A quick play with NSkill says that characters can be pushed (without drugs or limited access items like Gold WoC PA) to:
- Spy - 130 Dex
- Tank - 127 Str
- Monk - 123 Psi
However, the top weapon requirements are:
- Pistol - 113 (WoC)/112 (non WoC)
- Rifle - 115
- Heavy - 114 (115 counting some heavily restricted AoE weapons)
- Melee - 115
- APU - 103 (110 for AoE rares)
We're not especially interested in drones or PPU for the sake of the rest of this discussion. (Both inherently always tend to there being a single way to set them up)
Now, obviously these are stretch targets, not necessarily imp/armour combos anybody would ever want. But even knocking a point or two off those values, there is a huge discrepancy between what could be achieved and what is in actually necessary to achieve.
I'd like to see that changed. I'd like to see the real whizz-bang-omg-shiney weapons to be something that a character needs to be really pushed towards. I'd like to see PEs and Spies be made a little more different (although we'll come to more issues there in another post).
Given this, there also needs to be a good reason to NOT make the stretch (otherwise, nothing is different to know, save people stuff their heads with even more MC5s). I'd like to imagine that we could (fairly easily) create a bunch of different character setup "archetypes" for people to aim for. Naturally, most builds will show some degree of compromise. So:
- "Mainskill" Setup - The above, hitting ~125 in dex/str/psi. Reaches the biggest most damaging weapons, but at the expense of almost everything else. To support this, we need weapons where the requirements really push the limits of a character, and we also need to see an end to chips that give lots of mainskill and lots of weapon skills. Some of both would be OK, but choice here will be hurt if the best say, PC boosting chip is the same chip that also boost dexs up (like the current SWAT/CCP combo).
- "Competence" Setup - Focus on brining mainskill up as far as is needed for a chose weapon, then boosting weapon skills, hc/pc/rc/tc/wep/apu/fcs. Increases accuracy, frequency, even brings damage up a bit. Will work well for people who want to be able to hit and run, or just hit hard with a key weapon. As well as the above mentioned brain chip changes, this also needs to be supported by making the weapon competence curves a bit gentler. At the moment it's easy to get most of the damage/freq/aiming of a weapon, and then it takes huge amounts of more points spending to make small improvements - to encourage this kind of skilling, and to encourage any noticeable difference between how well players use their gear, this curve needs to be smoothed a lot. Also, DJ could get his Kami back.
- "Con" Setup. - Again, going up to a target weapon, but then using what remains (perhaps all) to boost resistances. Again, may need a little smoothing of resist skill/resistance curves.
- "Psi defence" Setup - Similar as above, but using psi skills to provide defence and other utility
- "Armour" Setups - Boosting up strength to get key pieces of armour. Means that the armour sets need seriously looking at, with sensibly chosen stats, rather than being seemingly arbitarilly distributed. As an aside, no armour above str 100 req, otherwise going for the biggest HC/melee will also lead to better defences
So thoughts? Talking crap? A good step towards decent variety? Even if you don't agree with my "setup archetypes", do you like the idea of weapons that are a genuine stretch to make?
