I'm pleased to announce that I will be organizing a 2-versus-2 duel tournament! Depending on how many teams sign up, we may go straight into elimination rounds with pairings decided randomly, or have an additional round-robin series to narrow down the top few teams vying for first place.

Fights will take place in the coming weeks, with the date of the finals decided at a later point in time. Each person may only sign up once, and cannot participate in multiple teams.  

To keep all contestants on equal footing, the above contest will be restricted to those at MIL 75. For those BELOW MIL 75, fret not! I shall hold a Free-for-all 2-versus-2 tournament just for you as well. The date and time for this lower-MIL fight will be announced later as well. 

Prizes: (Prizes below are per team, NOT per person per team)

MIL 75 bracket Teams
1st place: 400 Credits
2nd place: 200 Credits
3rd place: 100 Credits

Below-75 MIL Teams (FFA)
1st place: 200 Credits
Participation prize: 5 credits to ALL participants in this bracket

All other donations for prizes are also welcome!

Thank you all for reading this far. For now, to register, please send me a message (in game to Xuthori) with the following details: TEAM NAME, Team members, MIL bracket. 

DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION IS Starsday in the 3rd week of Starmourn, 961 A.E.
(//That should be 20 Dec 2020, Sunday 0000 hrs GMT)

Other rules/restrictions/information:
- Duels and Spars to take place in Arenas UNLESS OTHERWISE AGREED to BETWEEN TEAMS (Its come to my attention that this can probably only be achieved via FFAs, but I'll figure this out - worst case scenario ppl just duel out in the open and I'll reimburse the clone costs.)
- No class combination restrictions (I'm aware 2x BEAST can out damage ez, but I'll keep it open for now unless people think this pairing should be banned for sure.)
- You may change classes BETWEEN fights
- No COSMPIERCER POWERS ALLOWED
- (new rule in case open area duel) - No outside interference allowed. And no rezz'ing allowed - each participant only has one life per match 

For more information, feedback, or comments, please contact me directly via Message (in game to Xuthori)!

Come forth and test your might!!

-Xuthori

//OOC: This is my first time organizing something like this, so if there are any serious imbalances or things I may not have thought about, please let me know!

• 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. 

First tier ("Alpha powers"??) cosmipowers: Largely focused around PvE QoL skills with FEW pvp focused skills (mainly geared towards cache runs), mostly passive. Any active/on demand powers require item (crystals maybe?) to activate.

Second tier ("Lambda powers"??) cosmipowers: largely focused around cosmipiercer PvP, both for defending and attacking player-held cosmipiercers. Warping, disrupting, etc.

Reduce the number of cosmipiercers

There's too many cosmipiercers, and not enough reasons to hold more than whatever you need. Why not bring the number of cosmipiercers down to just four. The rest either go inert, phase out of realspace, fuse together, blow up, get towed into Y'saari space because [CLASSIFIED]... Anything to ramp up the mystery give an adequate RP reason for the reduction of these structures while reducing the number of them.

- Every faction has ONE cosmi attached to their faction, which enables them to maintain whatever first tier powers they have unlocked, maintained by feeding the cosmipiercer crystals on a regular basis or by feeding it resources. Resources being the weaker of the two options, naturally, but markedly safer to get at compared to caches.

- Every faction can use their PTP network to get to their cosmipiercer, even during an Ishvana incursion.

Second tier is only attainable by capturing the one remaining cosmipiercer from an opposing force, or the Ishvana.

- Second tier lets factions rapidly research and activate any ONE previously locked power, either tier one or tier two.
- Free usage of first tier powers
- If kept for a Sync, the faction holding it gets another research credit to open another tier one or two power. Earned every Sync.
- Flat percentage chance of the Ishvana attacking the fourth cosmi, with a steady increase per Sync (starts at 28% after lockdown, then increases by 10% every sync after that)

Keep the Ishvana blitz reset cause it is cool as hell

If any of the following is possible, awesome.

Ishvana incursion unleashes xenoslayer type mobs, and instead of it being a room full of mobs, it just one mob, written to look like a crowd maybe? Triggered manually by those with the guards factionpower (im not married to the idea, i just like on-demand) and also 50/50 chance every 7 Syncs.
Repelling the attack gives you one research credit for a tier one power. If fully unlocked, your faction gets free tier one power usage until the next Sync, but those with guard factionpowers lose the ability for on-demand incursion. Ishvana CAN and will attack the fourth cosmi from time to time, and when that happens, that cosmi becomes instanced like cache raids but faction based. The faction that repells the incursion on the fourth cosmi will gain control of it, which boots out the others. Cosmi then goes on lockdown for 22 hours(?) and is protected from attack.

CAC integration cause it needs our love too

I am suggesting this after the fact as I just had this idea after writing everything above, and it is not a completely formed (to me) idea

- Slotting slivers into the CAC to scramble the Ishvana's combat algorithms, and you can choose to strengthen or weaken the incursion of your held cosmipiercer
- Stronger incursion - More XP, better junk drops, ???
- Weaker incursion - Easier to do, useful if you don't have people on hand or want to bring newbies.
- CAC XP bonuses become passive tier one bonuses, stat boosts stay.

Hacking the CAC will grant the hacker the ability to scramble the cosmipiercer(s) making increasing transit time from PTP networks and transfer between 45-110 crystals from the hacked faction's storage.

 ??? idk, i made this up right before posting because I had a "hmm, but what about..." type thought last minute.

-- Updates - #124 -------------------------------------------------------------

Date:     02/14/2019 at 18:55

Author:   Garryn, the Reshaper

Subject:  EM attacks.

The old concept of EM damage didn't really work very well, and as such, is now reworked!

* EM buildup / wearoff is removed, EM is a damage type like the others, with some specifics

* All robots and similar targets now have 20% resists to all forms of damage except EM

* Non-robots have a 50% resistance to EM damage

* When you hit a non-robot with EM damage, there is a 2-second window. If the target uses any tech

attack during this window, they get hit for some more damage, as well as muscular damage

* Dampening (Suittech) removed, added EMShot to MWP

* Disrupt (Bots) now gives electrical damage and the scaling has changed

* Degauss (Bots) makes bots/turrets temporarily immune to EM attacks

* Shock (Gadgets) changed to give EM damage only, not an EM/electric combo

* Magnetize (Gadgets) changed to give muscular damage scaling to shrapnel count

* Magnotron (Gadgets) upgraded a bit

* Gaussify (Gadgets) changed to give elec damage scaling to muscular

* Gaussmeter (Gadgets) removed

* Switchout (Gunslinging) removed

* Grounding (Oblivion) changed to block forced movement on everyone in the room (voluntary movement

still works)

* Affinity (Nanotech) still gives +25% damage, but duration now depends on sensory subsys damage

  - experimental, may downtone it if it proves too powerful

* Discharge (Skirmishing) and EMStatus (Skirmishing) removed

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• We're going to be increasing the time taken in the regeneration sequence by a factor of 3

• INRs will be encrypted for (tentatively) 30 minutes after death, preventing anyone bar the owner from being able to scan them.
• INRs will drop on logout/death.
• MS TRACK will show the location of your INR while it is still in the corpse.

• If a player dies in PVP defending their faction (in an area that's affiliated with their faction org), reduce the cloning fee by 90%.