Balance of items/shipclasses
Engineer, Onyx Marble, Wolfhound, Hawkmoth:
Except from the Wolfhound these shipclasses are very good supporters, but as soon as they use their repairfield they turn into true NPC magnets! They get focused very hard in a NPC mass and are forced to flee from the fight with afterburner. Resulting into the gameplay on earth in unrest and calon to 80% running away from NPCs while your squadmembers have fun shooting and 20% actually shooting on NPC's.
As you know these shipclasses have low HP and focused fire lets your Deep Recurrent Protector look like a quick snack.
The aggro effect is basically the effect we would like to see on the Taunt, which I will to talk later about.
The aggro throu healing is in the game since the "effort value" update which was with the Amarna and Soris update. The healing aggro mechanic was a side effect of the XP mechanic throu healing. The design goal was to gain XP even with ally healing instead of only damage dealing, so the effort value was born.
Unfortunately the aggro of NPCs is based on your effort value instead of dealing damage or taunting enemies.
The Wolfhound generates his effort value a lot throu allies cover and repairfield turret, laying down his aggrobeacon has zero effect during combat, because he "out-values" the effort value of his own aggrobeacon. Making the aggrobeacon only usable while flying from location to location, but his squishiness makes him a bad choice.
Updating the aggro mechanic would make these shipclasses more interesting + fun to play and we would be able to use more shipclasses than only the paragneiss to sustain in big NPC fights.
Shock compared to Poenari and Marlstone - the aggrobeacon:
Doesn't matter if we look at PVE or PVP, the shock gets "out-utilitied" by both. The Marlstone has slightly more HP, but can shield himself, RIP Shock!
The Poenari can use on him or allies the protector for stun immunity and bonus HP, he also avoids damage with the Aim Scrambler.
How to balance the shock class? Guess what! Reworking the aggrobeacon will help out the Wolfhound and the shock class! When allies get hit a percentage of the damage transfers to the aggrobeacon and lowering its HP. This would make it viable for PVP. For PVE I think a second aggrobeacon charge can be useful which should generate more aggro from units, the magnet trap is currently much more attractive to NPCs than an aggrobeacon and carries more HP!
Magnet Trap:
Too much HP in PVP, PVE is okay.
Chromian Corundum:
Too much HP in PVP, enables easy protector cycling with high HP and speed acuator during every PVP against any non-perforator shipclass.
HP nerf by 20%. Flight speed nerf by 1,5%.
The Taunt:
Originally it should get the aggro on you as a tank. It has no use in PVP only a targeting, effectless visual. In PVE the aggro is "out-valued" or "out-aggroed" very easy by any damage ship class. There are a lot of ideas in the forum and people I've discussed this topic with.
We all think it should have a PVP effect and a stronger PVE effect to make the tank class viable. We all love the design of the Dominator, but no one wants to use this ship, because of the named reasons.
New mechanics could be a mix of those or one particular effect:
-reducing damage from the target in general or only on yourself for a percentage
-increasing damage to the target in general or only when you hit the target for a percentage
-the target can only attack you and you have a Taunt animation with a different colour on yourself which is only visible to the target (in PVE you will dislike the NPCs with Taunt)
Else: Who's idea was it to bring the RC-X-01 Claw into the game ?!?!
Lightning Chain combined with Aim Computer:
There are only two shipclasses with the Lightning Chain in the game - Thunderbird and Paragneiss.
Both use the Aim Computer. While this of course helps out the rocket a lot, the Lightning Chain is crying in the corner, because the active effect of the Aim Computer is not benefiting it. It will always hit seven targets in range with a fixed amount of damage. To give it some benefit I would add the effect of hitting additional targets while the Aim Computer is active.
Regular Aimcomputer: Hit one more target (7 to 8) and a 50% Chance to hit even one more target (50%: 7 to 8; 50%: 7 to 9)
Strong Aimcomputer: Hit one more target (7 to 8) and a 70% Chance to hit even one more target (30%: 7 to 8; 70%: 7 to 9)
Long Aimcomputer: Hit one more target (7 to 8) and a 40% Chance to hit even one more target (60%: 7 to 8; 40%: 7 to 9)
Materializer:
All in all it's pretty fine, but there are moments were you can't materialize a buddy, because you have no Repair Target, Repair Field or his own Repair Droid.
To take advantage of being materialized and not losing momentum, I like the idea of reseting the materialized buddy's Repair Droid or give him a damage reduction bonus of 50% for 10 second e.g.
The time to materialize with the regular and long materializer is just to high and they are irrevelant in most scenario compared to the strong materializer.
Sticky Bomb:
After 1,5 seconds delay you have up to 6 seconds to recast the Sticky Bomb again to blow it up! Which won't count as active item cooldown for other ship components which is ~1-1,5 seconds. This will give the player more control and will be more fun to play. If the target dies with the Sticky Bomb it will still explode and deal area damage.
Corruption Cloud:
It's a cloud effect right? So why not leave it on the ground after the "infected" target died?
Attack Droid:
After its HP got buffed by the factor of ~5 it managed to withstand at least 2/3 aggrobombs (e.g. Sirius Long Attack Droid on 5th ring against Horus) instead of instantly blowing up. The damage output is okay.
So why are we here? It is not really "attacking" targets, it will wait for a target to come close then wait 4-5 more seconds and eventually start shooting on that NPC or when a NPC engages you on long range the Attack Droid proves his loyalty and fight that poor NPC till death.
The Attack Droid should be more aggressive and look for more fights. If I want to leave the combat mode I just recast the Attack Droid to switch it into a defensive mode, which he is currently all the time. If I shoot at a Quarc please join me! That Dolomyte stone deserves to die for looking at me in the wrong way! (Just kidding, but you get the point haha)
Humpback:
I understand that the Damage Inverter was the reason to give it less armor, but that is just too much less armor.
Deserves at least 30% HP buff to be any option to choose from.
