Force abilities

"Mark your friends before the shooting starts. Afterwards is far too late." — Instructor Meren Task
Verified

3 abilities are typed as commands rather than bought as powers. You will not find them on the Force powers screen.

/forcemark and /forceblink need you alive and in play. /intercept needs you logged in instead. Marking works without a login, though the powers that read marks have their own gates.

What it does

/forcemark tells your Force powers who your friends are, so a wide power spares them. /forceblink is a short teleport that Speed 5 unlocks. /intercept listens in on comlink traffic and belongs to the Tech skill rather than to the Force at all.

Marking friend and foe

Put a live player or NPC under your crosshair and run the command. Each press moves that target one step around a cycle of ally, then enemy, then cleared.

Running it on Tomas again turns the mark hostile.

A third press clears it and frees the slot.

Marks steer Force Energy's rank 4 and 5 arcs. Hold any enemy mark and the arc hits only marked enemies. Hold only ally marks and it hits everyone except your allies. Hold nothing and it hits everyone. Other wide powers read marks their own way. The Push and Pull rank 5 repulse only moves players you have marked as enemies, and a wide grip seizes marked targets first.

Support powers read marks the other way round. Hold any ally mark and a wide heal reaches only your allies. Hold only enemy marks and it reaches everyone except your enemies.

Marks are yours alone. They steer your own powers and nobody else's. Bind the command to a key, because aiming, pressing and reading the confirmation are fast enough to do mid-scene.

Blinking

Speed 5 lets you cross 400 units instantly in the direction you are facing, for a flat 50 Force. You arrive turned around, facing the way you came.

That is the answer below Speed 5. At Speed 5 a successful blink prints nothing at all, because you can see it happen.

The blink passes straight through other players, so you can land behind someone rather than bouncing off them. It never passes through walls or terrain. If a live player is standing exactly where you would land, the game refuses rather than killing them.

The blink ignores pitch, so looking down at your feet still sends you level and forward.

Intercepting comms

Tech 3 unlocks a comm scanner. While it is on, any comlink message whose sender or receiver is within range reaches you as well, tagged [Intercepted].

Run it with no argument and it reports the current state instead. Below Tech 3 every form of the command refuses.

Settings

Server-side. Minutes a mark lasts before it lapses. 0 means the rest of the map, and the value is capped at 60. Default 1. Server-side. How close a comlink sender or receiver must be for you to intercept them, in units. 0 turns interception off. Default 2000.

Things to note

  • /forcemark needs no Force power at all. Anyone alive and in play can designate targets. The powers that read marks still have their own rank requirements.
  • You can hold 4 marks at once. The game refuses a fifth with You already hold 4 marks. Clear one first., so clear something before a fight rather than during one.
  • The crosshair needs a living target. Aiming at a wall, a corpse or a prop answers No target under the crosshair. instead.
  • Marking is rate limited to twice a second. The game silently drops held keys and rapid presses instead of queuing them.
  • Marks expire on a timer. At the default of one minute, a mark set at the top of a scene lapses long before the scene ends.
  • Blinking is Speed 5 only, and Speed 5 costs 140 XP in total. The blink itself then costs 50 Force each time, and refuses with Not enough Force to blink. below that.
  • Blinking flush against a wall does nothing and says nothing. A silent failure looks the same as a broken bind.
  • /intercept resets when you log out or disconnect. It is a session switch, not a character setting.

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