Promoting Support players

Simply put there arn’t enough support players out there. I think one reason is because they get the short end of the stick in party play. So i would like to make a few suggestions that I think would make more players want to play as a support.
1) Like traders, they should get exp for what they do best. Supports are best at healing/buffing people so I think they should get exp based on some formula similar to ([#hp healed]*[your level]-[person getting healed]) or something like that as a general idea
2) Parties should get shared uranium, or at least everyone in the party should get a % cut, as it is now, only the attacker is getting the uranium and the poor support is getting left out. This is a big reason for people to not make parties as it is, everyone’s fighting over the kills.
3) Maybe add another buff, maybe one that increases hit rate/critical chance etc.
4) Add in a cpu gem.

for #2: definitely agree.. would also like to use that to keep the leechers out when killing bosses / reactors.

ok so i may have a slightly unbalanced view on the support class as i have put in a little money to get the best equip mine can use but then i did the same for my raider and trader and i dont use either of them any more, the reason i dont use them now is because support in my opinion is the best all round class there is

what does support have going for it

1)if set up correctly it has the highest solo damage output in the game ship+drone+buff(targeted to drone)+buff(self) .. you cant argue with all that lot added up

2)you’ll get invited to every mission, every quest, every party, every boss just for being a support class

3)you can attack without ever taking any damage or very little by using your drone

4)in pvp you can outlast anything since your damage does not really go down once your out of ammo and you move faster than most enemys

5) you can solo anything up to G6 with ease, bosses, any quest (except escort), any mob you choose (i cant get into G6 yet so dont know what it’s like there but hey only 1 proson can get in there at the time of this post)

6) their cost efficancy is off the chart, little to no ammo cost mostly no need to self heal and heal bots for your drone cost next to nothing and store 4 times more ammo than a gun

so few things come close to just how good they can be

so whats the drawbacks

1) low HP (but they do have high dodge)

2) hard to use, have to watch your drone and yourself at the same time(solo),you have to be on the ball and expect to get blamed if things go wrong (party) its not for everyone

3) sadly they are a star pit, their normal uranium equipment is ok for their team job as healers and buffers but if you want them to be any good alone the basic drones wont cut it (i know this is the killer and the reason there is so few of them around)
4) they dont really have gem’s the help them much, the dodge gems are ok but really if your using your ship right you not gunna get shot at let alone hit

i personally would have to say if you havent already tried it you should get some skills into support class cuz once you start playing that role you’ll soon find that doors to big exp and uranium farming partys will open up to you, just throw a few random heals about and you’ll soon find yourself in a party speed killing everything in your path, yes the ppl doing the killing will take the loot to start with but they should soon start passing it by and letting you have your cut

also to anyone having a support tail them dont forget they have to buy things as well dont be a hog or you might just find them cutting your life support and taking 5% of everything you have been picking up, you can get use to +1,200 HP or more per 2 sec and you’ll be killing so much faster with their help easy to die if they feel neglected on the loot side

i would like to add that i do not think supports should get exp for healing others for 1 reason, abuse, it can be abused no matter how you try to limit it and it would get abused and in a week we would have a ton of lvl 50 players that are broke with no skills and cant kill even the lowest mob that they can still loot and therefore their char would be ruined beyond recovery, yep it would be their own fault but it would still happen anyway

Currently support is better at tanking than tank (see my balance issues topic for math), thanks to drone abuse tactic never runs out of ammo or is in real danger and you want to buff it even further? If anything, support needs nerfs. People don’t play it because they either fail at math (tanking part), expect balancing (tanking part) or want good offence without spending stars (so they pick raider). Support classes are least favourite in any game, because they require teamplay. And that’s the way to go: increase incentives for good teams, not buff already good class.

Let me change my ideal then, sense I’ve been proven wrong. There is a problem that still exists, the need for some incentive to engage in team play. Other than the obvious perks like not being able to attack team mates and the exp/gem sharing, a lot of people don’t do it because they can’t get a cut of the uri, I still stand by my suggestion of adding some % cut of the uri to all team members. For example the person who kills the monster still gets full uri, but everyone in the party in the general area gets 10-25%.

how about when a can of uranium is picked up it just splits it by all group members automaticly i cant really see that as being hard to do, hell the game can remeber if a uranium extractor has been used on a mob forever untill it dies (gotta love when a boss drops NOTHING due to this)

i also think the range of group benifits are far too small, having to be on the same screen is ok for bosses but out on the maps in some cases if your in the same screen your gunna get blown to hell when a phatt collector dies

so improve the range and make loot autosplit

^ sounds good to me

All these suggestions are great, i hope Sublinet reads this.

i am support class and spend most of my research time on shield/ heal/ defence unit (didnt know drones where better for me..) i have to work real hard for my xp and have no attack/ defence bonus. giving support xp for healing/ shielding/ buffing is a must! it is what support does and what we should get xp for!

oh really, support is better at tanking … bullshit. just had to fight a tank with life buff, shield and heals. this thing does NOT die. i run out of ammo way too soon and he still keeps spamming shield +life buffs. as soon as i kill the 4k health he gets from it his cooldown is ready for the next one. anyways you cant argue about ships being better at lvl 50 since noone IS lvl 50 to test it.

I also did math at lvl 20, with same results. Not my fault you have subpar techs. I emphasized that those calculations include max techs available at those levels.
But that’s not why I bumped this thread. Now that you get xp even for refilling your reactors, I believe idea of support getting xp for supporting should be revisited. Even if it’s something as small as 1xp/heal it might be nice if balanced properly (daily/hourly cap for example).

1xp per heal… that could be massive XP very fast… Boss fight, with 3 “healing” weapons.. that’s …. a lot of xp being given out fairly quickly, if you cycle thru the weapons.
More reasonable would be maybe 1 xp per 20-30 healing.
each shot, on the low end, would be 120-150 xp? (At least for a trader-graded ship, no boost in cpu)