I had a thought while I was waiting for another game to come out, and that was the topic of forcefields and how they work. Forcefields are a pretty classic Superhero thing, going all the way back to the Fantastic Four, and forcefield generators are a pretty common thing among tech supers.
So I gave a bit of a think to how they'd work in a game like city of Titans and came to the conclusion of ablative armor. It would be, essentially, an extension to your health pool, but one that you can top up with powers that extend the power of your forcefield and recover it once it's dropped.
you might actually remember just such a system from some other games, though in those ones you don't have to actively maintain your shielding. Good examples are Warframe, Mass Effect, and similar. The idea to taking down such a character would be singular heavy strikes that bust through the shield and hit the character beneath, doing a bit of damage. then you keep whittling them down, since their HP pool doesn't really regenerate even if their shielding does.
We didn't have anything like this in CoH, but I'm hoping we get the chance for it here, because just off the top of my head I can think of several character ideas that make use of it - living armor plates that you can grow back over your body, A soldier with a forcefield generator on their belt. Someone who summons up a bunch of stone around himself to keep himself properly defended. Just as examples.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
CoH was actually just beginning to add Ablatives to the game right before it shut down. The Nature Affinity support set and Bio Armor defense sets had some. Who knows how the power type could have developed going forward, but alas.
I'd honestly be surprised if ablative/absorb powers didn't exist in CoT. They're fairly ubiquitous in just about every other game I can think of. CoH really was an outlier there.
Actually - IIRC Absorption in Bio Armor was like this - effectively an extra layer of hit points. And I specifically remember a dev on the forums hinting that they were looking into possibly incorporating it into some underperforming existing sets like Force Field.
I could get behind something like this in the game - I think it would add a fun extra dynamic layer to the traditional Avoidance-based (dodge) and Soak-based (resist) defenses.
Yeah, there were several sets with ablative type powers in the works, but I can only recall Nature Affinity making it to live before the shut down.
Bio Armor, Radiation Armor and Martial Combat (Blaster secondary) would have/did also included it. (I can't remember is any of those made it to live.)
Yes we have ways to apply additinal "layers" of hit points. We can also create powers where a shield provides additonal hit points and takes a portion of damage to itself and the other portion applying to the player.
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[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Ballin! That is almost exactly what I was hoping to hear!
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
So the "last" basic survival mechanic makes its presence known, absorption. That is having something else than the characters health pool taking/sharing the damage.
I was expecting this to be in the game in some form though making a full defensive set out of it makes me think of PFF from CO.
Mind explaining for those unfamiliar with CO?
And bad with acronyms?
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Diablo I had "Mana Shield" which was a power that caused incoming damage to be deducted from your mana instead of your HP, while it was active and while your mana was above zero. This ablative thing is basically "Activate a shield power for endo, get temporary hit points that get burned off first when you take damage" and as such is a lot like that.
Could we do a toggle that converts all or some incoming damage to endo loss? Even if it we're "50% of the damage still casuses loss of hit points, the other 50% goes to endo" it would be helpful, depending on the self heal and self-endo-restore options that you get with Reserves. If you can burn reserves to heal self more efficiently than you can burn reserves to get endo back, this power is not useful, if the endo is cheaper than the Hit points, this power is usefull, as far as I can tell. So maybe it's good for some classes and builds and not for others...
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
*note to self, don't talk about Pet defense, don't talk about Pet defense, don't talk about... oh damnit*
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
PFF=Personal Force Field.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Radiac, yes we can create powers like that. Our power designer is very versatile and the basics of our mechanics are made with what can be coded within the engine (which is a lot). Whether we see mana-shield-esque powers is another story.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I love the versatility of this game!
Half the fun of this game will be exploring the combinations of powers. You are going to have whole forums devoted to that!
* and thanks to the devs for talking to us, and giving clear answers...You keep the game exciting this way!
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Personal Force Field.
It's a slotted defensive passive (have to be put on the skills-bar to work). It works by absorbing all but 1 point of damage, pretty sure it's done that way so that other abilities that trigger from damage to health can still trigger while PFF can still fully absorb attacks. It does regenerate automatically while in combat without depleting anything but the regeneration-rate does go down the more often you get hit (down to 50%), however you can get the rate back to top by actively blocking for a while.