Oops, now crits are reborn, too? :P

So last time I talked about KI cannons and the new mechanics they'll be getting. Well one thing led to another (okay, dozens of others xD) and now the entire critical strike system is being redone. Having a special critical effect for KI cannons alone would be pretty inconsistent, and the original simple critical strike system was built for the 7DRL, after all, without concern for future expansions and the balance concerns that might emerge. Not to mention we may as well use the opportunity to further differentiate weapons and add more unique effects across the board, allowing for greater build variation as well as better balance! Also fun ;)

So the effect for KI cannons was covered before, although I should point out that while I'm designing it such that in most cases critical effects will be the same across all weapons of a particular class and damage type, technically any critical effect can be tied to any specific weapon to allow for exceptions (they're assigned on a per-weapon basis). In some cases this will also help resolve the few issues where weapons had a different damage type purely for the side effect of the damage type (e.g. an energy gun doing slashing damage), whereas now we can use critical effects instead.

Here's a quick summary of the types of critical effects to expect, just to give a general picture:

• Burn: Increase heat transfer (TH guns)
• Meltdown: Instantly melt target bot (TH cannons)
• Destroy: Destroy part/core outright (the current effect, basically) (KI guns)
• Blast: Also damage a second part and knock it off target (KI cannons)
• Corrupt: Maximize system corruption effect (EM guns/cannons)
• Smash: As Destroy, but gets a second full-damage hit to another target (impact)
• Sever: Sever target part, or if hit core also damages and severs a different part (slashing)
• Puncture: Half of damage applied to core (piercing)
• Detonate: ???
• Sunder: ???
• Intensify: ???
• Phase: ???

Before you start imagining how your favorite weapons are going to be more or less effective under this system given their current critical strike rates, note that all of those values are going to be revisited--lots of weapons without critical effects will probably be getting one, and many of the chances will be adjusted. Also note that yes as part of this rework a number of other related mechanics are also being revisited as necessary, like immunities, shielding, core analyzers, damage overflow, etc.

A system like this also of course opens the door for additional unique types of critical effects later if we want/need them, basically another design lever to control balance or add fun.

In case you missed it, this week I also published the second article in the Design Overhaul series, this time covering propulsion. (I didn't put it here first since much of that material was already covered in earlier discussions on Patreon, although you might want to check it out again for a few extra details.)

The third article will be covering damage types and these critical effects in greater detail, most likely posted here first once it's all actually implemented.

All of this and more is coming to X4, though if you are in the patron Discord channel you might've heard in real-time as last week's progress was derailed due to health and construction issues, putting X4 behind schedule. I was hoping to have it ready around now, but clearly that didn't happen. (Also as you might imagine this new goal is a pretty big undertaking...) Anyway, trying to make up for lost time by at least spending a good chunk of Sunday on it xD