Here's a heads up on the new class system that we have been designing. Hopefully we can put this in sometime next uni.

Station Master, MFM, CA, and EE get yanked out of the normal skill web and become separate, mutually exclusive skills, so each character can have one of these regardless of what normal classes he chooses.

The main skill web becomes all combat and support-related classes. Looking at http://www.starsonata.com/skills.html, in place of Station Mastery goes Juice Junky. In place of MFM goes Commander. In place of EE goes Gunner. In place of CA goes Engineer.

Juice Junky: He's addicted to the juice. +5%/lvl max energy. +2%/lvl electric regen.

Commander: (maybe) 50% increase to RC points. Can use powerful Field Generators that give fixed bonuses to all friendly ships. (Things like +1000 max shields, +5 dam/shot, that sort of thing.) Ability to use ship-based fighter bays that launch fighters. Not sure yet if these fighters will use RC points or if there will just be a limit to the number of fighters based on the tech of the fighter bay. He's kind of like a Slave Master, but has swarms of slaves that he buffs with auras rather than a few powerful ones.

Gunner: gets MF1, so can always shoot two weapons at once. +5%/lvl weapon slots. So for a ship with 4 weapon slots, he will get an extra slot for every 5 lvls of Gunner up to a total of 8 weapon slots at lvl 20. Each weapon will automatically give the target .5% vulnerability to that damage type per level of Gunner, or 1%/lvl if the Gunner is firing two weapons -- up to a maximum of 20% vulnerability for something like 5 seconds. Transference not included.

Engineer: +0.5%/lvl to every augmenter-like stat. +0.5% to NT, AT, and Slave Tweak. Gets all the current CA electric auras. Gets shield transference guns that do high amounts of transference for high electric cost and also bestow transference vulnerability to the target -- making healing that target more powerful. Has the ability to use equipment that makes powerful NT's that die on jump, though the effects don't die on jump. He can make pills and toss them overboard to his friends to beef up before a battle.

Other classes are basically the same with maybe minor tweaks here and there.

The major difference that these changes make is that every char will be both a fighting char and a money-making char, instead of having to choose one or the other. In theory, you will want one guy to be EE to mine resources, one guy to be CA for a place to sell the resources, one guy to be MFM to haul the resources, and one guy to be Station Master to protect everything. Maybe more trade skills to come, like Prospector or Smuggler.

Well, I can think of a few classes that could be implemented that would add alot of gameplay value with minimal coding, but overall I think what you are suggesting will be a great change for SS. Hope to see it in-game soon.

What happends to the CA/ExE/etc chars then? Free skill reset?

I Think this is an amazing idea.

But are they new classes? SM is getting wiped out along with MFM? or are they still there but in the gunner/Juice Junky forms

hopefully to keep it fair it'd be a universal reset - since some MFs or seers or people whose classes aren't being deleted might want to try out the new skills.

also what will happen to station mastery spec and CA/EE/MFM spec/expertises? aug reset or mass deletion or something?

What i am interested to know, like a couple other peeps, is that are these new bonuses included with the current CA/EE/MFM bonuses? Otherwise they arent so great for bases are they...

Well, I think that this will both include:

A.) A massive skill reset

and

B.) A massive aug reset.

With more skills coming in, many augs such as EE Expertise will possibly ruin someones setup. Im not sure that these are going to happen, just an inference I have made.

~BD

This is incredible

Im SD on a reaver, so gunner is pointless to me (if im correct my reaver would have 4 weapon slots total, and since I use nothing but my laser, MF'ing 2 other weps is pointless (even tho ill give stuff -10% to laser fo a litle bit). And I wont use commander for obvious reasons.

I would choose juice junkie, giving me x2 elec bank for x2 dmg over time and 40% regen, so take my dmg over time (120k) x2 is 240k, +40% for my total dmg over time (336k, a total of about 2.8x more damage over time woot!)

I would choose engineer, but it doesnt give as much compared to what I would get from juice junkie, and I know that anything else to that skill would be overpowered.

The one and ONLY suguestion I have to make is to give juice junkie a stats that reduces fuel comsumption by like 1-2% a level (mabey more!)

Hmmm so I could be slave master, rad exp, commander ?.


Well all the skills sound nice, but if I get it right, there are no longer skills to beef bases ?


As I see, commander is a slave skill... If is is swarm oriented, well I suggest something for the GG, because 200M each time I get ass kicked is already bad, it would get much worse with swarms...

Open test server and give everyone some ship with the skills

Yeah, there will probably be a global skill reset. Not sure about the spec augs. I would rather not do a global aug reset because it wreaks the economy, so maybe just a reset on the augs from the 3 moved classes.

No. Commander goes where MFM used to be which requires Merchant which is mutually exclusive with Slave Master. You could be a Slave Master/RadEx/MFM, but MFM bonuses will only apply to non combat slaves.

If we have a CA alt now will it be switched to Engineer and get the ability for another class?

If there is a giant skill reset, you'd have to rebuy all skills which is gonna cost a few mils..