Item Manufacturer Differences

[Raujinn]

I of course am referring to GRM, Tenora Works and The Yohmei Corporation.

It would be nice if the differences they offered for their core weapon lines had tangible effects in game. I'm not entirely certain as to what, though.
Sega's original idea is of course to grant GRM weapons more precision, but that's unapplicable in the system we've proposed for stats so far. Tenora was the raw power company, which due to the way PSU was balanced kind of made it the best company. Yohmei was all about stable reactors with large amounts of energy storage capacity. Note that I think this should only affect thier core weapon lines, other weapons by the companies could just ignore this (idk, companies like to try different things sometimes? Copying the competition? A random stupid idea of theirs?). The company variations could change between weapon types I guess?
This could pidgeon-hole their use, but is that such a bad thing with weapons though? I want to try to avoid a one-size fits all situation if possible still.

More PP for yohmei weapons I think works out fine (as it's a tangible mechanism rather than slightly different numbers), but that leaves two companies which have to offer something different... I don't know, this isn't exactly a big fish to fry so I wouldn't be particularly disappointed if a solution wasn't found.

[Qwerty]

I think we could balance the 3 manufacturers based on PP and ATP/TP alone. For each type of weapon, one company would be strongest/least PP, another would be the weakest/most PP, and the third would be about average for both (maybe high PP regen?).

[essen]

Or just have GRM do guns, Yohmei do techs and Moatoob do swords.

[Raujinn]

I was thinking more like, say:

GRM is precision, so it could hit fewer targets but deal more damage. Greater range on some weapons.
Tenora is more wild, so it could hit more targets but for less damage. Less range on some weapons.
Yohmei's PP means you could spam PAs more on them, but I'm not sure exactly where their damage should sit..

Ofc, photon arts working as they do screw that up completely, so the actual mechanisms would depend on how those are to be handled.I think tht also may well be a nightmare to balance..

Or just have GRM do guns, Yohmei do techs and Moatoob do swords.

What wouldyou do with the orphaned weapons?

[essen]

Make *all* guns GRM.

I really couldn't care less about manufacturers really.

[Raujinn]

They do become somewhat irrelevant beyond 10*, yes..

[Mewn]

I don't think it matters too much. In my view manufacturer weapons should be common items - relatively simple to obtain, usable stat-wise, but outclassed by the masses of Kubara gear (perhaps add some sort of upgrade route to make these weapons more competitive, but the base items should fill a niche for beginner gear).

So, you know, just handle it like PSU. Except good.

[Qwerty]

Yeah, to be completely honest I really don't care what we do to manufacturer weapons, because the stats really only matter for 1-9* weapons that no one will ever use anyway. As long as we make a token effort to have some differentiation between the companies, I wouldn't worry too much how well balanced it turns out because it just won't matter.

[essen]

Well, I do intend to have at least 4 tiers of everything with /R-like caps for C missions where you would be capped from like LV1 to LV50 depending on the mission and could maybe use only C weapons and some B weapons, and same for B missions and shit. So C weapons would still matter in endgame and more importantly you could have 15* C weapons to find and use in those missions. Details to be worked on but that would make the game more interesting and we wouldn't have to do CBAS of all missions with all same enemies at different levels just because. We could really focus them on difficulty and make real changes to the mission when comparing C and S, like harder enemies, more buffed enemies, more maps to go through or whatever.

[Qwerty]

Even still, people would likely use rare C/B-rank weapons, making the exact stats on the 1-9* manufacturer weapons not really a hugely important deal.



Also a bit off-topic, but would it possible for us to do something like a true challenge mode? None of this halfassed GAM crap where it only caps your level (I mean there isn't anything wrong with that, it's just not as interesting as starting at level 1 with no equipment and working up from there).