Interesting, here are my opinions:

Revered Elder
No other specialists participate in combat, unless both sides have a Revered Elder. Promotable to the Chancellor
Combat priority: 2

Chancellor
All global effects are nullified within the range of 1 standard outpost.

Princess
Increases her outpost's sonar range by 50% of the standard sonar range. If you lose control of your Queen, the closest Princess becomes the new Queen. (The idea here is that the sonar range no longer grows exponentially, meaning it is a lot harder to cover the whole map.)

Spy (promotable from infiltrator)
Local: Drains all the shield charge of any outpost it attacks. (addresses shields stacking and turtling, which the chancellor can't deal with). Global: 'Attacking' specs drain an additional 10 shield in combat.
Combat priority: 4

Sentry
Fires on an enemy sub once every 2 hours while at an outpost. Each shot destroys 5% of drillers rounded up. Sentry's range is half of its outpost's sonar range. Target is chosen to maximize damage. Only 1 sentry can target each sub.
Promotes to: War Hero

War Hero
Destroys 20 enemy drillers when participating in combat. Captures assassins, saboteurs, and double agents before their abilities are applied. Prevents firing from sentries and targeting from pirates.
Combat priority: 7

Intelligence Officer
Adds 25% of standard sonar range to all your outposts' sonar range. Shows you the type of all outposts that are outside your sonar range. (same idea as princess)

Hypnotist
Takes control of all captured specialists present at his outpost, resists being hypnotised by hypnotists.
Promotes to: King

King
Global: Destroys 1 enemy driller for every 3 of your drillers that remain after shield phase in every combat you are involved. All shields reduced by 20, except at king's outpost, where it is increased by 20. All your generators produce 15 less electricity.

Pirate
Sub carrying Pirate can target another sub. When targeting a sub, the Pirate's sub travels 2x faster than ordinary subs, then travels at 4x normal speed to nearest friendly outpost. Promotes to Pirate King.

I also think there need to be more mechanics for subs, and more ways to counter/interact with them, so:

Pirate King (promoted from pirate)
Local: You can target all subs in the standard sonar range of the outpost that the pirate king is positioned at without the need for pirates. Global: All pirates destroy an additional 10 drillers.

Navigator Promotion II (or just another promotion from somewhere else):
Local: You can launch another sub from the sub that this spec is on as if the sub were an outpost. If you have a pirate you can merge drillers with another sub (including gifts), while all specs on the sub merged with are redirected to nearest friendly outpost. Global: Pirates can target own drillers. (this spec opens up a whole lot of tactical possibilities btw, which I think suits this game a lot)

1. I also have another idea. Seeing as promotable specs have a star on top of them, why not mark promoted specs as different from the rest? Maybe you could encircle them with black, or invert the colours. Just a small change (which I've actually suggested wayyyy back when I had like 200 posts or something), but it would be quite nice to see them unique

2. Also, you could add the class of each specialist on their little panel that shows up with you click them. It'll improve the players' understanding of the structure of the game.

3. A very unlikely idea, but maybe we could add 3rd generation specs (as in, you promote them 2 times in their history). idk, things that are really, really OP compared to anything we know now. Things like: Decreases the time until next hire by an additional 25%. Or: allows subs to be stationed anywhere on the map. Or: allows full view of the entire map, which is not attributed to an outpost.

4. There's a thing that could potentially be extremely interesting, but is probably too radical for it to ever happen (maybe if there was subterfuge 2 it could be implemented). We could make it that you can only hire 1 of 3 things any any point in time: a base attack/defence/other spec. Hires wouldn't cost, but rather just take time. For example, you could hire one of these things, and you wouldn't be able to promote or hire for another X hours (which could make balancing specs much easier) until the promotion/hiring of your current specialist was complete. So then you would be able to promote each of the base specs to any of the current first generation specs in their respective classes, and so on. The result would be a tree of specialists, some perhaps costing more time to promote/hire (for example maybe hypnotist to king would cost a day while a base defence to saboteur might only cost 3 hours). The effect of this would be pretty awesome. In any game, (assuming most specs were well balanced by this time), people would have different starting 'strategies' which would always be available, instead of requiring luck to stumble across the current game, kind of like an 'opening' in chess. This also means we could implement 3rd or higher gen specs and so on. And, (as I had already said) the best part would be that balancing specs would be much, much easier. Sorry for the messiness, but I was short on time. Maybe I can develop this dreamy idea a bit more later on lol

Is it just me or is the biggest issue stacking specialists? I'm not a coding expert, but why not just eliminate the stacking. Stacked smugglers don't go 6x speed, so why not eliminate the global affect of the 2nd specialist. For example, 2 generals would still only kill 10 drillers and 2 admirals would only increase sub speed 1.5x.

This would also make all "early game specs" more effective as they would not have to overcome the overpowered stacks.

philbailey wrote:Is it just me or is the biggest issue stacking specialists? I'm not a coding expert, but why not just eliminate the stacking. Stacked smugglers don't go 6x speed, so why not eliminate the global affect of the 2nd specialist. For example, 2 generals would still only kill 10 drillers and 2 admirals would only increase sub speed 1.5x.

This would also make all "early game specs" more effective as they would not have to overcome the overpowered stacks.

You're probably right, but it's such a simple solution that we can't possibly accept it. What else will we overthink? What can TW and TopKilla argue about without this? What threads will we endlessly necro? What topic will be rehashed over and over?
No, philbailey. We need stacking. It defines us.

roadkiehl wrote:

philbailey wrote:Is it just me or is the biggest issue stacking specialists? I'm not a coding expert, but why not just eliminate the stacking. Stacked smugglers don't go 6x speed, so why not eliminate the global affect of the 2nd specialist. For example, 2 generals would still only kill 10 drillers and 2 admirals would only increase sub speed 1.5x.

This would also make all "early game specs" more effective as they would not have to overcome the overpowered stacks.

You're probably right, but it's such a simple solution that we can't possibly accept it. What else will we overthink? What can TW and TopKilla argue about without this? What threads will we endlessly necro? What topic will be rehashed over and over?
No, philbailey. We need stacking. It defines us.

So true.

There's one other change I'd love to see too. A change from the end condition for elimination being just capturing a queen to capturing a queen being held captive at an enemy base.

Basically, this just changes what would happen if you beat a sub with an enemy queen on it. You get the specialist capture, but the other player isn't eliminated until the captured sub arrived at a base. Giving the player that's pending doom the chance at returning to the game.

I feel like this could result in some more creative game play. As opposed to 'don't move your queen and if you do, make sure you have speed'

topkilla wrote:There's one other change I'd love to see too. A change from the end condition for elimination being just capturing a queen to capturing a queen being held captive at an enemy base.

Basically, this just changes what would happen if you beat a sub with an enemy queen on it. You get the specialist capture, but the other player isn't eliminated until the captured sub arrived at a base. Giving the player that's pending doom the chance at returning to the game.

I feel like this could result in some more creative game play. As opposed to 'don't move your queen and if you do, make sure you have speed'

Sounds interesting.

only one tinkerer per outist

bangerz wrote:only one tinkerer per outist

Only 1 in effect per outpost?

philbailey wrote:Is it just me or is the biggest issue stacking specialists? I'm not a coding expert, but why not just eliminate the stacking. Stacked smugglers don't go 6x speed, so why not eliminate the global affect of the 2nd specialist. For example, 2 generals would still only kill 10 drillers and 2 admirals would only increase sub speed 1.5x.

This would also make all "early game specs" more effective as they would not have to overcome the overpowered stacks.

This is the best solution that I've read to rebalance the game. It has my vote.