How can we make the power armour gatling gun guy work?

Okay, I either thought about this for way too long or way too little, but here goes: Do it anyways.

Why? Because if you have a "washing machine lower body" (using that for ease of visualization) and you take martial arts, no leg swings out. you twist a little and the opponent reacts as if kicked, right? Great, now you have a hover robot lower body with a force field attack. Use non moving arm pods (just mechanical doo dads, anything really, I think the daleks have a plunger and an egg beater, anything works in there) and now it is complete. you martial arts punch someone. Nope! your force field waps them upside the head. You kick someone, nope, your forcefield pops them one. I can even explain the weird twitching as your body moves left or right for the punch and kicks (as your torso goes thru the martial arts moves) as you hover field absorbing the kinetic impact of the body it strikes. Okay, ya, I overthought that.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

Mostly because it comes down to stats. I can say for a fact that I will never see a point to playing a Blaster if I got an AT with the same numbers for its Blast primary but also a secondary that doesn't suck across the board. Yes, I know Blaster secondaries were strengthened recently, but they're still one of the weakest, least useful powersets in the entire game. If I can have Blasters but with even Scrapper sets (and Scrapper survival numbers), then I'd never even look at Blasters again. I'd still play Scrappers because "Sword Blast" isn't as cool as Sword Melee, but that's just why a sort of balance must be maintained.

That balance, I assume, will seek to lower the stats on everything, and I hope a "gimmick" of some sort will allow fewer numbers to go less low down.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I wouldn't say that. In fact, it's almost the exact opposite of what I'd say.

Basically, my point with the self-rooting system was to give a character perhaps more power than he really should have, but at the cost of sacrificing a very basic strength in this game, which is the ability to reposition both to avoid danger and to line up your shots better. I get that it's not everyone's thing, but it was the only one I could come up with that's not just stat-jiggling.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I like it.

You still seem to be ignoring that 'Tankmage' status has already been killed and buried with a stake through it at the crossroads since EATs came out. It's only a matter of time, IMO, till we (finally) get a Ranged/Armour or Assault/Armour AT that isn't so annoying restricted as Khelds or VEATs.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

as soon as I read this I thought "Glitterboy" from RIFTS

I agree, to work the "tank" would have to be immobile to offset the benefits of the tankmage imbalance.

However, I wouldnt just go immobile, I would:

1. the power armour doesnt just root, it locks. no turning without resetting the "lock" - takes time too unlock and re-lock.

2. All powers would then only fire within a firing arc aside from a minor blast powers that does normal damage *BUT* each time it is used it drains a charge.

3. Charges are generated while rooted at a rate of one charge per X seconds.

4. the tankmage's primary assault weapon does ticks of damage like full auto but it only does 1 tick of damage per charge built up (same for all primary weapon attacks be they chest laster or arm cannon or backpack rocket launcher).

5. when not rooted, as you say, they can use attacks but with lower damage and they cannot use any attacks that require charges

6. rooting disables all travel powers, including teleport. additionally, a rooted tankmage is immune to teleportation even by allies. A rooted tankmage is also immune to KB

a brief idea of powers:
Primary powerset:
Power armour Defensive:
1. Armour: +RES (All but Psi, elec, toxic, dark) (auto)
2. Internal Systems: + Res ( KB, stun, hold, acc debuff) (auto)
3. Rooting self immob, disables TP, self + KB prot, builds charge, -DEF (all except mez protection - the tankmage can resist damage but the lack of mobility makes them an easy target) (toggle) , activation time: 10 secs, deactivation time 5 secs, recharge, 15 secs. recharge cannot be changed.
4. Insulated Systems: + Res (elec, toxic, energy, fire, cold) (auto)
5. Life Support: self heal (+HP over time, 1 tick + 1 charge per tick) (toggle, recharge long),
6. Improved armour: +Res (smashing, lethal) (auto)
7. Ablative Armour: self +Absorb , (click) recharge long
8. Reboot: self resurrect (click)
9. Shields!: Self only affecting self, Immune to all external effects including ally heals/buffs etc. (like return to battle) (toggle, 2 charge per X seconds)

Powersuit : Offensive
1. weapon system: range close, damage low, recharge: fast
1. weapon system (ROOTED): range: medium, damage moderate, recharge: fast cost: 1 charge
2. Explosive: Ranged Targetted AoE: range medium, damage moderate recharge : medium
2. Explosive (Rooted): TAoE: range medium, damage high, recharge medium, cost 1 tick

3. Scattergun: Cone, range short: damage medium, recharge: medium
3. scattergun (Rooted): cone, range short, damage: high, recharge: fast
4. Discharge: PBAoE foe disorient requires ticks to activate, click power (a burst of energy/sound/light/ from the suit) range short, low DoT, foe disorient, foe -ACC, -DMG , Cost: 2 ticks
5. Snipe: range: long, damage: extreme, recharge: long
5. snipe Rooted: range: long, damage extreme, recharge long, rooted gives +ACC, cost 1 tick
6. Flamer/Acid spray/ poison gas: range: short (cone), damage: High DoT, recharge: medium (3 ticks)
6. Flamer (Rooted): range: short (cone), damage: Extreme DoT, recharge: medium, does 3 ticks of damage per charge (toggle attack) (attacks again per tick)
7. Seismic shock: the power armour fires off their rooting mechanism but doesnt fully engage resulting in a PBAoE shockwave, foe Knockdown, chance to stun, Rooted requires a full cycle to reset (30 seconds), high endurance cost, chance of damage to self (?)
8. Cannon: primary weapon, can only be fired while rooted: ranged: Cone, damage: High, recharge: Long, fires once per charge stored
9. Omega Maneauver: The powersuit pilot overloads the suit in an effort to ensure that if he goes, everything else goes with him. PBAoE, Damage: Extreme, Recharge: very long, Rooting disabled 5 minutes while system is repaired.

As can be seen these are just approximations of powers and not meant as a serious suggestion of what they would look like (it is a theoretical exercise after all, I am aware that a lot of tweaking would be required).

anyway, thats how I'd see a Power Suit tankmage working. Maybe with some options on damage type taken at power selection, with an ammo change power like DP or as part of the power set selection.

The powersets could possibly work like SoA power trees with a base package and then branches to allow for ranged/ crowd control / melee specialisations with defensive options to complement them (like a shield power-group to go along with crowd control or melee).

thanks for posting the thread Sam that was fun

That's kind of what my problem is, as well. What you're describing is kind of an in-between character, which isn't a BAD thing in itself, but also kind of isn't what I'm referring to. I know JUST giving this character great ranged damage AND great defence isn't going to happen, but I don't really think the right solution is to give it weak damage and weak defence. Sure, statistically that might make it "even," but that's why I'm trying to come up with a gimmick that lets the set be both tougher and more deadly than basic balance would suggest, which is offset by the opportunity cost of getting to that point, so to speak.

Consider Titan Weapons, for example. I realise some people don't like how slow the set is, but at the same time it's easily one of the game's strongest melee sets, both in single target damage and in AoE, and yet this is possible because of Momentum - the set only performs as well as it does if the user manages the set's gimmick right. To me, that's always been what gimmicks should be about - allowing something to be stronger than it should, but at the cost being harder to achieve. What gimmicks SHOULDN'T be - and Dual Pistols demonstrates this to abundant evidence - is a reason to make something WEAKER with the belief that the gimmick will then bring it up to par. That just doesn't work.

I'm trying to figure out how we can make something that's tough to kill yet isn't great at tanking, and which has solid damage at range, yet isn't obviously better than all other ranged classes. It would have to be something very drastic to permit this, and self-rooting is that kind of "drastic" I'm talking about. It's probably not a good idea, but it's sort of what I'd consider the balance point of "annoyance vs. utility."

Again, I wouldn't mind a ranged/defence hybrid that's mid-range in terms of numbers, but I don't think that'd really work as the "power armour gatling gun guy" since neither the power armour will be that great nor the gatling gun that powerful.

That actually IS a factor in Space Marine, which is my source of inspiration. A "braced" heavy weapons guy has a firing arc of about 45 degrees. Trying to shoot past this causes the character to start turning around veeery slowly. A full turn takes around 2 or 3 seconds of shuffling in place. It's not a big deal when you've picked a decent spot to "hole up" and either enemies are only coming from one direction or you have someone to cover your back, but when you start getting swarmed, you're pretty much SOL. About the only thing that makes sense is to uproot, stomp in place, run away, toss a stun grenade and brace again farther away from the enemies who mobbed you, so that now they're all relatively within 45 degrees of where you are.

I'm not sure this can work in City of Heroes, though, not if we want to reuse our existing powersets. The reason for this is most action games give you trash critters that you can usually shred in a couple of shots of auto fire, meaning you can mow them down in groups. Unless your set is all AoE, that's really not going to happen in this game, just because our attacks are slower and most of our critters don't go down in a single shot outside of corner cases. I'm actually starting to see flaws in this design in general, since critters in City of Heroes will basically swarm you and you'll end up fighting most of your fights in melee anyway.

That's kind of why I say my idea probably won't work, just because this isn't the kind of game where you can reasonably expect to knock out most enemies before they reach you as you really should expect with a character like this. Or maybe it's just late and I'm sleeping. It's possible.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Exactly the same issue with the RIFTS Glitterboy. actually the "swarm" is the reason for the existence of PBAoE powers in the offensive set, just to help clear space and buy time for the Power Armour to uproot and move elsewhere.

Honestly, I cant see the AT ever being playable solo. You come across something big enough to warrant rooting and its going to be big enough to flatten you. You dont root and you're underpowered and have a tough time with even con spawns...unless you root... its very much a case of needing to be the one doing the ambushing and not the other way round.

not necessarily true. If the toon is a tank or scrapper yes but I have had several Controllers and blasters that never go into melee unless they choose to. My main blaster does have melee attacks but only uses them as a last resort because he has feck all defense or resistance. If the powersuit tankmage is meant to have the potential firepower of a blaster and the potential defense of a tank then it should easily wipe lower level mobs on their way to melee range and weaken the powerful ones significantly, then survive melee long enough to get away (slowly).

Again, this was the reason for there only being 2 single target attacks in the suggested power list. everything else is designed for large mobs of even con.

While I agree that its very unlikely to see an AT of this type in the game (I dont think i would enjoy playing a toon that has to shuffle, stop, fire, shuffle, stop, fire and literally sit there while all my team mates zip about to achieve best position or break line of sight) , It's a fun thought-experiment and you never know, it might actually produce a post from someone that might be useful elsewhere

Well, I don't know about RIFTS, but the "Devastators" in Space Marine are actually kind of SOL in big groups. You have a choice between three weapons, and all of them have serious drawbacks. A Heavy Bolter requires you to brace, which takes time, prevents you from moving and stops you from turning faster so if you get swarmed, you need to hope someone helps you, or else you just keep running. A Lascannon is a precision weapon that deals incredible damage, but it's also a long-range weapon that lacks a crosshair unless you zoom in, making it VERY inadequate for shooting enemies close by spread all around. A Plasma Cannon is a heavy AoE weapon that kills enemies in hordes but also deals significant splash damage TO YOU if you shoot at anything even remotely in melee. The leading cause of Plasma Cannon Devastator deaths is - at least in my experience - self-inflicted.

What I mean to say this is that each of the "power armour heavy weapon guys" has a crippling weakness to being swarmed because while the heavy weapons are great at killing at range, they perform very poorly in melee. Their heavy armour is typically useful either when fighting ranged enemies at range, in which case the Devastator almost always wins, or when ignoring melee enemies for your team-mates to pull off your back while the Devastator snipe at something at range. The problem is I'm not sure this can really work in City of Heroes since a lot of how these characters operate in at least the games I've seen them in relies on finding good gunning positions and lots and lots of dodging and precise aiming, which our game relegates to stats as opposed to gameplay. And these also tend to work best when you're told to hold a position with many enemies coming to you, as opposed to moving forward and pressing through enemy positions.

That's kind of the problem I have with Devices, actually. If you're protecting a position with limited access paths, then mines, bombs, auto cannons and so forth are a great asset because it turns into tower defence. On your average fast-moving team for anything, however, all of those turn into liabilities since you're going to the enemies as opposed to the enemies coming to you. It makes the set, and indeed a Devastator Marine very situational, which is why I'm not actually that big a fan of my own idea... Bizarre as that might seem

Well, Controllers and other characters who possess control abilities are a lot easier to keep stuff out of melee with. For my Blasters, it was as simple as taking Hover, though ghosts were always a problem. The thing, though, is that even I'm not as ambitious to argue for a character with strong ranged damage, strong melee defence AND strong control abilities. That would be just waaay too much.

I know I made it sound like this, but I really wouldn't want to make literally a Tank with Blaster damage. That would be crazy and, again, make Blasters pointless. I'm fine with having stats somewhere in-between, I just don't want this to be essentially a Defender with Stalker survivability, which is about the opposite end of the spectrum. Basically, I just want a ranged character who feels "heavy," which aside from Spiders (which I haven't played) we don't really have. That's one big problem I have with the standard MMO balancing, in that you can never be heavy AND ranged, just one or the other. More specifically, that if you ARE ranged, you have to be squishy and play nimble.

We call them "tanks," but our Tankers really don't act like their namesake. Consider that the heaviest of actual tanks tend to have both the thickest armour AND the biggest guns, and are typically brought down by mobility issues of terrain, bridges, speed and manoeuvrability. Right now, we can sacrifice damage for protection or protection for damage, but at no point can we sacrificie mobility for anything which isn't Stone Armour. And again - I wouldn't mind Stone Armour's Rooted or Granite Armour slowing me to all the speed of continental drift if the attack set it came with didn't require me to move around to stay in melee range. The truth of the matter is that a very slow, very unmanoeuvrable character is still workable provided that character has a decent reach, whereupon "movement" becomes a question of location and positioning and not a question of range.

As you say, I myself am not convinced such a concept is really workable, or if it's not too narrow enough. I want a "heavy," yes, but I don't know if this isn't too limiting a concept good for, say, one set (Stone Armour already does this) rather than an AT gimmick. What I'm saying, though, is if such an AT is to exist, I don't want it to be the WORST of melee and ranged characters. I can't ask for it to be the best, that'd be ludicrous, but I want for it to be decent, through the use of a gimmick. While range as a form of defence is, and has always been, a lie, the truth is ranged damage will always be better than melee damage for the simple matter of the convenience of range, so a Blast/Defence character will need to have lower stats than a Melee/Defence character just for the sake of logic. But what I'm saying is I don't think it needs to have MUCH lower stats, and would rather have a gimmick involved than just a downward balancing in play.

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This doesn't change the main question of the thread, though I think it narrows it down a bit:

How cam we make the power armour gatling gun guy work, without just jamming all his stats to the lowest possible settings to offset the benefit of his range and defences?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Actually Another MMORPG's (TM) has precisely this class. (powered armour, with, depending on side, gatling guns or pistols) they wear heavy armour, can spec as ranged tank or as heavy DPS.

The difference of course is that said game has a far different balancing mechanic.

There is a point in that mobility doesen't quite translate well into COH (it does translate slightly better in certain circumstances, especially PVP, in other games, said game for instance also has a self-rooting ranged DPS class) the problem is that MMO's are, essentially, attack-target based, and so the benefits of mobility re: harder to track doesen't exactly exist.

Hmm... That could work. It's less restricting than rooting, but it does have the problem of I don't think it can work on ice or in the presence of knockback, since I think those still count as movement. I know for a fact that you can almost never use an interruptible power while standing on, say, the ice in Frostfire's building or the oil slicks in, um... Oil Slick, Port Oakes.

Yeah, that's part of what I refer to as "click and kill." That doesn't mean they have to be, of course - even we have the Vorpal Judgement Incarnate power that fires in a forward come without needing a target. As well, "action MMOs" have been showing up of late. Stuff like Spiral Knights, Tera, Vindictus and so on tend to play more like action games with stats than the "stat duel" that we have here, and in some of them, mobility does come into play. I'd say it's less that MMOs are like this and more that traditional MMOs tend to follow this model.

But suppose we're stuck with it. CAN we have a power armour minigun guy when the game essentially takes movement and aiming almost entirely out of the equation?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I should point out there's a reason for this (and a reason we're starting to see more action-y MMORPG's now) latency.

Lag can be smoothed over a lot more in traditional RPG's (even a relatively fast-paced one lie COH) compared to FPS:es or similar. (Which as probably the reason the original Planetside remaiend all-but unique)

Take a look at the MMO's coming out of Korea and Japan today and you'll see that some like Vindictus suffer horribly when in the US simply because our broadband platform is crap. It doesn't help that people are trying to send packets from NY to LA and back to Chicago to do the same things as people trying to send info from Seoul to down the street and back.

Light speed delay is a real problem for MMO's that try to be too actiony. that's part of the reason so many stick to the target enemy and click buttons approach. What's funny is that maybe 20 years from now, those of us in the US will be able to catch up to the first world countries of MMO gaming.

I agree with you. One BIG reason I bought City of Heroes... Well, not so much a reason FOR buying as not a reason AGAINST it... Was that the game is click-and-kill. Back in 2004, I was running... Not quite dial-up, but something with horrible latency and terrible download, so I knew the only MMO I'd be able to play would one where latency wasn't an issue. I play this game with around 250-300 ping routinely, and I barely notice it.

That said, I HAVE actually seen games with VERY aggressive latency compensation. Space Marine, again, basically takes what's happening on my screen directly. If I see an enemy and shoot him in the face on my screen, he's shot in the face on the server side, as well... I just might need to wait a couple of seconds to actually see him keel over and die. I've seen straight beams curve, I've seen them shoot sideways out of guns and more, but what it means is that no matter how **** my connection may be, I don't have to worry about it, because I can play by what I see on MY screen and the server will accept it.

I assume this is much more open to cheating, yes, but I'm not well enough versed in networking to know either way.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I believe that the server ticks are roughly 0.333 seconds... so a ping of 333 or higher can have problems. When your ping goes above that, then you will start to have troubles with powers not clicking properly.. recharging when not fully ready etc etc... 1/3 of a second actually *isnt* all that much when you think about it, so we tend to not notice it. 1/2 second or higher latency *is* noticable, even in City of Heroes.

To be honest what you are seeing is the downside (or upside) of a server that is pretty much 100% trusting of the client (although for console games, this isnt so much of a problem, because those that cheat tend to do it *obviously*)

And to be honest, it isnt all that much of a problem if it is just the one person who is suffering from "lag"... they might actually have a fairly large window for the hits (quite possibly up to 100-150ms lag, if not slightly higher). Sucks though if you are killed by someone who was laggy and you moved before they fired!

However, once again, if you start suffering *severe* latency, I am sure that you will have problems. I have read on several MMO forums (eve online for example), that as soon as you release the client, it is in enemy hands, and information from that should not be trusted. However, due to server costs/loads they normally make the client fairly trustworthy (depends as to how much... if you trust the client 100%, then teleport hacks, god mode, latency hacking can easily become a large problem)

*shrugs* Space Marine (when played online) is just limited to 16 players *maximum*. Latency starts to become more of an issue the more players that are involved, especially in FPS games, where no matter your reflexes, as soon as you have a *significantly* higher latency than other players, you are at a large disadvantage (although you can combat this with skill, leading more with your guns...), although you would want to try to avoid "fast reaction time" situations.

A game like Space Marine is several orders of magnitude less complex than COH. You have at max maybe 30-ish players. Compared that to the number of players and enemies in a regular map in COH.

Getting decent (if not perfect) latency for these kinds of games is old hat: Even Quake could do it assuming everyone had decent computers, good enough connections, and a decent server.