healing) or strong debuffs (especially CC) for initiative to matter significantly (you are balancing essentially 1 extra turn against better performance in every turn). The more important issue though is that initiative would likely become one of those stats you always max or never put points into (the worst case is that you put in points but you end up going last anyway; if initiative values tend to increase as the game progresses, this can effectively mean a lot of sunk points for no return if you choose a bad rate to invest) since the effect is often so binary. For that reason I'd suggest making initiative be derived from the second category of stats, and in a blend (like (3*agi + 2*dex + str)/6 or something) to generate somewhat more organic initiative numbers, rather than making an entire skill control initiative.

In a Loren-style individual turn system, using delays to balance abilities is a good idea, though I think you'd want to watch that much more carefully than in Loren. Despite some of the comments I've read, I don't actually think the issue with Loren's turn system is because of the speed parameter; the problem is that the speed parameter was improved by a stat that controlled too many other stats and because rogue abilities generally became faster by improving them (Dora and Rei being the most egregious examples, e.g. Headshot and Volley). Rogues were really the main culprits as they scaled in both damage and attack rate from one stat and again both in damage and attack rate by improving their abilities (mage suffered from this double-dipping in a weaker way, with the damage from spells increasing and their endurance in combat increasing from one stat, though endurance quickly becomes a non-factor).

Also, I'm not sure if the speed to turn conversion in Loren was handled in a nice way; I was assuming that speed ~ number of actions (so 150 speed should result in 1.5x rounds as someone with 100 speed) but it either doesn't really work that way or enemy special ability delays are balanced poorly. The last issue with the speed system was due to stagger's effect on speed; going first often means you stagger your opponent, which means they suffer even more relative to your actions.

Another thing to consider for individual turns (though probably minor) is to decouple the debuff/buff turns from the one that cast it. One way you'd do this is to make virtual 'normal speed' objects (or just one turn object) and have it hold the reference to the buff or debuff rather than entity with the effect; this would get rid of the weirdness of strange timings and the added penalty/bonus of going slow/fast.

WRT evasion, I would have to imagine that you could always find a scaling for the evasion stat to make it not-broken if you define your scale first (the most natural way is simply to expand the size of your curve, i.e. throw 3D400 instead of 3D40 and scale the step function accordingly). It should really be a matter of defining what a 'high' evasion stat should look like versus a 'low' accuracy stat (as well as the reverse), and what the approximate result of that should be, and fitting the curve to match.

WRT dexterity, the reason I would suggest to tie it to item effectiveness is to complement it being tied to offhand wielding effectiveness (everyone would have two hand slots, which could be a weapon - probably even two-handed - and an item slot; this would be the 'typical' load out, while dual wielding would give up having the item ready). This way dexterity would control the 'same thing' for everyone regardless of dual wielding or not (otherwise the value of dexterity would probably end up being either too high for DWers or too low for non-DWers). Either that or it might help using the offhand in other ways (shield effectiveness? if there is such a thing; or reducing recoil from multishots from two-handed weapons); the point is to make the stat cover the same 'design area' for everyone so that it's can be balanced between class types. Note that even in those circumstances dexterity would likely be of greater benefit to DW than not. An extra attack is often equivalent of an extra turn or a significant part of that; unless items can provide equivalent strength, it would scale less well, and the items are probably of limited usage compared to DW. However, it would make the difference a lot more manageable to balance, and from a design allocation standpoint seems to make sense (dexterity controls how effective your secondary attack or action is).

WRT regen, one thing I noticed frequently in Planet Stronghold is that I would a) make my tank effectively invulnerable with protect (total armor = 1 less than maximum enemy attack range) and b) wait until everyone was topped off before killing the last enemy. I'd do this basically every single battle it was feasible to do (which was almost every battle after level 4 or so). Something similar was possible in Loren as well, though it was less ridiculous since you had less dynamic control over the damage you took. This makes me wonder if HP/PP regeneration is really a good design space (despite my comment about Psionics increasing PP regen above). One possible solution is to invert how it works to reducing PP costs; this has the downside (if it is a downside) of making it more valuable to people who use psionics more (I'd say it's a downside as it probably discourages mixed classes from using their limited psionic ability). Or maybe just remove non-item regen altogether (though you'd have to do that thoroughly if you were to do so) or tie it somehow to non-farmable activities (regen triggered on party kills, perhaps).

Also with respect to the mixed classes' psionic skills - they need to account for the opportunity cost of those classes using those abilities. One big issue I noticed in Planet Stronghold is that the mixed classes already have a disadvantage in using their sub-class psionic abilities to start with; as you put points into their combat skills, the opportunity cost grows more and more, and at a faster rate even if you skill the psionic abilities at the same rate as the combat skills (which puts you at further disadvantage whenever you're not using that power, which is pretty much all the time no matter what); this really ends up meaning that you level combat skills and never use your psiskills unless you're a psionic (or the corner case where you need 1 point of protect). Having the combat stats affect psionic powers equivalently does help alleviate this issue (and it's why I specifically noted how each one should impact psionic powers in some fashion), but the non-psionic classes will *still* have a greater opportunity cost since (presumably) they are going to do better attacking than a dedicated psionic. What all this means is that the psionic power provided to the mixed classes should be inherently _better_ than for the psionic class (not just equivalent, or weaker); the balance would be in the specific powers provided. One possibility is for the mixed class, their specialty power could act faster than for the dedicated psionic; this helps mitigate the opportunity cost issue. Having it be flat-out stronger is okay, too, though you have to be careful at that point not to make the dedicated psionic useless (fortunately this can usually be done by allocating the best of the skills as being purely for the dedicated psionic). As a mainstream example, this is similar to one of the design changes from Mass Effect 1 (which had basically the same problem) to Mass Effect 2 (which made the blend-class abilities more viable; though often by flat-out restricting some abilities to an individual class). Probably good choices are debuff/buffs (damage usually overlaps too much with the attack option) and the minor variants if there is one (e.g. guardians get a fast-cast, strong version of disrupt, everyone else get a regular cast, maybe weaker but more PP efficient one and psionicists also get an AE variant; scouts get a fast-cast strong protect, everyone else get a regular cast, maybe weaker but longer duration one and psionicists might also get a group variant).

Edit: Broken quote block
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jack1974
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Re: levelup idea

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Seloun wrote:I was just making the association of possibly Medicine = better in combat medkits, Sabotage = better grenades (those are already planned, I believe) and adding Science = psy-restore items, which would sort of thematically suggest Charisma should also control a type of consumable.
Ah I see now. Well I'll think about it but seems hard to find a consumable that can be associated with Charisma :lol:
Seloun wrote:For that reason I'd suggest making initiative be derived from the second category of stats, and in a blend (like (3*agi + 2*dex + str)/6 or something) to generate somewhat more organic initiative numbers, rather than making an entire skill control initiative.
Well but in this case there would be the risk that many characters are similar, while there should be some that move first. Well unless I put skill caps based on Classes, which is probably what I'll do anyway.

I've read what you wrote about the speed, but I leave such very technical considerations to the coder (since I really don't get it :mrgreen:). I have a very empirical approach - I tweak the game and test it until I see that work, I am really bad at numbers :oops:
Seloun wrote: This way dexterity would control the 'same thing' for everyone regardless of dual wielding or not (otherwise the value of dexterity would probably end up being either too high for DWers or too low for non-DWers). Either that or it might help using the offhand in other ways (shield effectiveness? if there is such a thing; or reducing recoil from multishots from two-handed weapons); the point is to make the stat cover the same 'design area' for everyone so that it's can be balanced between class types. Note that even in those circumstances dexterity would likely be of greater benefit to DW than not.
I like the idea of influencing other things. There's no recoil for two handed weapons (we don't plan to make the engine go so much in detail) but could give an accuracy bonus in general for all weapons (small of course, but would still influence / be useful to all classes).
Seloun wrote:WRT regen, one thing I noticed frequently in Planet Stronghold is that I would a) make my tank effectively invulnerable with protect (total armor = 1 less than maximum enemy attack range) and b) wait until everyone was topped off before killing the last enemy. I'd do this basically every single battle it was feasible to do (which was almost every battle after level 4 or so). Something similar was possible in Loren as well, though it was less ridiculous since you had less dynamic control over the damage you took. This makes me wonder if HP/PP regeneration is really a good design space (despite my comment about Psionics increasing PP regen above).
Yes regen needs to be handled carefully. It mainly depends also on the scale I'll use. A regen of +1/turn is very different if you have 50 PP total or 150PP total :) I think will remove it, and have special action as perks when you level up, since would make more sense doing it that way.

I agree on what you said about Psionics. I still want the Soldier class to have almost no use for Psionic (or very little) but the Guardian/Scout should follow what you said, otherwise people wouldn't never bother to put skill points in Psionic. Done that way, I don't think is needed that the PP is determined by a mix of skills. If the skills are 0 to 20, probably Soldier will have a skill cap on Psionic of 5 or so, while Guardian/Scout will have a skill cap of 10. Considering they start at 1, with 9 point out of 60 you could max the Psionic power of a Scout/Guardian so have still a lot of other skill point to assign to the other skills :)

A final note: I read everything you (and others) write and often there are great suggestions, though in the end I have to decide what to add and what not, depending also on how hard is to code/design/test and time constraints. Sort of disclaimer if you don't see that feature X that you suggested and I approved :wink:
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