Neocron 2 Skills Guide [English & French]

[Dribble Joy]

OmG love your post and everything you say is what I feel, too. Makes sense.

/backs away slowly...

[Dirus]

I don't agree unfortunately and I have multiple reasons for why I don't.

1) The class of weapon is used by PE's & Spies

2) a TL100 Weapon is 20TL's over the Cap of a PE, Where as the highest for a Spy is 13TL's over.

3) The lines between Offensive Setup, Defensive Setups, Tradeskilling Setups needs to be unblurred. Arguing that a Pistol PE may lose their ability to Implant at TL115 if they want to completely cap a weapon thats 20TL's over their DEX Cap is not a valid issue to me. Especially when it wasn't even an option before no matter how much they put towards the weapon.

4) I can not cater to one play style out of many especially when I'm dealing with 2 classes and the one making the most noise is the lesser of the two.

It's a balance issue. If I boost Pistol PE's to the point where they can completely cap a TL100 HighTech Pistol & Implant at 115, What happens to the Spies? Those who push their limits and strive for either as much damage, or as much defense need to have an advantage over those who want to be able to do everything especially when they're the lower class.

The only part of the community that seems to really push for this it seems are those who try to push those limits and don't get any benefit. Like the people who spec 250 in CST and don't like the fact that someone with 150 can do as good as them with the exception of slot chances and speed.

[Dribble Joy]

As I stated in a thread in the new runner section, I am more or less in favour of specialisation, simply because it does NOT allow us to do everything we want to. We are forced by it to make choices and sacrifices if we want to go full combat or full tradeskill or anywhere inbetween.
So yes I would be in favour of this change to pistol freq calculation, but only if it didn't effect the balance between rifles and pistol in the way that it will.
Pistollers WILL be at an advantage to riflers in any encounter where they both can engage each other. That is where I don't like this.
Obviously this is my personal opinion so it is completely dissmissable, but I would rather pistols and rifle be equal in thier basic combat effectiveness, and abilities above and beyond that to be represtented by additional skilling.

[Dirus]

As I stated in a thread in the new runner section, I am more or less in favour of specialisation, simply because it does NOT allow us to do everything we want to. We are forced by it to make choices and sacrifices if we want to go full combat or full tradeskill or anywhere inbetween.
So yes I would be in favour of this change to pistol freq calculation, but only if it didn't effect the balance between rifles and pistol in the way that it will.
Pistollers WILL be at an advantage to riflers in any encounter where they both can engage each other. That is where I don't like this.
Obviously this is my personal opinion so it is completely dissmissable, but I would rather pistols and rifle be equal in thier basic combat effectiveness, and abilities above and beyond that to be represtented by additional skilling.

Rifles vs Pistols suffer from other issues and if they weren't ingame the whole idea of WEP wouldnt really be that much of an issue. when you compare MC to PC and RC, your forgetting the fact that AGL is to MC what WEP is to PC & RC.

[Sophie]

Are the vehicle weapons considered like heavy weapons? Or are there seperat formulas?

[Siygess]

@Sophie: I'm 99% sure that HC includes the vehicle mounted weapons.

@Lupus: Before you read the rest of this post, I want to make it clear that, as usual, we (I) appreciate the hard work that you have put into NC2 so far, especially the new skill guide and % distribution. However..

I can not cater to one play style out of many especially when I'm dealing with 2 classes and the one making the most noise is the lesser of the two.

Those who push their limits and strive for either as much damage, or as much defense need to have an advantage over those who want to be able to do everything especially when they're the lower class.

You see, things like that really tick me off - It implies that A) The PE is an inferior class because he does not have any stats that cap at 100 and B) The concept of the so-called"lower" class is entirely flawed and poorly thought out because the sum of it's flexibility is not be allowed to equal the sum of a specialised character.

Its like saying 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 shouldn't be allowed to equal 100 because 25 + 75 also equals 100.

I understand that the PE's must make it much more difficult to balance skills and classes in a system that is perhaps increasingly encouraging specialisation, but KK really needs to sort it out. If the template for the PE doesn't fit with NC2's roadmap, then for goodness sake, rebuild the PE template or scrap it altogether.

Roll on "PE" week, thats what I say

[Dirus]

@Sophie: I'm 99% sure that HC includes the vehicle mounted weapons.

@Lupus: Before you read the rest of this post, I want to make it clear that, as usual, we (I) appreciate the hard work that you have put into NC2 so far, especially the new skill guide and % distribution. However..





You see, things like that really tick me off - It implies that A) The PE is an inferior class because he does not have any stats that cap at 100 and B) The concept of the so-called"lower" class is entirely flawed and poorly thought out because the sum of it's flexibility is not be allowed to equal the sum of a specialised character.

Its like saying 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 shouldn't be allowed to equal 100 because 25 + 75 also equals 100.

I understand that the PE's must make it much more difficult to balance skills and classes in a system that is perhaps increasingly encouraging specialisation, but KK really needs to sort it out. If the template for the PE doesn't fit with NC2's roadmap, then for goodness sake, rebuild the PE template or scrap it altogether.

Roll on "PE" week, thats what I say

5.2. 1 Private Eye
The Private Eye is not specialized in any particular area. All his skills are relatively weak at the beginning, yet equally developed. A player choosing this class for his character strives for equal skill levels in all areas, but must be aware or the fact that he can never be as good in any one skill as a class specializing in that particular area.

Strengths:
• No real weaknesses
• Versatility

Weaknesses:
• Equality in all skill levels, but limited in their development
• No real specialties.

A Judge using PE was the basis point for reworking the Pistol skills. In fact I used the info I was given in the thread where I requested player setups for most of the reworks.

With that said I took a PE that was had a setup that leaned towards as much pistol boosting implants as they could get, not including Pistol Combat booster 3, nor any drugs. Then with the exception of DEX since that has to be a minimum of 100, I took 90% of what I got PC & WEP wise and adjusted the skills so that it would be enough to cap the Judge.

That still leaves room for those PE's who want to reach for even higher since they have an additional 10% or so ontop plus they can get into using drugs, and high level PPU buffs as well.

Tradeskilling at a TL115 level as well as capping a weapon that is 20TL's over what your character reaches base wise is I'm sure likely to be possible with the right setup and access to things like Op's or lvl3 buffs, or drugs. However those areas are where you're on you're own when it comes to PE's.

[Netphreak]

My only concern is that it will hurt spies (btw i have both rifle and pistol spies and pe's). We don't want to see it hurting the tradeskillers, but i see your point about having to balance it with PE's too.

And no matter what people say i think spies are still weaker than PE's even though a spy is more fun to play. Spies have paper armor besides their Xray resist from PA and Energy resist from Heavy Energy Protection Belt. Excluding the insanely high xray resist spy PA gives, a PE can easily get much higher armor resists even 10 lvl's before STR cap.

People will say use drugs and zerk2 and moveon etc. for inq 1. But really i hate the fact that a spy has to use nightspider for shelter just to be competitive, which if we read the class description you'd think a spy wouldn't have to drug for shelter anyways.
Basically what i mean is for a spy to be more powerful it has to specialise, and it can't have any decent armor if it goes along this path of using combat implants.

Anyways sorry for going off topic, and great work Lupus, i know the community can't say it enough.

[StealthyAssassi]

Basically what i mean is for a spy to be more powerful it has to specialise, and it can't have any decent armor if it goes along this path of using combat implants.

True, its either taking lots of drugs, implanting lots of strength implants instead of combat implants or doing a bit of both.

[Netphreak]

True, its either taking lots of drugs, implanting lots of strength implants instead of combat implants or doing a bit of both.

Yeah, and if you try to do abit of both then your combat strength is weaker than a PE and your armor is alot weaker.
Glad you understood what i was saying, as i wasn't too sure if people would understand my point.

Anyways of to test the patch then we can make up our minds about it.

[whifix]

Aren't we missing the melee frequency equasion?

[QuantumDelta]

Yup, I have the base values in the calculations. And I'm saying that the values in whatever file you have are only the final part of the calcluation, and the flip point changes the values that go into it! I'll send you my excel file if you want, Lupus, and you can see for yourself! It has the calculations I have done for the Health, Stamina, PSI and Free Load.

Believe me, it took hours and hours with my calculator to work out what formula you guys used above the flip point, and then to work out the approximate flip points themselves. I reverse engineered nothing.

AlphaGremlin

That's impressive.
It's so rare you see people ...actually, trying.
These days it's just skill managers heh..

Lupus;
I'm not going to pass judgement on these changes until I get ingame.
Though looking at it, I do feel a tad concerned.... (remember specialisation?)
We'll have to see though, I do have faith in ya...

Aren't we missing the melee frequency equasion?

Never been one.

[QuantumDelta]

Damned blasted one hour edit rule
6minutes.
Jeez.
Anyway;

After altering my setup to this patches version of what it was last patch, I've lost 20% aiming, and gained 40/min. (ok 37/min).

I love that WEP is now more useful.
However you mighta overdone it a little bit

[thebee]

Rifles vs Pistols suffer from other issues and if they weren't ingame the whole idea of WEP wouldnt really be that much of an issue. when you compare MC to PC and RC, your forgetting the fact that AGL is to MC what WEP is to PC & RC.

Amen to this. But if and when we have a rifles theme week. is the need for less WPL for capping the dizzy and healing light reasonable now? cause i have (base) 140WPL and (imp'ed/buffed lvl 1) 189RC and that pushing it as a spy.

So what benefits are rifles seeing out of this. its nice to see pistols are yet again WAY to easy.

[kurai]

I hope to god this is only a first step along the road of balance tweaking ... if it stays as it is now without further fine tuning we might be rather screwed.

Dear old tankehs now have the aim of pistols, the range of rifles, and the damage of APUs.

Sure - HC prior to the patch needed *some* work, but it's a tad overdone.

Oh - and the freeing up of HC points now means HC tankehs can easily spec for a melee shocker as well.

Great