Wit is a cool skill and is the only thing that is not combat related, but I feel it needs to do a bit more to be interesting. I am not the biggest fan of leaving charters behind in rooms, although I can see why it has to be that way. Plus I have found that characters you leave behind usually are no the best at defending themselves. I think having more options would be nice if you had to go more combat focused.



Idea;



Characters with high enough wit can "pick up" a placed minor mod and take it with them. The mod would either act like a drone and fire above them, or they would have to place back down in another room for it to be active. The strength of the mod could be based on the character's wit.





I think this would really help with those character with low strength/HP and use a pre-existing system.

My own Wit suggestion is to have it affect the probability of positive events when interacting with Cryo Capsules or Dust Factories. Perhaps a tiny discount when interacting with a research Artefact. Carrying defences seems like too big a game changer to me.

I like that. Preferred people for interaction.



I still think there should be a better use for these guys when combat breaks out. I tried using Josh a couple times, and it just feels like a burden tying to keep him alive.



I saw some posts of people asking for drones. I think using the mods would easier to implement. If it is too powerful you could always have them watered down when carried.

Wit's fine at the moment. It creates a divide between the strength of your heroes and the amount of resources they can generate. I think you can have Wit do more things to add depth to the game, but Wit is balanced as is. Wit already indirectly gives a discount to researching... by operating on a science module. Same with picking up mini modules, they simply operate/generate the industry to achieve the same result.



Well, how about this? What if higher wit allowed an operator to move between more modules while operating? This in turn would allow for speed to be much more important to operators than before, and adding a layer of complexity. (ie Wit * 15 = the range in which an operator can move from their original main module and retain operating status) Although if we did this, I imagine a lot of the operators would have to have their speeds rebalanced.

I'll respectfully disagree with the notion that Wit is balanced as is. The point being that Wit is the one stat that is either used by one skill or is obsolete. Characters without Operate have Wit, but unless you give them an item that provides Operate and put them in a room to do that, they might as well not have the stat at all.

Sorry if this may seem like I'm putting words in your mouth, but here's my logic of the balance of wit with fighters and operators.



It sounds like you're saying that a fighter like Mizi with 1 wit is inherently favored over a fighter like Joleri with 7 wit and no operate. It's as if the developers allocated any wit that Mizi had into something more immediately useful like attack power, while they kept the 7 on Joleri and simply made her a worse character. And yeah, wit is worth jack if you can't operate, other than two steles that allow you to operate/use your wit for turrets, and repairing (lol). And what's more seemingly messed up about it is that you have to *hope* you find scope or energy bar to allow them to operate? At first, that seems like bad game design. What if you never find either item? So you basically win based on the lucky find of an item?



But the way I see it, the player is also partly responsible for this situation. The degree of how much the player is able to influence the situation is variable, and it could be as subtle as choosing to level up Joleri over Mizi with the hope that they run into either item. I feel that the probability of running into either item is 50/50. The player doesn't really have any way to increase the chance of these two items dropping, but they are able to control the value of the items before they even find them. If I had a team of three made up of Josh, an operator, and a fighter, would I rather have Joleri or Mizi? I'd choose Joleri because Josh's knowledge is good would boost the value of Joleri, that is, IF I find the item. So it's a calculated risk. Joleri's 7 wit may be immediately useless to me, but it's potentially very valuable later down the road. So by increasing the value of an item I don't even know I'll have, I actually increase my chances of winning.



You could apply the inverse to HP and backline operators. Would you rather have a normal Josh of 400 HP + 12 wit at level 1, or a Josh with 100 HP and 16 wit? Consider for a moment that HP indirectly generates resources, just like wit does! If your fighter goes down to 10% life but manages to win the battle without a single turret or a single heal, then that's food and industry you just indirectly saved! A fighter gets back all of the health they lost after a battle. An operator like Josh practically never benefits from having his HP restored because it's too risky to have him fighting. So a fighter like Joleri is wasting away her wit in the same manner that an operator like Josh wastes his HP. So then why would you ever buy protective armor for Josh to wear? Because something very bad can potentially happen to him, just like how having Joleri around can be potentially very good.



Then again, it's readily apparent to any player that HP for Josh is more important than more wit for Joleri. Josh's HP is still way more efficiently utilized than Joleri's wit. So let's try supposing something else; what if Operate-less Joleri had 500 wit and Operator Josh had 1 wit? Then the game would be pretty stupid because your success relies on your luck of a single factor. What if Joleri had 500, and Josh had the default of 12? Even if Joleri 500 doesn't come with operate, she's still the better character because 50% of the time, she wins every time! But Joleri doesn't have 500 wit, she has 7.... 7 useless wit. And I think that is balanced. (actually I would decrease her wit by 1 and give sara 2 wit or 50 starting hp) Now SPEED on the other hand... I think that can use a bit of a buff. I've tried a lot to make speed more useful, but unfortunately the higher values of speed diminishes when compared to other stats.

I think what it boils down to is characters often get divided into two groups; fighting and resource bonuses (operating). To me fighting is a lot more interesting and ultimately fighting is what wins the game.



At the end of each level when you pick up the crystal, everyone has to fight. The characters that I have had dedicated to wit almost always come close to death or die(mostly in the latter levels). And than the resource bonuses you got through operating get used in healing the character or they die and you are at a big disadvantage next level.



So I just think that character with wit need to have a way to help with fighting, OR find a way to make operating a lot more interesting and have more variables for strategy to make it worth it.