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[Kriellya]

Paris, have I ever told you how horrible the template code is? Is the stuff that powers that based in *lisp* or something, cause I can barely understand it on a good day, and you've got it very well organized XD

Also, oh god it's a template that calls another template. That feels monstrous, but now I think I know how it works XD


*ahem* The Character Builder has been updated to include the combination of Int and Will into Mind.
I'm working on converting the template, but I wanted to be a little more creative in order to avoid having to redo all of them. (I might just have us re-do all of them, since not very many are already done, for this exact reason XD )

Bugger this, it's not worth junking up the template code in order to avoid re-doing stat-sheets.
The template has been updated, Int & Will are now deprecated, and have been replaced with Mind. Go nuts. XD

[Xantalos]

I have to do school stuff for another few weeks so it'll be about a few days or so before I get to update my sheet.

[Parisbre56]

I'm not sure about whether or not manipulators should be removed. My current character doesn't use them, I just have some points in uncon for using mêlée weapons. But my next character if this one dies was going to be a manipulator user. And manipulators seem fun and have a fun history.

And I don't understand how removing them is going to make things better in terms of balance, if they're basically the same as amps. That's not balancing the scales, that's cutting the scales in half and using them to build new scales with spikes and nukes on them.

Plus manipulators should have the advantage of having better accuracy at longer ranges and/or with better preparation and/or equipment like range-finders, since amps rely on your mind understanding the range while you can just input the range and area of effect in a manipulator. Basically, manipulators should (at least based on what they are, not how they've been used in game so far) be a bit weaker than amps, but more reliable, more accurate, less tiring and easier to use. Like a handgun compared to a nuke.

On the other hand I understand the need to give each category its own feel and I'm not unwilling to try new things, even if it means losing old things. Nostalgia alone is not a very good reason for keeping something.

EDIT: Having too many skills is indeed a bit troubling though, since it's easier to minmax. But not much we can do about that, since they're needed.

@Kriellya: It helps if you use an external editor like Notepad++/NotepadQQ, something that can highlight parentheses and replace things with regular expressions. (Note to self: check for syntax highlighting for wikitext.)

I made it call another template so that I wouldn't have to write the same equation over and over and over again. Like a function. I could probably make a few more templates to make it easier to read, but I thought it would be best if I did not flood the wiki with Function-Templates.

Really, just change the name with a Ctrl-F regular expression and remove the Int variable. People will redo their stats anyway. Maybe add an if that displays a warning message if the old int variables are set to anything other than the empty string "".

I considered just writing something in HTML/JavaScript for it, since wikia apparently supports something like that, but that would have the disadvantage of having the calculations be made client side instead of server side, which means old or mobile devices might have trouble displaying it.

If you're having trouble with it I can help once I'm back from the university and can access my PC.

[Kriellya]

Nah, getting Mind working was easy. I was just considering trying to write some code to convert the int/will stats into mind, and decided I didn't want to think about it that hard right now XD

Notepad++ was helping, but not enough for me to want to actually try modifying it significantly. It has that lisp 'too many parentheses' issue that makes it really irritating to parse, even with a good editor. Not helped by everything being flagged with *two* parentheses, because wikia loves bizzare parsing conventions...

[Xantalos]

Plus manipulators should have the advantage of having better accuracy at longer ranges and/or with better preparation and/or equipment like range-finders, since amps rely on your mind understanding the range while you can just input the range and area of effect in a manipulator.

This might have weight, but per word of PW the math the manipulators have you input is meaningless jargon to get you thinking the way it needs you to.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

That's why the M5 thing with the dog ('COOK ME SUM DOGGY') Still worked, it kinda set his mind into the proper way of thinking, but it was off.

[Xantalos]

I knew something like that happened!

[Parisbre56]

@Xan: What I'm saying is different. Yes, both depend on your brain for processing and output, but amps rely on something like your imagination and your sense of space for input, while manips rely on you to actually write what you want to do, something that can be done better with intelligence and data. So they can be more accurate.


You input something like 20metrs and it heats that, that's what I'm saying.

[Xantalos]

Ah, I see what you mean. We could maybe just move them over to Exo and have increasing intelligence/uncon/general knowledge/whatever make them work better then?

[AoshimaMichio]

I don't mind having manipulators removed, but as alternative how about making them one-shot wonders, basically they burn whole battery at once? And move them over to exo. Balancewise manipulator would basically be free, but batteries costs lot.

[Empiricist]

I don't really understand the new classification system. Why are mindfuck guns and shotguns both of which are used exactly like any other gun classified as EXO and UNCON respectively?

Disclaimer: I an completely biased as I have spent the entire day considering replacing Charle's face with a Mindfuck gun hooked up to his voice synthesizer, because no conversation is complete without someone having to roll WILL against both CHAR and CON.

[Sean Mirrsen]

As I see it, with the Mind stat, the difference between Amps and Manips as it stands is thus:

Amps: limited number on person, hands-free use, available ammo directly tied to other combat ability.
Manips: not attached to you in any way, require physical interaction to use, ammo is external to the user.

As such I think it could be neat to put them both into the same Exo category, but have them play on their differences.

If you want amps, you need to pick what you want to install, and any other brain implants will also take up space. You have far more freedom of how you want to use them, and it takes less effort to do what you want exactly, but if you ever overdraw yourself, you blank out. If you ever suffer a critical enough failure, you could blow your own brain up. And like any implants, these would make you vulnerable whenever anything that affects electronics or metal en masse is used.

If you take manips though, you can treat them as any other weapon. Yes they're more restricted, yes you have to actually have to interact with them to use them, and it takes more effort as a result - but you can't overdraw yourself nearly as badly with a manip as you can with an amp, because the manip supplies some of the basic power for itself.


I've had an entirely different idea for field manipulators, but it's contingent on that nominally secret project I've been mentioning. If it works, manips could be made into uncon weapons that are Mind-based, but draw only whatever power they are supplied, rather than mind points.

[Unholy_Pariah]

As an uncon user i say fuck personal manipulators off completely.

Speccing into the higher end versions massively weakens your mental defences and the only, and i mean only, way a manipulator is in any way more useful or practical than an amp is when its an automanipulator.

Long story short; automanipulators yay, rest in the trash can.

Edit: Also i support mindfuck gun being con and teleporter/space magic infusers being Aux/Uncon due to thei control methods rather than their functions.

[Corsair]

I agree with Sean and Parisbe on the manip thing, and I would present an argument for it but Sean has beaten me to all of it.

[Empiricist]

Speccing into the higher end versions massively weakens your mental defences and the only, and i mean only, way a manipulator is in any way more useful or practical than an amp is when its an automanipulator.

Actually, what if personal manipulators were changed into the halfway point between psychokinetic amplifiers and automated field manipulators? Basically, they'd need people to manually input the calculations and whatnot, but it'd be less mentally draining and safer (overloads don't make heads asplode) in exchange for having a more limited scope. So they won't control an entire field-type like an amp, instead they'd control a field-type for a specific subset of applications.

So you could perhaps put a lower cap on power, or precision, or speed. Or divide each amp domain into subdomains that manipulators use. So for example, whilst an amp can alter vectors, a manipulator might only be able to change a vector's direction or magnitude.

I suppose a good analogy would be comparing it to programming. Automated field manipulators would be like commissioning a custom piece of software - you get it without much risk, but it only performs a specific task. Personal manipulators would be like using a declarative language where you do need to have certain skills, but the unit itself still does a lot of the work. Psychokinetic amplifiers would be like doing low-level stuff with an imperative language like registry manipulation where you have a lot of control but will probably memory leak your computer into oblivion.