News: Matt Higby doing a Q&A at reddit!

[Malorn]

I hope the specialization for outfits works like "Tactics" worked in Warhammer Online. I liked that system.

Basically in warhammer you had a set of tactics that modified behavior of things, sort of like glyphs in WoW (they took the idea from Warhammer).

You could only have a limited number of tactics at a given time and most of them were tradeoffs or minor bonuses.

Outfit specialization might be like a set of tactics that applies to all members of the outfit. Outfit certs open up more potential tactics and going down a specific tree grants more specialized tactics.

Then the outfit leader & officers can set the tactics for the outfit based on those avialable to them. Supposed they had like 5 tactics they can choose...

Sample tactics:
* Rapid Air deployment - reduces air vehicle timers by 1.5 minutes for the entire outfit (affects all vehicles)
* You want some of this? - infantry weapons damage is increased by 15%, but rate of fire is decreased by 10%.
* Runs like a machine - resource costs for the entire outfit are reduced by 10% (affects all upgrades)
* Incoming MAX Units! - reduces MAX suit timers by 1.5 minutes for the entire outfit
* Move it, soldier! - Infantry speed for the outfit increased by 5%

If this is how they implement it, I can see minor bonuses like 5% more damage, or 5% more speed or what not as entire outfit bonuses being acceptable when its scoped to specific things. I think this is OK to have a flat bonus mainly because the outfit doesn't get ALL of the bonuses available to them and instead they must choose which set of bonuses they want. This adds some minor differentiation among outfits and makes them make hard choices.

Additionally, new players who join the outfit would immediately get the benefit, so it isn't really a penalty to new players, nor does everyoen converge on the same set of bonuses. So this could be a good way to add differentiation and specialization with something tangible without screwing up game balance.

They could do this tactics thing with individuals too, though I think the outfit level is better. Should also be a reasonable timer delay between changing outfit tactics, like once per day or something like that.