hye guys. I'm don't usually come up with a million specialist ideas but I have one based on some in game experiences. I have realized that if you have a navirate with a martyr or assassin and an ally willing to slingshot you then it can be almost impossible for the enemy queens to escape. They either need their own navirate with more subs, hope a smuggler comes up for hire, or to have previously hired a princess. I would argue that it makes almost no sense to hire a princess early game because the benefits of having a spare queen only become apparent if you're losing, and the opportunity cost of not hiring another specialist will actually put you behind the eight ball. Therefore there needs to be another reasonable specialist option which can functionally protect your queen.

Enter the illusionist. I am still thinking of ideas for the exact implementation of this specialist. However, the basic idea would be that he can mimic any other specialist its owner has. It could also change the specialist it is mimicking, but there would be a 16 hour cool down in between changes. This would allow you to mimic a queen and potentially give yourself a chance at escaping a navirate. The only thing I don't like about this idea is the 50-50 RNG-like chance of getting the opponent to queen. However, some people already think navirate is 'OP' and this would be a subtle nerd to that combo.

In order to give the illusionist some functionality, maybe this specialist could have 50% of the mimicked specialists abilities, MINUS global effects. So if you mimicked a war hero you would take out 10 of the enemies subs per battle. This would allow the illusionist to have some other function besides an escape artist. I would be open to other ideas regarding this last part.

-Connor

This would be interesting, but I think only if the illusionist actually can't do anything but be an illusion. May weaken his allure a bit though but it could provide for some interesting fake outs.

I agree with thestash. The illusionist should be able to turn into any specialist every tick, but won't have any effects, only the description and appearance.
Otherwise, people would have situational boosts (ie illusionists smuggler will have 1.5 speed, illusionist infiltrator will destroy 10 shield, etc).

Yeah that's why I was saying there would have to be a 16 hour cooldown

I feel like thestash has the right idea. Especially since some specialists don't have mathematical abilities. How can you have a reduced martyr effect? Or what about the King? Destroying .5 drillers seems like a nightmare for the game's simple math, haha.

One problem I see is that it would be difficult to use the illusionist unless he is at the same outpost as the mimicked specialist. An inherent downside, I guess, but I feel like it might end up similar to the martyr. Cool effect, mostly useless.

when the illusionist is created maybe a global announcement like wen you hire any specialist(for the position he filled not for the illusionist himself). but so many of those and people would know you had an illusionist

roadkiehl wrote:I feel like thestash has the right idea. Especially since some specialists don't have mathematical abilities. How can you have a reduced martyr effect? Or what about the King? Destroying .5 drillers seems like a nightmare for the game's simple math, haha.

One problem I see is that it would be difficult to use the illusionist unless he is at the same outpost as the mimicked specialist. An inherent downside, I guess, but I feel like it might end up similar to the martyr. Cool effect, mostly useless.

Yeah that's a good point. Part of why I was thinking no global abilities though. I think the idea would need some tweaking but could work as a counter for navirate etc.