ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Swapping between tinkers is instant. This means for instance that Fungal Web, a highly powerful tinker that heals when you use a salve, by function does nothing on turns you aren't using a salve...so you are incentivized to use another tinker that has a passive boost, and when you need to use a salve, open the inventory, drag fungal web to the belt slot, close the inventory, use the salve, open the inventory, drag another tinker to the belt slot, and close the inventory.

This is obviously terrible.

Can we have changing tinkers take a turn, just like equipping an item?

I would prefer not - I like being able to e.g. run around with a default good ammo mod, realize it is not ideal for this particular combat, fire it, and then freely swap it out. Or being able to run dual Crystal Edges while not hating my life whenever I encounter any of the radiant horror line. Or being able to swap in Focus Lens when Blindsight would be useful. Feels more Batman utility-belt-ish.

I agree, the Fungal Web scenario in particular has one version of optimal play and another of non-aggravating, but sometimes that's how life is. Given how many tinkers that you would practically want to swap do have cooldowns, and that cooldowns go off whenever you swap in a new tinker, I don't think the burden of Fungal Web specifically is that bad.

Strictly optimal tinker play can be tedious, but I feel like this fix would remove a lot of existing merely good tinker play along with it. Speaking as someone who played quite a lot of reg-cancel Oozemancers, sometimes the burden of kicking your play from “good” to “optimal” can and should rightfully fall on the pilot.

Yeah, I get that. Tinkers are already categorically very highly strong though so an additional turn to swap would more bring them in line a little than anything. It's how all other equipment swaps work after all.

Also Swift Hands would make the swaps instant, which would make more sense with the flavor and how other equipment works. Tinkers basically cheat as is.

I would consider the additional turn mainly a QOL malus rather than a big power cut. It would likely drive optimizing players towards cheaper-to-acquire in terms of generics, safer, middle of the road options (razor edge, explosive shell), and disincentivize acquiring lots of variety in ammo types, grooves, etc. Not my preferred outcome.

If we want to have an discussion starting from “hey, tinkers are too good” there’s a case for that - most classes get better taking them as an escort category. But I don’t think this is a right-sized patch for that discussion, if indeed we think the experience of the game would be improved by weakening tinkers.

I agree, switching tinkers should take a turn. Just like normal equipment switch

If nothing else, it would make the prodigy (Quick Hands?) more valuable.

I think it’s mostly a problem for Fungal Web, though. Maybe recode that as granting a sustained skill that has a short cooldown before being available or maybe takes a turn to activate? That way it can be swapped out at whim, but it isn’t as useful to do so?

SDY wrote:I think it’s mostly a problem for Fungal Web, though.

Nah, an awful lot of tinkers and demon seeds (which use the same interface) benefit from micromanagement. Which resistances do you want on your shields? Do you actually need silence immunity right now, or would you rather have a boost to Cunning? Do you want to be firing off flame bolts, or silencing enemies, or using blood grasp, or farstrike? Etc.

The defensive stuff, though, happens when time passes and only one thing is active at any given time. That just makes adapting mid-fight more convenient - rare that you’d be able to make use of more than one resist. I suppose rotating weapon tinkers to apply a variety of debuffs is meaningful. When using the instant salves, Fungal Web all happens on your turn.

I suppose there are a couple of others that interact with instant abilities, such as mana coil for spellcasting or back support for fatigue reduction on other instants, but their effects aren’t as meaningful as fungal web.

Fungal Web is basically “free” since the only thing that’s harmed by swapping it out is the cooldown on Thunder Grenade.

Also, as a big picture issue, the ability to swap at will constrains design, because it means adding new tinkers further augments the already good tinker power set.

This is also true for ammo btw, so by switching out ammo for steamguns you can utilise a shitton of different shots while the other is on cooldown. Now, while i'm of the opinion that it's very bad for others, for ammo it can actually be fun. I say fix them for everything but ammo and then switch ammo types midcombat just by using the talent.

I don't think that's how it worked - whenever you swapped in a tinker with a cooldown that cooldown was activated.

However... mission accomplished, I guess? More mental rest for strict optimizers, fewer options for tinker Batman, situational stuff is now less valuable.

How about Solomon solution - swapping tinkers takes HALF a turn instead of turn?