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Firstly, as a foreword, I want to clarify that this is a discussion. I won't claim that I have all the answers to the topics I will be discussing below, but I'd at least like to bring some of my ideas and lite criticisms to the table for consideration in order to make some classes better or just more enjoyable to play, if they're possible to implement. I'd also like to say that I'm very happy and impressed with how far Clementine has come as a server and where it's going. Kudos to all the admins, moderators, and supporters for getting the server to where it is now; it's already better than official in a lot of ways in my opinion. With that being said, and hopefully my overall enjoyment of the server being made clear, I can get into what this post is actually about. Balance. I'll try and keep this as organized and straight to the point as possible. It may be long though, apologies in advance. Note: Topic and sub-sub-topic transitions will be bolded for the sake of making this easier to read and organize. Currently, I main MF and WT on the server. I also sub AT, and I have a friend who mains GT (Human GT, to be specific), so most of my proposed changes will be surrounding those classes. Starting from the top, I'd like to look at Dam-techs. Right now, outside of a solo play defensive option, they don't really have a use, and even then they have some issues with them imo. Damfoie, Dambarta, Damdiga, Damgrants, Dammegid Cons: Generally speaking, as soon as the tech goes down, faster mobs (which will only get faster as we get into higher difficulties) have a tendency to rush you down so quickly and effectively that you can longer use the tech unless you hit their re/despawn range. This excludes that you're also probably getting hit because of that. The damage on these techs is low. As of right now, Dam-techs seem to be a mix of offense and defense, but fails in both. It stops casting after a period of time so that it isn't a complete lockdown, but still somewhat defensive. Although, it also hits low damage to the point where it won't even kill the target on S2, so they end up slipping through and damaging you (if they don't just ignore the tech to begin with), ruining the positioning for the dam-tech, and to top it all off, it's also a huge PP dump in comparison to just running up to the spawn and casting a Gi-tech and getting better results. Poor damage; poor defense. Not looking good so far. Damgrants has sleep. That's it. That's the description of the problem. If they do get staggered, the mobs will get knocked out of range, then put to sleep very frequently, so they just sit there not taking any damage. What am I supposed to do? Cancel the tech to reposition, then have all the other mobs flood in and damage me and ruin my positioning for one mob? This is not helpful at all. To add, this is not even useful for team play because as soon as they get tapped by anything they wake up. I'd rather just freeze, shock, or literally any other form of CC. More on this later. This can also be applied to laser cannons, but I don't have as much experience with those, so take that with a grain of salt. The range on these techs feels unholy inconsistent, not to mention there's no value for context or comparison on the wiki. Damfoie feels very small, Dambarta feels medium, Damgrants literally goes across the map. The other two fall in-between Damfoie and Dambarta. I have no idea what's going on here, but some range values would be very helpful. Proposed Fixes/Changes: Give Dam-techs an identity and a more defined spot in the tech kit. Is this tech type more offensive or defensive? Whatever you decide, I have suggestions for both that'll be listed below. If you want the tech to be more defensive/utility based, give it blowdown, a higher status effect level, and infinite hold time, or at least increased. However, lower the damage to compensate, if necessary. Why blowdown? This gives the squishier force-types another option to deal with bigger, harder hitting mobs beyond just going up to them and spamming Nosdiga for stun and damage, or just eating damage to deal DPS in whatever way. This does somewhat conflict with Regrant's effect, but I look at this as more of an on-element option for lockdown versus it just making Regrant completely useless. Why status? This would be a way to balance the very strong lockdown that Dam-techs would have with this proposed change. Not every enemy can be burned, frozen, poisoned, infected, etc., so mostly you'd just be using it for a defensive lockdown, but when the status gets to kick in, it'll be a nice reward on top of what you're already doing. In the case of MF, these changes help towards avoiding the scenario of "Use LV10 Sabarta as MF" that will inevitably ensue in solo play later on. Their lockdown tech is not only comparable in utility, for themselves that is, to Sabarta, but also does damage and complements MF's PA level caps. This would be a lot less awkward, I feel. Sa-techs would still have usage on other classes however due to their nigh guaranteed status proc instantly. You would not catch me using LV50 Dambarta over Sabarta for support in my melee parties because it could potentially be a waste of time and not proc freeze quickly enough. Giving sleep its GAS customization innate. Simple. If a mob is sleep, the first hit gets a damage boost of X%. If the enemy is going to be out of my hit range due to being put to sleep, at the very least I'd like to blow it up when it's the last mob remaining. In the case of teams, when it is out of your range, at least another player can hit it for big damage thanks you. A form of support, somewhat. Also, it actually makes sleep useful. I'd keep a close eye on sleep traps though. I'm not sure how out of hand that could get, but again, that's why this is a discussion. Share your thoughts, please. This next bit will be about Acrotecher. One of these I can see being potentially problematic. It's the section I'm the least confident in, but I have a few suggestions based off what I've seen/played. I'm especially intrigued how everyone would feel about these. Acrotecher Proposed Fixes/Changes: LV30 PA cap. I'm not sure why AT gets twin daggers when they can't even use any of the PAs to their "full power" beyond Soujin Ranbu-shou (JP PA). Kind of weird. Access to S-rank R-mags. I think this will give AT some extra, interesting status effect utility to support the party with. This is the problematic one considering some of the later R-mags. Changing AT's limit break from Gi+Dam to Gi+X. AT never uses Dam-techs right now, as far as I can tell. With my proposed dam-tech change implemented, you may see them used more, but even then I doubt it because you have traps and Sa-techs. Any other limit break would be useful, in my opinion. Just gonna jump right into Guntecher. There isn't much to say, but my friend and I feel techs are somewhat neglected right now despite having a limit break. Most of these observations and suggestions are on his behalf. Guntecher Proposed Fixes/Changes: Increasing LV21 Ra-tech base hit count by one. Right now, taking limit break into account, fighting large melee/range resistant mob pulls can be somewhat cumbersome because only having 4 targets allows for them to slip through quite often. Not to mention the somewhat awkward targeting priority that Ra-techs have. Now, having used Ra-techs on MF and hitting 5 targets at 41+, this almost never happens considering you're gonna see around 5~6 enemies at most per pull in non-JP missions. This would make the tech casting on GT feel a lot better. The balance here is that it doesn't get as much range or damage notation as FT or MF would get. This may make their bossing capabilities a bit stronger, sure, but honestly, my friend is noting how dangerously close bow DPS is to his techs already, if it's not higher already. A single hit option versus a multi-hit option. Again, this is something to discuss. Last general note as well, Nos-tech tracking. It's kind of wonky on flying bosses. I think this is just a bug though, but I thought it would be worth mentioning anyway. Okay! These are my takes and suggestions on some things related to balance right now. I'm eager to see what you all will think. To reiterate, I do not have all the answers. These are just my observation-based opinions that I want to share to get some type of discussion going. Again, this is written with all due respect in mind to all the people who contribute to building this server and making it what it is. Try not to tear into me too hard. Thanks for reading <3

I want to bring the partner machine experience to the next level. It started as a random idea, and it's turning into a dream. This idea will be 3 separate functions that may be implemented together or as a combination: Appearance, Equipment, Personality. Appearance Ideally, it would be possible to enter character creation mode just like your character does at the stylist. The function may be added to the PM itself with or without some kind of cost. The above may not be possible due to coding restrictions, alternatively: Add new versions to existing PM models that will run a different line of clothing and style. For example, 410 can have a new line of 410a, 411a, 412a... which will use the same weapons but wear different clothing and have a different hair and/or face. And additional lines can be added for 410b, 410c, and so forth. Equipment add a palette for PM's and let them be manageable through the PM in your room. Let it be like the standard 6 slot palette. PM equipment can be added like it is done on player palette. PM equipment should be obtainable via room items shop or otherwise. PM equipment should come preset. For example: Granarod-Foie, Rafoie, Gifoie, Resta (just like the 450) should come as one equipment piece. The following PM equipment restrictions should apply: -PM cannot have equip the same piece of equipment more than once on their palette. -Equipment have a number of points assigned, and you cannot equip past a certain threshold. ......Alternatively, separate equipment to different categories like it is for armor units. With main weapons only being able to go in main slot, secondary weapon slot, sub weapon slot, heal slot, and so forth. Personality With equipment changes, you may require a different AI ruleset to handle them. AI may be based on the PM model, or add a method to select an AI behavior of your choice. AI with customized lines would be great. It would require a menu that will allow you to manually input the text for the following lines: They're cute Attack Where's my master? Assist my master! I require healing etc......

Nobody likes being unable to 10/10 a weapon, especially if it's very difficult to obtain, but we also don't want it to be too easy to 10/10 a weapon, thus there must be some kind of restriction. The purpose of this proposal is to bring grind restoration back in a difficult, but obtainable and fair manner. Restoring a broken grind will come in the form of a new exp system. A weapon will gain an exp bar startin from when it first gets broken, and until it is fully restored. The exp required will be based on the weapon rank or star rarity that should match a corresponding mission's ballpark exp value. So, IF an A rank weapon requires 20 A rank missions to restore, then a S rank weapon will require approximately 20 S rank missions to restore. To obtain said exp, the weapon should be used against an enemy, and gain exp on each hit based on the exp earnt when killed. The exp required should increase with number of times broken. With 1 break requiring 100% of exp, each level may require Exp * 1.10 ^ (times broken). This is NOT CUMULATIVE through the weapon's lifetime. If you break a weapon, restore it, and break it again, it should cost the same amount of exp to restore, but breaking it twice without restoration will cost the 110%. The restoration will restore ONE level, not all of the breaks. Further restoration will require filling the exp again. Once the exp bar is filled, the weapon can be restored via the grinding shop or otherwise. I'm not sure if the above idea is even viable due to coding restrictions, an alternative idea: when you break a weapon, you earn a token of the corresponding rank, and you get one for each break. You'll be able to equip or link this token and have it earn exp as you earn exp. Each grind restoration will require one full token of the correct rank.

While playing through Sakura Blast A, I've noticed something a little off. The player model manages to keep it's center point within the playable area of the map, whereas mobs do not. It appears that while the player's position is offset from the edge of the map, the mob's position is not. If this were a Quake/HalfLife game, I'd say the mobs were ignoring the collision hull of the map. So, my suggestion would be : Is it possible to offset a mob's position so that it is always in the playable field of a map? I mean, if a mob gets withing X units of the edge of the map, it can't go any closer to the edge? This would definitely keep the mobs within the world, keep their drops in the playable area, might solve a couple of annoying issues (monsters shooting at you through solid walls, for instance), and maybe make the game a little harder as the mob's might not be getting stuck on corners as often, or at all... I don't know how collisions with environment is handled within the game, though the maps are very 2-D in layout, leading to simplified AI navigation and collision detection. It may be too expensive, time wise, to compute distance to edge for every non-boss mob during play, but I thought I'd throw this out there.

Would it be possible to have the chances of a rare missions appearing, be linked to a characters level, instead of a flat percentage per run? On the 24/08 Marm posted fixed rates for the rare missions appearing in the discord announcement channel. Fixed an issue with rare missions being haha. Rates are now a fixed percent across difficulties. -C: 0.75% - B: 1.0% - A: 2.0% - S: 3.0% - S2: 4.0% - S3: 4.5% - S4: 5.0% But wouldn't this adversely affect the lower rank items from the rare missions? As people would get the lower missions more rarely, and people won't want to do an A run, when they're the level for an S. Instead, I'm suggesting that the rates be tied to a characters level, so players who're levelling on new or alt characters, have the same chance to get one, as people spamming the S4's. It might work something like this (all of this can change, but just to give a general overview) Level 1 -19: -C: 5% Level 20 - 45: -C: 3% - B: 5% Level 46 -75: -C: 1.5% - B: 3% - A: 5% Level 76 - 100: -C: 0.75% - B: 1.5% - A: 3% - S: 5% Level 101 - 120: -C: 0.5% - B: 0.75% - A: 1.5% - S: 3% - S2: 5% Level 121 - 140: -C: 0.25% - B: 0.5% - A: 0.75% - S: 1.5% - S2: 3% - S3: 5% Level 140+: -C: 0% - B: 0.25% - A: 0.5% - S: 0.75% - S2: 1.5% - S3: 3% - S4: 5% Or it could even build up to those rates that Marm posted at 140+ -C: 0.75% - B: 1% - A: 2% - S: 3% - S2: 4% - S3: 4.5% - S4: 5% Having a system like this would stop people from spamming the lower level missions to try and get rares, while at the same time allowing people to play them as they progress through the game. This also wouldn't adversely affect the market for some of the items from the lower missions, like a flat low percentage would. Obviously all the rates can change and such, if an idea like this is even possible.

Would allowing FT to have S rank mags break the balance too much? Would love to be able to use Kakwane Madoog, sadly none of the A rank mags are green haha I only ever see MF or AT players, so maybe this would help with the techer class diversity? Would love to hear some thoughts/feeback about this, thanks!!

Hello Personally I think that getting rares should be hidden from others to see. This would solve problems for many people since I tend to save my rares for my friends.

Currently, NPC items are pretty costly in my opinion. For example, a Jitseen (7-star Saber) on PSUPedia as 90000 meseta, but in the NPC shops it is sold for four times the price (360000). Rayharods (3-star Rods) are 8000 when PSUPedia states 2000. A Lidra (8-star Wand) from a NPC shop is a whopping 660000 versus a much more reasonable 165000. Weapons are needed to help players upgrade themselves; they shouldn't be considered money sinks. Player Shops don't necessarily always have the weapons people want to buy and shouldn't be used as the method people are basically forced to use and get lucky with at lower levels. Prices should not be treated as if players are making 1 or 2 million meseta a day, especially for players in the lower levels. I think the NPC weapons should not be the PSUPedia's price multiplied by four; weapons should be bought and sold for the PSUPedia prices listed. Moving a little away from weapons, I also do not think PAs should be near 2 million for any of them. Moreover, I feel that Open Shop (the remodeling ticket used for a player to participate in Player Shops) should not bought from NPCs at a price (1 hundred-thousand meseta) that is ~6.7 times the PSUPedia buy price---especially if people want to gear this game more and more towards a player-based economy.