Does Gadgeteering Need An Rework?

circleofpsi · December 2017

So, been trying to make an ideal build for my revamped techno-crh, but I've been struggling with ideal ways to do so, as we lack of any good " Gadgeteering" powers. or overall "Technology".

So, this is both an normal discussion and a small build tipping. Ideally: I'm looking for new powers that fit around a technologically advanced set, that uses "Plasma"/"Lazer" weapons and due to this crh, is a doctor/medic, powers that fit around there (Healing Drones, or special nanites, etc)

But we lack alot of such good powers, examples are say like from:

XCOM 2: Specialist/SPARK Class, that uses an Drone, as most of their "Powers", while they can have Mag/Plasma weapons.

Warframe: Frames like, Nova/Vauban/Octavia/Volt/Mag also spring to mind as controlling tech.

While we have great examples, we lack great powers.

So what you guys think?

Unknown · December 2017

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pantagruel01 · December 2017

Gadgeteering has a bunch of powers that are handy to cherrypick, but building a dedicated gadgeteer does not work well.

theravenforce · December 2017

pantagruel01 said:
Gadgeteering has a bunch of powers that are handy to cherrypick, but building a dedicated gadgeteer does not work well.

^ I think that pretty much sums up Gadgeteering's current situation.

I remember being a bit miffed when I read Gadgeteering both in the Champs Powers book, and the description given in game for the power set, and yet...there were so many things missing.

I'd like a more futuristic take on gadgeteering, and maybe that will happen one day.

Ideally, Gadgeteering would retain some element of quirkiness, but have an overall, stronger feel with it being able to be fully self sufficient.

(I've always wanted a Hybrid / Support passive which is a mix between Medical Nanites and AoRP and buffs pet damage and resistance.)

I would imagine a gadgeteering review, would have to come after a pet AI review / update. Which is unlikely to be in the cards, so I think if gadgeteering was to be looked at any time soon...it would be a heavy focus on actual gadgets which players can use directly as well as new particle weapons.

Unknown · December 2017

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aesica · December 2017

Yes, and when the revamp happens, it should probably split gadgeteering into two distinct categories:

- High-tech scifi stuff
- Batman-style gadget stuff

legendarylycan · December 2017

better yet, split the high tech stuff off into its own powerset, like laser sword got split off power armor

magpieuk2014 · December 2017

Yup. At the moment Gadgeteering fails the "what do I make with this?" test. Very bitty and not really clear what type of hero you'd make with it.

Overall I'd like....

1) Energy pistols/rifles etc moved off into a ranged energy subset of Laser Sword (Future Soldier AT)
2) A proper Tech support archetype (Juryrig as an AT)
3) A Tech pet commander, based around DoT effects and CC/debuffs (Drone Commander AT)

and finally

4) the ability to add cross-set synergies to blast attacks through on-next-hit powers. Always seems daft to me that CO insists on having individual set versions of each attack and debuff type. Your true gadgeteer would have just have a gun and different types of ammunition, picking the appropriate type for their enemy.

spinnytop · December 2017

I dunno about splitting Gadgeteering up. It's actually the one set that seems perfectly suited to having a bunch of different things thrown together since wtf even is a gadget? There really isn't enough there to split anything off either - a "laser weapons" powerset would basically be munitions-lite. Better to keep them together and make them play to the theme of the set even more, rather than less. Like other sets it needs a good tight central loop but I would love it if it kept a lot of its "look at all this stuff I dumped out on a table" flavor. Would especially love if it was heavily cooldown ability based so you really feel like you have a bunch of gadgets you're using, rather than just an attack rotation.

circleofpsi · December 2017

Lets hope its on the next drawing board.

magpieuk2014 · December 2017

There really isn't enough there to split anything off either - a "laser weapons" powerset would basically be munitions-lite

Yup. Nothing wrong with that. We have a game full of enemies and allies with laser rifles, pulson lazers, Brickbuster guns..... but heroes have a few gadget weapons. Energy weapons already have a suitable passive (Quantum Stabiliser), toggle forms and EU available, and even nice synergies between melee and ranged powers. It's an easy gap to fill and one that would be quite popular as a character style. Then you can make the Gadgeteer weapons more about Crowd Control, Holds etc, with a pile of eccentric advantages and odd debuffs - a set of unexpected things.

spinnytop · December 2017

magpieuk2014 said:
Then you can make the Gadgeteer weapons more about Crowd Control, Holds etc, with a pile of eccentric advantages and odd debuffs - a set of unexpected things.

Except Gadgeteering would still need its core attack loop, which is what laser rifles/pistols are. When they broke Laser Sword out into its own set, PA didn't lose its primary means of attack. Rip laser guns out of Gadgeteering and you've only made the problem of "a set you cherry pick from but don't make a dedicated character out of" worse.

Unknown · December 2017

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aesica · December 2017

spinnytop wrote: »

Except Gadgeteering would still need its core attack loop, which is what laser rifles/pistols are. When they broke Laser Sword out into its own set, PA didn't lose its primary means of attack. Rip laser guns out of Gadgeteering and you've only made the problem of "a set you cherry pick from but don't make a dedicated character out of" worse.

Like with every framework revamp before it, it'd just be a matter of adding new powers to fill in the gaps. Assuming Exp blaster, burst ray, ion cannon, and pulse beam rifle get spliced out into their own framework, there's still ricochet throw, sonic boom generator, gas pellets, throwing blades, and the odd pre-strike effects in sonic device and toxic nanites. With the energy weapons and their particle damage out of the way, its damage types would likely be consolidated into slashing and sonic. Toxic would be a bit of an oddity, but that opens the door to possible synergy with infernal, and possibly even other sets if they add other, similar abilities for other damage types.

Edit: As for energy weapons being "munitions lite," remember there wasn't much going on with laser swords initially either. That's why you have to fill in the gaps. One could argue that it's "MA-lite" but it still feels enough like its own set to make it stand out. It all depends on how creative they can be.

spinnytop · December 2017

The difference here is, you're proposing that they make a gap first, then fill it. Seems like a rather convoluted justification. I'm not even sure what the proposed benefit is. Anything that could be in this energy weapons powerset would make just as much sense in the Gadgeteering powerset, which is essentially the "high tech weapons" set, compared to munitions the "conventional weapons" set. Laser sword was always an awkward fit in power armor since, well, it's not power armor.

magpieuk2014 · December 2017

There's nothing to say you can't put a single target ranged blast/ cone attack / 100ft single target range maintain attack back in the Gadgeteering set, spinny; there's no new animations needed, you just design the powers to go even further down the pulp sci-fi/golden age comic book route than the set currently does.

Modern energy weapons would be, like munitions, reliable, but probably wouldn't excel (I'd make it more of a debuff set that the player needed to set up for max damage, rather than that part of the whole rapid maintain/critical mechanic which is a bit commonplace and, to be honest, rather OP).

legendarylycan · December 2017

there isn't anything 'hi-tech' about a chemical pellet or a piece of curved wood...that's why the set needs to be split up

aesica · December 2017

Thing is, none of gadgeteering's powers really have the sort of rotational loop you're talking about. It's just a mess of awkward gimmicky stuff with no synergy, so really, splitting them apart isn't creating any sort of gap at all. The split I'm talking about is theme-based; a split between the high-tech, futuristic weaponry (energy weapons) vs the more modern/quirky things like batman gadgets and the other odds & ends. Several people have independently suggested they be split for basically the same reason.

spinnytop · December 2017

aesica said:
Thing is, none of gadgeteering's powers really have the sort of rotational loop you're talking about. It's just a mess of awkward gimmicky stuff with no synergy, so really, splitting them apart isn't creating any sort of gap at all. The split I'm talking about is theme-based; a split between the high-tech, futuristic weaponry (energy weapons) vs the more modern/quirky things like batman gadgets and the other odds & ends. Several people have independently suggested they be split for basically the same reason.

Hence why it's likely that the only direct attacks in the set would be used to produce that loop, rather than removing them only to have to replace them with new direct attacks. Laser guns and sonic weapons are very much in the theme of the gadgeteering set.

shadowfang240 said:
there isn't anything 'hi-tech' about a chemical pellet or a piece of curved wood...that's why the set needs to be split up

Those boomerangs aren't made of wood. Yes, chemical pellets might be the lowest of the hi-tech stuff in the set. Now let's talk about flying robots.

aesica · December 2017

There's still plenty of direct attacks to work with if you split them up.

Energy Weapons:

Experimental Blaster: Blast
Experimental Burst Ray: AoE (Cone)
Pulse Beam Rifle: Single target attack
Orbital Cannon: Cooldown/heavy AoE

Gadgets

Ricochet Throw: Blast
Throwing Blades: AoE (Cone)
Sonic Boom Generator: AoE (Sphere)
Strafing Run: Cooldown/heavy AoE

So in terms of barebones, "energy weapons" already has the basics: A blast to apply burn through/whatever, a cone AoE, a single target maintain that will likely get bumped to T3, and for fun, a heavy-hitting opener via Orbital Cannon.

Meanwhile, "gadgets" has its basics as well: A blast to apply some sort of sonic/slashing debuff, a choice of throwing blades or sonic boom generator for a cone or sphere AoE, and its on unique cooldown AoE via Strafing Run. Only thing really missing is a heavy-hitting single target ability--some sort of sound gun would probably work nicely, as would some throwing weapon barrage or whatever else. A stylistic choice between sonic-based attacks and throwy stuff would be ideal.

I should note that, aside from the blasts as debuffing abilities, pulse beam rifle, and the niche cooldown AoEs, most of those abilities are generally unpopular due to not being maintains. Since maintains-for-all seems to be the intended design direction, new powers to facilitate this would likely be added whether gadgeteering was split up or not.

Besides, keeping them all together means you have 3 major damage types to contend with instead of just 1 for energy weapons (particle) and 2 for gadgets (sonic, slashing). It also means a lot of redundant overlap. I also wouldn't be surprised if the throwy stuff found its way over to MA at some point, leaving gadgeteering as a mix of particle and sonic stuff while several of the non-toggle PA abilities found their way to gadgeteering. (If this were to happen, I'd sure hope that chest beam was refit to fire from an energy pistol or rifle)

pantagruel01 · December 2017

aesica said:

I should note that, aside from the blasts as debuffing abilities, pulse beam rifle, and the niche cooldown AoEs, most of those abilities are generally unpopular due to not being maintains.

That's not why they're unpopular. The reason they're unpopular:

Experimental Blaster: it's actually a pretty solid performer as blast powers go, but blast powers in general don't make good core dps moves.
Experimental Burst Ray: a random chance to go on cooldown is horribly annoying.
Pulse Beam Rifle: it's ugly and makes a horrible noise, but is otherwise a pretty good power.
Orbital Cannon: the delay is crippling on this power; whoever designed it vastly underestimated how crippling it actually is. It needs to either have a much shorter delay, or do ridiculous damage so people are willing to put up with the annoyance.
Ricochet Throw: see experimental blaster.
Throwing Blades: super buggy.
Sonic Boom Generator: 'meh' damage at best, and the sonic debuff is kinda useless given that there aren't other high-damage sonic powers to take advantage of it.
Strafing Run: used to be super-OP. Now not super-OP, so people aren't willing to put up with its targeting BS.

aesica · December 2017

Yeah, I suppose I should've said "one of the reasons." Of course those other things are also issues, as well as the fact that they all work horribly with the set's on EU.

magpieuk2014 · December 2017

I'm not even sure what the proposed benefit is. Anything that could be in this energy weapons powerset would make just as much sense in the Gadgeteering powerset, which is essentially the "high tech weapons" set, compared to munitions the "conventional weapons" set.

It's about updating the game world, more than anything. CO is set at a time where futuristic weapons are just starting to edge out conventional munitions; the Police still have 9mm pistols but UNTIL and VIPER are fighting with energy weapons; heroes (always being on the bleeding edge of tech) would definitely be upgrading their weapons to compete, so why not acknowledge it? The bones of a set are already there, just needs a few more powers (support / attack drones that fit with the power set's buffs/debuffs, a big slow Ion Cannon in the Force Cascade style) and they'd be good to go.

Gadgeteering itself needs a heck of a lot more work before it's ready for a revamp, but thematically it needs to be much more random, more "mad scientist".

legendarylycan · December 2017

yeah, strafing run would've been a fun power for me to use on several characters...but it is literally unusable for me the way they have it set up, because it can't be triggered at all on non-default keybind setups and i absolutely REFUSE to play with the horrible default setup just to be able to use ONE power

what would need to be done with it is just turn it into a simple click (or charge) power that uses the position of your character in relation to the target to set up the direction the strafing run takes

oh, and as to PBR being ugly...well, duh! the engine can't handle overly fancy effects on spammable powers, which is why incinerate is just a cylinder with an orange texture on it and a small FX coming off your hands...it doesn't have an impact FX

Unknown · December 2017

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legendarylycan · December 2017

i'd rather they make it like STO's orbital strike - decent burst damage and the only charge time is what happens AFTER you toggle the power

pantagruel01 · December 2017

I'd change it from a delay to instead produce the crosshair at the start of charge, do damage at the end of charge, and do damage appropriate to a 4s charge time or whatever it winds up at.

legendarylycan · December 2017

well...that's kind of how STO's orbital strike works

aesica · December 2017

No, what I think he (she? I don't actually know...) means is that the crosshair animates while you charge it, then strikes at the end of the charge (which would also be the end of the animation). In STO, it's pretty much just an instant thing that has a long activation delay.

Anyway either would be fine by me, really. Anything but the god-awful long charge followed by long delay that makes the power a pain to use.

legendarylycan · December 2017

well, i would've said a non-character animation during a charge isn't possible...but then i remembered gravity driver has one

Unknown · December 2017

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legendarylycan · December 2017

definitely; clicks are superior to charges because clicks can be fired and forgotten - if you have to block or something during a charge, you have to start all over again

pantagruel01 · December 2017

gradii said:
I'd rather it be a click with a 4 second delay after the click than a charge.

Power damage is to a large degree determined by charge time + activation time. A 4s charge power would to much more damage than a click+delay power.

Unknown · December 2017

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circleofpsi · December 2017

Yeah, tho any new type of weapons whuold be useful, rather then the little we have. And there is a ton of games out there, that they can inspire themselves from.

Magnetic/Gauss weapons or even right-up plasma beam weapons. single fire, semi and full auto beam weapons. are most wanted to. Even Continuous ones.

Ideally: Weapons, like from XCOM 2 (Mag/Beam) are quite an idea, and same goes for Warframe.

Cuz for the type of build i'm trying to make I am extremely limited in such choices.

spinnytop · December 2017

Ya, more weapons for Gadgeteering would be great since it isn't as restricted as munitions - it can have a lot of crazy stuff

rtma · December 2017

Everything they haven't touched or touched enough needs more touching up.

circleofpsi · December 2017

rtma said:
Everything they haven't touched or touched enough needs more touching up.

*Rises hand* I needed to be touched

circleofpsi · December 2017

The type of "Pistol" powers I can suggest are the following:

Magnetic Auto-pistol:

100 Feet, Single Target, Single Sidearm. (Blast)

Ranks: 20% Each (1-2)

Held down: Longer you hold, more damage (Does particle every 0.5 damage sec)

Advs: It Burns, Recharge.

Dark-lance:

100 Feet, AoE Target, Single Sidearm (Blast)

Ranks: 30% Each (1-2)

Charge Up: If Fully charged, does higher damage. (Charge time, is much faster then all powers)

Adv: Vortex Rounds: Dark-lance no longer deals Particle damage, but now deals Ego damage. (If Support Mode: It scales off Pree, If Hybrid: Ego)

rtma · December 2017

cryneting said:
*Rises hand* I needed to be touched

circleofpsi · December 2017

rtma said:

cryneting said:
*Rises hand* I needed to be touched

YEY!

magpieuk2014 · January 2018

The type of "Pistol" powers I can suggest are the following:

Can we not just have Judge Dredd's pistol? One attack that does crushing damage (like munitions) by default but which could be made to do AP, Fire, Cold, Toxic damage (whatever, really) by selecting the appropriate On-Next-Hit power.

Overall something more like the Archery set would be nice - not the highest DPS, but fast and fluid with a lot of choice in the appropriate attack to use next.

shredmonkey · January 2018

My solution for gadgets is that it's base attack, ricochet throw, be changed from slashing which has no synergy with anything else you can use from range, to crushing. If it were crushing, you could pair it with grenades to do some decent damage which also goes well with MSA and intellegence for cool own reduction and energy.... Plus they fit into a batman/hobgoblin like theme as well.

spinnytop · January 2018

shredmonkey#6879 said:
My solution for gadgets is that it's base attack, ricochet throw, be changed from slashing which has no synergy with anything else you can use from range, to crushing. If it were crushing, you could pair it with grenades to do some decent damage which also goes well with MSA and intellegence for cool own reduction and energy.... Plus they fit into a batman/hobgoblin like theme as well.

I believe it used to be crushing. Current devs changed it to slashing. Probably something to do with the batman AT and damage synergies.

kamokami · January 2018

PBR is competitive with recently revamped ranged attacks. Strafing Run is decent but could be amazing as well...esp if it started working with defense penetration and the utility dmg bonus mod. The rest of Gadgeteering needs serious help.

flowcyto · January 2018

tbh, I suspect PBR's tier position to be moved up and its energy costs greatly increased, if a revamp ever happens. Its a good attack for its position and cost now (esp since its also 100ft and doesn't lockdown). Not sure if they'll keep the ramping maintain either, as those seem to be getting phased out.

circleofpsi · April 2018

I just don't know how "Soon" this will be

I have like 3 OCs, who need gadgeteering revoked and god knows how meny other people's OCs

avianos · April 2018

I concur, The waiting game for the powerframe revamps is killing me, especially since its 2-3 months of waiting

You can be sure that after the current revamp (Single Blade) Dual Blade and Fighting Claws will propably be next
So gadgets won't berevisited any time soon $:\$

spinnytop · April 2018

cryneting said:
*Rises hand* I needed to be touched

( owo)>( o.o )

circleofpsi · April 2018

avianos said:
I concur, The waiting game for the powerframe revamps is killing me, especially since its 2-3 months of waiting

You can be sure that after the current revamp (Single Blade) Dual Blade and Fighting Claws will propably be next

So gadgets won't be revisited any time soon $:\$

Indeed, the issue on my side is that there is 3 type of builds I'm trying to make that are all connected to the gadgets tree, even if I get super grand ideas, they are easily put to sleep, due to how lacking gadgets are (DPS/Tanking/even support)

First build is a: Hacking/Tech Specialist Build, bacily just like from XCOM 2 LW (Taking Permanent control over units, useing EMPs or Support drones to add shielding or health, etc.

Second Build: Is a Telepathic & Tech user build, so "Plasma/lazer guns" with a few minor drones, and other devices, but focus heavily on Telepathic stuff (Controlling robots with dah mind)

Last Build: Is a purely support build, medical based, So nanites, drones to heal, again like the XCOM 2 one, but Support side not hacking.

Ideally the Second & Last will be fine to build for now, with the stuff we have, tho if Gad does get its rework, highly likely will revamp them.

And our magical build master "flowcyto" will delf kown when that happens, He'll hear me scream with joy before I even post the build.

o3o

circleofpsi · April 2018

spinnytop said:

cryneting said:
*Rises hand* I needed to be touched
( owo)>( o.o )

OwO

Does Gadgeteering Need An Rework?

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