It's actually still 0.5 seconds to switch to regular ammo for some reason. Personally I'm of the opinion that switching ammo shouldn't be a balance using ability of all, however. But probably be too strong in practice, would have been nice if it had been initially released as no balance, just so I could know for sure.
While I love the quality of life improvements to Improvisation, I do not like the recent change to make crafting the bombs cost junk items. This just adds a fiddly gimmick to the skillset and even more preparation time to stock up when the whole idea behind revamping Improvisation was to cut down on all the unnecessary preparation and stockpiling people were forced into.
Not only that, Scoundrel is now the only class who has had extra costs shoe-horned into their skillsets. I know that in previous IRE games there are other classes who have to pay for reagents for their class abilities, but Starmourn is an entirely new game with very different ideas and there's plenty of other costs already in this game, such as clone costs, ship insurance, weapons and armor repairs.
I would rather avoid the whole extra expenses to enjoy a third of my class and would like the junk costs stripped out.
If you're committed to keeping the costs in place, don't have it cost actual junk items, because that's a chore to go out and collect them, then sit crafting them, adding modifiers. It would also suck to run out in the middle of a fight and suddenly not have your full kit available to use. I know you're saying we're making improvised bombs and that making it from junk fits thematically, but when you've got a pack of candy or an unused condom, they aren't exactly components to make bombs and it made more sense to me with the old messages where you searched your surroundings for materials to craft the bombs.
If costs are here to stay, add costs to all classes, keep things even. Scoundrel is already the squishiest PvE class with a lot of downtime between fights, extra expenses on top is a kick in the teeth when no other class has had the same treatment. If engineer parts cost junk to fashion, nanites are made from junk and BEASTS suddenly have to use junk to power their suits, then we are back to a level playing field.
I don't mind the cost one bit, actually. I think a small damage buff might be in order to justify it, but managing IEDs isn't a big issue to me. I like the bandolier mechanic, it bothered me having hundreds of IEDs in my inventory.
And lastly, I actually like the junk-to-IED mechanic. It makes me choose between more marks or more options.
Increasing damage is a poor way of balancing things out, because that makes the class the clear choice of being the better option for a bit of inconvenience, or we're balanced around that damage increase and have the inconvenience tagged along because 'immersion'.
It shouldn't have to be a choice of earning the same marks as other classes and only using 2/3 of your skillset, or using it all and making much less profit. We all want good ships, amazing equipment and the best mods, why does one set of people have to have a handicap?
How would people feel if Scoundrel got a passive called Roguish Luck that had them get 5-10% more junk drops, or junk sells for more? That'd offset the difference for bomb crafting, yet I feel people would just complain then regardless.
While I agree that damage creep should be avoided, on the flip side the impact to marks is pretty minimal. I farmed for 15 minutes and made -dozens- of IEDs. I don't think we need an increase to junk drops.
I did around 2 hours of bashing after the change last night I went through maybe 100+ rippers and yet I probably still made 2k marks, I think I was only out apx 200-300 marks from restocking IEDs. It really wasn't all that bad and it gave me a few minutes of down time if I wanted between bashing.
The only issue I had was that it's easy to end up with more IEDs then you can put in your bandolier and you are now having to choose to drop the extra or risk fumbling them.
Though I really like the idea of not running around with so many IEDs in my inv and I like the idea of using junk.
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "We're called
Scatterhome after what everybody does at
the end of the night when it's time for
someone to pay the bar tab."
(Scatterhome): You say, "Which by my
calculations, it's your turn to pay."
(Scatterhome): Brantar says, "That's what
my calculations have come to."
(Scatterhome): Paavo says, "My math adds
up to that, yeah."
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "Bastards."
I agree with most people here - in reality the junk cost is negligible. On paper, yes, we have to pay for skills when no one else does, but unless you're bashing rockhoppers to 75 you really don't notice the extremely minimal cost.
I think the bigger issue (if you want to call it such) is the mark economy as a whole, which this just adds to some of that stress. Repairs and clone costs seem high, so bashing now sometimes can even net a negative amount of marks with just one death. Charging for a class ability now makes that felt more because it wasn’t there from the start.
I love the bandolier (so much, all the love) but I hate the junk change. It doesn't really cost that much, but I have two problems with it: first, it's fiddly - I have to keep looking at my junk list and finding a new type of junk to construct from. And secondly, where bandolier is amazing RP, making IEDs from junk is the opposite.
Exactly why can I make a bomb from a hunk of meat? Or why do I need raw meat to make it? Does Starmourn have some kind of magic technology where you can strip substances down to their base elements and then 3D print completely new substances? If so, that sounds more science lab than rogue scoundrel.
That being said, I'm being nitpicky, and the change is not going to break scoundrel for me. I'm just giving my feedback on it.
Yeah, it doesn’t matter what junk you use, the cost is the same in the end. The only advantage is saving time by creating more at once, but then again you wasted that time searching for a 50 value piece.
OT: Personally I don't notice a difference. I make IEDs out of all junk worth less than ~15 or so. After an hour bashing I 'lose' maybe 300 marks (out of like 5000), and gain probably 4-5x the IEDs that I used in that hour.
At this point, the quality of life in crafting modded IEDs is super nice with the bandolier, and the junk cost does seem manageable (and thankfully flat cost). I am interested to see in if/how they plan on dealing with the super large time to construct modded ieds.
That's still marks that you are losing, and you're actively doing an activity that rewards you with junk. Good luck when PvP takes off and you're burning through your IEDs rapidly, at a cost, plus the inconvenience of having to leave the battle to farm again or fight at two thirds effectiveness.
OT: Personally I don't notice a difference. I make IEDs out of all junk worth less than ~15 or so. After an hour bashing I 'lose' maybe 300 marks (out of like 5000), and gain probably 4-5x the IEDs that I used in that hour.
Yeah, I mean I literally just do IED CONSTRUCT RIPPER FROM JUNK and trigger that ish to repeat. Doesn't really matter in the end, you aren't going to sav
At this point, the quality of life in crafting modded IEDs is super nice with the bandolier, and the junk cost does seem manageable (and thankfully flat cost). I am interested to see in if/how they plan on dealing with the super large time to construct modded ieds.
I grudgingly agree. I'm still pissed off that I lost 4K rippers on this "change" but there are definitely some QOL benefits that came with it. I still want my rippers back TECTON! *narrow*
That's still marks that you are losing, and you're actively doing an activity that rewards you with junk. Good luck when PvP takes off and you're burning through your IEDs rapidly, at a cost, plus the inconvenience of having to leave the battle to farm again or fight at two thirds effectiveness.
I've fought a fair bit already. You don't use quite as many IEDs as you think you will. Think after 2 hours of sparring (probably 20-30 2 or 3 minute fights), I used maybe ~150 IEDs. That's like 5 minutes of bashing at most. In PvP it's also not always the best way to reload, so you likely won't use anywhere near that much in a group fight.
By the time pvp 'takes off' if you don't have several hundred of every IED I'd question what you've been doing in the meantime. Hard to find sympathy from me when I've played resource-heavy classes for the majority of my ~13 years playing IRE games. Scoundrel is probably the least-offending of the ones I've played... Sorry but losing out on maybe 5000 marks in a week, but having enough IEDs to last several weeks, isn't a big deal to me. If they add junk costs to wiring/shrapnel/timers, then maybe it'll be worth complaining about.
Just be that person who fills their bandolier with 500 of every type of IED, just because you have the option to. Never know when those useless IEDs get buffed, right?
That's still marks that you are losing, and you're actively doing an activity that rewards you with junk. Good luck when PvP takes off and you're burning through your IEDs rapidly, at a cost, plus the inconvenience of having to leave the battle to farm again or fight at two thirds effectiveness.
I had a longer response to this typed out but it was based on assumptions of PVP playstyle and reload usage that I can't confirm, so for now I'm just gunna say if you are running through hundreds of IEDs in one PVP occurrence, you have bigger problems than the marks spent on IEDs.
Okay I actually went out to test this, because I dislike misinformation and untested whining.
Results, from start to finish of 1008 marks. Which took less than 9 minutes of bashing in a crowded area at level 41. I probably could've easily knocked it out in 4-5 if there were less people. A lot of them was replacing/rebuilding my ripper stock, but all the IEDs have the same rate of creation (2 marks per IED on average, rounded up).
If you don't feel like counting that comes out to 16 distorters, 57 melters, 42 piercers, 227 rippers, 163 shriekers and 54 sleepers for a total of 559 IEDs... Let's put that number into perspective.
Let's say... 60 minutes of fighting. And this is assuming you're actually firing that entire 60 minutes (unrealistic, so we'll say... 40 minutes of fighting might not be out of the realms of possibility for a big group fight). With an average balance of 3s (fling at 3, crackshot at 2.5, rapidfire at 3.5 still works to an average of 3)....
rapidfire, crackshot, crackshot, crackshot, rapidfire, crackshot, ied is gonna be the rough sequence of firing with some minor pattern alteration as the fight goes on. That's about 21 seconds. So 40 minutes / 21 second sequences works out to ABOUT 114 IEDs, and that's ASSUMING you're firing for 40 minutes straight. And ONLY using IEDs to reload (there's a 99.9% chance that, if you have any clue about scoundrel, you're not). There's a number of scenarios where you might want to use spin, shellspill or suckerpunch as well (the latter especially if you have a fury with you). So that number is more than likely probably gonna drop down to at least 100 IEDs, possibly lower.
There's also the likelihood of changing ammos throughout a fight, taking cover, jetwashing people out who fly/levitate. A number of things which reduce the time spent firing. Not including crashing away from a fight.
TL;DR - hunt for like 5 minutes, and have enough IEDs to last you probably 10 hours of STRAIGHT fighting. Realistically, probably double that. You can subtract like 200 of those IEDs for hunting purposes and still have a shit load left for fighting (and that hunting will bring you even more, so it's a moot point).
Prone seems to be broken -- I filed a bug, but wanted to see if anyone else had an issue with it?
My experience today:
1) If I prone someone, I am not seeing a message that they have stood back up. I just repeated get messages that my target is not prone when trying to use bind. 2) Guile trip takes a 2s balance to use, does not interupt, does not seem to stop someone from getting out of the room, and does no damage. 3) Another scoundrel and I took turns pumping each other full of vertigo, but prone was still instantly cured and after 50+ bullets each and 30+ trips, no loss of balance happened as a result of vertigo. 4) Since prone cannot be applied, neither of us could ever get bind to work -- without bind, forcefeed, strangle, and pummel do not work which leaves scoundrels with zero instakills to apply.
Unrelated, but it seems fury has "balance" as a skill which allows them to never be prone -- even if hit with a sleeper? Does that just negate every scoundrel instakill and we have no way to strip the defense? Correct me if I am wrong with the skill ability, but that seems like it would make scoundrel versus fury combat really difficult from an instakill route.
Sleeper prones, as well. Of course then you run into the issue of bleeding waking them up once you get them to the point of being able to forcefeed. I did it by pushing mind first, to stick stupidity / distraction / forgetfulness... But currently vs Scoundrel, 90% of people die long before you get them that prepped.
There's a lot of weird things with it, that hopefully get fixed soon. Sometimes you see them stand, sometimes you don't.
You see them stand if they stand with STAND but prone can also be cured by wetwiring ticks, and is invisible if that happens, like all affs. Not sure if intended. Seems odd.
Fury balancing is RNG, so you can prone them but it takes a while. Balancing probably shouldn't stop sleep from proning (but currently does).
Exactly why can I make a bomb from a hunk of meat? Or why do I need raw meat to make it? Does Starmourn have some kind of magic technology where you can strip substances down to their base elements and then 3D print completely new substances? If so, that sounds more science lab than rogue scoundrel.
@Admin any news on when we're going to get an update on adding shrapnel to IEDs? Just spent over half an hour staring at "Using a roll of spacer's tape that you happen to have handy, you secure a handful of sharp, broken salvage to a handful of explosive putty, which will serve as shrapnel when it explodes." I remember Tecton mentioning in the Discord that there's work being done on making adding shrapnel happen on IED creation, for instance.
Comments
Not only that, Scoundrel is now the only class who has had extra costs shoe-horned into their skillsets. I know that in previous IRE games there are other classes who have to pay for reagents for their class abilities, but Starmourn is an entirely new game with very different ideas and there's plenty of other costs already in this game, such as clone costs, ship insurance, weapons and armor repairs.
I would rather avoid the whole extra expenses to enjoy a third of my class and would like the junk costs stripped out.
If you're committed to keeping the costs in place, don't have it cost actual junk items, because that's a chore to go out and collect them, then sit crafting them, adding modifiers. It would also suck to run out in the middle of a fight and suddenly not have your full kit available to use. I know you're saying we're making improvised bombs and that making it from junk fits thematically, but when you've got a pack of candy or an unused condom, they aren't exactly components to make bombs and it made more sense to me with the old messages where you searched your surroundings for materials to craft the bombs.
If costs are here to stay, add costs to all classes, keep things even. Scoundrel is already the squishiest PvE class with a lot of downtime between fights, extra expenses on top is a kick in the teeth when no other class has had the same treatment. If engineer parts cost junk to fashion, nanites are made from junk and BEASTS suddenly have to use junk to power their suits, then we are back to a level playing field.
Plus, making melters out of unused condoms is fun! Who doesn’t like filling them with acid and throwing them at Nabians?
And lastly, I actually like the junk-to-IED mechanic. It makes me choose between more marks or more options.
It shouldn't have to be a choice of earning the same marks as other classes and only using 2/3 of your skillset, or using it all and making much less profit. We all want good ships, amazing equipment and the best mods, why does one set of people have to have a handicap?
How would people feel if Scoundrel got a passive called Roguish Luck that had them get 5-10% more junk drops, or junk sells for more? That'd offset the difference for bomb crafting, yet I feel people would just complain then regardless.
The only issue I had was that it's easy to end up with more IEDs then you can put in your bandolier and you are now having to choose to drop the extra or risk fumbling them.
Though I really like the idea of not running around with so many IEDs in my inv and I like the idea of using junk.
(Scatterhome): You say, "Which by my calculations, it's your turn to pay."
(Scatterhome): Brantar says, "That's what my calculations have come to."
(Scatterhome): Paavo says, "My math adds up to that, yeah."
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "Bastards."
The cost is is pretty negligible for IEDs.
Exactly why can I make a bomb from a hunk of meat? Or why do I need raw meat to make it? Does Starmourn have some kind of magic technology where you can strip substances down to their base elements and then 3D print completely new substances? If so, that sounds more science lab than rogue scoundrel.
That being said, I'm being nitpicky, and the change is not going to break scoundrel for me. I'm just giving my feedback on it.
Why do you think the skill is called improvisation?
I had a longer response to this typed out but it was based on assumptions of PVP playstyle and reload usage that I can't confirm, so for now I'm just gunna say if you are running through hundreds of IEDs in one PVP occurrence, you have bigger problems than the marks spent on IEDs.
My experience today:
1) If I prone someone, I am not seeing a message that they have stood back up. I just repeated get messages that my target is not prone when trying to use bind.
2) Guile trip takes a 2s balance to use, does not interupt, does not seem to stop someone from getting out of the room, and does no damage.
3) Another scoundrel and I took turns pumping each other full of vertigo, but prone was still instantly cured and after 50+ bullets each and 30+ trips, no loss of balance happened as a result of vertigo.
4) Since prone cannot be applied, neither of us could ever get bind to work -- without bind, forcefeed, strangle, and pummel do not work which leaves scoundrels with zero instakills to apply.
Unrelated, but it seems fury has "balance" as a skill which allows them to never be prone -- even if hit with a sleeper? Does that just negate every scoundrel instakill and we have no way to strip the defense? Correct me if I am wrong with the skill ability, but that seems like it would make scoundrel versus fury combat really difficult from an instakill route.
Fury balancing is RNG, so you can prone them but it takes a while. Balancing probably shouldn't stop sleep from proning (but currently does).
I remember Tecton mentioning in the Discord that there's work being done on making adding shrapnel happen on IED creation, for instance.