I had a bout of insomnia recently, and this is the result. Brainstorming suggestions for the inevitable expansion.
Alternate Exos. New exos, and thus new weapons are something that would defiantly be expected in an expansion, but the current exos cover the architypes quite well making it tough to design new ones without stepping on the toes of the old ones. One solution is to have variant loadouts of existing exos, letting you take on the same purpose from a different angle, without feeling like you are stepping on the toes of the current exos. Also lets you reuse, or just recolor existing exo art, which for a team as small as arcen can matter. This is my brainstorming for Variant Exos, it should be noted that health, scanner range, and stealth actions remains unchanged, and thus I did not mention them, other intrinsic boosts and weapons will be mentioned even if they repeat (thus if not mentioned the variant lacks them).
Assault: +20% shield related, +20 regen (+40 regen when epic)
Heavy Machine Gun: 200 damage, 50 ammo, 7 range. Spray: If this weapon kills a bot it doesn’t use an action (or maybe bots within range 2 or 3 of the killed bot lose their next action instead, less cheaseable)
Reaction Grenades: 250 damage, 22 ammo, 7 range. Reactive: when this weapon kills a bot, that bot explodes for half of its max health, in a radius of 3. (would allowing this explosion to also cause explosions for its kills be too much, letting it be a possible chain reaction?)
Epic Weapons
Reclaimer: 500 damage 17 ammo, 5 range: Reclaim: half the damage done to by this weapon is added to the exo to be regenerated, up to your exos normal regen level, only activates on enemy bots and cannot add more to be regenerated than the targets current health (when it deals damage it adds to your white health bar, just like taking damage does, but the white health bar is still limited by your regen skill)
Sonic Rifle: 750 damage, 10 ammo, 7 range, splash 2 (cone). Can fire through walls (but counts squares that normally cant be fired through as two squares for range), but is loud, it alerts bots 3 times farther away than normal gunfire does
Notes: The heavy machine gun is a stronger weapon than either the LMG or laser rifle, though in losing two weapons to gain one it ends with less total weapons, and therefore less equipment slots, hurting its ability to equip exo wide bonuses. On the other hand reaction grenades pack much more ammo than the normal grenade launcher. A smaller shield related bonus so easier to one shot, but the innate regen and reclaimer weapon make it possible to get back to full health even if taking damage past its regen value, making it almost immune to attrition. And a Sonic weapon instead of plasma, cus I like Sonics, less damage and splash, but more ammo.
Brawler: Every second movement does not use an action
Shotgun: as current
PUNCH!: 750 damage, 200 ammo, 1 range: Melee: this weapons range cannot be increased
Flamethrower: 500 damage, 70 ammo, 4 range The flame thrower deals damage to every square in a line between the exo and the target square, leaves a burning tile on the ground for 4 turns, and uses one ammo for each square effected
Epic weapons
Rocket PUNCH! 1000 damage, 15 ammo, 2 range. Okay you caught us, it’s a reskin of the kinetic burst weapon, but it’s an awesome reskin.
Teleporter: 0 damage, 15 ammo, 10 range, radius 3. Teleports the exo to the target location, and emps all bots within radius for one turn. If this device targets an enemy bot directly, the exo and bot switch places and the bot is emped for one turn. (maybe set base damage to one, and make turns stunned equal to damage dealt, so damage boosting gear has a purpose on it)
Notes: more maneuverable but even shorter ranged than the original brawler. Losing the dissolver, pistol and volitizer means its max base range is 4, and none of its splash styles can be used to indirectly extend that range, or attack around walls. However its weapons do high damage, and the teleporter can be used to get it into or out of trouble quickly, and exchanging places with a target can be used to force them into a trapped area.
Ninja: +50% propulsion, Immune to AoE, Deals double damage with attacks that break stealth.
Plasma Pistol: 30 damage, 30 ammo, 5 range. Charge shot, every turn you do not fire the plasma pistol it gets +100% damage to a maximum of +900% (so it does between 30 and 300 base damage), this is reset when fired
Welding Laser: as current
Epic weapons:
Kinetic Charge Weapon: 500 Damage, 17 ammo, 2 range. Kinetic charging, every move action adds one to the charge value, and the weapon does +25% damage per charge up to a maximum of 8 charges (+200% or 1500 base damage). In addition range is increased by one at charge values 2, 4, and 8 (so maximum of +3). Firing removes 4 charges, to a minimum of 0.
Note: The primary difference is the original can stay and stealth and shoot while this one breaks stealth to perform a double damage “backstab” attack. Exchanging the normal pistol for the plasma pistol helps accent this single target assignation mindset, at full charge doing up to 600 base damage. I kept the welding laser as its kind of iconic to the ninja as is. Kinetic charge weapon, instead of Kinetic Burst Weapon works under the same principle, allowing a charge up to be combined with the backstab for very high single target damage, though lesser than the KBW if you don’t take the time for it to charge.
Science: +30% computer related, +25 virus points (+50 virus when epic), can virus targets from range 3, can virus a friendly (already virused) bot to provide random permanent bonuses to the bot.
Virus bonuses
Extra damage (50%)
Extra shield (based on target bots level)
Extra range (+2)
Healed to full health (instantaneous)
Bonus action per turn (rare)
Unstable (explodes when dies)
Ammo reloaded (instantaneous)
Decoy (bots will always target this if it is in their range)
Plasma Pistol: 30 damage, 30 ammo, 5 range. Charge shot, every turn you do not fire the plasma pistol it gets +100% damage to a maximum of +900% (so it does between 30 and 300 base damage), this is reset when fired.
Light Machine gun: as current
Epic Weapons
Chaingun: as current
Note: though the plasma pistol can be quite dangerous (at least if you don’t use it every round) the light machine gun is less powerful than the laser rifle it replaces. This alternate focuses more on virus points than hacking or sensors like the standard load out does. Though a smaller % based bonus means its fully possible for the standard loadout to have more virus points at end game, this variants ability to virus at range and ability to use virus points to boost captured bots can more than make up for that.
Siege
Light Machine gun: as current
Guided Missile System: 800 damage, 7 ammo, 10 range, radius 2. Guided missiles can fire around corners and cover, it traces its range of effect in the same way sensors do, and can fire at any square in that range.
Epic Weapons
Plasma Cannon: as current
Lightning Cannon: 2500 damage, 3 (2?) ammo, 9 range. Arc: any excess damage done by this weapon will be dealt to a bot within radius 4 of the original target, if there is still excess damage it will also jump to another bot within radius 4 of the new target; it will continue to do this until it runs out of damage, or runs out of targets. Damage will jump to the nearest bots, and randomly select a bot in the case of a tie. If force targeting the ground the damage will still make the first jump if there is a bot in range. Will never jump to an exo. (maybe the range it can jump should be tied to radius instead of a flat value, letting it be pumped via gear, also not sure how it will interact with explosive runes).
Note: Less difference than other varients, guided missiles do a bit less damage than their standard counterparts, but gain versitlity in the form of being able to fire around corners. The biggest difference is the lightning cannon, being the new highest damage weapon in the game and replacing the mysterious and powerful shadow torpedoes. The lightning cannons unique form of splash can devastate hordes of lower health targets over a large range, however as it uses a single damage pool instead of the normal fashion of splash its far less useful against many high health targets, quite possible burning all its damage on a single boss target.
Sniper: +4 sight
X-Ray Laser: 400 damage, 18 ammo, 12 range. X-Ray laser can fire through doodads (cover, terminals, doors)
Laser Rifle: as current
Epic Weapons
Beam Cannon: 1200 damage, 2 ammo, 15 range. Can only fire in the 4 orthogonal directions plus the 4 diagonal directions, deals damage to every square in range in that line , plus every square adjacent to the line.
Shadow Torpedoes: as current
Note: except for the beam cannon this versions different weapons are less damaging, but more versatile versions of the originals. X-ray laser doesn’t get the double fire ability of the gamma, but can attack enemies that can’t shoot back due to intervening terrain. Shadow Torpedoes vs railgun is the same, shadow torpedoes can fire through walls but do less damage. Beam cannon vs plasma rifle is not quite the same, and I will be honest, the beam cannon is included primarily because I thought it would be cool rather than any real theme thing. Though like the other weapon changes it will be easier to fire at targets that would otherwise be untargetable due to intervening terrain, though with limited firing patterns the opposite will also sometimes be true.
Pilots/pilot powers: Like new exos new pilots are almost a default on what is to be expected in an expansion.
Scavenger: enemy bots will sometimes drop small ammo (refills one of the exos weapons by 10%, minimum of one ammo) or health packs (refills shields 20%), maybe slightly more small loot container drops too.
Jerry-Rigger: Its said the best people always have the right tool for the right job, but sometimes you have to make due with the wrong tool for the right job. Can combine two peaces of loot to create a random new peace of loot, the new loots level and rarity is influenced, but not solely determined by that of the combined parts. (it’s possible to get good loot from bad parts, and bad loot from good parts, but its far more likely to get good loot from good parts and bad loot from bad parts)
Tagger: switching between exos does not use an action.
New Bots: What would an expansion be without new things to kill.
HiveBot: High health immobile bot, with basically no attack. However once alerted it will whistle every turn, alerting other bots. To make matters worse once alerted its scanner range (and thus whistle range) increased by one each turn. When it dies it spawns several hornet bots, the number spawned is based on level, difficulty, and number of free squares nearby.
Hornetbot: low health, low damage, short range, 15 ammo. Hornet bots are fast, having 2 actions per turn by default (3 with a mastermind).
Pitcherbot: med health, high damage with splash of 1, med range, 5 ammo. Pitcherbots used to throw softballs in the park before the uprising, now it throws grenades, using its patented slowball. It takes 2 turns for the grenade to reach its target, we advise moving out of the way before then. (instead of taking time to reach the target it could just have the grenade land at the targets feet and take 2 turns before explodes, same effect, different visual)
Necrobot: low health, low damage, med range, 34 ammo: Necrobots are tragic brooding characters, caught between the light and darkness of robot spirituality, capturing and preserving the power of robot souls. Just kidding, they are just jerks who like seeing other bots get hurt, whenever a bot dies within 5 squares of a necrobot it gets a boost to attack and shields (25% attack boost, and 1/5 the boost a command bot would give them)
Clumsybot: Medium health, low damage, medium range, 10 ammo: Clumsy bots are clumsy, it’s like a train wreck really, you just can’t look away. Every bot within 5 squares of a clumsy bot is stealthed, on the other hand not only can clumsy bots never be stealthed, as a matter of fact they make such a ruckus (even when stationary) that you always know were they all are, even when they aren’t in sensor range.
Overcharged Gunbot: low health, med/high damage, super high range, 5 ammo: these bots really like big guns, so much so that they use a gun that uses far more power than they can actually output. Gunbots must charge their weapon for a turn before firing, and are then stunned for 2 turns after firing while they reboot their systems. (So a 4 turn fire cycle of charge, shoot, reboot, reboot). If you get out of range/LOS before they fire they will shoot at a random square that is in range/los of them instead.
Telebot: medium health, no damage, med/high range, 10 ammo. Telebots pack a teleporter instead of a gun, bringing any exo hit to an empty square adjacent to the telebot.
FrostyBot: medium health, high damage, low range, 30 ammo. Some bots just want to watch the world burn, this apply named bot is one of them. It packs a flamethrower that functions like the one in the alternate brawler description, sucking multiple ammo and leaving burning squares. Also when it dies it explodes for its weapon damage in radius determined by its remaining ammo (0 nothing, 1-5 just the bots square, 6-15 radius 1, 16-25 radius 2, 26-30 radius 3) and leaves burning squares. We could make Frostybot a boss by amping up the health and ammo (and death explosion radius)
