if your adding the thallasaphobia clown job maybe replace the other 2 assistant talent trees with ones that fit the other types of clown like cultist and mime

I think leaving assistant as is would be the best course of action if the clown job is added in. Although, I think that if it had the 3 variations (Cultist, Mime, and Clown) it should probably be called something like Entertainer rather than Clown.

Ideas for Cultist Subsection:
-New knife that allows you to steal people's blood while they're down/dead and use the blood on yourself for somewhat long lasting undetectable buffs (incentivises killing other players or plundering corpses of pirates, but might break mods like Neurotrauma or Better Human Damage)
-Cultist robe recipe/talent that covers the face and acts as armor (good way to not be recognized), maybe has a slot for oxygen? (when running away outside the sub)
-Recipe for auto-syringe (basically you put it down and injects whoever passes by with whatever it has, including poison >:) )
-At highest level, you get a permanent buff that stacks up to X amount total for each player/NPC you murder that isn't an assistant

Ideas for Mime Subsection:
-New clothes
-At highest level, you can no longer speak, but you also are better/faster at skills

Ideas for Clown Subsection:
-Pretty similar to normal clown section but maybe with more of a focus on the honkmother or 'pranks' like the super clown horn or other stuff in the mod

Overall, maybe make the trees mutually exclusive?

As a secondary idea, I know that there are mods which merge all the trees into like 5-6 for each job, so maybe add on the Cultist and Mime subsection to the assistant as extra trees instead of a new job?

These are all just ideas, so pick and choose if you want to add any

I feel like the first tier of each tree should let you craft the basic stuff needed for the class like the clown crafting thing and the outfits

So a lot of what you both have mentioned I've already implemented or was going to, I would like to avoid any overrides of vanilla content as it makes updating easier and I'll get less compatibility issues going forward, so the assistant tree hasn't been touched.

Instead a new job called "Child of the Honkmother" has been created. This is of course subject to change based on what most people want to see but for theme setting a lot of it is based around the Honkmother as a religious icon for essentially the mentally insane.

The ideas I have thus far, and have early implementations of, are 3 skill trees:

* Disciple - Base Clown which expands on the assistant tree, but in functionality not in stats, i didnt want to make a tankier clown, that's already done well in vanilla.
* Ritualist - The Cultist tree - Focused around unlocked ritualistic artifacts and perhaps something with sacrificing both living and dead bodies to get a stacking buff, how to implement that remains to be seen.
* Trappist - Essentially the Mime, in exchange for not being able to talk they would get the classic mine toolkit like in thal but also expanded - ideally something like being able to trip enemies up or crowd control humans.

I haven't done any work on the last two really, but for the first one, Disciple, I have two routes id like to explore initially, it may not work but:

Note: these would be exclusive to eachother:

* Mad Clown: Expand on the psycho clown, make psychosis management a mechanic, it should ideally give diffrent buffs and debuffs depending on how much you have making management of this important. You might, let's say, get a buff when under the effects of meth but are the downsides worth it? It would ideally encourage situational thinking.

* Mad Prankster: For those that want a less crazy seizure inducing experience that is more around items.

The idea is the clothes will provide access to the unique effects of the tree combined with the talents, so switching clothes switches roles and kinda gives the crew a heads up of what they can expect.

With the above feel free to suggest feedback. This is essentially a re-write of the mod from its simple item based origins but i think it might add a fun and importantly useful dynamic.

Regarding the above feedback:

@Connar: Already made it so the first talent unlock gives you what you need, its basically called "Tools of the Trade" and gives you the unique buff, much like clown power for that role and unlocks the recipes for the tools you'll need :)

@Greenie: I like the idea of Ritualist being so mad they are both a help and a hindrance. I think it would add a unique dynamic that sets them apart. I'll look into implementing it as a unique talent line for Ritualist :)

That was a bit of a long one sorry!

For the Disciple tree, maybe you could make a new medicine item (for the Mad Clown section) that is basically better medicine that induces psychosis per dose. Example, Morphine < Fentanyl, but it would be Morphine < Mother's Healing (idk a name) < Fentanyl with the middle one being cheaper than fentanyl or just taking morphine but also gives some psychosis or a chance for random poisoning.

For Mad Prankster, maybe make the clown grenades (not sure what they are called off the top of my head) part of this section and add more stuff like that that is more disruptive to a wider audience rather than focused on one person (poison grenade?). I would also find it hilarious if you managed to add something like a normal looking oxygen tank that was instead like 1/4th the oxygen capacity or just always looks full but is actually empty.

There is also the option of adding the one Clown-cosis hammer as a Mad Clown only item, stuff like that. Spreads out the fun between the trees a bit.

As a very different idea, maybe adding in something like a spineling spike launcher to the ritualist could be funny. I am imagining a single spike just tearing through a hallway of people from a different part of the ship. Maybe the ammo would be made of Hydroxapitite (something like that) and steel bars, and single shot like a grenade launcher.

As a final idea, for ritualist, maybe some options to hurt yourself or get buffs depending on your health. Ex: you're bleeding or at 30% HP so you go faster/shoot faster, or some other threshold for something like not dying under pressure. Adds a bit of danger and risk management depending on HP, "Do I want to stay at low HP for the large speed buff for repairs or heal in case they actually get in? Or try to do both and possible fail and die?"

I've started incorporating both your feedback into the mod. I just finished and pushed the Disciple update with a bunch of changes, any feedback on this is welcome of course. A lot of it could be considered subject to change based on how it feels to play in an actual campaign, something I haven't had the time to do recently but plan to do soon.

Things to watch for: The final Mad Clown talent allows you to life steal from enemies but seems buggy, im sure there are ways to exploit this but I couldnt think of something that would really compel you to choose it otherwise. Decent into Madness gives healing, Crusader gives attack damage, so i'm unsure what the final tier could give to give it that "oomph". It also gives psychosis to nearby allies so there needs to be an upside to taking that talent.

The other side of that tree is more around conducting a Circus more than anything and general mischief items, they are quite powerful, including the "Ringmasters Staff" which needs some balancing, its based off a boarding axe but does slightly less damage and instead of bleeding it deals internal organ damage and blunt force trauma, might be a bit much.

Hence why feedback is appreciated ;)

P.S I plan to implement some of the above suggestions when i do the other two trees :)

will the clown job have the stuff from the clown talent tree for assistants or are they going to be completely separate now?

That's a good question Connor, what do you think would work well and be fun? :)

If you mean, will the clown job talent tree affect assistants in any way? At the moment it doesn't. But i could try and add something that works with them and the clown job talent tree.

I was toying with the idea that Assistants could be used as minions for some of the Clown-O-Trauma stuff, like for the talent "Greatest Show on Europa" if the character you order is an assistant give X additional buffs, might make mutiny more fun :P

If you have something in mind please let me know. :)

The Long Explaination (Too Long Don't Read)

While I initally intended for this mod just to be some clown stuff for the assistant, one of the issues i ran into was i couldn't make certain changes without overriding certain items like bikehorns and clown costumes, while i could do it i feel any other mods that people would want to use would end up a choice between my one and another one, and that just didnt seem right.

So essentially instead of changing core game aspects i decided it might be better to make everything as separate to the base game as possible, within reason. This means when it comes to updating the mod I dont have a lot of work to do, in fact the update today required no work because of this, but had i done overrides and the game updated that part of the code then it would cause nasty errors on load, meaning people cant play the mod until i copy and paste whatever changes to bikehorn.xml into my own version of it.

Additionally the assistant clown talents are for a different kind of person, some people like the play style of "Take 50 percent less damage because HONK!" and that's fine and fun as hell. But I have also seen people complain the assistant clown is a magic role, so im trying to appeal to two different kinds of people by having the roles separate. Is it the right decision? I have no idea but i know it offers the player the most flexibility and i think that's the important part here - fun.

Basically I am not keen to change anything about assistant that makes assistant what it is, but thats subject to change of course :)

Thats the long reason why everything is it's own role. I also had so many ideas i couldn't fit them all into a single talent tree! Now coding them is the hard part so im sure some will be not possible to do :P

Again, this is just my take on the above but that doesn't mean it's the only one, if you have ideas on how i can make the mod more fun please suggest stuff, I don't like developing in an echo chamber. :)

Is there no ways to add more trees or stack all your ideas in a tree

I mean i could, but the UI becomes a little crowded. :)

Do you want to see them all under a single tree in assistant or the clown job?

I feel like the clown talent tree should be mixed with one of the clown jobs trees since funni clown perks

listen, i usually want to spread the honkmothers influence by making my crew wear clown outfits. but most of the time, they usually dont want to wear them. So to combat this i forcefully make them wear the outfit with a stun baton, which doesnt end well for me.

it would be nice if i could "willingly" make them wear the outfit from a distance, like a t-shirt cannon?

I can certainly look into adding that :)

Tried this out on an actual campaign. And i quickly learned that the bat doesnt actually ruin your outpost reputation. This allowed me to completely strip a security guard for an smg and 2 mags, while also making him naked. I dont think this is intended

Sounds fun >:)