Hamstring is a great addition to Mercs but I'd like to see more guns in the game and mabey have an in battle strike like thiefs to with circle hamstring is nice with retreat and things but if your gunna do that you cant garotte and it kinda gets buggy I would like to see mercs get something like a knockdown besides shoulderthrow or even better guns mercs need more guns we are guns need an implantable gun and um, i'll get back to this

Holy shit. That was the longest sentance i've ever seen. Do you realize you didn't use a single period in that entire paragraph? At least make the coders somewhat think your smart if you want them to listen to your ideas.

Almost as bad as saying your instead of you're.

Sorry, Rahvin. Love ya.

Merriam

Mercs can use implantable guns through remorting cyborg, which would be highly recommended. A Mercenary is a powerful class and is often overlooked by many. Most notably, makes have recently used Mercs to make some very powerful characters. Since you are a primary Mercenary, you may want to think of some remort skills for mercenaries and post them here. It has been said that the coders are working on revamping mercenaries right now, and only more good things can come.

Right now, shoulderthrow is a great knockdown skill which should be used whenever in battle. Wrench is powerful when your character has become accustomed to using it. Mercenaries are one of the earliest fast attackers in the game, with dual wield, double attack, and triple attack making them dangerous. It is a shame that guns are more designed for occasional use or PlayerKilling rather than in-battle use. This is partially solved, I think, by the implementation of energy weapons. Does anybody have anything to add about the recent changes to energy weapons? Is it a viable solution for gun-wielding mercenaries and cyborgs?

Respectfully,

Merriam

I do agree that Mercs could use a little something. What they have already is great though! I love having it secondary.

I had an idea recently about the vision of Mercs on Tempus - maybe we can see them a bit more like Riddik? It would allow for more weapon-based skills instead of being forced to use the fairly-awkward gun system.

Just sayin' stuff.

Carefuly when using terms like "stuff". We don't want crap skills like clothlesline thrown in as filler do we?

All kidding aside.

I really do think Mercs are in pretty good position now with their skills short of two areas, which have been mentioned here. Guns and remort skills.

Specifically about guns, I'm particularly disappointed with projectile weapons. To be specific, I made a primary Merc with whom I intended to use projectile pistols despide the fact that they are a hassle with the constant reloading. To my dismay I discovered that they do not function in the same manner as energy weapons. My mercenary, equipped with a pair of fully loaded pistols, will proceed to relentlessly bludgeon his opponents with said fully loaded pistols rather than shoot them. I don't know if this is intentional, an unfortunate "how it has to be", or whatever the reason might be. All I do know, is that as a player who doesn't intimately know Tempus code, this just doesn't make any sense to me. I would like to see projectile weapons function in the same manner as energy weapons, in that they fire automatically when loaded, as energy weapons fire automatically when charged/loaded with a charged cell.

About remort skills, I don't have too many ideas, as Mercenary is a tricky class to come up with something fitting. But here goes anyhow.

Infiltrate is currently simply sneaking. My understanding of the word is rather to sneak beyond somesort of obstacle. My idea is to change infiltrate from mort to gen 1, and instead of simply granting stealth, to also allow it to grant an opportunity to sneak past guards. Such as the guards to the guilds, or Ip and Smeel in Drachs. To fail would have even those guards who normally do not block aggressivly, to become aggressive.

Manhunting, a later gen (3..4..5) remort skill, could be as tracking used to be.

Garotte is a really cool skill. I think the idea is brilliant, and it is unfortunate that it's currently not very usefull. Currently it is a single strike attack that does damage. My proposed change would have it be a more drawn-out skill. Example; My merc sneaks up upon his victim, and garotte's him. The victim takes damage, and tries to break free, but is unable. My garrotte continues as long as I am intent upon garotting my victim. (Meaning, as hide and elude work, the garrotte continues aslong as I don't enter additional commands, the "distraction" would allow the victim to break free) Every round or so, the victim takes additional damage, and struggles to break free. If they manage to break free, the garrotte ends. Aslong as the victim is unable to break free, he is also unable to harm me. And this continues untill either the victim breaks out, or dies quietly. The struggle would be the Mercenary using their skill at garotting, with their strength and dexterity, versus the victim's strength and dexterity. Also, perhaps, other mobs would not jump into assistance during the attack, as this is intended to be a quiet stealthy kill, as to not draw the attention of others. That is also something perhaps that could be a succeed/fail situation, of whether or not the Mercenary can bring the victim down in a quiet struggle as planned, or instead fail and alert the mobs in the room to the fight.

I think that's enough to chew for now.

To add to garotte… Naturally if the merc gets hit, the garrotte would fail. So, failing to be quiet doesn't necessarily mean that you fail to be deadly. However, should there be others present that would care to assist, not being quiet could be detrimental to being lethal, as an assisting mob would hit you, and cause you to fail. I daresay even being attacked and missed would be enough.

I agree with Narcissus and think that ammunition should be more abundant and guns need to fire "properly". Damage should also be reasonable when ammunition is abundant. In the past, I believe ammunition was scarce because the weapon damage from guns in 4-6 rounds was insanely past the damage you could put in with sword hits, even if you had 100+ damroll. The issue now is making guns have weaponlike or slightly better than weaponlike damage.

In regards to garotte, the struggle idea is superb, and should be a la the struggle to break free from a Ranger's entanglement. Whereas an entangled mob frees itself by movement, fleeing, or retreating, garotte could function based upon previously mentioned methods. It may be difficult to code, though–perhaps have garotte be a skill that does not initialize battle until the struggle (str/dex/etc, as described by Narcissus) ends in favor of the mob? I'd like to see garotte do primary damage at first, and a worthwhile continuing damage thereafter.

Merriam

Correct, if you read carefully you'll see that part of garrotte's function is that while your victim is being garrotte'd, they can't fight back, they can only simply struggle to break free. And naturally should you fail to successfully garotte your victim, regular combat ensues.

Projectile damage is high yes, but, consider this. You're basically trading any in-combat damage skills or knockdowns for higher combat damage with projectile weapons. Because frankly, you really have to spam reload them during a fight if you want them to keep working. And even with the high damage these guns can inflict, I don't think it would compare damage/time to a bard's melee swinging combined with screaming.

I appoligize for my bad grammer, I was half asleep when i wrote that. As to the garotte idea I think that is great, I would love to have a move like that, I would also like to see a trip move with a garotte mabey, kind of like.

Infiltrate/garotte feet Kind of like hamstring but more of a trip during battle shoulderthrow is nice but when your a dual wielding merc/borg it kinda makes it hard to take off a weapon to throw, slows ya down, I feel like I am doing hiptoss/combo with a monk…

Having played Mercenary I feel like shoulderthrow is a very good skill, and that mercenaries do not need three knockdowns (you already have hamstring and shoulderthrow). I'm a physic, and I don't get anything. As a remorted cyborg, I don't get anything again!

Maxwell

This may not be a true Merc skill, but I think that a Merc would make better use of this than any other class on the MUD right now.

Twinstrike - utilizing their ability to dual-wield, a Mercenary combines his weapon attacks with his pair of weapons to generate more damage, and possibly a unique effect.

Bear with me here, this idea is a bit complex.

This attack takes two things into account - the Mercenaries dual-wielding, and his weapon choice. The 'unique effect' would be determined by the weapon combination the Merc is using. I am having difficulty thinking of a good way to describe this, so here's what it would look like in combat, using a slashing weapon and a gun.

<905H 325M 1005V -25A (Quite a few)> You trace a wide, arcing slash across your opponent's chest! You fire a shot point blank at Ishtar! The unexpected shot sends Ishtar reeling across the room! <905H 325M 920V -25A (Big nasty)>

I unfortunately have to leave now, so I will attempt to explain a bit more in-depth later.

Ok, so the formatting on that last one sucked. But now I have more time to explain what I wanted to say, and a chance to think about it.

The whole "dual-wield" thing is used by both Rangers and Mercenaries. Rangers have become fairly well known for their amazing defense, while Mercs… have hamstring and shoulderthrow. Shoulderthrow even defeats the purpose of dual wielding! So, I sat down and read through some of my books to look for ideas. I found in the DnD book Complete Warrior, the concept of "weapon styles" - tricks with paired weapons, or unusual singular weapons, that made them a more attractive choice to use.

Totally random dual-wielding merc: http://privateerpress.com/WARMACHINE/gallery/miniature_pages/previews/ashlynn_preview.html

Now, implementing a whole lot of skills for each weapon pair would… suck. A lot. I do not know if placing it as a single skill would be any more or less difficult, but I know it would allow people without one of the "special" combinations to use the skill. Basically, it would be a bit more powerful than an attack with each individual component, plus any special weapon combo that you have.

Now, for some totally arbitrary examples of what weapon combinations would do. Note that none of these have any fluff as to why they are, they just… are:

Slashing/Slashing: Bleeding (like hamstring, only continual)

Slashing/Blasting (or whatever a gun is): Temporary debuff

Slashing/Bludgeoning: Chance to knockdown

Bludgeoning/Gun: Extra Damage

Gun/Gun: Either Knockdown, or Gust of Wind effect

I'm sure you could think of more creative stuff to do. We have quite a few damage and weapon types, so just about anything could go. I'm sure you could think of some nice story-type explaination for everything, too.

I think that's a pretty interesting idea, Timeless. I agree that it would be fairly long to code, I don't think it would be particularly difficult. I also think this could be a great way to incorporate the guns that are so sorely lacking in everyday use. I think this should be a merc skill, and probably a remort skill (or at least one that sucks until you gen up) since mercs are supposed to be weapon specialists, not rangers or borgs.

What I see happening with this is mercs will become even more mixed up. They can wield guns for awesome damage, they can dual wield with a slashing weapon for hammy and fast attacks, they can have a hand open for shoulder throw, or they can have both hands open for wrench. And now we add even more combinations.

The way I think this should work, however, is instead of giving explicit and specific properties to each combination, is to have some obscure and complex algorithm with the 2 attack types as arguments and coming up with some bonuses. I see these being something small, like a couple of damroll and hitroll for popular combinations like slashing/slashing, while stuff like whipping/blunt gives dam, hit, AC, speed, and other nice things. Maybe throw in bonuses for using guns, since mercs are supposed to rock ass with guns.

Now that I think about it, I take back what I said…. this would be a pain in the ass to code, but probably a lot of fun too.

I think the most fun of that skill would be trying to discover all the cool combos put in. There'd be some easy ones, to be sure - but maybe one or two really obscure ones that would absolutely rock and be worth the effort finding.

Hell, it would be something I would use as an evil Cleric/Merc all the time. 'Cause I got nothin' better.