Then I thought about the weapon overheat mechanic in ME1 - you keep firing shots and if the bar hits the limit you have to wait a short time before it allows you to shoot again - could this principle be applied to casting powers in addition to the standard power cooldown system?
So I'll stick with biotics because that's what I'm most familiar with; lets introduce a biotic stamina or fatigue bar - stamina bar if it starts full and empties with power casting, and fatigue bar if it fills (like ME1 weapons) with power casting.
I'm going to consider the second case because it is easy to visualise by thinking of ME1 weapons.
So say each power you cast will fill this bar a given amount that is proportional to the individual cooldown of that power.
A warp with ~ 3s cooldown will fill more of the bar than a throws with ~ 1.5s cooldown.
I'm going to use those numbers directly (the seconds converting to a value with no units) and give the fatigue bar an arbitrary limit of 10.
So you fire a warp - the bar will fill to 3 insantly; the normal cooldown starts and in 3 seconds you can use another power. The fatigue bar will remain however full it is until half the normal cooldown period has ended. In other words you will not begin to regain stamina until half the normal cooldown of the power has ended.
Then the bar will empty if you take no other action (don't use any power) - 1 per second, again for argument's sake.
If you wait 2 seconds the fatigue bar will be at a value of 1 (after the 3 seconds of warp cooling down), and proceed to fire a throw, you will fill the fatigue bar to a value of 2.5.
And then the same thing applies - you need to wait for throw to cooldown halfway before the fatigue bar will begin to empty - 1 per second.
This can go on and on using whatever power combos you like.
Now if casting a further power you reach the limit of the bar you will be "temporarily exhausted" and will have to wait a set time penalty and for the bar to empty to recover. In this time you will be unable to cast any power and all normal cooldowns will be cancelled (reset).
So if the bar was at a value of 9 and you cast a warp - you would hit the limit of 10; you must wait a fixed time which I will say is half the time of the total value of the bar - so half of 10 which is 5 seconds, PLUS the amount you have gone over - which is 2 seconds in this case.
Now the difference here at the limit is that it will not empty at a rate of 1 per second because then you would be permanently stuck at an almost full bar - not really fun for a caster class!
No in this case the fatigue bar would empty back to 0 over a period of 7 seconds, after which you will be able to cast a power again.
Sprinting and rolling will freeze this process so it could potentially take longer if you end up sprinting while trying to regain stamina.
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This whole thing could apply to tech powers - call it "tech capacity bar" which is measuring how overloaded an omni tool is.I don't think it will apply to combat powers because there's only really adrenaline rush that makes any sense.
Biotic powers make sense because of draining stamina, tech powers make sense because of loading the omni-tool's processing capacity.
Adept and vanguard will be constrained by a biotic fatigue bar. Infiltrator and engineer by a tech capacity bar. Sentinel will have both with some modifications?
class passive powers (fitness and class passive) can have rank options for raising the limit of the fatigue bar, making it empty faster, making powers fill it up less, and so on.
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Please bear in mind all the numbers I've used are just to illustrate the point - completely open to change and discussion.
Also note that this is limited because of trying to shoehorn it into the current combat mechanics, which it will have to be limited by.
So what do you think - good idea, bad idea, too complicated, too simple, need some modification?
Modifié par Curunen, 19 mars 2012 - 08:36 .
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