the only real problem is attack coding. From what I was told, CoX only allows 1 damage type coding for an attack's accuracy+tohit/defense calc. that means that attacks have a Primary damage type.
In example an attack with Smashing, fire, energy, though the attack has fire and energy damage types, and lets say a target has weak defense to fire or energy, it doesn't matter because it's coded as Smashing in the battle calc that determines if it hits. it wont calculate the fire and energy in the attack separately. It only calculates this separately when dealing with Res and direct damage.
So to accomplish Power Synergy, you would have to have several def calcs for each attack. in the example's case 3 different def calcs, one to check if smashing hit + one to check if fire hit + one to check if energy hit = types that hit.
Then when applying damage you'd only call the types that hit to compare against the Res, and during damage application to the HP (direct damage) you'd not include the damage from damage types that did not hit.
So lets use our example; The smashing (45) did not hit, the fire(20) hit, the energy (20) hit. Res was 50% Smashing, 10% fire, 10% energy. the outcome would be fire(18 (90%))+energy(18 (90%)) = 36 damage.
One downside is you'd have to decide what buffs and what debuffs attack damage. Heat+cold in example would probably directly lower eachother's damage output.
then theres team implications, a fire team wont want an Ice guy because it'll lower damage they can deal though it provides steam effects. where ice teams wont want fire to melt their holds. then theres enemy groups that have fire for DoT - end and Ice for DoT +rech - speed, this equilibrium that made some enemy groups so tough would be broken. So the rule has to consider friendly fire maybe omitting negative effects.
In the end it'd take lotsa extra attack coding. Extra variables for consideration, and a relook at the battle calcs, and a few extra steps in attack casting, using rays to detect for each damage type between you and the target, and also applying sensors to physically present attacks to make them able to sense eachother and apply the effects of damage types that collide.
Not saying that's bad, but this is one thing I was thinking of when I came up with Project Bane (my partly functional game idea I made years back as a spiritual successor from when CoH went down). After thinking about it, I thought it'd be fun to include it in CoX if we ever got the code, but after pondering on it for years I realized it was just a different beast entirely.
CoX, is still the best Super Powered MMO out there. But it wasn't perfect. there are things that could have been done to make it more accurate to a real comic book universe, power synergy being one of them. The question now is; Add it in? or just make a new game and build it and other things in from the start?
This was kinda because of deadlines cramping idea development when CoX was built, if they had more time to think about it they probably would have done tons of other stuff. These deadlines cause development in any company to always be imperfect, which is why Intellectual Property exists, because they are always affraid of private groups with all the time in the world 1upping them with all the things they should have had the time to think up but didn't. :troll face: butthurt much IP holders?
Now that we don't suffer from such deadline overheads it's entirely possible to make such drastic overhauls. But it will be drastic. I have been pondering starting up Project Bane again to see what it could become with more help behind it. But yeah I would support this being added into CoX.
