engineer -

jerry-rigging (unsure of spelling)

penalty to damage, RoF, range, or a combination of them
bonus to energy regen, elec tempering, agility, speed, or a combination of them

basically the idea is that the engineer tweaks the ship to improve in some ways at the expense of others.

Of course, the penalties are suggested to offensive stats, while the bonuses are meant to enhance the support role.

Just off the top of my head.

if all these classes get a 4th sub-skill current content will be pretty darn easy.

Just lock it to 3k+

Then balance new content to take that into account.

Older content shouldn't stay hard for endgame people.

Kanga

My personal opineon on this would be something that gives a negative effect on a sub part of the class but bost the main part for example

Sniper + Range - Damage
Zerk + damage - resistance
Gunner, dunno
FC + wildslave stats - normal slave stats
Engi + Drone ops - Tractoring
Shm +Shield/regen - Damage/trans res
SD +Speed/RoF - Crit rate/damage
Seer + crit damage/rate -warp capabiletys -.-

As a sniper I would never sacrifice damage for range, thats just utterly dumb.

As a zerker id never sacrifice resistance for damage, thats just utterly dumb.

I cba with the rest, bad ideas in general.

Gunner
1. Give area of effect to all weapons and missiles
2. More speed, less weight
3. Multifire +1, less elec temp
4. Missiles give the enemy more elec temp (so they use more energy)
5. More elec charge, more rate of fire

All I can think of right now.

To be honest I'd like to see subclasses. For example, Gunners can choose between having more weapon stats, or having better missile stats. Something to create more variance in gameplay to suit what people like to do.

Mutually exclusive choices would be really fun.

For engineer for example, there could be a tractor option, a drone option, and a trans option perhaps - could make it a lot more fun to develop alts of the same class and then branch them differently.

If you give engineers penalties to those stats, then you remove all HPS ability completely. Even 10% damage reduction has a heavy impact on your HPS.

Just becouse its dumb whit your setup and gear dosent make it so for all

Yes Thermal - you're right - that's why ideally I'd love to see mutually exclusive subskills.

For example - give a choice between making your ship much more maneuverable vs. being more effective at transfers vs. perhaps being more of a tractor tank.

I suggested what I did simply because I thought it would have a neat affect on the way I currently play.

Indeed, it can be an idea for sure.

I think we should drop T21 class skills completely and introduce maybe two or three different, mutually exclusive advanced subskills for each class. Either that or the total number of levels in them would be capped so you can't max all of them. Here are my reasons.

1. Putting in a fourth subskill will either make current content too easy, or require a big rebalance of current classes if all four are not meant to be maxed. This is especially an issue for Berserker where one subskill is necessary to be maxed in order to multifire 5 weapons (and you don't get a marginal bonus from having +50% MF). I am in favor of rebalances when they are necessary to make dramatic improvements, but I think there is an easier alternative here.

2. Current classes are very poorly designed for the increment to T21. In general, marginal benefit increases with every factor you have affecting each particular stat, due to cross multiplication. Sniper has five different class bonuses to damage (more considering the improved analysis), while most classes have two at best. Berserker actually only has one that triggers at T21. That is not to say that T21 is useless to Berserker, but the marginal benefit is vastly overshadowed by Sniper (and Speed Demon, to a lesser extent).

Here are some suggestions for the advanced subskills (remember you can't max all of them).

Speed Demon:
-% elec temp
+% shield regen

Seer:
+% crit percentage, -% crit strength (hit them where it hurts)
+% range, -% rate of fire (those snipers might be on to something)

Shield Monkey:
-% rof, +% resistance (a little selfishness never hurt anyone)
+% trans damage, -% trans resistance (take one for the team)

Engineer
+% elec
+% inertial dampening

I'll leave it at that for now.

"Putting in a fourth subskill will either make current content too easy, or require a big rebalance of current classes if all four are not meant to be maxed."

I really don't think I agree with this overall statement - particularly the first part.

In a sense, yes, a fourth subskill would make current content easy - but that isn't a problem. I hate to say it, but it is absurd to think that current content should consistently remain difficult.

As is in the game, there really isn't any t21 content. Sure - there's some things that are much easier with t21, but when you come down to it, currently, everything in the game is t20. Oly itself is obviously intended for t20 since it is what generates t21 skills.

So, as long as there are certain restrictions about when this skill becomes available, and as long as content intended for t21 and higher players begins to be introduced, there is absolutely no reason not to include a 4th subskill (preferably a variety of mutually exclusive subskills). Personally, I'd like to see a move towards actual zones and material specifically intended to be difficult for t21 squads.

I'd much rather see a change to gameplay rather than a beef to everything. Like it was said before, there should be further specializations into the classes, but it definitely should not be a beef.

For Fleet Commander, I could imagine they would be something like this:

Carrier - +X% to all fighter stats, +Y% of max number of fighters, +Z% to launching bay times.

Slave Master - +X% to all slave stats, +Y% Multifire, +Z% Transference Power and Efficiency.

Adding a fourth subskill, unless it is very carefully balanced to be a utility feature and primarily not affect the core function of the class (dps for sniper, tanking for zerk, sustained HPS for shm, et al), will break the game. Every boss fight is balanced for the current structure and would have to be redone. Unlikely to ever happen.

Zerker: +hostility
Sniper: -hostility
Engineer: +elec
SD: +shield regen
Seer: +range?
Gunner: +range
FC: +resist or tractor power
ShM: ??? range and tracking maybe.