Please don’t misunderstand: If someone opens a thread for OP-Panda skills, I’m absolutely there!
I would like to concentrate on only one: “Dash”.
Problems:
It is not realistic for a soldier to cover such a huge distance over rough edges!
This skill has a massive impact on other “OP” skills (such as Terminator build: dash + rapid clearence + adrenalin rush + [rally the troops] + …)
With the new skill system (+10 SP per mission), experienced soldiers are “ultra maxed”. Such a soldier can dash to any little panda and “alpha strike” him. This method is unrivaled.
The current mobility is simply exaggerated (you can cross the whole map in one turn → not particularly tactical)
I will definitely repeat myself, but my goal is to let the full potential of this game unfold and that means that it will finally become more TACTICAL.
What do you think of the following changes?
Use only once per turn (has been discussed many times → optional)
Use only in a straight line (this means that open maps can still be crossed quickly, for example, you can still quickly run over to major dangers like chirons. Angled maps are then more tactical because you can not just sprint to the nose of every little panda , and can always succeed with the same “alpha strike” tactic.
The straight line dash mechanics could even be extended by a meele attack for e.g. + 1AP. That would give us one more reason to use Meele weapons.
Dash is part of a larger problem of extreme mobility. The question is not so much what to do about dash specifically as whether there is too much mobility and what should be done about it. I don’t want to go off topic or expand the scope of the issue, it’s just that you can’t consider dash in isolation. Nerf it too much and you just make quickaim and various speed buffs the optimal solution.
To quote myself:
And as someone pointed out in that thread in my calculations I didn’t take into account a third row skill that gives another +2 to speed, so the maximum speed is 34, after frenzy 34+34*50%=51. So 51 tiles in a single turn without dash. Now combine with things like vanish (which allows moving 5 tiles for 4 WP), quickaim (which gives 1 AP worth of extra movement) and of course Rally the Troops and hopefully you can see that even without dash you can have too much mobility.
So, unfortunately, just nerfing dash would upset many causal/novice players without fundamentally solving the problem.
My suggestion in the thread I shamelessly plugged in here (sorry about that ) is put a hard cap on speed and make frenzy add +10 to speed, instead of +50%. So frenzy could be used to make slower soldiers faster, not turn fast soldiers into Flashes.
Leave dash as is, but make it optional in the difficulty settings to cap all skills to one use per turn.
Your approach is different … but … it tackles the same problem of hyper-mobility.
I was just looking for a possibility here … other ways are of course also welcome as they solve the same problem.
Still, I think if you adjusted all the other “OP” holes it would make sense, just because of realism
Strangely enough, there are “hard caps” nowhere! Not on increasing weapon accuracy / range, speed, multiple use of skills …
What is also strange, why does armor increase speed even though it has an additional weight?
I think dash should simply be one use per soldier per turn for 4 will points - when used, a soldier’s move characteristic is increased by 50%.
The current form of dash is easily one of the most OP skills in the game and it becomes a no brainer to pick this for as many soldiers as possible.
The problem with this is that it becomes a no brainer to use it every turn.
Right now, though resulting in extreme mobility, there is a tactical decision - do I dash far ahead and risk exposure to, say, psychic attacks that take advantage of my low WPs? Or detection that may result in being bombarded by Chirons?
An increase in speed, on the other hand, is generally an optimal solution. I will just go a little further with each AP I spend on movement. Provided I have enough WPs, there is no good reason not to use it.
The decision becomes whether you want to spend WP for the movement buff or not, and the decision would ideally need to be made before the soldier has made any moves as it is most useful when you have 4 AP to spend. Also the buff is much smaller, it’s a 50% movement buff across 4 AP, whereas the existing mechanic gives you a 50% movement buff from 1AP with the option to keep spending WP and move 3 times the normal distance.
Then it becomes a no brainer not to use it.
As I said, nerf dash too much and all you are doing is pushing players into other ways of achieving the same thing. To which some may say, great, let’s rebalance everything, to which I would reply that is unlikely to happen for a variety of reasons… Not least because nobody knows for sure how the new balance will workout, and everybody knows that many players will be royally piss*d off.
That’s why you would under normal circumstances just spend the 4WPs. Recovering WPs is easy - much easier than APs in any case, so you want to get everything you can out of every AP. This kind of thing already happens with quickaim: if you have it, you use it because APs are more valuable than WPs.
Soldiers start with about 7 WP and they can gain more as they level up. It’s not a no brainer to use it each turn; if you don’t plan to move with 3 or 4 AP in that turn then it’s probably best not to use dash. I’m basically saying they should nerf dash from a maximum 300% move to a maximum 150% move if you spend all AP on movement - perhaps that wasn’t clear in my previous post.
It depends on the difficulty level, but yes they start with low WPs. But by the same reasoning dash as it is right now is also not OP in the first missions. The problem starts when you can cast it multiple times, when soldiers get 12 WP or more (which now happens rather fast, by the way). At this point it would definitely be a no brainer to usually cast it, meaning you would need a good reason not to spend 4 WP out of 12 or more to gain extra 50% mobility every turn.
My reasoning is that from a decision making perspective it’s more than that, because the advantage granted by this kind of dash would be spread over all the APs, which means that you will want to cast it every turn almost as a matter of fact to ensure that you are maximizing this advantage. Not casting it would be an exception, like when you don’t want to move at all, or you know exactly how far you want to move that turn.
Draining WP can be dangerous depending on the situation. Having units sitting idle to regain WP can be dangerous as well. Hypothetical is one thing, but in actual fire fights with sirens and other psychic draining enemies, burning WP to dash across the map may end up being folly.
How about . move anywhere in your movement range fire twice and whatever movement range you still have you can use to retreat. 3 turn cooldown 4 wp cost 3ap.
@VOLAND are you engaging in a bit of philosophical devil’s advocacy here? Because your arguments here are currently sounding like the exact opposite of your usual stance.
I agree that something has to be done about the extreme mobility, but I think that dash is only a part of the problem.
Also, I don’t like a solution where dash as a move with an AP cost is replaced by dash as a buff, because, provided everything else stays more, or less the same, it will be almost auto-cast at the start of every turn. What would happen if everything else changed (e.g. @Yokes if the WP pool was significantly reduced) is hard to predict, not to mention that it is doubtful that something like this would be done.
My point is we have to look at mobility, not just at dash (take care of extreme mobility and chances are dash as it is right now, limited to one use per turn, is going to be alright), and also that we have to avoid thinking in terms of comprehensive overhauls that have a huge impact on other mechanics.
) is put a hard cap on speed and make frenzy add +10 to speed, instead of +50%. So frenzy could be used to make slower soldiers faster, not turn fast soldiers into Flashes.
