Warning: It's a long post. I had a few ideas today of how to make Necrons playable and thought I'd share them and see what you guys thought. Race characteristics Slow movement speed Tough (high HP and/or Defence) Powerful weaponry, but possibly with a slow fire rate or less power than I suggest to keep the balance Weak in close combat (unless using a good loadout or class type, even then they're just average or slightly above average) There could be a race trait that activates when a Necron player (or Necron NPC) reaches 0 health, where they have a chance to recover an arbitrary amount of health, e.g. 25% of total. If this is OP then accuracy, defence and/or attack could be reduced for a short period after recovery as they're still "disoriented". Classes The four classes I could think of were: Lord Cryptek Triarch Praetorian Warrior Class abilities If classes have certain abilities, these are what I think the Necrons should/could/would have. Warrior - Relentless March Slower walking and firing speed, increased accuracy/damage/both and increased resistance to knockdown. Immortal - Relentless Advance Slower walking and firing speed, increased accuracy/damage/both, increased resistance to knockdown and buffs nearby Warriors and Immortals' accuracy/damage/both. Flayed One - Strike From Below The player burrows underground and is then able to move around for a short while (10-30 seconds maybe) before rising up out of the ground and damaging nearby players or allowing the Flayed One to commit an execution as he rises to instantly kill/maim another player. Semi-invulnerable whilst underground, vulnerable whilst going under and rising up. Triarch Praetorian - Gravity Repulsion Similar to the Assault Marine's jump pack, but instead of causing damage when landing (or at least reducing how much damage is caused) the player can hover in mid-air for a few seconds and even perform limited flight. Whilst hovering the player can shoot. There should be a way for the player to end the hover move though, or they'll be stuck up there, as well as some way of staying in place or stopping mid-jump to activate the hover. Cryptek - Unsure, might vary with what type of Harbinger he is Lord - Unsure Class Progression Class progression involves buying more advanced gear and abilities (like normal, if that's how it works) that change the role or style of the character, e.g. a Warrior can keep upgrading it's ranged attacks to become an Immortal. I thought they could have: Lord can buy upgrades to his weapons and gain a wider variety of wargear and customisation as standard, but can also buy upgrades to change him into a Destroyer Lord that has different abilities and play-style (less buffing, more damage). Starting wargear could be a Hyperphase Sword or Staff of Light. Cryptek can be upgraded into one of the different Harbingers in the codex and can switch disciplines, but can't share the wargear (e.g. you can't have a Harbinger of Eternity Timesplinter Cloak and a Harbinger of the Storm Ether Crystal at the same time) - this fits the lore but may need to change to make gameplay fairer/more fun. Starting wargear is likely to be a Staff of Light. I couldn't think of much for the Triarch Praetorians except gaining a wider variety of wargear, equipment and customisation. Starting wargear could be a Particle Caster and Voidblade, but at the higher levels can unlock Rod of Covenant, Warscythe, Hyperphase Sword and various other stuff. I thought that the Warriors could choose to go one of two ways - they could either become a ranged combat player or a close combat player and become an Immortal or Flayed One respectively. For example, they could follow the path of the Immortal and gradually improve their guns, toughness and so on; or they could follow the path of the Flayed One and add extra blades, spikes, claws, combat skills, etc. These paths are interchangeable up to a point (e.g. a Warrior can have good guns and spiky limbs or some basic combat skills) but eventually the paths split into separate classes. Immortals gain better and better abilities and ranged weaponry (and change their class skill to Relentless Advance) and Flayed Ones start to be able to change their bodies to be better at close combat, like reverse-jointed legs and gaining the Strike From Below skill. Character titles I'm not sure how they're implemented, but I heard something about players earning titles through playing and thought of a few Necron-specific ones. Lord - Overseer - Overlord - Phaeron `- Destroyer Lord - Destroyer of LifeCryptek - Harbinger of Doom - Harbinger of Death Triarch Praetorian - Triarch Vargard - Triarch Commander Warrior - Immortal - Legion Commander `- Flayed One - Lord of the Hunt Vehicles Catacomb Command Barge - Usable by: Lord, Warrior A Lord can use it as a transport and gets to pilot it, control its gun and make sweep attacks from it (if the only player occupant). Warriors can pilot it whilst an occupying Lord can make sweep attacks, I'm not sure who would get to control the gun when it's occupied by both a Warrior and Lord Annihilation Barge - Usable by: Warrior, Immortal When occupied by one player, the player controls movement and both guns but can only fire forwards. When controlled by two players, one's the pilot and controls the under slung gun, the other's the gunner and controls the main gun and are able to rotate it however far its arc allows. Ghost Ark - Usable by: Warriors, Immortals, Crypteks, Lords (transport only), Triarch Praetorians (pilot only) Triarch Praetorian players or AI can pilot it and shoot its Gauss Flayer arrays. It can carry up to 10 players that are of a class listed above, who can all fire with a limited arc and (for the ones behind the front two) with a limited view thanks to the transport spots being taken up in front of them. The vehicles could have Quantum Shielding that reduces damage taken until a threshold is reached, e.g. if X amount of damage is caused in Y mount of time, the shields drop for Z amount of time. The vehicles are tough to implement and my ideas may be too restricting, if so ignore them. Weapons Tesla weaponry AoE damage, ranging from small area and small damage from the Tesla Carbines, to large AoE from Tesla Destructors that can arc to players near the target area on a random chance. Gauss weaponry Although on the tabletop it's good against most things, for game balance they'll probably be better against heavy or armoured targets than ordinary infantry. Warscythe Effective against everything, but as a close combat weapon it's got a very limited range of effectiveness and to help with balance it would have to be slow to use (e.g. 1/2x normal combat attack speed) So guys, what do you think? Also, I don't know if you noticed but I really like Necrons and would be among the first to play them if they're added to the game. P.S. Bullet points FTW!
did a quick look through, maybe add immortal to the classes, I feel like it's more separate from warriors
A quite interesting read.... But I am just not really convinced to actually play Necrons.... mostly because of their dependence etc. Also "Lord" Class, I understand the necessity but shouldn't that be rather something like the Force Commanders that are elected by a faction? I rather would go with a Pariah, which then would be the elite melee unit. EDIT: regards Lord Class, otherwise you have like 200 Lords running around and that would be more than weird ; same as if from the Eldar 200 Farseers would run around. EDIT#2: As much as I know Librarian & Chaplain of the SM will be so called "Hero Classes" / "Hero Characters" similar should be with the Necron Lord & Eldar Farseer ; just as reference
Dude you missed the Deathmarks, they are clearly one of the best classes to pick if you ever had one for Necrons. I think the Immortal would just be a slightly higher ranking warrior anyway if i understand the progression correctly planned for this game.
If the Necrons enter the game, I will have a never ending desire to watch a Monolith reap destruction on the battlefield.
Yeah, maybe. My reasoning was that Warriors are base infantry whilst the Immortals are similar versions but tougher, thus the progression from Warrior to Immortal rather than separate classes. I'm not sure how the progression works, so I was pretty much just making it up. Fair point, I hadn't thought of that. Tbh, I'm not entirely sure how the classes and progression works so I was pretty much making it up as I went along, but Lords as a "Hero" class sounds interesting. Also, they're not called Pariahs anymore, they're Lychguard To be fair, there's a lot of good units in the codex that no matter what, we'll miss something, but yeah, Deathmarks would be awesome with their loitering in other dimensions and marking targets - it would probably increase damage against marked targets for a time. Me too, that would be awesome but perhaps slightly OP.
Iam not up-to-date with changes so I just went with what I knew from Dawn of War 1, Necrons are "only" my 3rd fav faction along with the Tyranids and I do not buy the Codex of any faction since they are too expensive ^^ Anyway thanks for the clear up! Regards Progression etc. nobody REALLY knows yet.... There are only rumors / indicators from the Developers, I hope to learn more about that on the 2nd AMA on the 21st!
They are just a bit, but the latest Necron codex is pretty good and has loads of cool new units. I'm sure there's a version floating around somewhere on the internet. Ooh, looking forward to then! Maybe, depends how well balanced it is. E.g. reanimation with few problems would probably be a one-off, but reanimation that only has a small chance of occurring, has a few or lots of penalties and doesn't recover full health (as I was aiming for in the original post, guess I didn't explain myself properly as usual) would be more common
I see the necrons playing similar to the heavy from TF2 where you kind of lumber across the map and point your big gun at anything that moves that isn't your color.
