Various mini-announcements.

Junctions have been tweaked so they aren't irritatingly vague. You can find the new Junctions in the SP rules, or here:

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Team: Mobility Junction: Equips to the allied target in a form that improves agility, such as shoes or a vehicle. The Mobility Junctioned SP grants as many passive Movements per turn to the wearer as the SP has actions, or as many passive Dodges per turn to the wearer as half of the number of the SP's actions (rounded down, minimum 1). If the SP has Flight: Planeswalking, Flight: Fly, Swim, and/or Tunnel as abilities, they are granted to the wearer while the SP is in Mobility Junction. A Mobility Junctioned SP does not count as a separate target from the wearer.
Team: Armor Junction: Equips to the allied target in a form that improves defense, such as armor, shield, or barrier. The Armor Junctioned SP provides an HP defense to the wearer as the chosen defense type with an HP value equal to the SP's HP. If the SP has Brace or Second Chance as abilities, they are usable by the SP while it is in Armor Junction. When the defense's HP is reduced to 0 and the SP has no other active Junctions, the SP is forcibly unjunctioned from the wearer with its original HP amount, stunned for one action, and becomes unable to use Armor Junction for the rest of the battle. An Armored Junctioned SP is a separate target from the wearer.
Team: Weapon Junction: Equips to the allied target in a form that improves offense, such as a blade or a gun. The Weapon Junctioned SP provides one instance of passive Strengthen to the wearer for every 3 actions of the SP's (rounded down, minimum 1) per turn equal to the SP's attack power. If the SP has Chip Preset as an ability, the wearer can use that Battlechip as a free action. If the SP has an Element Strike and/or an Effect Strike ability, the wearer can apply them to his or her buster/regular attack. A Weapon Junctioned SP does not count as a separate target from the wearer.

Also, some general rules about Junctions that you should be aware of:

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Policy Notes/Changes:
--A Junctioned SP is stripped of its abilities unless otherwise stated. Junctioned SPs do not have actions, and instead contribute their abilities to the wearer through the methods stated in the individual Junctions.
--Junctioning does not limit the SP's access to its sigs. The wearer has access to all of the Junctioned SP's sigs.
--The wearer can not have more than 1 of each type of Junction equipped at any one time. The same SP can have multiple Junctions active at once.
--SPs can Junction onto other SPs, but the SP wearer can not itself Junction.
--If an Armor Junctioned SP is overwritten by the same type of defense or if a Weapon Junction SP is overwritten by another weapon in the same hand, then the SP is forcibly Unjunctioned and is stunned for its next action.

If you currently have Junctions on your SP and the changes have messed with your build, you can refund all of your abilities for the appropriate number of Bugfrags and rebuy abilities. This should only affect 4 people at maximum, so don't get too excited.

As a final note, I'm pinning this topic. After 20 announcements in this thing, I think it deserves it.

Since we're not going to turn down a good offer, our dear PaladinGC is an R&D mod again. Now he can do the work he's already been doing anyway with slightly less inconvenience. Yay.

We are now affiliates with Megaman Star Force RPG.

Tournament Lounge FXP is finally available.

You should totally check it out.

Special thanks to CC and Bomber on this one.

~Staff

Hey, look, Cross Expansions don't exist anymore.

... Actually, I guess you can't look at that. Moral is that there's no longer a limit on how many Crosses you can have. If by some odd reason you have a Cross Expansion (Hi Shin), you lose the level it grants, but as usual, you do not lose the Process Upgrade that comes with it.

Doesn't affect anything mechanically, but Free Action sig effects are now renamed Standard Action sig effects. It better fits what they are, and actually lets free action be defined as what most think it would be.

Since MC had a be a jerk and get to level 40, I was forced to open up the Chaos Nets. Level 40 minimum, and please wear a helmet at all times.

A new set of signature effects have been added to the Core Sig Effect section of the Signature Attack Effect List. Beware, most of them are Advanced signature effects. They are extremely powerful if used properly, but learning how to use them will be just as difficult.

The new effects include:

Trigger
Delayed Damage Attribute (Revision 2)
Trap Activated Attribute
Counter Activated Attribute
Time Delayed Attribute
Multi-Stage Attribute

And that's that.

The SP rules have changed a bit in that the pricing and level scale for the Special Abilities are no longer strange and nonsensical. Short version is that they now have individual prices and levels listed like everything else, and the Swim and Tunnel abilities were removed for being largely redundant.

Of course, a change in price means that some people may have some discrepancy in how many Bugfrags you should have. In all cases you should actually be owed a few Bugfrags, so no reason to be shy about making the adjustment. To get your Bugfrags back, post in your SP's reg topic with how many Bugfrags you need back. Remember that the Special Abilities used to be 100 for the first ability, 200 for the second, 300 for the third, and so on. If you had Swim or Tunnel (which no one did, to the best of my knowledge), then request the full refund for the price you originally paid.

There are new object-only effects.

Read all about them here.

Several things.

First, MagicCereal has taken the time to redo the chip descriptions for Sword, Melee, Gun, and Ground chips. The terrain chip Cursed Ground also got a makeover. This revamp will eventually extend to the rest of the battlechip lists as well.

Goroke has also contributed by going in and standardizing the formatting of all the chip lists from top to bottom, complete with fixed tags and the addition of colors.

Next, we'd like to announce that the mechanics of some of the battlechips have changed.

Pulsar1-3: No longer has Object Triggered Splash x8. The series now has Object Triggered Blast2 for full damage.

FlameScales1-3: This series has been nerfed temporarily, although it remains an incredibly strong defense regardless.

SonicBoom: This chip now features a full strength ShotEraser ability.

Airsword: Now features Impact, and does not include NorthWind. No Microburst either.

ZapRing1-3: Damage has been buffed for the later versions.

DrillArm1-2: This chip series now only takes a single action to fully use. Yes, we know that's a huge buff. How the chips work is also fully explained now.

GolemHit1-3
Lil'Cloid
MedCloud
BigCloud
-- Now with WideAttack instead of more ambiguous targeting effects. :'D

WindRacket: Apparently this chip was updated ages ago, and no-one saw fit to mention it. Take a look at it, it's pretty sweet.

FireHit1-3: Now follows the same definition of double attack as the rest of the chips. Yes folks, that means you can throw the second punch anytime before the end of your turn instead of being forced to use that second attack immediately after the first.

MistConvergence1-3: You used to know them as MistConv. Them? Nope that wasn't a typo. There's 3 of them in the series now.

LavaCannon1-3 & Volcano: Have been reworded, and Volcano has been buffed slightly.

Quake1-3: Now with AoE panel smashing.

PanelShot1-3: They have new mechanics.

SandWorm1-3
ElementalRage1-3
-- Changed to LineAttack3.

Kuna1-3
PanelShot2
AirStorm1-3
AquaNeedle1-3
BlackWing
Snake
-- These multi-hit/target chips all have Variable Targeting. From now on, any multi-hit chip without this ability cannot split hits among targets at will.

RingLog 1-3: They are now called RollingLog.

IceWave1-3: This series now features Freeze.

And this is only the beginning.

Please see the Battlechip Lists for more details.

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Then we have MagicCereal's effort to completely revamp the old player-accessible Virus Database. It's now up to date, and includes every virus family currently known to RE:RN. Credit goes to Azureink, SJ, and several other members for their contributions of virus portraits to this effort. Yes, members, not staff. :'D

Please see the Virus Database for more details.

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And finally we have the addition of several new NCPs, as well as a couple of old ones being changed.

The affected programs are:

ShadowShoes
Block
Shield
First Armor
Fast Armor
First Barrier
Fast Barrier
Millions
Collector
Bugger

Please see the Navi Customizer Program Lists for details.

ALL of these are already available at Suitachi's Navi Shop.

If you ever had any questions about how Turn Splicing works, they should now be answered in the Battling Rules thread. I suggest everyone, newbies and veterans alike, go take a look at this.


Credit goes to Twi for this rewrite.

GMO System

The GMO Rules have been updated. You can read all about them here.

Basically, you now get a GMO every 5 levels. These are in addition to the mission ones, which you can still get.

So this is retroactive, obviously, meaning if you have levels >5 then you get GMOs appropriate to your level. And if you already had extra GMOs from missions, you keep those, too, on top of the new ones.

Nobody loses anything, this is all positives.

Have fun playing dress up.

~The Staff

SPs rejoice, because they now receive elemental bonuses whenever they use battlechips of the same element, just like Navis. (Note, SPs can only use battlechips that are either handed to them by another program, or used in conjunction with the Chip Preset ability) Check out the Element/Subtype Rules for more information.

You can now keep up to four shelved navi/op teams.

All of the battlechips in the Traps and Counter Chips section have been updated. Please click the link for further details.

Just a few changes to a couple of battle chips here and there:

QuickBoomerang series has been remade. It's now a less accurate but faster hitting group attack.

Boomerang series got a damage buff up.

Multibomb series (Double, Triple and Quadruple bomb) got a damage buff up.

That's all. Enjoy.

For those of you who value power (or just overall versatility) over accuracy, we're introducing a new nerf to the sig effects list:

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Off-Target: Add 40 to cap (Per round, per instance) [Reduces the accuracy of ALL attacks made by your Navi by 1 rank. Players may not use signatures with this nerf if it would result in an overall accuracy drop greater than 2 ranks.]

You may now all stumble around blindly shooting each other.

There's a new virus/chip contest up, for the first time in almost two years.

Details can be found here.

WE NERFED THE NERFS!

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Buster Lock: Gain 10 Points per equipped PowerUP and Buster Effect Upgrade to cap per instance. [Self inflicted Buster Crash. Cannot be cured or prevented by any action other then duration expiration. This effect does not wear of at the end of battle, and will carry over from battle to battle and thread to thread. It also stacks. If for any reason this effect is stacked upon with itself more than 7 turns of duration, your Buster System is permanently crashed, and must be repaired at Sci-Lab for a fee. This is cumulative. Duration: +2 turns.]

NC Lock: Gain Points equal to occupied NC space to cap per instance. [Self inflicted NC Crash. Cannot be cured or prevented by any action other then duration expiration. This effect does not wear of at the end of battle, and will carry over from battle to battle and thread to thread. It also stacks. If for any reason this effect is stacked upon itself with more than 7 turns of duration, your Navi Customizer is permanently crashed, and must be repaired at Sci-Lab for a fee. This is cumulative. Duration: +2 turns.]

Yes, Buster Lock and NC Lock have been changed so anyone who has either of those in their signatures should go edit their sigs accordingly. As usual, anyone that this change affects gets one free Process Edit.