Khobai, on 12 September 2014 - 11:40 AM, said:
what about just removing anchor turn and speed tweak from the heavy/assault skill trees? give them shake reduction and damage reduction instead. It also solves the whole problem of the timber wolf maneuvering as well as most mediums. A lot of the victor nerfs could be undone then too.
I think they should completely redo the skill trees for mechs and instead of basic/elite/master make them more about the individual mechs.
They'd be skills devoted to Class which you'd unlock once for each class... small boosts designed to help mechs of that size. Light mechs, relying on speed and maneuverability, get speed tweak and twist/torso speeds unlocks here, maybe jump jet boost benefits... so their early skills are more about movement
medium mechs get a smattering of speed and maneuverability mixed with utility... their starting tree might actually a bit larger and look more like the current basic tree
heavy mechs, which are mostly large weapons platforms get the cooldown buffs (or we can do away with them entirely) or perhaps early access to weapons modules, arm movement, convergence (if it did anything), ect... mostly about dealing damage faster/more efficiently
Assault mechs get a mix of damage dealing and defensive benefits, things like small damage reduction to torso hits might be appropriate.
At the second Tier we get sets of skills that are specific to the mech chassis... so every chassis will have a set of skills you unlock once. These skills are things that chassis is supposed to excel at, and often they'll be skills that differentiate the chassis from the general Class skills... or maybe even double up or triple up on those skills.
Example: the Dragon is SUPPOSED to be a really maneuverable harasser, so it's chassis skills focus on things like speed tweak and agility. The Jager though is much more about dishing damage so it's chassis skills might double up on the heavy mech trees earlier abilities and give it even better cooldowns for ballistic weapons and access a skill that lowers the chance for ammo to explode by 5% (assuming ammo had a REAL change to explode).
Tier 3 is about variant specific skills... these should complement the mechs quirk tree and help define a specific role for each variant. Special abilities could be placed here...
Maybe the Spider 5V is the dedicated scout of the bunch so it might get a skill unlock that gives it a free module slot that always filled with a FREE UAV at the begining of each game... it can still pack on a second one for cash if it wants, but it's always got the one to use.
Maybe the Spider 5D, as the most highly mobile ECM unit is intended to play more solo... it's ECM team bubble gets shortened but the time to lock gets a few seconds added.
Maybe the Atlas 5K get's added damage reduction to the side torsos, while the Atlas DDC gets a short range increase to the ECM field.
Basically play up the stand out feature or role of each variant in the third set.
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