This is the first in a series of posts targeted at announcing new features for all the classes as well as getting feedback on them. I have just wrapped up the bulk of the Seer Class Content, so this first post will deal directly with Seer.

First things first, the new stuff. Seers will be getting quite a few new items that should be very useful to Seers of all levels.

Ethereal Surgical Lasers: Seers will soon have access to new ethereal surgical lasers starting at tech level four. Surgical offers increased critical hit chance, and these lasers will benefit from your class skills.

Translocators: Starting at Seer 15, Seers will be able to gain access to Translocation Devices. These powerful microwarps will translocate a player behind his target allowing him to ambush an enemy. Static Energy cost and cooldowns starting at five minutes.

*Edit to answer a few questions on Translocators. First, when you use a Seer translocator you are warped behind the target, facing it, and sharing it's velocity. Second, you are warped a fair distance behind the target as well, there is very little chance a Seer would be in range to fire any weapon similar to a Jackhammer. Finally, I am looking around 1000-1500 range jumps with a 1:1 Distance to Energy Ratio. This may make it more energy efficient than a PWI but keep in mind it is a class specific device with a cooldown and limited range.

Psionic Wave Amplifiers: These are series of Seer Specialized weapons that impart rather powerful detrimental tweaks to an enemy with ten second durations.

New Cloaks: Seers will also gain access to new cloaking devices with lower energy costs. These cloaks also help with energy regeneration.\

Hopefully all these new items will promote Seers using stealth to aid in combat, as well as generally make the class much more enjoyable to play.

Now, for the second part of the post, feedback. As I've had players playtest some of the new Seer content, I've compiled a list of suggestions, but I'd like to hear more opinions from anyone who has tried the class. What do you like about it, what don't you like, what do you think needs changed?

Caelestis

Love you Cael!! Been dying to here this for a long time and thank you. I personally think all of that is awesome. One concern I have however is the Translocator. I see you've mentioned a static energy cost. How high will this go upto? You have to bear in mind due to the nature of seer it will be using high recoil high damage weapons that take a lot of energy. If it takes energy amounts like the PWI then I can see it becoming rather useless because you would want to fire after you translocate, rathe than have to wait for your bank to fully recharge, unless your paritcular setup already has a large energy bank. Will it also have the warp affect like a PWI? Problem with that is that it will reveal your location, not so good against players. You warp, unless they're dimwitted they'll know your there and move the hell out of the way.

Other than that I dont have any worry other than the fact my account will most likely expire on test when these are put on there. Always does with seer changes.

Thanks.

i'd say lower the translocator time down to 2 minutes,

or have a seer subskill which reduces the time on it.

but nice, we do not have enough seers by far in the game, since it has been shall we say a "little" underpowered compared to the other classes.

but this helps it a lot, not quite there but seer is reaching the stage.

another question is how far out does the warper go if it should be able to warp very fare

Will the new surgical lasers be high damage high recoil? And how much increased critical chance are we talking about?

Will the translocators change the direction your ship is facing, or will you have to do that before/after you warp to face the enemy? Also, will it warp you on top of them, if not how far from them? Different weapons/setups would require different distances from the enemy.

Will the wave amplifiers be required to crit to give these tweaks? Also, do these weapons do any sort of damage, or just give tweaks?

Are these cloaks going to be large, like a lot of other cloaks? And will these have a semi-high % on cloaking?

Also, are these items going to cost obscene amounts of money/commods to build? Are they going to be very rare high end drops?

As for feedback: I recently came back to the game as a sniper, and was very dissapointed. I heard that seer was the new "stealth" class and decided to try it out. I have had mixed results, most of them being positive with the class. One thing I have had problems with is when trying to shoot a very nimble AI from behind, they seem to know before you shoot and are able to turn and shoot you before your attack even gets there.

That is my two cents, the new stuff sounds cool

Your awsome cael, and the ideas are all really original. That's why I hate what I'm about to do; I'm going to tell you how translocaters are broken. Two simple little words: Mercurian Dissinigrater. MD+Stealth+Critical hit+Instaperfect position to fire=some serious ownage. Maby if you made it so that seers only get those nice stealth critical hits for surgical damage, it woulden't be so bad. Unless they decide to use a pantherfang. That would hurt, but it still woulden't be as bad as a MD.

That seems pretty fair. Although technically it could still be possible for an MD to hit, the seer probably wouldn't be as stealthy.

I'm really looking forward to having a seer character. I would have gone seer right away but the costs to make a decent seer character was too high before.

so all that sounds great, but why did you work on seer first when there are like 2 in the game? work on SD, sniper, or monkey stuff...

-ERMAN

The translocator is interesting. Will it have a similar 20b mission price tag to the PWI to which it has been compared ?

Whre the PWI is a purely defensive device I can see how a translocator could be useful both defensively as well as offensively.

A very nice piece of kit.

erman- the reason they're working on seer is BECAUSE so few people use it. they want to make it a more used skill.

Second, on the translocator, i can see some strange issues with seers in cap ships , using the translocator against a SD just to get around faster. not thats a bad thing, just you may not have intended that.

Becouse there are only 2 he worked on it perhaps?



I believe he will make the seer pwi limited to heavy and light fighters..
That way you wont have warping thatches full of base gear and crap like that..

Maybe the translocators could have a maximum weight limit?

Maybe just extra elec after a certain weight. It's easy to get a ship pretty heavy, quickly. But don't make the weight limit absurd, like 500k weight.

Simply make it not equippable on capital ships. even if someone did use it on a capital ship it wouldn't hurt too much, do you have any idea how hard it would be to make a combat capital ship as seer? just look at the class, it has to be stealthed to fight. I agree with Slicer, enough said there.

Also Erman, Demiser is right. With the actual skill Seer is very underpowered compared to somethign such as SD. The old seer content became completely useless (TRL etc.) with the new change. Hopefully this will encourage people to use the skill.

Oh and thanks for the reply Cael. Energy requirements sound Ok and its good you wont be in range for something such as Jackhammer.