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I will leave my long post here trying to give feedback to the whole PTS setup.
If you like, you can also take some time to give a long feedback, or just pick some of the topics.
Overall
The skill tree looks decent on first sight.
Many choices for specialization in weapons and your mech.
But, most likely the majority will spec full Survival and Mech-Ops branch on all mechs, part of InfoTech and Movement branch and then specialize in few weapons with the last few points. Not sure if players will even skip mech specific branches for more weapons instead of just boating a single type to have enough SP for the mech branches (Survival, Infotech, Mech-Ops…)
It might be better to limit the amount of Mech-based branches (e.g. max 30 points in these).
The number of SP per branch could be increased and some connections reshuffled to allow for more specialization with less sacrifice.
E.g. the Gauss branch requires to spec multiple Charge and Velocity nodes to get Cooldown or Range.
The cooldown bonus is only 5% (for 5 Nodes)
Most SP should provide a value of 1 or higher to make it worth to spec it at all.
0.8 values for a SP seems to be very small and overall benefit of anything below 10% is hardly noticeable or worth it.
Targeting the end-result of weapon bonus to be around 10% for Clan and 12% for IS should be the best approach. In case of IS mechs, the inherent quirks can help in that part, but should not be the basis of the skill values for all mechs.
Inherent Quirks
Keeping the mech quirks in addition might be a good thing also for the longer term, as it will still push the low-performers.
The reduction of weapon specific quirks in many cases are also good. The overall result looks very good imho.
Changing the current quirks to give a multiplier to certain branches could also be an option
e.g. turning the 50% PPC velocity and 10% PPC heat quirk into a +50% PPC skill efficiency.
So skilling 20% velocity and 5% heat multiplied by 50% would give you 30% velocity and 7.5% heat skills.
Cost
In general it’s expected to be similar to current cost if you used some module in every mech. But Module swapping made it cheap for people with large Mech count.
Comparing the max cost to the current Mech + Modules give different results for how players used Modules in the current game.
If the players never got Modules, the SP cost is very high, while players who have 2-5 expensive modules per mech are saving CBills now.
One way to overcome these could be to give different cost to Module-like skills (e.g. Weapon classes and also Seismic, Radar-Dep etc.) or increase the count of the Nodes required to gain max effect.
For easier implementation there could be “Elite” skills which give more boost and will cost a lot, while the rest of the skills will cost less. With the same cost as end result, the player could choose for the lower skills with less cost or Elite the Mech to have the special Elite skills (giving more bonus to weapon CD/Range or sensor bonus like Seismic).
Option 1 (more nodes, current pricing)
e.g. Seismic sensor node count increased from 2 (100m each) to 5 (40m each) for a total of 200m (same).
e.g. Gauss Cooldown node from 5 (1% each) to 10 (1% each) for a total of 10%
Option 2 (Elite skill nodes, all basic nodes only cost half, Elite cost more).
e.g. Seismic sensor is one Elite node and provides 200m for 3-6mio CBills (current price or more)
e.g. Gauss Cooldown node at the end of the branch as single Elite node provides 10% fo 3-6 mio CBills
Option 3 (Mixed Basic and Elite nodes, all basic nodes cost half, Elite cost more).
e.g. Seismic sensor 1-4 provide 25m for normal (cheap) price, Seismic5 (Elite) provides 100m for 4x the price and is deep down in the branch.
e.g. Gauss Cooldown 1-5 provide 1% each node and the Gauss Cooldown 6 (Elite) node at the end of the branch provides additional 5% fo 1-3 mio CBills
EDIT:
Option4 (Increased cost deeper the branches, the more SP you spend)
e.g. skills cost less on top of the branches and more CBills/XP deep down the branch
e.g. first 30 skills cost less than next 30 and the last 31 will cost even more.
This would give beginners the ability to get cheap survival skills and then move further down if they got enough games (for XP and CBills) in the mech to decide and spend the expensive points.
EDIT:
BONUS for multiple variants of the same chassis or same variant!
Reduce the cost for additional variants of the same chassis by 33% (e.g. HBK-4P and a HBK-4G) and further increase the discount if you have multiples of the same variant (e.g. 2x HBK-4G) by total of 66%.
That way you give people a reason to USE and OWN multiple variants rather than picking only one.
This also provides a reason for all the collectors who want /already own over 100 mechs.
EDIT:
Role diversity
Using different amount of max cap for skill classes would actually mimik the current Module slot distribution quite well (e.g. x Weapon modules, y mech modules, z consumables).
For more fun and diversity, we could have different amount of SP per class on different mechs.
e.g. Weapon / Mech / InfoTech (incl. Aux) distribution of
light = 20 / 30 / 41
med = 20 / 40 / 31
heavy = 30 / 30 / 31
assault = 35 / 25 / 21
Respec
If the above Elite skills could not be implemented, the re-spec CBill cost could be removed (or give discount, e.g. if you respect only one branch) as the spending of SP is already costing CBills.
If specing the same nodes again and again will cost the same CBill price every time, you will run out of CBills very fast, but will sit on XP and GXP at some time without the ability to use it up as fast as you spend CBills.
If the mech has all 91 SP, you should not need to “buy” the SP anymore and should only require the respect fee and the XP required for each Node.
Another option could be to spend more XP than CBills if you respect. That would also provide benefit to all the XP conversion (cost MC) and the GXP you gain in the game, as well as Champion variants.
Synergy of branches/classes
As the players will likely try to max the efficiency of their loadout and use of SP, they will focus on a single weapon or maybe two and use SP for survival and mech-ops.
To give a bonus to multi-weapon builds, the skill tree could have inter-branch synergies for multi weapons.
e.g. if specing 10 SP into laser and 10 SP into UACs, you would get 10% bonus effect on both branches skills. Specing a third branch could then push this by another 10% for all branches.
e.g. Laser range and cooldown of 10% skills from Laser branch with 10 SP + 10 SP from UAC branch and 10 SP from SRM branch would be boosted by the 20% synergy for a total of 12% effect.
e.g. If someone would go crazy and skill 5 different weapon branches (Laser, PPC, SRM, LRM, AC), the 40% bonus to all of these skills would push that 10% range skill to 14%.
Not a big difference, but a bonus which adds up in total and might make a weapon platform build interesting for players.
Difference between Mech Weight Classes on Skills
It’s good to have the smaller mechs gaining more from certain skills
The difference could be increased and could be also affecting other Infotech skills like Radar Dep and Target Decay.
Skill Class specific
• Firepower
See above for weapon synergies.
Could use more nodes for total of 10-12% effect (especially cooldown).
• Survival
Almost must-have for all builds!
• Mobility
Upper Body seems to have too many Arm nodes and requires you to spend many unwanted points to get the Torso skills.
Jump Jet nodes are not very attractive
• Operations
Nearly a must-have
• Infotech
Very useful and many skills are easy to get (Seismic, Radar-Dep), even if counting the other Nodes required to reach. Might need to increase count for the strong ones (Seismic)
conclusion for the classes/branches:
I think the whole Mech-Ops, Survival and Movement branches should have a total cap, so you have to choose between being more tough, or having better agility, or better sensors or better heat control.
e.g. 30 points max for these skill classes/branches.
Then the weapons and InfoTech should be the rest of the points (e.g. 61).
That would also give you more points to spend on multiple weapons rather than puthing 60+ into your mech.
Giving you more reason to actually spec AND use multiple weapons instead of single weapon type and boating that.
UI specific
• 'Mech Enhancements Window
• Compatibility Alerts
• New XP Conversion Interface
• Transferring Historical XP (HXP)
Looks good so far.
Game balance
• Component Health / Critical hit changes
Crits are ok, but in most cases the mech is doomed quite fast if you lose armor, so the impact of crits is most noticeable if you have a large health pool (heavy and assault).
Anything with low structure health (e.g. Med/Light without extra structure bonus) is going to lose the component section without noticing the critical hit at all.
Component health and total structure could be doubled over the board to increase TTK.
• Target Info Gathering
More from the previous InfoTech PTS4 could be included here.
More range differences and especially the ECM change (no hard-counter for LRM locks).
With the Mech Class specific ranges and Mech Class specific SP range increases, the InfoTech for scouting might be finally interesting, but it needs to be a big difference between Assault and Light (e.g. 500m vs 1200m).
Adding more consumables to the Aux branch would bring more reason than just the UAV.
• ECM
Good move to make the default range of ECM less effective.
Not sure if the investment will limit ECM specs much, if they boat single weapons, they should have enough SP.
• Targeting Computers
Looks OK on paper
• IS vs Clan balance
SP providing more for IS than Clan is a good start, but 0.8 values for a SP seems to be very small and overall benefit of anything below 10% is hardly noticeable or worth it.
Targeting end result of weapon bonus to be around 10% for Clan and 12% for IS should be the best approach. In case of IS mechs, the inherent quirks can help in that part, but not for all mechs.
• Ballistic Weapons
• Energy Weapons
• Missile Weapons
Looks good on paper for the Crit changes.
Edited by Reno Blade, 18 February 2017 - 06:56 AM.
