Post by fortescue on May 10, 2014 21:17:18 GMT -5
A simple way to make Soldiers more competitive with Scouts while maintaining theme would be by reducing all incoming damage to Soldiers by 1. They are more focused on surviving encounters with hostile forces than a Scout is, and don't need to dedicate part of their Leviathan armor system to managing special weapons like the specialists do, so they have mastered fighting in it and know how to take advantage of all the protection it has to offer them.
I was going to suggest a % chance to reduce incoming damage by 1, but then you have a lot of dice rolling for whether their abilities work or not between this and their Defensive Fire ability as compared to Scout's always-on +1 free movement. Speaking of which, you could also change their Defensive Fire to always make their first shot / punch free, then offer 66% chance of additional actions being free if you don't like the damage reduction idea.
They need some kind of dependable bonus like Scout's that always works 100% of the time (at least once per round as theirs does) to make them more appealing. As many have pointed out, being down at least 2 AP compared to most Scouts is a massive disadvantage that leads to completing missions much more slowly, which in turn snowballs into greater odds of running out of ammo and losing soldiers. The additional difficulty in getting these units into position often leaves them much more exposed to danger compared to Scouts, so the damage reduction idea would be a good counter to that problem and perhaps combining it with one guaranteed free defensive firing per round would not be overpowered since Soldiers would still be the slow boat they are now, they'd just be a lot more reliable / harder to kill, and that seems like it is perfectly in theme.
I was going to suggest a % chance to reduce incoming damage by 1, but then you have a lot of dice rolling for whether their abilities work or not between this and their Defensive Fire ability as compared to Scout's always-on +1 free movement. Speaking of which, you could also change their Defensive Fire to always make their first shot / punch free, then offer 66% chance of additional actions being free if you don't like the damage reduction idea.
They need some kind of dependable bonus like Scout's that always works 100% of the time (at least once per round as theirs does) to make them more appealing. As many have pointed out, being down at least 2 AP compared to most Scouts is a massive disadvantage that leads to completing missions much more slowly, which in turn snowballs into greater odds of running out of ammo and losing soldiers. The additional difficulty in getting these units into position often leaves them much more exposed to danger compared to Scouts, so the damage reduction idea would be a good counter to that problem and perhaps combining it with one guaranteed free defensive firing per round would not be overpowered since Soldiers would still be the slow boat they are now, they'd just be a lot more reliable / harder to kill, and that seems like it is perfectly in theme.
