I've been playing a lot of Dominating recently, and was struck by a bit of a revelation; the hardest part of Dominating is the early game (pre Depot-A). In the early game, your options are limited for gear and experience, and many of the enemies have been replaced with significantly harder versions of themselves, such as in Silent Isle. Once you get past Depot A you are presented with a plethora of experience and easily obtainable high quality gear, which makes the rest of the game a breeze. I've compiled a list of changes that would make the later stages of the game more interesting than just rush Constantine and buy cool stuff.
Hard Specific ChangesNPCs have a 125% health modifier and 115% skill modifier-Right now there is a huge gap between Hard and Dominating, in large part thanks to the health and skill modifier. This provides more of a gradual transition to make combat more challenging, sine otherwise the main difference between Normal and hard is extra enemies and the stealth and EMP changes.
Dominating ChangesMechanic ChangesThis section is mainly focused around various methods that can be used to cheese combat encounters.
- No Zone Transitions during combat-Any area with multiple exits makes combat fairly easy, since you can camp out near an exit, retreat when health is low, and reenter from a different exit without having a swarm of enemies immediately attack you. This is most noticeable in the native villages, where you can pull all the melee enemies to one side of the map, circle around, and then kill all the ranged enemies. You can also cheese the Praetorian security warehouse mission this way by throwing a gas grenade next to the window, leaving the zone, and then entering the walkway outside the area to pull the enemies into the gas grenade, or to pull them away from the entrance.
- Enemies gain temporary resolve after each incapacitation- Right now it is very easy for melee builds to stunlock enemies with cheap shots, mental breakdown, flashbangs, and stuns, which can allow players to access endgame areas right after depot A with a little luck (example: stunlocking arena gladiators or stunlocking the greater coil spiders in Hecate labs for an early power fist, stunlocking the three masters with the powerfist and cheap shots). Giving enemies a 30 resolve buff after each incapacitation would make it a lot more difficult to chain incaps and cheese enemies.
- Have Merchants only sell items above a certain quality after certain story checkpoints- Most experienced players rush Constantine immediately after depot A to get high quality items very quickly such as knives, energy shields, ect. Merchants should only sell up to a maximum of q120 before helping rail crossing, q140 before the coretech research facility, and have no modifier after the research facility.
- Eye of Tchort is permanently active near the gate leading to Tchort and the areas behind it-Most Tchortling encounters can be easily skipped, even on dominating, and this would make it feel more climactic as you approach Tchort.
Enemy ChangesThis section is mainly focused around making some mid and late game enemies more threatening.
- Azuridae Goliathus Int raided to 6, gain premediataion- This is mainly to let them cast PSP without expending action points, which in turn gives them a bit more movement on the first turn to increase their chances of landing a disruptive field or psionic inhibition.
- Alpha Rathounds are no longer afraid of fire- Alpha Rathounds are fairly rare early game, but become much more common late game. Giving them fire fear immunity makes their encounters a bit more challenging, so they can actually pose a threat to weaker characters.
- Ancient Rathounds gain the Taste for Blood Feat- This makes encounters with these enemies much more tactical, as preventing bleeds from alpha rathounds becomes much more important.
- Burrower Warriors gain Charge-Burrower Warriors currently suffer greatly from a lack of movement, and giving them charge would let them temporarily overcome this weakness and let them threaten faster characters
- Greater Coil Spiders gain tranquility-This lets the spiders shoot off 2 electrokinesis instead of 1 when at full health. This also makes combat more tactical by encouraging the use of crowd control such as grenades to lower the damage capabilities of these enemies.
- Cuttlesnails leave behind a trail of toxic gas and acid puddles- This would work similar to the zoner from that one core city sewer fragment, and make it harder to move around snails without proper protective gear.
- Plasma Sentries change into their turret form after attacking, changing form costs 0 ap- This would increase the damage output of these robots, and prevent easy escapes from the bots while they waste their turn entering and leaving the turret form.
- Melee Bandit gang members (Ironheads, Lurkers, and Lunatics) spawn with rathound or pig leather tabis- This lets these enemies more easily reach characters, and increases the attacks that knife bandits can make.
- Give Knife Bandits (Lurkers, Lunatics) Expose Weakness- Knife bandits currently struggle to damage any enemy with decent tactical vests or stronger armor, and this change would make them a lot more dangerous to fight.
Boss ChangesThese changes aim to make some boss encounters a bit more challenging.
- Carnifex and Balor gain Thick Skull-These bosses currently can easily be defeated with dirty kick, cut-throat, and even a taser, and this would make it a lot harder to do that
- Vanga, Frost, and Firecracker gain the Dominating boss modifiers, remove several of the lunatics on the upper level of the mall-These are the leaders of the Lunatics, but are currently just a slightly special lunatic Nuker, Freezer, and TCer. Giving them the boss health modifier makes them a bit scarier, but is slightly counterbalanced by removing a couple of lunatics from the horde on the second floor.
- Balor Gains Truesight-He has a mechanical eye, so this makes sense.
- Tchort Gets the Dominating Boss HP modifier, regens 200 hp per Mutagen Tank- A lot of builds can Take Tchort down in 1-2 turns, and he currently barely has more heath that Gubbins or Fatso at this difficulty, and even has less health than Jet Eater on Dominating. Now, instead of just rushing him down, players have to destroy the tanks and prepare for a long fight, which would also cause a lot more people to do the mutagen puzzle.
Native Raid ChangesThis could have been a separate topic but it fits well enough here. After Defend the Island, each subsequent native raid should receive buffs based on each of the native chieftains. The buff can be prevented for future raids by killing the corresponding chieftain.
Raid 2- If Eldran is alive, in this raid and all subsequent raids enemies permanently gain 4 stacks of Warmed Up, which increases movement speed, healing recieved, and cold threshold, as well as providing immunity to chill.
Raid 3-If Baenkraster is alive, in this raid and all subsequent raids enemies gain bone armor, a buff that gives 10 bonus mechanical dt and 20% mechanical resistance.
Raid 4-If Oyensorm is alive, in this raid and all subsequent raids enemies gain Battle Trance, which increases all offensive and psionic skills by 50%, similar to buff that the faceless receive when attacking the Institute.
Final Raid-If Magnar is alive, all non-boss enemies receive a permanent Vitality Powder effect. Additionally, at the end of the battle an additional wave will spawn for each chieftain still alive, with Eldran leading a wave of 6 random krisfargers, Baenkraster leading a wave of 6 random Skaaders, Oyensorm leading a wave of 3 spaaters and 3 Oyetspaaters, and Magnar leading a wave of 3 Krisfarger, 3 Skaaders, and 3 Oyetspaaters.
