Best Of

Re: Scoundrel Combat fixes

Toolkits probably should be worn rather than wielded, yeah. How the heck do you throw bombs or punch people if your hands are full?

You could make the argument here that Engineers have to wield their toolkits, but, you know, they're actively doing stuff with those in combat, as opposed to just having them as a bomb-component-carrying-case. If it's not possible to separate scoundrel and engineer toolkits, just make bandoliers with stats and get rid of Scoundrel toolkit usage entirely. Problem solved.

Also, Pointblank seems pretty weird from a fluff consideration. You walk up to a guy, shoot him straight in the forehead.... for a very small amount of damage?

It'd make more sense for a pistol whip attack to take the place of Pointblank. (or, if folks really want a bullet to use, do a foot shot or something equally distracting in place of a pistol whip.) Maybe rework Pointblank into an instakill for sensory/mind damage or whatever other stuff would work. It'd be a badass finisher: you casually stroll up to someone you've knocked senseless and delirious, push them to their knees (if they're not already on them), quip something edgy like "Nothin' personnel, kid" and core their brain like a pippalap. Super stylish!

Lain

Re: Scoundrel Combat fixes

Bloop. I'm putting down the product of conversation with the most active scoundrels and the best scoundrels historically -- there's been a LOT of talk over the past six months about what to do and how to get scoundrel into a better place. The class is awesome, but, speaking honestly, it's got quite a lot issues, some of which really need to be addressed soon, and most of which should be addressed at some point.

A top priority for pvp should be to get sensory, mind, and internal afflictions on par with muscular, somehow. I'll let someone else, like Soza, explain that.

For scoundrel specifically, here goes my attempt to capture the best ideas we've had, and agreed to them being the best (with ambush being thrown in there as the product of = conversations with past experts):

Buff encroachment. Encroachment has to pull enemies out of cover right away. It's getting cured too quickly against most opponents who set their WW priorities to afflictions first, meaning we keep landing it, they may not be pushed out of cover for a while. If scoundrel can't control cover with encroachment, a ton of our abilities just don't work. Some of the reasons they don't work are clearly intended, and others... who knows?
Replace staggering in weakening ammo. For whatever reason, staggering is no longer proccing staggering. Perhaps this was a "bug" that was fixed, but scoundrel needs something to replace staggering now that we have no way to interact with staggering. One scoundrel, possibly the most skilled we've seen, called losing this "the biggest scoundrel nerf in history." It really hurts, even if it wasn't utilized often. So! Enter what I've been affectionately calling "baby haemotoxin," a poison that reduces health regeneration and healing by 20%. Note that real haemotoxin is a xenoslayer mob ability and it's pretty handy. Without having that balance advantage that staggering provided, we need something else to help us keep up. Forcing an enemy to heal less efficiently or more often, however you look at it, will do the trick nicely.
Buff rapidfire. Rapidfire is essential for scoundrel to keep up in pvp, but it really needs to not be able to deal the same affliction twice in one attack. It's OK if the target already has one or both of the afflictions, but it really needs to land separate afflictions every time. With staggering no longer doing its job, there's no possible upshot for rapidfire not checking for what it's shooting. PVE is unaffected by this change, but we gain some consistency and lose a little less ground based on a roll of the dice in pvp.
QOL change plus buff to shoulderroll. Shoulderroll targets as described above (SHOULDERROLL PLAYER will pick the correct cover) but also afflicts winded upon delivery, like a suckerpunch. Kerpow! Winded is too hard to land, making suckerpunch useless currently. Also, winded is just a handy thing for us.
Buff ambush. Ambush is fine in pve, though its conditions for use feel inconsistent. More importantly, ambush in pvp is a very, very suboptimal way to actually ambush someone. 2.5s of balance, deals more damage than crackshot, deals same subsystem damage as crackshot per balance time, but has to be the first attack. Compare that with GUN VIGILANT, which attacks without balance for something like crackshot. Other parts of scoundrel's kit -- namely TRIPWIRE and HIDE -- strongly, strongly incentivize setting up and bunkering. There's no reason not to use vigilant instead of ambush for an ambush. Solution: make ambush take 1s of balance to reflect its fast-shooting flavor, plus change the conditions for shooting it so that each mob has its own timer instead of a timer for the scoundrel (or something similar so that you can ambush a new target right away), plus make it so that vigilant does not preclude ambushing by putting into combat with that target. This makes scoundrel pve a little better and definitely more consistent while allowing ambush to have a chance to play in pvp -- and even gives us a little bit more of a chance on chase. We're terrible at chasing enemies.

Two IEDs that really need some love because they've been nerfed to being a waste of time, and we really need them to not suck:

Pusher
Sleeper

Gunslinging abilities that underperform:

Detonate, because we have some issues with hiding bombs and because detonate is random
Impairing ammo, because encroachment isn't doing its job efficiently enough and because mind afflictions are not strong enough and because we have to resort to damage kill, which isn't really supported all that well in scoundrel's kit
Disrupting ammo -- sensory's bad
Arcing, because EM's payoff (discharge or a failed mend) isn't good enough to justify that we lose enough damage that people can set WW priorities to ignore our now miniscule health damage
Infusing, because we don't have time for that
Amplifying, because same. They're not bad, we just don't have time.
Quickload -- meh
Backflip, which would be awesome if we could actually use it to get away. The problem is that we backflip and then stand there waiting for balance long enough that our enemies always walk up and keep hitting us, meaning we've wasted a reload. The only thing good about backflip is that it gets us out of quicksand, which is probably unintended.
Gauge. This ability should be awesome, but it's got a 3.5s balance cost. Reducing its balance cost to less than crackshot would get it close to where it needs to be because, right now, the main use of it is to GAUGE, LEAVE COVER and RAPIDFIRE, HAYMAKER to stack afflictions -- assuming you don't roll poorly and get redundant afflictions. It's rare that this is desirable, period, because we want to go for an internal kill, not a health kill, typically.
Cavein. Doesn't do enough damage for an ability that doesn't do anything but damage. It doesn't even set up airstrike.
Bulletguard. It just isn't that practical.

Guile abilities that underperform:

Kneecap, because it could be a PIECE whip. I kid, though a lot of new players would rather see the flavor of a pistol whip. It's OK that kneecap is weak because pointblank is pretty strong, and forcing a scoundrel to use a reload to interrupt should be rewarded. Buffing kneecap would be fine, or changing it to a pistol whip.
Suckerpunch because it's a reload and it's too hard to get winded on the target
gritblast because it's a reload and is so much worse than fling -- as an aoe, it underperforms compared to trigger, which has a short cooldown. Trigger isn't a reload. This one's just bad, though I like the flavor (but why is it a reload? our jetpack abilities ought to be a lot cooler, and why isn't backflip a jetpack ability?)
Pummel. It's awful. You can WW REGEN while being pummeled and be completely fine, even gaining subsystem health while being pummeled.
Incite appears to fail pretty often now, which is lame (someone please speak into this one, I haven't tested it in depth in a while). It's really strong, but there are ways to make it weaker without making it random, such as reducing enemy damage on hit.
Incite -- cool, but disappointing because it fails and because we don't get the benefit. Why not have something even cooler like, you know, a stim grenade that does ??? for everyone around?
Strangle UGH. Why do we have two abilities that are both bad and so similar? I'm talking about pummel and strangle. One of these could scale with mind damage, and one of them could scale with sensory or total subsystem damage.
Illegalmods. Its effect just isn't that useful. Nobody else has to worry about limited flight, but we spend an ability on making our limited flight last longer? It's got a tremendously long duration and I'm not sure the jetpack abilities even use the jetpack power. Not that I'm going to test it; the jetpack abilities other than jetwash are not good.
Dash is redundant with a generic ability in exploration.
Airstrike, as our max guile ability, has: a 5 min cooldown; is channeled and we can't do anything else during it; doesn't work indoors; and just does damage. If cavein would set it up indoors, that'd be nice. We just don't get to use it often because of indoor restriction. As an odd idea, we could have it do something fancy like generate new debris cover. I'm not positive what this ability needs, but it's not getting used because it's easy to interrupt and doesn't work indoors.
Bugs really could stand to be rolled into one ability. They're limited in usefulness and it stinks to have to use three of our abilities in guile to make them decent.

Improvisation abilities that underperform:

bandoliers. Bandoliers in general. Why do we have to create bombs? Why do we have to track the number? Can't we just be like other classes that simply use their abilities? Using a bandolier means we lose our bombs on class swap (alleviated a lot by construct now doing 50 each, which was a great bandaid, by the way, so thank you). Having a bandolier means we lose both the back item slot and the... whatever bandolier goes into just because we're scoundrels (clothing slots). That said, this isn't as important, frankly.
Sweep
Hide. It's slow. Making it faster would be great.
Tripwire. It's slow. Making it faster, somehow, would be great.
Disarm. I don't think I've ever disarmed a bomb.
Stickybomb. It has its uses, but can we talk about not having it be a reload ability or something? The only reason we'd use this over fling, 99.99% of the time, is that encroachment isn't getting someone out of cover and so our fling might not work.
Wiring. With sleeper and pusher not doing much, wiring doesn't ever keep up with shrapnel. Why not have some bombs, I dunno, be better with wiring?
Timer. I mess around with this occasionally, but it's just a gimmick. Giving up shrapnel is almost always a loss. Almost always, in both pve and pvp.
Blinder, because it's random which of blind or deaf you afflict and because neither of these afflictions is all that good. Afflicting both, every time, may bring blinder in the realm of "I might use that to set up a haymaker," occasionally. Sensory in general is one of the weakest parts of this game.
Pusher. I'm saying it again here because it's unreliable. The Bushraki artifact works against its forced movement. I think people can follow around with it. There's just a lot wrong with this thing, but the main problem is that it's inconsistent.
Zapper. Ripper's recent buff means zapper's just a little bit behind in damage against bots. For an EM flavored ripper, that means it's just worse than ripper. Buffing its damage or providing some kind of other benefit against bots that results in a tangible improvement would fix this one. EM in general isn't where it should be, though. The payoff isn't good enough against players.
Shrieker, because... honestly, I don't remember exactly what this one does. If our mind route had a clearer end goal, such as making pummel or strangle scale with mind damage, then we're in business, probably.
Choker -- low damage over time, doesn't have any other benefits. Just not good enough, and that its solely damage dealing, and slowly, means it has no place in pvp.
Distorter. It's a shame that our max level ability just doesn't cut it. I think this is more of a function of mind afflictions, generally, underperforming. Would I rather use this or shrieker in a world with better mind afflictions? I don't know, but they're competing with one another unless their durations are pretty generous.

There's yet more to say, but that's what I wanted to throw down now. I love this class and SM. I wouldn't bother commenting if I didn't believe in the product and the team, so now I'd like to say, again: thanks, all, for making SM.

Steve

Re: Scoundrel Combat fixes

As mentioned by Steve, Shrieker and Distorter both currently seem useless with the kit given to scoundrel, though they are great if they gain a new small portion of code that make them uncurable by wet wiring for their duration. Scoundrel is missing a finisher though as we only have one and three main subsystems to do.

Strangle: you place your hands around an enemys neck choking the life out of them. Requirements: enemy be prone, bound for x seconds, have distraction and sluggish.

Small change to bind to have its duration based off either mind or internal whichever is lower at the same rate (currently it doesn't scale to anything except internal)

This would give scoundrel their 2nd kill route, fix a ton of small things and give scoundrels variability.

Soza

Basic Ship Numpad System

Hi. This is a very basic ship movement package for Nexus. You control your ship mostly with the numpad, but there are a few aliases to help as well.

You can get it here. Extract the .nxs file from the zip folder, go to your Nexus settings -> Reflex Packages -> click the big box -> select the .nxs file or drag and drop it.

Note that you will need to remove the stock numpad movement package from Nexus for this to work properly. You can do this by going to Reflex Packages in the Nexus settings and hitting the little X circle on the respective line.

When your ship launches and docks, the triggers will automatically switch you from numpad walking to numpad flying. It will also automatically activate all your modules; you might want to change this if your power limits have a low tolerance. You'll also see a custom emote play; this is purely for fluff and you can edit or remove it as you wish.

This doesn't include any weapon keybinds or triggers, or provisions for skip/flyby/other captaincy tricks, but these are simple enough to set up.

Flight command list:

Num 1-9 is used to SHIP TURN in the eight cardinal directions.
Num 5 is used for SHIP BEACON.
Num 0 is used for STARCHART <destination>. You set a destination with DEST <zone>, for example, DEST IOTA or DEST RS-5943, and it'll show up when you hit num 0.
Num / and * decreases and increases the max speed of your ship in a gradient specified by MSTEP <#>. For example, if you set MSTEP to 25, and hit num *, your ship's maxspeed will increase by 25% each time (from a minimum of 1% to a maximum of 100%).
Num + and - do the same thing but with your ship's thrust. You can use TSTEP <#> to set the gradient here too, but I honestly recommend just leaving it at 100 because I can't think of any real reason you would want to be at any other thrust level except zero or 100.
CTRL+NUM5 recovers all cargo adjacent to you, in every direction. Spammy, but useful.
VCHECK is an alias for debugging. It shows you what the variables in the system are set to. If these aren't within a range of 0-100, something broke.
WALKING and FLYING change movement types manually, for example, if you want to move around in your ship while in space, or if something breaks.

Walking command list:

Most everything is unchanged from the basic numpad reflex package. However, CTRL+numpad directions will do CRASH <dir>, for example, CTRL+NUM4 will make you CRASH W. CTRL+NUM5 will also make you do FLY UP for an even quicker escape provided you're outdoors and have a jetpack.

Lain

Scoundrel Combat fixes

Now that we have a new coder just wanted to get a plan together for possible fixes in the future. Welcome Zersiax! And @Eukelade told us to not just discuss stuff on discord without putting something here. Here's my ideas refined by @Soza and @Steve:

Improvised Cover -> Actually puts you in the cover created. Here's the reasoning behind this. Implemented in a cache or cosmpiercer where you have to make your own cover (common PvP scenario). Improvised cover is a 3 second balance, then a 2 second balance to take cover. Your opponent depending on class can remove/take cover faster than a Scoundrel who just made it. 5 seconds is an eternity to get back into cover to be able to use TRIGGER or MULTIBOMB which is a big part of our kit. Just something to consider, thanks!
Tripwire -> Sets up the bomb on ALL exits in the room

Tripwire -> hits those not in crew (maybe enemy list?)
Currently this skill takes a 5 second balance to place a bomb on a single exit in a room. This means that it is removed from viability once battle has begun. If the room has even 2 exits this makes chasing down a fleeing opponent very hard for the Scoundrel because you cannot spare 10 seconds to try and catch them OR try and set anything up. Not to mention that HIDE currently costs 6 seconds. Stickybomb is the best option at 3 seconds but has to be done on a reload. Just something to consider.

Affliction Encroachment -> pulls the target from cover upon affliction (POINTBLANK the only way to apply it, when you use PB on someone in cover you leave your own cover, hit them, wait for the affliction to pull them from cover (up to 5 sec), take cover again. (Alternative - have PB work while leaving the scoundrel in cover?) **needs tweaking -- FLAVOR RECOMMENDATION ( P.I.E.C.E. Whip as a skill name and flavor description to replace pointblank. Apparently the community wants this bad *heh*)
Strangle -> First tick isn’t half damage.

1st tick 1% internal, 2nd, 2% internal, 3rd, 4% internal 4th, 8% internal, etc
And cannot crash while being strangled
(NOTE: I believe this to be a bug but the first tick of GUILE STRANGLE is half the damage it should be) Suggestion as follows, first tick isn't half damage. As an alternative have each tick of Strangle do escalating internal system damage (in addition to it's damage) and prevent the target from crashing. 1,1% - 2,2% 3,4% 4,8% etc. Strangle is a trans skill in Guile and I believe was intended to be a FORCEFEED (damage based) alternative. If a target has 75% internal damage you can TRIP, BIND and they will be bound for 8 seconds (this is the forcefeed req btw so we’d be using FF at this point anyway). You can STRANGLE after you get balance back from BIND (3 sec assuming no aff or musc damage) leaving 5 seconds which means that in perfect scenario STRANGLE should only hit a person for 2 ticks before they can interrupt. 3 ticks if they are slow about it. 4 ticks should theoretically be impossible or they can't escape anyway and they should just die. Wetwiring will be curing aff and systems on it's own and many people are currently choosing to WW REGEN upon BIND since it can be done while prone and bound. This way if the person chooses to continue to regenerate instead of interrupting the strangle (scoundrel will lose the internal damage while they regenerate also).

Kneecap -> Scale to internal damage and not muscular

Scale to internal damage and not muscular. Here's the reasoning. Scoundrel currently has 0 way to do muscular damage other than pounding a connecting wetwiring system and a little bleed over into muscular. Our kit is setup to damage MIND, SENSORY, and mainly INTERNAL. This just makes sense and is a REALLY easy fix.

Shoulderroll -> Allow Shoulderroll to be targeted either to Player OR Prop. Most classes just instantly pull you from cover immediately but others like to stay in cover and it forces a scoundrel to fight OUT of cover just to get them out of cover. This would help the scoundrel to match cover with a target to be able to use Fling/Stickybomb/Facesmash again.
Bind -> Currently people can wetwiring regenerate -AFTER- being bound and afflicted with entanglement, which means if we miss on forcefeed or don’t use an interrupt on balance they get in a free regeneration. This means we can’t use skills like Strange/Pummel as the enemy will out regen the damage. The fix would be to make the entanglement affliction prevent wetwiring regeneration.

Jaidyn

Announcements post #127: Welcome Zersiax!

From: Starmaker Eukelade
Subject: Welcome Zersiax!

I'm happy to announce today that we have hired Starmourn's new coder - and he starts today! Please give a warm welcome to Florian Beijers - aka Zersiax. Florian hails from the Netherlands, and has a lot of ideas about how to improve Starmourn.

You'll start hearing directly from him once he's finished getting himself situated, but on his behalf I will say he's excited to be here - and we're excited to have him!

Autoposter

Re: Announcements post #125: Sale Refreshed.

Valincora said:

Question, since I forgot to test last time I had some: Do multiples of the Neural Blinder stack in any way? I assumed they would all trigger at the same time, making multiples pointless, but I never got around to checking.

I actually had asked about this. They don't stack at all

n1nj4

Re: Crime and Conflict

Just going to straight up copy/paste the brief back and forth on arenas from the Discord:

[8:56 PM] Scrublord Zarrach: ngl, i do want faction arenas, but from my experience there's always a map that winds up being preferred by the community. Imperian did alot of fighting in Antioch's arena and the Coliseum for example cause the layout was preferred for some reason (i never asked why but playing around in Ithaqua's arena I can see why)
Idk how much of a pain in the ass this'd be but here goes:
Omni stays as the main/primary PVP arena. (F in the chat for 'Baths' fans). The fact it's a virtual arena means we can do some really neat stuff, like it can get different maps loaded based off faction/racial arenas. Admin FFA is randomly one of these maps (or maybe it's a player vote vote for nuketown!), player duels can select a map to play in and like once a day each faction can initiate a FFA/Team Deathmatch at Omni.
Faction arenas exist but are not for PVP, but for pve/newbie friendly games. Like Freezetag, CTF, etc and are how the maps for Omni become a thing.

[8:56 PM] Scrublord Zarrach: thoughts?

[8:57 PM] RocketCat: I like the idea of "loading" different maps with the same VR "machine"

[8:57 PM] Scrublord Zarrach: hell maybe thats how we can get faction conflict going. Don't have anyone participate in the player started Team Deathmatch, your faction is mocked heavily. You don't have to win, you just need to participate to avoid shaming your house faction.

[8:57 PM] RocketCat: Cause my only problem with Omni Arena is that the map is boring and does not in any way resemble fights outside of arena

[8:58 PM] Scrublord Zarrach: i still find it hilarious that it's a heart balloon.

[9:02 PM] Quark: that won't work. Shame is more likely to drive people away from factions altogether than to promote faction conflict

[9:04 PM] RocketCat: Would be good to have 2v2s etc. Theyre infinitely more fun than 1v1s tbh

[9:06 PM] Morgan: Only reason Ata wants 2v2 is so he can get a triple kill

[9:09 PM] Scrublord Zarrach: ok, maybe not shame.

[9:09 PM] RocketCat: Morgan knows

[9:10 PM] Scrublord Zarrach: Tiered reward then? Like a tiered XP boost or something. First place gets 30%, second 20%, third 10%, plus all parties get influence points.

[9:12 PM] Morgan: Mostly quadras though, right Ata?

[9:53 PM] The Real Steve Strikes Back: Could make an arena connected to Iota

[9:54 PM] The Real Steve Strikes Back: So that it’s still accessible through Omni

[10:07 PM] Scrublord Zarrach: pve arena on iota?

[10:43 PM] Morgan: I do like the idea of configurable holographic arenas. Just load up a battlegrounds program and hey presto, we're in a new layout, forest themed, another new one, desert themed.

Ikchor

Re: Cosmpiercers and ship PvP

After some talk on the discord, I realized I didn't mention trade commodities (transteel, sensors, etc, as well as raw materials).

I think they should be treated the same as junk (as in things you get from incursions) - if your ship is destroyed, they get dropped. That way there is possibility for conflict in pirate refinery zones - even if one player grabs the refinery's cargo, another can still shoot them down and take it.

All I'm asking is that player ships don't lose ammo, repairkits and bots upon death.

Cubey

Re: Cosmpiercers and ship PvP

I want to start by saying I don't PvP at all, so there may be some facets of how it all works that I am missing.

That said, the way I think it should be handled is via ship insurance packages instead of ship just being insured or not. An example might be something like this:

Tier 1 - Costs 1000 Marks - Covers recovery of the ship hull/superstructure but no mods, cargo, etc.
Tier 2 - Costs 2000 Marks - Covers recovery of the ship hull/superstructure, no mods, and 50% cargo value.
Tier 3 - Costs 3000 Marks - Covers recovery of the ship hull/superstructure, no mods, and 100% cargo value.

The cost would still increase/decrease dependent on ship superstructure size. It gives players a choice with taking a risk or being risk averse.

The insurance would have to expire regularly in order to make an idea like this work, of course.

Bandus