Chitin gets shredded by poison, so i mean it atleast needs one advantage. Being able to repel sizzler attacks because there (probably) electricity, is one big advantage to use in melee fights. Also yea it could be the greaser interaction is jank

Yes, Chitin armor protects from Sizzler shocks. Imagine them as Faraday Cage. It was done purposely to give additional bonus for Chitin protect. Although it might be overpowered and maybe we should break chitin shell once Sizzler charge is absorbed - it would slightly balance it out.

Currently Sizzler shocks random zooids in its radius - this is probably where the most confusion and irritation comes from and we should fix that. They shouldn't be as unreliable and random in such critical situations. Question is how could we balance it out:
- All zooids within radius are shocked
- Only the closest zooids up to Penetration Stat count are shocked
- Only the farthest zooids up to Penetration Stat count are shocked (this was old behavior, confusing as well, as usually weapons are the close ones you might want to shock)
- Closest zooid and its further neighbors are shocked up to Penetration Stat count - so it would mean that the discharge is "travelling" through zooids, taking their connectivity into account. Could be interesting to see if Layouts can be optimized to avoid getting fully stunned and it would also have a potential for nice chain-lightning shock effect
- All zooids in sizzler blast range are shocked - might be too powerful, but easiest to understand and feel. Might need cooldown/energy use/duration nerf to balance.

Originally posted by Dominas:

Yes, Chitin armor protects from Sizzler shocks. Imagine them as Faraday Cage. It was done purposely to give additional bonus for Chitin protect. Although it might be overpowered and maybe we should break chitin shell once Sizzler charge is absorbed - it would slightly balance it out.

Currently Sizzler shocks random zooids in its radius - this is probably where the most confusion and irritation comes from and we should fix that. They shouldn't be as unreliable and random in such critical situations. Question is how could we balance it out:
- All zooids within radius are shocked
- Only the closest zooids up to Penetration Stat count are shocked
- Only the farthest zooids up to Penetration Stat count are shocked (this was old behavior, confusing as well, as usually weapons are the close ones you might want to shock)
- Closest zooid and its further neighbors are shocked up to Penetration Stat count - so it would mean that the discharge is "travelling" through zooids, taking their connectivity into account. Could be interesting to see if Layouts can be optimized to avoid getting fully stunned and it would also have a potential for nice chain-lightning shock effect
- All zooids in sizzler blast range are shocked - might be too powerful, but easiest to understand and feel. Might need cooldown/energy use/duration nerf to balance.

Hey, thanks, it's very nice to see a dev response! I had no idea the sizzler worked like that. While shocking all zooids in the radius would be the most intuitive solution for the player, and seems balanced enough with the sizzler's base radius, I can see how greasers would make that a large balance concern. You could tweak the numbers, (cooldown/energy use/duration) but balancing with greasers in mind might make the sizzler feel too weak without them; it's a hard call.

I think the most important part of changing the sizzler is making sure the player understands what just happened, because clearly I did not; the big circle of lightning says "everything in this area just got shocked." If it only affects a certain number of targets in range, or only those meeting certain criteria (for instance, hitting the X closest valid targets, or hitting one target and penetrating to neighbors), maybe it should send out individual arcs of electricity to those targets instead of blasting its entire radius?

Arcs would be so nice. We'll see what we can do - for now we'll experiment with whole-radius blasting and if that's too op, we should see how "chain lightning" nearest would work. Thank you for sharing feedback, it helps us to pinpoint largest issues!