Ok so you like NGE...

[Oporim]

Well I hope I'm not depressing anyone with this, Orph ;)
Here is an add-on, on why I like it. It is bound on some previous discussions that took place on these forums and ended up in comparison what has more 'strategy' (I agree it is debatable and subject of personal preferences).

First something on semantics. The use of word Startegy in military is limited to high level decisionmaking. Strategy is a set of decisions that take you to your political objective. These include:
- choice of which forces to employ and weapon usage
- choice of supression of certain enemy defenses / installations / production / morale
- choice of which trafficways to block or move by

When coming in contact with enemy operational and tactical levels come to use. Operational when planning and executing a divisional-and-below sized engagement on a certain theatre. Operation then includes preparation of combat and combat-support forces, organisation of supply, managing assembly areas before battle occurs, establishing forward operation bases, moving units into contact, unconventional tactical weapon usage decisions etc.
When smaller units come into contact, tactics comes to play. Tactics is directly a consequence of
#1 Field-of-Vision of smallest pieces of hardware in play
#2 range of fire -""-
#3 Turning ability of units
#4 Ammo reloading times
#5 Movement speed and fire-on-the-move abilities
#6 Other abilities that may influence the fight

Tactics is mainly a set of rules how to behave in a firefight in an organised manner, so that a frontline may function. Every smallest unit must have a designated field of vision inside which it acts. Unit as a whole must manage smaller FoVs so it is effective and certain smallest unit does not block line of fire of other units - therefore formations come into play. Formations also dictate how much firepower will be directed in a certain direction. Then again if a flanking attack comes in, some formations will be useless to respond properly - thus turning (reformation) speeds come to play. All the time of combat some of the units will be low on ammo and combat ineffective, so you need to manage three aspects: a part of units will be in combat, part will be in transit and part will be reloading in the immediate rear of the line of troops.

Projecting this into SWG, I say OK. Deciding the order of your specials may be considered strategy in CU, but it is a poor strategy. Deciding on foods also. It can be compared to chess, but it more resembles to tic-tac-toe. There was only one way to play it: unload ALL available states to your enemy and hammer him down. In chess you have the freedom to choose from a wide variety of moves that may take you to victory, one move at a time. In SWG-CU choice was only one: unload as fast as you can (and maintain) and power attack afterwards. In NGE with limited foods-to-consume and action at least this was fixed. Now you need to choose which special/state to use. You cannot use all of them like you could before. In this manner, NGE now is MORE like chess-play and less like tic-tac-toe. At least that is how I see it and I do respect if any of you see it otherwise.

There is another good aspect of NGE. CU was in a certain time-frame allways a one-on-one engagement (because of lock-on targeting and if no AoEs were used). Because no line-of-sight disruptions from allied (or enemy) players ever came into play, there was no need for keeping a formation, and no consequence from movement also. Ergo: no tactics needed.
Now players can block your line of sight so formation keeping is a necessity in large scale combat. Same goes for movement. While movement may give you the advantage of not being hit so frequently, it will for sure disrupt the formation of your group.
SWG has come to a point where players need not train any more in the sequence of specials to be used, need not spend a fortune on gear to be competitive. Instead players should now emphasise to train in an orderly combat. Like the real life military does. Spread formation if enemy is in front, wedge formation if enemy is front-ish. Diamond (hedge) formation if enemy is all around. To move around without breaking formation. The best part now is, flanking attacks ARE possible. If a force decides to flank a group of players, they can. Consequence will be noticable: until the attacked group repositions to face the attacker, only the one on the flanked edge is able to fire towards the attacking group, all others will have more or less blocked line of sight. Consequently since other defenders are hidden behind the far-player (or a few of them), attackers will converge on those exposed and simple math tells you that the side which converges fire will be likely to win.
So, while repositioning defenders are more voulnerable than the attacker who is spread-on to them. Tanks drive in formation so they can immediatley respond to a detected enemy unit in a certain direction (without the time of turret-turning). In Vietnam war Vietnamese pilots had a tactics "Slashing attack". When a US formation of aircraft was flying straight, they would come in supersonic from behind through their formation forcing them to break up with no order. That way they gained some advantage. Problem in air combat is that pilots must contantly inform eachother who is pressing on the enemy, who has no visual on his wingmen during turning (turning must allways be deconflicted, so they don't collide), where his wingmen are - so that multiple are not going after the same target and that the lead can allways call up his wingman to clear his six, etc. Formations are the core of every interesting fight.

Toons now reload weapons. This becomes most obvious in the long-term DPS which is dependent on clip-size. If they prolonged the reload timeout, then another aspect of tactisc would come to play - coordination of gunfire through time - so (say) two shooters are allways firing, while two may be reloading.
You see, the emphasis now comes to group-tactics and no longer single person action/resource management (or sometimes group coordination who does the snare/root).
Foods: you can no longer stack a lot of foods, only one drink/food and one buff - more 'strategic' than before I think.
Specials: only one for a certain ammount of time - more 'strategic' than before I think. You cannot travel on all possible paths at the same time any more; only one at a time.

This is also why I love the potential NGE has given us (still a lot needs to be done).

[Oporim]

A sidenote on formations:

#1
unless players start to train in formation fighting, you will still see just hordes fighting chaoticly

#2
to prevent immediate mixing of opposite groups fights should be transfered out of the cities

#3
prone position (slow reformation speed) would have a more visible effect on this than fighting standing up

[Shensen]

....

[Jabe Adaks]

Wow... Both the last couple of posts averaged about 1200 words, congrats.

Thank you for your insight an spending so much time to try to communicate your point of view. I will refer to your posts as I play over the next few months. But right now I am not "getting it". Thats nobody's problem but mine.

Jabe

[Shensen]

That would be kinda cool to see a guild or a bunch of people like MERCS going through a city Counterstrike/Rainbow Six style shouting "Clear!".

[Ekade]

If complexity is the yardstick you think is the mesure of how fun a game can be, you are mistaken. By that logic, it would be impossible for Ekade to enjoy a game of Go-fish with her children.

Well, I refuse to play Candyland because it is just too dumb and the colors are too hard to distinguish from one another.

Chutes and Ladders is a little more interesting because you can feel like you are pwning face, but then you land on the large chute and plummet 2/3 of the way down the board.

What I dislike about those both of those games is that you do not get to make decisions. You are essentially a robot moving your marker according to the "instructions" given to you by the randomizing mechanism.


Go-fish requires some level of thinking, and memory. You get to make decisions in Go-Fish. That's what makes it enjoyable for me.


Fun in a game comes, in large part, from the decisions you get to make.

I have yet to give the NGE it's fair shot.. but when I did try it I got frustrated by the fact that the game would not implement the decisions I was making. I decided to heal myself.. and it just was not happeneing. I decided I wanted to talk in Noct chat.. but I had no clue where it was or how to bring it up on my screen.

I could not do half of the things I wanted to do. It felt like I was playing Candyland. The visual feedback was confusing and it did not appear the game was allowing me to make any decisions aside from whack-a-mob. I refuse to play Candyland. It's dumb.

Give me the ability to make decisions and do things and I will be much happier.

[Hashum]

If complexity is the yardstick you think is the mesure of how fun a game can be, you are mistaken. By that logic, it would be impossible for Ekade to enjoy a game of Go-fish with her children.

Well, I refuse to play Candyland because it is just too dumb and the colors are too hard to distinguish from one another.

Chutes and Ladders is a little more interesting because you can feel like you are pwning face, but then you land on the large chute and plummet 2/3 of the way down the board.

What I dislike about those both of those games is that you do not get to make decisions. You are essentially a robot moving your marker according to the "instructions" given to you by the randomizing mechanism.


Go-fish requires some level of thinking, and memory. You get to make decisions in Go-Fish. That's what makes it enjoyable for me.


Fun in a game comes, in large part, from the decisions you get to make.

I have yet to give the NGE it's fair shot.. but when I did try it I got frustrated by the fact that the game would not implement the decisions I was making. I decided to heal myself.. and it just was not happeneing. I decided I wanted to talk in Noct chat.. but I had no clue where it was or how to bring it up on my screen.

I could not do half of the things I wanted to do. It felt like I was playing Candyland. The visual feedback was confusing and it did not appear the game was allowing me to make any decisions aside from whack-a-mob. I refuse to play Candyland. It's dumb.

Give me the ability to make decisions and do things and I will be much happier.

Well you picked a bad example here. I'm by no means a huge fan or even a fan of the NGE, frankly I loved the CU, and I want it back.

Anyway as to your argument you're comparing a game like candyland where you are not allowed to make decisions with a game that does allow you to make all the decisions you described (Heal, Chat, Etc.) but you didn't want to learn how to make the game let you choose.

For instance on healing, and all defensive skills to my knowledge this is still the case. You need to move your curser off of your target before it will execute. Granted that is stupid and really kills the point especially for melee because by the time you move the curser, heal, and go back to attacking the time delay has caused you to take the damage you just healed by the time you can attack again. But you can choose to heal.

Chatting is another option, you can somehow create a Noct. Chat again, now I don't know how but it can be done. You can choose to chat.

And the commands can be changed you can choose to make it very similar in every aspect but combat to the CU.

So as you said you really haven't given the NGE a chance but you can't blame it not it not allowing you choices. It sounds more like you didn't want to put the effort into giving it a chance. Now that's fair why should you have to put in an effort but let's just call it what it is and not blame it for something that it's not doing which is not allowing choice. There's plenty of that in the NGE.

[Jabe Adaks]

((This is not directed "at" anyone...))

As much as her example may be considered a bad one... consider this:

Your first and only MMORPG is SWG. Suddenly one day you find yourself struggling to use even the basic controls of the same game. There is no apparent or inidicative right way to do something. I can attest to this, I had to ask Saf how to get Noct chat back and other things I learned from hearing people share information.

Who wants to spend time doing that? This community has had to try too hard for too long IMHO. You shouldn't be putting this kind of effort in to enjoyment. You shouldn't be having to work so hard to give things a chance. This is your time to relax when you play a game. Its your time in the day to do something other than worry or "work" on something. Ekade realizes that and moved on, I envy her ability to do so.

This community had its issues but was generally comfortable. Most here hoped that the game would go on just like other aging MMORPGs like EQ, etc. We got denied that right. And so we're veterans of nothing. As a matter of fact the old schoolers are stuttering around as level 80 n00bs. I lose battles simply because of modal chat problems. I am pissed about that, but to be honest that would only be the tip of the iceberg.

I am personally tired of putting an effort in to it. I don't blame Ekade one bit for playing WoW this past month - she hasn't missed a thing. If I had another game I loved so much I would leave and never come back. Unfortunately no other game has gripped me like SWG so here I am painfully trying to find my comfort zone again. People accuse me of being a whiner. You're damn right I'm a whiner. Unless you've paid to keep this site running or put as much time in to the community then you got no right to even tell me to STFU or quit whining.

I look at my "Jedi" holding a T21 rifle while wearing Jedi robes and I want to vomit. I look at the 31 forums on this site and see Jibber Jabber overtaking them all in active posts and I want to cry. But then there's people who say "make the most of it" or "stop whining". Fuck that.

I will make one promise to everyone here, I won't complain about anything twice from this point forward. The next time I find something atrociously broken I am going to bitch about it and that will be the last of it.

SOE and LucasArts deserve exactly what they are getting right now. Some of you are already aware of the reports (which I was made aware of last night) that SOE will not confirm SWG's continued existence past March of next year. If... or more likely when the game gets shut down I will be comfortable in knowing that they did this to themselves. The community did not fail the company the company failed the community.

Jabe

[Hashum]

Your first and only MMORPG is SWG. Suddenly one day you find yourself struggling to use even the basic controls of the same game. There is no apparent or inidicative right way to do something. I can attest to this, I had to ask Saf how to get Noct chat back and other things I learned from hearing people share information.

I can relate I was in the same situation, and yes this was very frustrating as the game was not user friendly. And if thats the reason anyone is not playing as I did say at the end of my post thats a valid reason. In the case of my post Im just saying call it what it is, dont say the game doesnt give you a choice when its one of the few things the NGE does have.

Who wants to spend time doing that? This community has had to try too hard for too long IMHO. You shouldn't be putting this kind of effort in to enjoyment. You shouldn't be having to work so hard to give things a chance. This is your time to relax when you play a game. Its your time in the day to do something other than worry or "work" on something. Ekade realizes that and moved on, I envy her ability to do so.

/agree but again thats something completely different. I wasnt saying there arent valid reasons for leaving or not playing the NGE Im just saying if your reason for leaving is because you dont think the NGE gives you choices then youre wrong. And despite my understanding of how to use some of the choices and make it more user friendly I have still moved on myself and have started playing Silk Road Online. So I can appreciate this completely.

And SWG was my first and only MMORPG so believe the loss I feel because of the NGE runs very deep.

This community had its issues but was generally comfortable. Most here hoped that the game would go on just like other aging MMORPGs like EQ, etc. We got denied that right. And so we're veterans of nothing. As a matter of fact the old schoolers are stuttering around as level 80 n00bs. I lose battles simply because of modal chat problems. I am pissed about that, but to be honest that would only be the tip of the iceberg.

100% agree

I am personally tired of putting an effort in to it. I don't blame Ekade one bit for playing WoW this past month - she hasn't missed a thing. If I had another game I loved so much I would leave and never come back. Unfortunately no other game has gripped me like SWG so here I am painfully trying to find my comfort zone again. People accuse me of being a whiner. You're damn right I'm a whiner. Unless you've paid to keep this site running or put as much time in to the community then you got no right to even tell me to STFU or quit whining.

I wouldnt tell you to quite whining because I agree with your complaints, I have the same (except paying for the site, and thanks by the way for doing so). And I dont blame Ekade for leaving either, heck I left and have gotten into something else just because of the NGE. So I just want to clarify Im not trying to blame anyone from my post. Im just saying if shes not playing because she doesnt think she has choices in the game shes wrong, and maybe now is a good time to give it a fair shot. She doesnt have to, and if she doesnt so be it, its our loss as a community not having her around. But if she truly wants to enjoy it and would want to put in an effort if she knew she did have choices then Im just saying that is an option.

I look at my "Jedi" holding a T21 rifle while wearing Jedi robes and I want to vomit. I look at the 31 forums on this site and see Jibber Jabber overtaking them all in active posts and I want to cry. But then there's people who say "make the most of it" or "stop whining". Fuck that.

Again I completely agree with you. I only have had a small role on the Tales Team here and cant offer much help but even I find it sad to have seen the activity here seem to decrease rapidly and to see so much conversation in Jib Jab. Again you may not be referring to my post but it wasnt a stop whining post, it was just either admit what the real reason is (whatever it is there are plenty of good reasons to leave) or maybe its time to take another look at the NGE and give it a chance.

I will make one promise to everyone here, I won't complain about anything twice from this point forward. The next time I find something atrociously broken I am going to bitch about it and that will be the last of it.

SOE and LucasArts deserve exactly what they are getting right now. Some of you are already aware of the reports (which I was made aware of last night) that SOE will not confirm SWG's continued existence past March of next year. If... or more likely when the game gets shut down I will be comfortable in knowing that they did this to themselves. The community did not fail the company the company failed the community.

/Agree again, Sony and I think LA both have made some rather large business decisions in regards to this game. And unfortunately theyve compounded and snowballed on them. And to a large extent this community is the one footing the bill in some regards.

[toront]

Projecting this into SWG, I say OK. Deciding the order of your specials may be considered strategy in CU, but it is a poor strategy. Deciding on foods also. It can be compared to chess, but it more resembles to tic-tac-toe. There was only one way to play it: unload ALL available states to your enemy and hammer him down. In chess you have the freedom to choose from a wide variety of moves that may take you to victory, one move at a time. In SWG-CU choice was only one: unload as fast as you can (and maintain) and power attack afterwards. In NGE with limited foods-to-consume and action at least this was fixed. Now you need to choose which special/state to use. You cannot use all of them like you could before. In this manner, NGE now is MORE like chess-play and less like tic-tac-toe. At least that is how I see it and I do respect if any of you see it otherwise.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. First of all, your assumptions on how to win a fight in the CU are just wrong. It then goes on to throw your comparison out of wack, Loading all the states and going for your powerful attacks was a BAD strategy, and is what would usually lead to losing. The strategy is just as comparative to chess (moreso than the NGE, but I'll hit that point later). The choices come from choosing appropriate times to use the states. As for damage, if you went out and hit your two highest damage attacks back and forth, you'd be out of action and your opponent, assuming they had any healing, would still be standing.

Even damage dealing was strategic, because anyone that knew anything was using their low end specials just as how the NGE has forced them on us. Basic attacks until you work your opponent into a situation where higher damage becomes more logical. Saying this is like tic-tac-toe strategy wise would be the same as saying chess and checkers are the same strategy wise because the point is to get rid of their pieces. When you dumb down the strategy to 'apply states' and 'do damage', of course it seems simplistic. The problem being that these points do not accurately reflect the system for anyone that actually knew how to play it well.

As for your whole tactics thing about group play, I would concede those points if this were a real FPS and it worked like that. Where you shoot is not based on where you click, it is still based on what target you click on. The NGE is so flawed in that it does not work for the genre it is emulating. If you get a good camera angle and click on the medic in the back row, the lasers will pass through the front line and hit him. You attempt to dodge, the bolt curves towards you. Do not apply FPS tactics and strategy to a game that still largely follows RPG game mechanics.

This is also to say that group PvP didn't also have similar tactics (within the mechanics). Flank attacks and formations were implemented in Theed PvP as well, to direct certain people to tank, rifleman to nuke from the back, or have a group at the second recruiter by the palace flank in behind the Rebel group coming from shuttle C.

Your final points on foods and specials do not really apply only to the NGE. Foods could not be stacked in the CU (the exception being ruby bliel, which was actually bugged and still had strategic choices surrounding it). Specials got more of a cooldown with the NGE. They already had cooldowns, which prevented choosing one move repeatedly. The difference is now, you are forced to wait even longer to reapply a move.

[Jabe Adaks]

Hash you don't have to be on the defensive man. I really just need to put somethings out there exactly as worded. I am a bit more tired about getting slammed for "whining" than anything. There's a reasonable complaint time for everything and for something this big its going to go on for a while.

The other side of the coin is that software companies assume no news is good news. I know this because I am a lead developer of a large software project but I am also the only member of my dev team that works AT the client sites for that very purpose. As this starts settling down they're going to think things are "ok" again or they were justified. I don't think people are willing to give them an inch on that one and quite frankly I hope nobody lets them forget... EVER. SOE/LA should be made an example of otherwise the game industry will be none the wiser.

Jabe

[Isleh]

As for damage, if you went out and hit your two highest damage attacks back and forth, you'd be out of action and your opponent, assuming they had any healing, would still be standing.

Just a note: Don't have time to read it all because I have stayed up far to late already.

Stock power-ups. Reduced the SAC so that's all I had to do. Between Food, the power-up and spice. I almost never ran out of action. With the Fetherweight FWG5 I had.

1 million credits unsliced..

Damage capped.. at about 380 min. 966 Max

1.05 speed between the CAs and the 12% speed slice...

+65 accuracy. More than enough to cancel the accuracy reduction of the power-up

SAC was about 55 depending on the % reduction of the stock.

I was almost ready to step into the PvP arena....

Anyway, I found that I had more than enough action regeneration that I could actually cut back on the action mods and bump up my health regeneration.

[Hashum]

As for damage, if you went out and hit your two highest damage attacks back and forth, you'd be out of action and your opponent, assuming they had any healing, would still be standing.

Just a note: Don't have time to read it all because I have stayed up far to late already.

Stock power-ups. Reduced the SAC so that's all I had to do. Between Food, the power-up and spice. I almost never ran out of action. With the Fetherweight FWG5 I had.

1 million credits unsliced..

Damage capped.. at about 380 min. 966 Max

1.05 speed between the CAs and the 12% speed slice...

+65 accuracy. More than enough to cancel the accuracy reduction of the power-up

SAC was about 55 depending on the % reduction of the stock.

I was almost ready to step into the PvP arena....

Anyway, I found that I had more than enough action regeneration that I could actually cut back on the action mods and bump up my health regeneration.

In my opinion this just further goes to prove Toront's point.

One of the reason's you were able to get such a low SAC aside from the pup is that you were using a pistol and the pistol specials tend to have a lower damage modifier but also a lower SAC cost.

Jedi on the other hand were only able to get a lightsaber to a SAC of about 95 depending on their experimentation with this being about the lowest possible with 90%+ in experimentation. And Jedi were unable to use pup's.

To counteract the increased SAC however Jedi had a lower damage range. As described by your post your pistol was 380-966 leaving a wide area for you damage specials to hit in. Much less important if you can use your most damaging specials back to back when they may only hit for 600 damage then a Jedi who using a 591-691 saber (these are my former stat's a Jedi with perfect pearls could have something like 630-730) So any special is going to do about 1200 dmg on average.

So again it's chess. Which is better? Is it better using a T-21 with the potential of doing 2k damage in one hit but only having that chance on a limited basis and if you get a hit for 1k instead possibly running into trouble. Or using a pistol where you can hit consistently for 600+ damage?

If I had the time I'd get into this a bit more but I think this is just another reason that I enjoyed the CU, there was a give and take, and each decision effected how combat played out and what style of combat would be necessary.

[Isleh]

In my opinion this just further goes to prove Toront's point.

One of the reason's you were able to get such a low SAC aside from the pup is that you were using a pistol and the pistol specials tend to have a lower damage modifier but also a lower SAC cost.

Jedi on the other hand were only able to get a lightsaber to a SAC of about 95 depending on their experimentation with this being about the lowest possible with 90%+ in experimentation. And Jedi were unable to use pup's.

To counteract the increased SAC however Jedi had a lower damage range. As described by your post your pistol was 380-966 leaving a wide area for you damage specials to hit in. Much less important if you can use your most damaging specials back to back when they may only hit for 600 damage then a Jedi who using a 591-691 saber (these are my former stat's a Jedi with perfect pearls could have something like 630-730) So any special is going to do about 1200 dmg on average.

So again it's chess. Which is better? Is it better using a T-21 with the potential of doing 2k damage in one hit but only having that chance on a limited basis and if you get a hit for 1k instead possibly running into trouble. Or using a pistol where you can hit consistently for 600+ damage?

If I had the time I'd get into this a bit more but I think this is just another reason that I enjoyed the CU, there was a give and take, and each decision effected how combat played out and what style of combat would be necessary.

Master Commando, Master Smuggler, Carbineer 0440. So I was using the 1.6 and the 1.9 damage modifers from carbineer. I could have also gone with 4400 Rifleman and used the those 2.3x (?) modifers.

Going by Oporim's description of startegy, operational and tactical levels. I would say that the CU and Pre-CU was on the operational level. Preperation ment everything. NGE is on the tactical level.

CU made you focus on preperation to execute group tactics. Preparing you template, making sure you had stims, etc.. Toront, Hashum, the tactics you've developed in the CU, could you execute them if you found yourself with just your lightsaber and robe?

Another form of dependancy? Pre-CU, it was Doc Buffs. Post-CU it was a satchel full of BE goods. Could you expect to win a fight without your fully stocked satchel of BE goods if someone had their satchel fully stocked of BE goods? That probably cost what? A million plus? As vetrens, putting down a million on BE goods ( or a Weapon ) is not a problem. For new players?

I just cleaned out my med & buff satchel. Crates of Blob Candy, Exo Protein Wafers, Crispic, Kanali Wafers, Ruby Bliel for PvE, Ruby Bliel for PvP, Kiwik Clusjo Swirl, Vagnerian Canape, Synthsteak, Gruuvan Shaal, Scrimpi, Breath of Heaven and my Stim Ds.

So much crap, I had to decide what I was going to do before I started to un-crate stuff. Each one was necessary depending on if I planned to use my pistol or the photon rifle or plasma flamer and if I expected PvP or if I planned PvE for the days activities. I also always kept 2 stim D's out and 2 power-ups.

Preparing for PvP combat was like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Challange someone to a duel and you got a "(sec)" and heard a bunch of gulping and munching sounds and then a pause as they swapped power-ups and made sure they had enough stims out.

A chess game of logistics and resource attrition.


Oporim's discussion about positioning is dead on. Before this was posted and during the vette runs I've experienced it. One instance comes to mind.

A corsec trooper came through a door and attacked Batak.

Pre-NGE, we would have all just moved into range in one clump, tabbed and started attacking.

Now, something different happened. Jart moved past the trooper past the door and started attacking from behind. I moved to the trooper's right and Sharn ( I think it was her ) moved to the trooper's left. When Jart moved past the corsec trooper, he moved into the agro range and another started attacking him.

When the first went down, we didn't just tab to the second and moved into the hall. We again moved to the sides and back.

[Hashum]

I don't have the time to read your entire post at this moment but will come back with a more detailed argument in a bit.

But I think again you're missing the point. Sure you could use 2x modifer's but it's modifying a pistols damage. The specific special doesn't really matter, what I was getting at is that whatever the special is it's modifying what could be a 380 damage hit. So you're going to have hits that are only 760 damage with a 2x modifier. Now sure you'll have some that are 1800 damage. But that ends up being right in line with the 1200 average that Saber's would do.

So where you can continuly use a 2x modifer because of your low sac and just spam your specials you're going to average 1200 damage based on the distribution of your weapons min to max damage. This theory is consistant across all weapon's but the startegy needed to use that weapon varies. Making it more like chess.

In chess you all have the same pieces in this case the pieces could be representitive of damage. An average across all classes of 1200 let's say as easily identified here by your pistol and my saber.

The strategy is in how you use them, which is special combination/food/etc. You have said you use food and spice to buff your action. In order to over come that I would have to focus on wearing down your mind. I could do that by using food that prevents damage and over the course of a small battle choosing to use a weapon that has a smaller damage range (100 between min/max as oppposed to 600 with your pistol) I'm more likely through the course of a battle to out damage you and as I intend force you to heal which drains your mind until you can't heal and then I kill you.

Now of course you would have I would assume a counter to this kind of fight because what I described could be considered the 4 move check mate that everyone that plays chess knows, expects and quickly counters. So then we get into an actual fight that requires the use of strategy trying to exploit another less obvious weakness.

In NGE the battle is over before this much though goes into it. Hense in my opinion checkers.

Again I didn't get to read you whole post I'll go back when I get a few more minutes and read it and alter this as applies.