Reading (and misunderstanding) the proposition of the creator gave me a different idea for a very versatile skill that could in particular increase the value of any existing movement skills:
The
trailer/tracer: Once assigned, for a fixed amount of time (e.g. 2 seconds) it would, each frame, place a small block of terrain (say 4x4 pixels) at its current position (above its feet). In other words, it would trace out the trajectory of the lemming with a terrain trail for 2 seconds.
Examples:
- with a walking lemming, it would simply elevate the floor by 4 pixels
- with a jumper, it would create a bridge between the jump starting point and its destination
- with a hang glider, it would make a slope that lemmings can walk up or down
- with a faller or floater, it would create a wall that can be climbed
- with a shimmier, it would create a platform below the ceiling (not sure how useful that is...)
- walking over a shallow digger hole that's currently being dug, it could plug up the digger's hole.
- with a swimmer it could close up a water gap
I guess it would make the stoner somewhat redundant, though it would bring a lot of new things to the table to be a valuable addition regardless. (Also see discussion below.)
Furthermore a weaker skill is not entirely useless, sometimes the levels designer might want to give the player a weaker skill to prevent alternative solutions.
The slider overrides normal rules at some future time: The next/every time the lem would fall, the lem slides instead. This breaks mental pathfinding. The skill must bring a ton of design goodness to overcome this massive burden.
I consider this a boon rather than a burden for the slider. Having the slider turn always around was core to many puzzles in QFK, and I found it to be quite refreshing.
That said, it is true that the glider can provide this feature with appropriate terrain design (i.e. a wall that the glider bumps into and turns around), and in that sense makes the slider a weaker addition to NL than it is in L2. It still has the link-up with the shimmier going for it which you can't replicate with any other skill, but maybe that's not enough.
I'm happy to see that Kieran has chimed into the discussion, if anyone he should be the authority on the usefulness of L2 skills.
It seems like we agree on the rather limited use of the laser blaster and projectile terrain creation skills, though I also personally find the use of projectile terrain destruction skills rather limited as well from my experience.
Simon's proposition of the angled laser blaster seems definitely better than either of those. Fast upward gain seems to be something new, and at the same time with a sufficient blasting range it could emulate the ability to make dents in remote walls or ceilings of projectile destructive skills without having the liability of their rather awkward projectile arc.
I guess like projectiles it could be nerfed by making the laser beam lethal; at the same time it poses the risk of making certain things possible but fiddly, e.g. timing the blast into terrain populated by lemmings in such a way that no-one gets hurt, something that a level designer cannot rely on for backroute prevention, but at the same time won't want the player to require doing.
With regards to this making the fencer redundant: As before, I don't think that should be an argument against a skill if it brings enough new things to the table. It might just mean that the fencer shouldn't have been in the game in the first place; in many instances a basher does the job just as well too.
Permanents introduce state that is hard to see, and come with lots of special interaction rules. Have too many permanents, they'll get in each other's scope, and thus the need for rules grows quadratically.
And permanents have a higher chance to turn out the weakest in hindsight. The floater is the weakest skill in Lemmings 1. Runner and floater are the two weakest skills in Lix. The disarmer is the weakest skill in NL.
Just because some engines made bad choices in which permanent skills they chose doesn't mean that permanents generally make bad choices. The climber is one of the best skills. I rather think that their limitation is that they basically have to be movement skills, so you cannot have too many very unique ones of those. So if you do have many of them it's very likely that some of them suck or are redundant. But that just means that they need to be chosen wisely. One unique thing they bring to the table is that they allow you do to multiple things with a single assignment, which I think is always a good feature to have in a level. The floater is weak because you need to put a lot of effort to make use of it more than once. The runner is weak because it doesn't do anything (in L2 it would hop over small gaps, setting it apart from the rest of the crowd at least). The disarmer and swimmer are weak because their use cases are so very specific. I'm pretty sure if there'd been a lengthy discussion like now, the runner wouldn't be in Lix and the swimmer wouldn't be in NL.
The climber, glider, slider and L2 runner all bring good features to the table with a lemming having that skill easily employing its feature multiple times in a level. On their own they are great, but with the jumper in the game the L2 runner becomes less unique, and similarly with the glider in the game the slider becomes less unique. It always depends on the context. Now if a new skill is more versatile but makes another one redundant, that's more a point saying the old one shouldn't have been there in the first place rather than a point against the new skill. But with things being the way they are and skill cullings being quite unlikely, in practice it might make the new skill a less attractive addition even if it is a good one.