One major tms fix I want to see as fast as possible.

[Whitesand]

First let me say that I don't ask for making TMS stronger or making my soldier stronger - so no reason for other classes to begin to flame now - how good our tms is and that we are uber etc. and all the other lies we have to hear every day about the soldier class. I only ask for a small fix not more - a small fix which didn't affect you as a non-soldier class in anyway! I don't ask for removing nano-shutdown, for lowering it, for increasing times etc. I don't call for all this - I still think it would be only fair to do all this - but I don't ask for it now! So no reason to explain me how good tms is and that it will become uber when fc do that, which would be a lie too, but well thats not the concern I have now and that should not be discussed today as well. So I hope that you as a non-soldier help and assist me by asking about this fix.

So please assist us soldiers in this concern we have.

Ok let me explain what I want to ask about. Let me begin to show you our two main shield buffs and the problem we have with it at the moment.

Lets begin with both nanos:

1. Reactive Reflective Field (Extended)
NCU: 44
Reflect: 30%

2. Total Mirror Shield Mk X
NCU: 45
Reflect: 75%

Now let me explain you how it works at the moment. The TMS overrides my RRF buff, it cancles the old buff (RRF) and forces my metabolism to run the new buff (TMS) which gives me a 75% reflect for a short duration of time. Sounds ok or? Well but thats the way it should work but it don't work atm. A soldiers will agree to me that TMS overrides RRF. And that when we cast TMS that the buff cancles RRF and that we only have TMS running and I think outside classes which knows a few things about soldier buffs agree to this too. It would be very wrong when TMS runs on the top of RRF cause we would have 105% reflect then, and I agree that would be absolutly wrong to do this. So yes TMS overrides all the time the RRF buff.

Ok let me explain again what it does - cause I want to point your eyes to a big error and to a big pain in this buffline. I think most soldiers already know what I want to show you.

I have RRF running and my soldier casts TMS cause I'm in danger. The TMS buff cancle my running RRF and my metabolism runs TMS now which gives me 75% reflect for a short duration instead of the 30% reflect for a long duration. Sounds absolutly ok?

Ok now look at the NCU costs of both buffs. RRF = 44NCU and TMS = 45 NCU. No I don't want to change the NCU costs that not my point if you think I ask for that. Look at the NCU costs. 44 NCU for RRF and 45 NCU for TMS. As I said before TMS cancels RRF and we all know that TMS cancles RRF cause we have only TMS running and not RRF + TMS (105% reflect). So look at the NCU cost again. 45NCU (TMS) - 44 NCU (RRF) = 1 NCU! So I need 1 NCU more to run TMS or?

I ask you again I need 1 more free NCU to run TMS instead of RRF - thats right or? and I ask you again TMS cancles RRF thats right too or? I hope you nod to both of my questions now.

Ok then further. My soldier have lets give him a amount of free NCU say 60 NCU. I have nothing else running atm. So I have 0/60NCU now. I cast my RRF buff which fills my NCUs now. So after I cast RRF I see 44/60 NCU. Absolutly right or? Now I enter a mission and ouch a big enforcer mob begins to hit me hard. I cry and I need to cast TMS. I press the TMS Button but the only thing I see is "you don't have enough ncu to cast total mirror shield x". Can you explain me this now? I only need 1 more NCU to cast TMS cause TMS cancles RRF. Look above you already agreed to that fact! But I cannot cast TMS in this example cause I don't need 1 more free NCU I need 45 more free NCU to cast it! Lets say my soldier have 44/90 NCU. Now I'm able to cast TMS. I cast it and it instantly cancles RRF. TMS is running now and I look at my NCU again. It shows me 45/90 NCU.

What is my concern now. Well soldiers have a huge cost of NCUs. We are the class who need 6*64NCUs and the class who need MK2 armor too - cause we need the NCUs for all our buffs. I would say we are the class which have the highest NCU costs selfbuffed. Atm I count about 300NCUs selfbuffed and this is without buffs like rc or re mastery which I would need for a gun like a nophex, div9, nova, IEC etc. We soldiers need to cancle the best outside buffs all the time to keep 45 free NCUs. I ask you why? When I cast TMS then it should check the other shields I have running on me. It should check and notice that I have RRF running which already costs 44 NCU. It should then notice that I only would need 1 more NCU to cast TMS not 45 more NCU.

See the point that this is a very hard "bug" and that this should be fixed as soon as possible. Cause it hurts us every day and every minute we play our soldiers! Its not something like a wrong text or a missing damage type like the old omhh-bug! Its something which makes a soldier very hard to play in most times.

When I cast TMS which takes 45NCU and which cancles RR which takes 44NCU why do I need 45NCU to cast TMS? 45-44 = 1 and not 45.

Please fix this Funcom. This is atm I really pain for us and you can ask any soldier and our soldier professionals as well that It is a pain! When I cast TMS then don't check the free NCUs check the free NCUs and the already running shieldbuffs too. I only need 45 free NCU when I don't have any shield buff running. If I have a shield buff running which already costs x amount of NCU then it TMS should cost 45 - x amount of NCU to cast. Not 45NCU. The reasons why are written and explained a few lines above.

Regards

Whitesand

[stormhat]

Ummm....could you run that by me one more time?

Seriously
Totally agree....Very anoying

[__________Knightofni]

Totally agree.

I've had opponents toss a useless buff on me just so I'll run out of ncu for tms. Finding your rrfe to cancel for tms isn't very easy in the godawful lag you're usually dealing with. And by the time you actually wanna cast tms, you're usually doing so bad you don't have time to start fiddling with your buff window.

[Ashhunter]

you are forgetting that every one has to deal with the same problem not just the Soldiers but it seems to hit you guys the hardest and FC really should right to come up with some way to fix that its really a pain in the butt i have had some thing like that happen befor and it sucks

[Ghump]

You totally lost me somewhere, but if Warcriminal say it's good then I'll bump it too

Seriously it's a good point. But of course it's up to the designers what their intend was with overriding buffs...

[Sethil]

Whitesand, are you in love with your own posts? You needed almost 2/3 of your post to find the point j/k

Ok, I totally agree. I have 448 NCUs and I can only use 403 of them for buffs. Not only that we have to buff our attackrating with a horrible amount of NCU cost (compared to every other class 2-3 times more), no, we also have to leave 45 NCUs free for emergency TMS......

I dont know how often I died, because a stupid teammate filled my NCUs up and I didnt see that in battlespam...... what surprise... TMS not possible....

Dont know how often I died due to omni ganks in the arena, because an other 'friendly' clanner thought he would do me a favour with his own buff, just before I tried to cast my TMS.....
(ok, not that often, my stats are always open to prevent that)

I dont like to blame those friendly buffers, but we are one of the professions which has to keep NCUs free for emergency. And since TMS is our strongest defense, we get more hurt from friendly buffs than every other...

[Ghump]

Originally posted by Sethil
I dont like to blame those friendly buffers, but we are the only profession which has to keep NCUs free for emergency.

I guess You never played an enforcer long enough to get Mongo, Challenger and Rage? Those 3 "emergency" nanos at ql 100+ cost >100 NCU together.

I guess most professions have shortlived stuff like that. Wrangles, hp-buffs, etc.

[_________Kalashnakof]

hmm took you all those paragraphs to say:

Make TMS cancel RRFE so you dont need the xtra NCU free.

heh good idea btw

[__________Beautyfarm]

dont forget about nullity my nt died several times too, cause someone filled my ncu without me noticing.."casting nullity sphere..." - "oh no ! not enough ncu !" straight way to reclaim.
on another note, the problem you describe whitesand is a general flaw in game mechanics, same problem for example with traders. you cast a divest (major) to start, and want to use the divest(advanced) for the next refresh..a difference of maybe 5 ncu (dont know the correct numbers right now) but you will need like 45 ncu.
however, the issue hits soldiers a little harder, since TMS is their mean of survival in many situations. having TMS for basically no (well, actually 1) ncu cost sounds not like a good idea to me, neither would it solve the problem for other classes. the appropriate fix would be to make the better (more ncu costly) program just overwrite the lower one, like already happens with some buffs ( example : buff a soldier with tms running with reactive harmonic coccon ).
its actually pretty twisted. the current game mechanics allow exploiting (what the above is imo) but not using your stuff the intended way. pretty funny, or sad if your a soldier.

[Sethil]

The problem is the order new buffs act in the memory.
Currently it is:
1. NCU check
2. Higher Buff comes in
3. Lower buff canceled

But it should be:
1. Check for lower buffs
2. Check for free NCUs
3. Check if lower buffs NCUs and free NCUs enough for higher buffs
4. If yes, cancel lower buffs, replace with higher buff
5. If no, error message back to user, lower buff remains in memory

[M@hdi]

Agreed 100%

The trader situation is bit different tho...They mostly need the points from the debuff that is running to cast that next divest or deprive, hence canceling them out of NCU before the other one hits would mean they wouldn't have the skills to cast a buff by the time it lands. It's not 100% waterproof, but I see some logic in it.

As for soldiers, BUMP!

[Mercatura]

TMS should be made into a 1 NCU buff, and not cancel the long-term reflects. (though they obviously should not stack, the 75% should ignore all other reflect programs)

This would free up enough ncu to allow soldiers to get another outside buff (not to mention keep them from screaming bloody murder when I team wrangle) and not make them a sitting duck for the 1:30-0:40 when TMS is down but shutdown is still running.

The trader buff problem would be a helluva lot harder to fix (we have SEVEN lines that can work like this, though realistically only 3 can cause problems since nobody uses our ac buffs and we don't ladder our ac debuffs) and I don't trust FC mucking around in there anyways.

Also they really ought to consolidate the soldier nanos...that should be a benefit of the higher nanos, they should combine multiple buffs to save ncu. (i.e. at lower levels burst and FA are seperate, but at higher levels combine them to cut ncu cost in half)

[_____Real Kinky Ityn]

God, you could have said all that in 2 or 3 sentances.

TMS overides RRFE, but checks avaliable NCU prior to overiding it. Please make the NCU check after the overide check.

What I think would be even better for soldiers, make all of their reflect sheilds an AURA. So you run RRFE as an aura, then TMS cancels the aura, but the aura program keeps running while TMS is up, when TMS goes down on the next aura refresh RRFE is back up. The only thing they would have to code is TMS killing the aura instantly. As an example if I run AF as a crat it stacks with Mop till the aura recycles, then it no longer stacks.

2 big benefits for you here.

RRFE is now really a soldier only buff that can benefit his team or people standing around him of the same faction (issues in 0% gas that funkcom needs to work out tho)

TMS will overide RRFE but not cancel it.

1 draw back, you still need the NCU for both, but hey, the truth is eveyone needs a lot of ncu at higher levels, I think i have 340 or so base, and it's not enough.

[Kinkstaah]

Rage, Mongo, Challenger, Layers.

Whee, thats a lot of NCU to keep free, I tell you that.
(181 NCU, w00t)

And then you have Essence, Coruscating Screen, new weapon buffs, and you use a recompiler... aaaahhhhh.

/me trails off.

[Sarelron]

I can see this working either way. Checking for NCU after canceling any lower buffs of the same line would be nice...but from an RP point of view, how exactly is the nano program going to cancel the lower nano programs if you can't run said nano program on yourself because you don't have enough NCU memory? Be prepared to answer the same question from Funcom.

Flame on!

[engelstein]

The nanoprogram loader runs the appropriate check before trying to load and run the program.

[______________Sredni]

As someone previously stated TMS should be a 1ncu buff that overrides (ie does not stack), but does not cancel the smaller reflect buff (ie rrfe).

That would look a little too much like soldier luv tho.

[_____________Brandon]

Ummm in FC's view this must be working as intended... Sounds like no bug to me. I do agree this would be some subtle but good solja luv though.

[____________Asmodeuz]

yeah bump for it. and plz fix the damn weapon switching too. i hate the lottery it always is, mainly sometimes you have to wait for reload of the gun and sometimes not. sucks ....

[__________Distortion]

Isn't it easlier to make a new, lower version of TMS and make it stack with RRFE?

RRFE 30% + 45% new TMS = 75% Reflect = soldier is not naked after TMS

then FC don't have to work around the ncu rule if they make TMS req 1 NCU.