Combat Change (Action Points)

[Coops]

If you don't take part in combat or RAID combat then this post will mean pretty little to you, if you are a combat player or one who frequents the RAID combat system then you need to READ this post.

We have been monitoring player 'play styles' and methods of levelling for some time and have agreed (Dev wise) that its time to put a balance back in to Combat. When combat was added to the game a long series of balance and checks went on under the hood, placing Enemy vessel, threat, XP ect all in to the mix and working up palatable figures.

At that time a Red ship was a RED ship and not something you loaded up a few more 100 Matix's and Combat Drones for. These days the balance of the Threat rating is way out of kilter with players able to just about kill anything given enough time, credits and the insane ability to click a mouse for 40 mins.

AP (Action Points).
These have been now added to the game. Each player (regardless of level) has THREE. When you enter combat (or a RAID) you will see these AP points in the top centre of the combat system.

Drones and Matrix's now have a 1 AP cost to use. When you reach Zero AP you can no longer use either.

This WILL make a large change to combat, and in a sense I wish we didn't have to add this kind of limiting but it is obvious without rebalancing the entire combat system captains will continue to fight WAY ABOVE their combat abilities.

This change has been agreed to by not only the Devs but also tested on the Dev Server by the staff and found to be a great solution to combat levelling. From this change onwards a RED is exactly that RED damn near impossible to kill.

This will mean that MOST of you out there using combat as your primary income / XP ect will have to reset your sights (excuse the pun). Ships you could kill by using a dozen or so Matrix's or three or four drones are now outside your ability to kill. This is how it was meant to be!

We will watch and review the AP limit and also listen to sensible feedback, but the AP change is here to stay.
Combat Drones - Up to now combat drones have had a standard fire rate when in non Expanse territory. This has now been changed and they will fire UPTO their Max damage levels. This change was necessary to rebalance them slightly.

RAID AP
The AP changes will have a major affect on using Matrix's in RAID combat. This will stop the solo activities of Captains and return RAIDs to their original design - 'Team RAIDS'. Again we will monitor sensible suggestions and feedback on this topic.

Post AP changes
Whilst I have no doubt some of you will spit teeth over this change please understand it is a necessary change. One thing it WILL allow us to do is now develop more and more toys for combat, especially the Expanse where it has been impossible to add more fire-power to as players could already kill Red Aliens.

We take the long term future of Core-Exiles very seriously and want to add as much to the game as we can. Often it means making hard changes - this is one of them.

Coops