Adjust crafting needs for Communist items

After playing Communist before the latest patch I realised I needed full Wandcrafting to make any more of The Bomb, which was kinda annoying but at least you do get given one Bomb. Playing again after the patch, I now find that the new Communist Power Ushanka and Communist Power Armour both require full Smithing skills. This means, to make full use of the benefits of the Communism skill tree, you need both Wandcraft and Smithing levelled to max. I think this is a bit much.

Would it be possible to change the crafting requirements of each to Tinkering? Tinkering makes sense for making The Bomb, since Bolts of Mass Destruction already use that skill. Also, the images of the new Communist Power items look like altered versions of the Imperial Boilerplate armour, which to my mind would make them kind of stolen designs from the Capitalist pigdogs. This view is supported by the flavour text of the items ("you have appropriated imperialist-traitor armour technology", "All power armour to the Soviets!").

The name Power Armour also suggests that it is powered; what other skill pertains to clockwork mechanisms better than Tinkering?

 

Tinkering is rather more powerful than Smithing and Wandcraft already, your suggestions would make the disparity even larger.
Further, I think it's more appropriate to have the recipes spread across different skills, otherwise it would become a case of "If you take Communism, then you have to take Tinkering too."

So, in my opinion, the best thing would be to move one of the Smithing recipes to tinkering, while leaving the other two where they are. That way Smithing, Tinkering and Wandcraft all have equal synergy with communism, with one recipe each.

 

Honestly, I'm fine with the lack of Tinkering recipes. As you mentioned, Tinkering is really powerful, so why not just leave the recipes as they are now?

 

But it's already pretty much a case of "If you take Communism, you have to take Wandcrafting" because the final skill is a single explosion and three transmutative resistance without it. Also if you want to make full use of what you are given, you have to take Smithing as well, and then level both these crafts to maximum, which is a lot to ask.

Also, none of the Communist recipes currently use Tinkering so I don't know what you mean with the last part of your post.

My point wasn't really "I want more Tinkering recipes", it was that Tinkering seems more suitable than Wandcrafting and Smithing for the recipes you are given when taking Communism. What about the ability to repair wands makes you also able to create a thaumatugon bomb? Why does Imperial power armour require mechanical components and tinkering skill while Communist power armour requires smithing? (I agree with hammers and sickles and vodka as ingredients however )

 

Because gameplay balance? Because clockwork stuff is related to smithing while non-clockwork stuff can relate just fine to smithing?

I think this is more of a "Communism's Capstone sucks" than anything else. And I agree. Apparently The Bomb isn't even good against Dredmor, from what I've heard, so why bother taking it?

Now, if it was 400 cooldown Bomb spawn or something... but that's abuseable with Magical Law's capstone. So.

 

Give it a shorter cooldown but give it a non-removable (and non-dispelable) debuff that will rape you if you try to get another bomb too soon?
It would even match the theme, seeing as there were ration stamps for pretty much everything, and thus it would make sense for them to deny you another bomb if you come before getting another stamp.

 

I can dig it. But how would it be relevant? Making another bomb so soon allows you to devastate shit from far away. Things will be dead before they can take advantage of this severe debuff.

Could make it so if you time the cast poorly, and cast it while you have Communism debuffs on you, they begin to multiply. I think the "big debuff" could be "1991" or "The Fall" or something, alluding to the obvious fall of the USSR.

 

First - You can take Communist with no intention at all of taking the last skill (or even anything past the first skill, it's that powerful) so "Communism = Wandcrafting" isn't a good argument.

Second - Making one Communist item reliant on Tinkering means exactly what Maze said:

If each one of those skills can be used to craft one of the items that you'll get from the skill tree, they will all synergize with Communist. Not equally, because those items aren't equal in power, but hey, what is?

Third - Wandcrafting is the most thematically appropriate skill for making the Bomb because its about making items of magic power, which the Bomb clearly is (thaumaturgy is the power to make miracles, not the power to align cogs, after all, so that's clearly what thaumatons are - tiny little pieces of miracle.)

 

Well, it could be made so that trying to get the bomb while you have the debuff will give you a weaker item instead and renew the timer on the debuff.
Or something...

 

The skill requirement for the recipe doesn't bother me, it's the ingredient requirement that's the problem.

Orbs of nothing don't come up that often. you'd be lucky to craft the recipe ONCE, let alone multiple times. and frankly, it's not that great of an item.

 

I would rather that the DoT be buffed and a large aethereal component added, and the damage increased by at least 50%-75% compared to a regular BoMD. Then it might be worth keeping around especially for monster zoos.

 

I'd say it is a good argument. You can take it with no intention of taking the last skill, yes, but the majority of other skill trees have a very useful and worthwhile final ability to reward you for taking it so far. I am a completionist and I won't be the only one here - to leave a skill with one more level to unlock is excruciating . To make full use of Communism's final skill you need to max out Wandcrafting. This is one of the weaker skills available and I know that many others feel the same. I very rarely use wands myself and when I do I have a huge pile of them in the corner of my pocket dimension. The ability to create them is be useless to me and to others to, I'll bet. Therefore, the only attraction of taking Wandcrafting would be to max it out in order to make The Bomb, which is not at all enticing.

I'm game for spreading one of the Smithing recipes to Tinkering though, as Maze suggested. It just seems to me that right now Communism requires you to max out crafting skills and because these have been said to be the weaker available skills (especially with the crazy buffs on Chest of Evil weapons) it is a weaker tree as a result. Few other skills require a crafting skill to accompany them, save maybe Clockwork Knight with Tinkering. Even then, CK's active abilities are good enough that its recipes aren't required.

This too. Orbs of Nothing only show up in any useful amount in the very lowest levels of the dungeon so multiple crafts of this bomb are unlikely. That, coupled with the fact that The Bomb isn't even that good, weakens the skill further.[/quote][/quote]

 

I'm sure a lot of people don't like the Necronomiceconomics style of play because it doesn't fit their style of play, that doesn't mean the skill needs changing. There's different skills for different folks. I agree that taking the Orb of Nothing out of the Bombs ingredient list is a sound move, though. Consumable should be relatively easy to craft, as you'll want to make a lot of them. Also, if the Bomb scales to Wandcrafting, like other recipes from that tree, maybe we should make it scale to something else (stubborness perhaps?)

But the real power of the tree isn't its recipes, its the survival skills and the very harsh General Winter, which the equipment admittedly helps you survive if you can't get the cold resist elsewhere. Other than a little buffing of the Bomb, and maybe a proc to help you find potatoes to make Vodka with, I don't think it really needs any more help.

 

No one thinks Communism needs a buff. It's an exceptionally potent skill. We just think the capstone is pitiful. Changing the recipe would fix that, too.

If need be, we can nerf the tree in other places. People might be used to capstones being useless (see: Rogue Scientist) but that doesn't mean it's right. RS's capstone needs to be buffed, too.

 

Actually, if you look around you'll see several people have said they feel the skill is underpowered. And the point of this thread seemed to be that filing all the recipes under one craft skill would alleviate that.

 

I have a proposal for fixing the bomb, it's a bit complicated it involves changing several things about the bomb to make it both more useful and easier to produce.

First, The Bomb will actually be a "wand" item. This change is for purely mechanical purposes.

If the Bomb is a wand, this makes it possible to be targeted anywhere. This makes the bomb extremely effective against zoos, and much more efficent as an engine of destruction. It's a bit of a waste to have a giant AOE when 50% of your damage radius is wasted on empty space.

Code:

<item name="The Bomb" iconFile="items/thrown_the_bomb.png" special="1" >
<price amount="25000" />
<wand spell="They Blew It Up" mincharge="1" maxcharge="1" />
<description text="They said it couldn't be done, but here in your hands is proof that we can split the thaumaturgon and harness the vast power contained in that tiny particle!"/>
</item>

You could have fun with it at this point, coding some cool looking effect to make the nuke appear to be laser targeted before descending upon the target- or you could just use beammissile to make it look it's piercing everything between the player and the destination point-- or as shown in the above example, you could just have it trigger the explosion effect when the player designates a target.

The only flaw with this implementation is that since wands can't target the floor, the player could not target an empty area with this weapon. This means it's only useful for taking out unique boss monsters or monster zoos, and will no longer be useful as a wall clearing tool. Since the bomb is a bit too expensive to just throw away on a piece of wall, I don't see this as very important.

As far as the recipe, is concerned. I would use the following:

Code:

<craft hidden="1" >
<output skill="7" name="The Bomb" amount="1" />
<tool tag="lathe"/>
<input name="Aetheric Power Cylinder"/>
<input name="Bolt of Mass Destruction"/>
<input name="Vodka"/>
<input name="Hammer"/>
</craft>

This recipe is slightly easier to use, and the player can take advantage of it more easily than the orb of nothing because he could make at least one more if he takes communism. The player has several options for mass producing this recipe, but all of the require a significant skill investment, and with a bomb that can target the middle of a zoo, it will be much more worthwhile to craft them.

To Gaslamp staff, if you like this idea, I could write up a cosmetic effect for the bomb delivery.

Also, this implementation would be a lot smoother if the wand code was enhanced to allow the following

1. Target the emptyfloor/floor/walls.
2. make use of overrideclassname parameter.
3. produce a specific waste product when depleted (or no waste product).

 

Keep in mind the Communist capstone gives you 3 free transmute resistance. That isn't horrid.

I'd like to see them buff what the bomb can do, and maybe give you 2 or three of them if you take the Commie capstone. Otherwise, meh. I think its fine as a wandcrafting recipe, wandcrafting is lacking. The reality is you'll almost never craft the thing anyways since Orbs of Nothing do not grow on trees.

 

Brilliant, that would be a great change.

 

My one and only gripe with Ruigi's proposal is that it currently sets the skill level necessary to make the Bomb at 7, which it's not possible to get using just Communism and Wandcrafting, leaving you reliant on DG of Secrets or the Hat of Bergstrom. That's not quite as bad as having Orb of Nothing in the recipe, but it certainly isn't great for us NTTG players. This could be fixed simply by making the Communism capstone give that last rank of Wandcrafting, or by setting the craft level to 6.

 

Unless we gave Communism's Capstone 1. Not that it'd make much sense.

Or maybe a random Communism effect could give 1.