burlybuns's page

Maya Coleman wrote:

However, for those who are going through the playtest now, if you run into issues you want to make sure the devs see so that they can be reviewed and possibly added to a potential errata, those errors need to be listed in the playtest survey for devs eyes to see.

Sorry Maya, maybe I’m not making myself clear, and I may be missing something obvious.

If there are problems with the playtest, that will make playtesting those problems essentially pointless because the resultant data will be compromised, therefore before players get to taking the survey, it would be useful for those problems to be “fixed”.

Rather than waiting for the devs to trawl through the surveys and then make changes, the devs can see what playtesters are posting in realtime, adjust the playtest and allow the playtesters to playtest what is intended, rather than what is in error.

I know this all supposes endless person hours of availability etc…but given the playtest period is also finite, time does seem to be of the essence to get the most effective data. So to me, devs waiting for survey results seems counterintuitive.

Yeah I see the problem with this in some ways, like on Servoshell. It just completely doesn't function currently. How do players play test something that is completely nonfunctional at this point other than to make up changes to the subclass at which point their testing is really just not worth much beyond pointing out it is just completely broken currently.

I think it'd be cool to have an exocortex option that is purely focused around support and modding allies with buffs inside and outside combat.

Yes, the break threshold without self destruct is rough. But, I think you are being a little harsh.

It is very unlikely that the mine deploy feats are intended to allow 1 action at 30ft. Secondly, if you blitz all of your capacity of mines quickly, with how much damage you'd be dealing, it does feel appropriate to have some sort of cost. That said, the mechanic is also a martial. So, if your mine supply is gone, or you are pacing yourself, you still have that part of your class. But, this thread is about turrets.

As for the turret, again, yes, the BT is rough. And yes, it would be nice to have an optional Int to-hit. But those ranges are pretty standard or higher for most ranged weapons in the playtest. And, with a mod, you can extend it by 30ft. At that distance, your turret is pretty far back. Plus, I don't know your experiences, but it is rare to have a combat at that range anyway. And and, getting stat to damage at range is very rare in 2e. And and and, you can get an aoo at 30ft for the turret.

If your turret is constantly broken you aren't getting reactions with it.

In Pathfinder yes it is more rare to have combat at that range, but not in the slightest in Starfinder.

Broken on a weapon is a -2 to attack rolls...

No it isn't. Broken means it straight up does not work. Only armor gets reduced and that depends on the type of armor light/medium/heavy, -1/-2/-3 respectively.

I also keep saying people on Discord and Reddit (it may be the same person) claim that "they changed" the hardness to the weaker "half your level" always being the case. But I'm not sure why they say this, except for some online third party apparently implementing it that way.

Quote:

it has Hardness equal to half your level (rounded up). It has trained proficiency in Reflex and Fortitude saves, using your Intelligence modifier to calculate these bonuses. It has 6 Hit Points, plus a number of Hit Points equal to 2 plus your Intelligence modifier for each level you have. Its Broken Threshold is equal to half its total Hit Points (rounded down). During your daily preparations, you automatically repair your turret, restoring it to maximum Hit Points. If your turret is destroyed, the next time you Deploy Turret, you deploy a repaired turret with maximum Hit Points. You can only have one turret deployed at a time.

At 5th level, your turret’s Hardness increases to 10. At 10th level, it increases to 15 and its proficiency rank in Reflex and Fortitude saves increases to expert. At 15th level, its Hardness increases to 20, and its proficiency rank in Reflex and Fortitude saves increases to master.

I do agree there's some tension here and probably one of these is supposed to go away. As is it still works it's just clunky - half your level until the new rules come into effect at level 5.

I found it on Demiplane Nexus when it originally launched where someone linked it on Reddit, the documentation included the hardness scaling up like you mentioned, but then shortly within a day or so it was removed from the reflex and fort saving section.

I hope that is just an error and the hardness does scale up better, but I'd honestly prefer they just make it your level +5. I think that would work better anyways and give you an additional point of hardness each level instead of large jumps.

Can Mobile Exocortex really not move a Broken Turret? So if that is yes then it becomes just glorified cover and you should really grab Shielded Turret then and treat it as a Wall with a chance of doing some damage when the wall is first deployed with Cordinated Fire.

I believe most maps should have plenty of cover to work with anyways but maybe not. Guess that just depends on your games. Feels like it just doesn't stack up to the other exos.

I think the turret is competive on damage once you invest in Area Denial Turret (a 30-45' cone placed 30' away to toast an entire group) and/or Coordinated Fire (MAPless attacks from both you and your turret) at level 2, Self Destruct (one action to tell it to move with Reposition Exocortex or for you to run away, then two actions to detonate gets you a 3 action Fireball with full area), Auto Target at 6th (area fire will provide an incentive to move away for some enemies), and especially Energy Expulsion at level 10 to get a full MAP strike and full DC area blast (if your strike hits) for two actions.

It's also not all about damage. With a 1st level feat you get a permanent +2 to AC if you put it between you and enemies, no taking cover action required. There's also the concealment zone and wall off an area/provide group cover options. And if they're shooting at the turret, they're not shooting at you or your allies, that's a benefit in of itself.

That said, you should be able to restore it without having to destroy it yourself, and while Self Destruct is great, it becomes something of a feat tax and not applicable in every situation if you can't withdraw from the blast zone or Reposition Exocortex it somewhere that won't toast allies.

It's a tech book, we may also get crafting skill feats and nanite patches to repair the turret in combat, but that's not ideal given the existing "just spend actions, if it's hurt enough" refresh option.

Coordinated fire again ceases to function once that BT is hit.

The damage on the self destruct is quite low though. It also cannot be moved once its broken nor would it likely provide cover or if you go by armor rules instead perhaps just -2 or -3 but that still nullifies it. The feat for self destruct is level 4 if it scales from that level, it would only be 3d6 damage at level 6 as it scales 1d6 piercing damage every 2 levels, the fire does not scale, while fireball is 6d6 at level 5 for 2 actions.

I'm not sure what action you're talking about if it's hurt enough to refresh it, as far as I know that doesn't exist. You have to have it fully destroyed to redeploy it. And again most of the feats you're talking about using will not work if your turret is reduced to half which is quite easy to do and that again ends up nullifying all of your feat choices. If you're using the turret as cover, and say it hits that BT, you then have a non functioning weapon, that likely is your priority on upgrades, that is immobile now and does not provide cover. There also needs to be clarification on what your turret is capable of once broken, does self destruct even work? By broken rules the turret should be non-functional, but I can't imagine they mean to prevent self destruct.

Either way, say you're taking cover by your turret shooting things, it hits BT they stop shooting at it so it just remains non-functional and you cannot summon another. You can then run away and trigger self-destruct but with a lot of combat remaining ranged in SF2E you are very likely in a lot of cases just dealing zero damage that round lowering your DPR even lower. Even if there are enemies 2d6 is quite low by that level.

For Area Denial, as far as I've heard, area fire deals less damage than cantrips until you hit certain target thresholds based on the Soldier feedback. I believe it began to only be decent once they applied the changes to Primary Target to include an actual attack roll included in the area fire for Soldier. Because most monsters have high reflex and save, same problem self destruct will have.

For Energy Expulsion, I think that would be quite niche to even have enemies in the area of your turret close enough to be hit by it unless you're throwing it deep enough. Again, SF2E is much more heavily ranged leaning so having enemies clustered enough or close enough is not as easy as it is in PF2E. And if you're throwing it deep, it again becomes an easier target for them to just BT.

Edit: All of this is to say, I like the turret a lot, but I believe the BT needs to go entirely. It introduces too many complications into the turret gameplay.

I think the problem with this is the turret is central to your own damage and using your own actions. How is that significant an action tax okay? And how is turret mechanic supposed to be remotely competitive on damage? And because the BT is so easy to hit any random person shooting at it from range will be able to take it to that threshold quite easily with a single attack a lot of the time. I just don't see how that's supposed to work and not just be a hindrance on your actions where it'd be better to just shoot your own gun all the time instead of dealing with it. Why does the turret have a BT while the drone doesn't and the Drone has its own action.

Does anyone else have concerns around the BT on the turret? Currently it would be better if they just got rid of it and gave it half health instead so it actually breaks and can be resummoned. I don't see how the turret is supposed to be usable when small amounts of damage break it and you can't repair it in combat until higher level. If the goal is to then have you have to destroy it manually that's a lot of action tax. And if the goal is to have you self destruct it, that goes completely against using it as cover.

It didn't seem as bad when the Hardness scaled better, but that was only there for a few hours on the original document before being nerfed to hardness = half level rounded up. It will feel kind of silly to have a turret that is just broken all the time leaving you to just fire your own gun with no feat support.

With the mod adding int to the turret strikes, I'd be curious to see how the math works out on you both shooting vs your turret for all shots.

burlybuns wrote:

Where exactly on the survey are we supposed to provide this feedback? The survey has no spot to provide errors or such that are found only 1-5 ratings of different things and a question about feats with an Other option that seems like the wrong place to go on a tangent about errors. Tried to continue on through the survey to see if it was further along and then now it says completed with no way to take it again.

I'm quite surprised there's not a section on the survey dedicated to errors that are found.

I brought this to Jenny, and we found this was a mistake on our part! There should have been a free response question at the end. Thank you for catching the error, and the team has now added question 11, which is a is a free response to collect comments. Please put any errata you find and the general feedback in there!

Awesome! Glad to be of help.

Edit: Just a heads up, the question only appears on the Technomancer portion of the questions. So if someone only played the Mechanic and only wants to leave feedback about the Mechanic, and so skips the Technomancer feedback, they do not receive the question to provide feedback on the Mechanic.

I think you can kind of get that flavor from the single action upgrade feat "Instant Install". That allows you to just swap upgrades around willy nilly changing up your capabilities on the fly as long as you're carrying them.

Ningasak wrote:

When will the foundry vtt play-test module be updated with the new classes?

Unsure, but we'll update you!!

Also, to everyone leaving notes here about errors you've found and things you like as well as dislike, first of all, thank you for telling us at all because they're things we need to know! Secondly, please remember this is what the surveys are for! The comment section here is actually not the best way to get that info to the dev team. Since playtests have so much interaction with the community and will of course garner lots of feedback (which we want), we try to make sure that feedback goes to a central place so the devs can get it all, and that place is the playtest survey! Please put the errors you find there rather than here! Thank you!

Where exactly on the survey are we supposed to provide this feedback? The survey has no spot to provide errors or such that are found only 1-5 ratings of different things and a question about feats with an Other option that seems like the wrong place to go on a tangent about errors. Tried to continue on through the survey to see if it was further along and then now it says completed with no way to take it again.

I'm quite surprised there's not a section on the survey dedicated to errors that are found.