Zergling, on 01 March 2017 - 08:40 PM, said:
Checked out the PTS, my thoughts:
Survival is still a 'must have'; it just costs 20 points to get the armor/structure nodes instead of 14.
Operations is still a 'must have'; it just costs 21 points for all the heat related nodes instead of 16.
Mobility is a still a 'must have'; it just costs 30 points to get all the accel/decel, turn rate and speed nodes instead of 20.
Sensors is still a 'must have'. Unlike the others, it didn't increase in cost, still 19 points.
The problem here? It costs 90 out of 91 points to get all the 'must have' nodes. This new PTS suffers from there not being enough skill points available to specialise in any sort of weapons.
Further, the firepower tree isn't that good; it spreads things like range, velocity and heat generation out through the energy, missile and ballistic nodes, which forces players to take many worthless nodes just to get those they want.
Eg, if you want to spec for laser duration and range, it costs 22 points to get -15% laser duration and +7.5% range (in addition to -3% heat gen and -3.2% cooldown).
Specing for more range forces the player to go over into missile and ballistics, forcing points to be wasted on things like gauss charge, magazine capacity, LBX spread, missile spread, resulting in a cost of 13 points for another 7.5% range!
Frankly, at this point I believe the entire 'tree' idea should be thrown out, and just let players spend points on the bonuses they want.
The amount of bonus given by each skill point can then be weighted directly against each other, and players won't have to spend points on worthless bonuses.
Gotta say, I need to disagree with regards to the weapon tree.
A major problem with the current module system and with the old weapon system was running multiple weapon types was inherently disadvantageous.
Now, your skill points are shared between weapons. If you run a single-weapon mech, you're not going to invest a whole lot of points into the Weapon tree, but you're also not going to get the absolute maximum to heat gen/cooldown/range. Or you're going to have a couple extra points spent that don't really benefit you.
So, if you're investing heavily in the Weapons tree, it behooves you to run two weapon types: I found, with a laser+ballistic build, I was able to get basically all the range/heat gen/etc, and those applied to both my weapon types. I couldn't get *one* Cooldown (-.65%) node without buying an unnecessary skill, so I just didn't get that one. It's just 0.65% cooldown anyways.
If you're just running one weapon, then yeah, just invest in that weapon and the nearby nodes. It saves points for other things.
Why this is important:
For me, build dependant, I'd sooner invest more points in weapons and less in sensors, because I don't really care much about them. Operations, as well - Sure, I lose cool running, the only REALLY important skill in Operations, which is 10% dissipation, and I'm also losing 15% heat capacity. However, I'm gaining -8% Heat Generation. So, if I'm generating 8% less heat in the first place, I need less capacity AND dissipation. So, investing heavily in weapons has covered all but 2% dissipation and 7% capacity. That's pretty damned close in the grand scheme of things, AND I'm packing more ammo, have lower UAC jam changes, enhanced range and projectile speed, etc, etc, etc.
If I just ran a single weapon type, I wouldn't invest so heavily in Weapons and would instead consider Operations to get that heat management.
What I am seeing is a lot of harder choices. Still lots of "filler" to force people to pay more for certain skills: Specifically in Operations, getting those heat management skills costs a lot: you need all 25 points to get them all, and basically only 10 points is actually worthwhile. This really reduces the "must have" nature here.
Edited by Wintersdark, 02 March 2017 - 08:54 AM.
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