Due to popular demand, this thread will now be opened to host both my ideas and the ideas of others about completely reshaping the nature of Scout. The other thread can be used for minor script tweak suggestions. The Concept I think Scout should be brought more in line with his squad powers and class skills to create a Scout that is a fast moving, intelligence providing, infantry support class who, while not being an efficient vehicle killer or building destroyer, can still be a threat to the enemy by making his squad more efficient at doing their jobs, and making sure the enemy can't do theirs effectively. Squad gameplay is making a comeback alongside Empires, and with 20v20 games no longer a rare sight, people are beginning to actually use their squads efficiently and work as a team to take objectives,. I think this is where Scout should carve out his niche and make himself useful, without completely ruining other classes to make Scout relevant by default. The goal of this overhaul is to make squads, which are generally 5 Engineers -> Eng-Eng-Eng-Gren-Rif after the raxes are built, into Eng-Eng-Sco-Rif-Gren. To do this we need to make Scout useful and good enough that squads which run one will not be less efficient than those who choose another class, while also not making Scout so good that one per squad is a necessity, because this is Empires and is a great game because of how flexible it is. Scout and the Initial Game (before the first barracks) Currently, the only time Scout is used in the early game is either for Vehicle Speed on a map where a vehicle rush is essential (mvalley is the most obvious) or for having squad lead to increase the speed of his squadmates ever so slightly on a map where getting to a chokepoint slightly earlier can make or break the entire game (looking at you, FN). The first should be encouraged - taking advantage of a rarely used class skill to get to a very contested area slightly faster. Encourages great Empires gameplay, everyone loves that. The second one however is harder - a Scout leading a squad in a pub game either gets shouted at or has Engineer whiners on the mic, even if you have 0 points. To use effectively it requires a squad to not just let the Scout lead but swap back when necessary, requiring good communication which will very rarely happen in pubs. However, that's not to say it should be scrapped entirely - in Empires, effective diligent teamwork should always be rewarded. Therefore, what I suggest is to make the Scout squad speed bonus apply both when Scout is not the leader (a 3% speed bonus) and when he is (a 5% bonus). These values allow for the Scout to be relevant to the squad, but a squad without a Scout leader initially, which will be very common not only in pubs but vet games too, would not be crippled by not swapping squad leaders. While a seemingly minor change, it will allow for the Scout to arrive even earlier than the rest of his squad (crucially, earlier than his Engineers placing a rax on his side of the chokepoint, which will become more relevant in the following paragraph). The low numbers also mean that while this number is relevant, it won't be gamebreaking if a Scout is not in the squad - maintaining flexibility and ensuring a Scout is not necessary for a squad. Scout and the Early and Mid Game (after one barracks but before Heavy Tanks) This section will likely be the most controversial. To be an effective change to Scout, and adapt his transition into a recon class, we will have to hurt the other two recon abilities in the game - Engineer cameras and radars, and the target system. It will also require a crippling of Scout's most beloved weapon in order to make him actually get into the action. Here we're going to do two hypotheticals. Looong post incoming. Read it all. A) In this stage of the game, the two raxes have been dropped on either side of our hypothetical chokepoint. For the sake of imagination we're going to say it's NorthEast on emp_canyon. Both barracks are fairly safe, some trenches are being dropped with everyone spraying at one another, the sound of ammo boxes is deafening, and an engineer is slowly building a level three, crying tears of pain onto his keyboard as a gren furiously fires mortar after mortar onto it. What use does Scout have in this situation? Currently fuck all. He can't trench fight as well as a riflemen or gren, he can't revive, drop ammo, or anything useful. I would like this to change - I propose that we remove the camera/radar function from the Engineer's calculator and give Camera/Radar as an extra weapon to Scout. This way Scout will actually be able to Scout things and be useful in a situation of close quarters combat between squads. While it hinders the Engineer in these situations, it will also allow them to invest more time in their other responsibilities - healing, giving ammo, fighting, reviving, placing walls and turrets. There is plenty for Engineers to do already in chokepoints and they won't be sitting around bored, wishing they had a camera or something to place. Added bonus of making Scout actually Scout things, but this is not as relevant as the massive usefulness bonus he receives. B) Our second scenario is a more open map. We're going to say it's emp_duststorm. Two squads are running towards NorthWest, desperate to reach a point where each commander can drop a barracks behind a rock to give some shelter from the mortars. Open maps are interesting because very often, the squads can actually see each other prior to reaching the point of interest, usually with a refinery and some cover. Now, our little Scout has already given his squad a little boost with his speed upgrade. Normally, this is where he would undo his belt and whip out his fat, 30 inch rifle and start saying hello to the enemy squad. He'll hit a few, maybe he'll get a kill, most likely he'll hardly do much at all, except make the enemy squad do a weird dance between jumping, running, and crouching. What I propose instead is making the binoculars place squad targets AND spot, rather than just spotting. Not just this, but an unlimited number. The Scout could place targets on enemy enemy in his sight and his squad could have little diamonds to shoot at for every one of them. Think back to the old days of unlimited squad targets. This should go hand in hand with the removal of any other targets - commander and squad leader alike. They promote gameplay where people begin to rely on them rather than actually hunting for the enemy. There was a reason unlimited commander squad targets was removed and the same reason should be applied to single targets - it's annoying and deceptive. Commander targets should be removed again entirely. Not only do commanders have to constantly update them, but often there are 4 or 5 targets and giving just one to all players in the area means that sometimes they focus on that target to the exclusion of all others. As commander, giving targets now means you have to quickly assess each corner of the map you have troops in, assess which target is the most likely danger, and then give that target. In 3 or 4 areas on the map. Every 10 seconds. It makes the commander useless when he should be focusing on other things - building a base, dropping forward buildings like Armories and Repair Pads, and constructing second and third lines of defence for his team. This is especially important as the time when commander targets are most important, in the early stages of the game, he will be focused on building a radar, vehicle factory, and beginning to research for his team. Giving this responsibility to Scout will mean both will improve and Empires drifts into a more "pay attention to the task at hand" style of game. It also inadvertently buffs the Sniper Rifle, as a player with one will no longer instantly be targeted by the enemy commander and picked off. People will have to communicate with each other where the shots are coming from. Sniper Rifle should be moved to Riflemen, or at least removed from Scout. I'll try not to make you read so much this time because there are a hundred reasons this weapon is controversial and if you're a member of these forums you've probably read them all 5 times each. One that I would like to point out though, is that not having Hide on the same class as the Sniper will be a huge, huge benefit to the game. Suddenly the Sniper will become an actual gun. "But Devourawr!" you shout in exasperation. These are all things that help the Scout's squad and team! Where are the negative effects to the enemy you promised? Scout already has plenty in his skillset, but one more should be added - either giving Scout the old Rifleman Concussion Grenades as a grenade choice, or combining Sticky Stuns and Concussion Grenades into the same grenade and heavily tweaking the numbers. Here is an example of a combination, although of course other options can and should be explored. The important point is that something should change. Giving Scout Smoke Grenades would be a very good idea too (they might already have them, I'm not sure in the new patch) but it would synergise very well with the camera he can now drop. Scout and the Late Game (Heavy Tanks onwards) Honestly, no buff should be added to Scout which makes him relevant in heavy tank fights. This is the stage where Riflemen become almost irrelevant and I think the majority of Empires is happy to have Scout fade into obscurity too. His benefits of driving a tank are good, such as vehicle speed/stealth and being able to jump out, sab a building, then jump in the tank and finish it off while it's weak. TLDR -Give squads with Scout a small speed bonus simply for having a Scout guide their path (3%) and an increased bonus for having a Scout as squad lead (5%) -Give Scout the Engineers Camera/Radar -Allow the Binoculars to replace an unlimited amount of squad targets (review what commander and squad leader targets do for Empires and potentially remove them) -Remove the Sniper Rifle from Scout and potentially give it to the Rifleman -Ensure Scout has access to Smoke and Concussion Grenades, while possibly considering a merger with Concussion and Sticky Stun to allow for more flexibility, but obviously that might be too hard to implement. At least give him the other grenades. Scout needs to be changed. Very few people disagree with this. The question is how. These changes, while not being a 100% overhaul, significantly give Scout a different role to the one he has now, which seems to be a very, very niche one and so he is hardly seen. Help bring him into the mainstream and give Scout the love and care he deserves. Further changes would be likely, but this is the best start we can give him. Vote for Scout change and vote to make Scout great again. I would provide more with this post, such as pretty pictures and a better layout, but it's airport wifi and I can fix this later. It's the content that matter anyway.
I kinda want to see that applied to other classes too, it's a rather cool idea. Along with possibly stacking said bonuses, but I can see the reason not to. It must have been ages since you last played with smokes, they are absolutely useless in the current form and are only good at greifing your team. I do know Z!000000M made new smoke particles but I only saw it for an apc grenade launcher, it was actually pretty cool, but if it could be applied to infantry smokes and that terrible blinding feature was removed sure add smokes back in. Indifferent about concs, it was really only super annoying on district, every other map it wasn't an issue, so sure give it back to him. Do people really complain about scout lead? I don't think I've had this happen, but then again if the squad was doing this scout rush the squad lead would be the scout anyway, so it wasn't an issue. Binocs giving targets is cool though, I would just say targets only last for 10-20 seconds or something. I think currently they last forever until the target dies. But please, don't remove from commander. The commander needs the ability to tell team to attack a certain target because people are dumb and need that. It being on the binoculars also means it has to be in line of sight, so telling team to get that one gren or engy in your base would be hell. I almost want to say the same thing with squad lead targets, he needs the ability to communicate with his squad without having to rely on a mic. I'm certain just giving targets on binocs wouldn't hurt anything and help scout be more of a scout like you say. I guess I'm for the cameras only cause it means less cameras in general. Still want to see radar turn into a camera jammer though, but that's probably complicated to add. Oh no, another poll where we can't see who voted for what. When will this tragedy come to an end?
I think we need a spartacus style poll guide exclusively for suggestions, recommending that people include only two options 'in favor' & 'not in favor' as a matter of gathering public opinion - and anybody who agrees but with some tweaks should just comment and say in favor. Agree completely with lazy regarding binocular targets and how you should not take targets away from the commander. I'm not sure how I feel about taking camera from engineer... maybe both classes could do cameras? I'd say make both be able to do cameras but only scout have radars except for the fact that the radar is a completely useless building. I'm actually amazed that nowhere in this post did you touch upon scout hide, other than to say it shouldn't be on the same class that has the sniper rifle.
@Lazybum I'm not sure the commander shoul be micromanaging the infantry fights to that extent though. He already has the added bonus of a birds eye view, why should he be given more? Honestly empires would be good with a combined arms bonus. Each class in the squad adds an incremental amount of their skill, like Riflemen add +5% dmg each, engineers +.5hp/s, scout speed etc, so an all rifleman squad would get a free +25% damage but with the drawback of having nothing but riflemen, but the problem with this sort of combined arms bonus is it would ruin district and infantry maps. A squad of 5 riflemen for massive dps and then a squad of 5 engineers who are super hard to kill? Etc. Small steps at a time, I don't want to drastically change empires, just tiny bits and pieces to make scout a decent class @Señor_Awesome What's the problem with scout hide? It's a good skill. If I was to change it I would massively reduce the fade time and halve the invisibility, so it becomes more of a camo skill than a total invisibility skill But like I said above, this isn't really relevant, I'd rather focus on the above suggestions so scout can actually be fixed before moving any further
Remember not every commander has a mic, so they can't yell orders of "THAT GUY IS IN THE RAX" kinda of deal. If I was commander and I had to lose a base because I didn't have the tools to tell my team what to do I would be very unhappy. A couple of things to note too is that your scout with binoculars only goes as far as the squad, this doesn't help the rest of the team at all. What's suppose to happen if you went back to base to grab a apc but commander says there's enemies in base? You could grab enhanced senses sure but it doesn't take much time to lose a building, the range of senses isn't that far, and if there's other friendlies in the area enhanced senses doesn't tell them anything. When it comes to fights in the front lines the commander doesn't have to micro at all there though, between squad lead giving a general attack order on the important thing and the scout giving targets on everything else there's no reason for a commander to waste time there.
You could make the scouts binoculars give targets to the whole team, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But that's another positive you're talking about, between squad lead and scout the commander wouldn't have to fuck around with targets unless it was necessary
Scout doesn't need overhaul, just needs a couple of tweaks that you already mentioned. -Remove the Sniper Rifle from Scout and potentially give it to the Rifleman -Ensure Scout has access to Smoke and Concussion Grenades, while possibly considering a merger with Concussion and Sticky Stun to allow for more flexibility, but obviously that might be too hard to implement. At least give him the other grenades. Anything more/less and it just makes the game more confusing. Binoculars are fine, they let you see really far. After the scout rifle is taken away they will get more use.
I can't think of many times where I thought, "gee whiz I sure could use something to see whatever is out there". Distances are just so short most of the time you can usually see without binocs and there's hardly anything you can do against things out of draw distance anyway. I guess sneaking around to find the cv is really about the only use, I don't think it's good to call something that happens like 5% of the time a useful item though, assuming people actually remember to use binocs in that situation where map is open enough it has a point. I wouldn't put smokes back in until particles actually do their job and it doesn't do that weird gray out just from touching the edge of the smoke.
Give ability to choose between normal hide and hide with which you can also run, but will be only active for a short time and needs to recharge. Iam sure this was suggested before. I would much more enjoy hiding from cover to cover than just going prone next to a wall slowly going to the other end of the map. Like every class has the ability to be agile and fast, while using his powers, why should scout be super slow with its "main power" hide? Imagine disappearing behind a corner of a building, while being chased by someone only to surprise kill him.. Considering what other classes are able to do, I dont think it would be too OP...balance could be adjusted too. Annoying? Thats what scout mostly already is. Would probably make it even easier to spot him, as he would need to recharge it, compared to current prone hide, which I think is much better than only noticing him after he sabs something or so. (/better chance to spot him, more fair, also less time wasting for the scout, which is pretty much one and only reason why is he almost useless....he is slow and ineffective currently, which makes him rather too situational or "the right moment" type) Seems much more fun, atleast in my head And I think it fits the "almost arcady" feel of the game. Scout has currently no real combat ability at all. (just cant be as effective as any other class at it, at all) This would add combat part, while keeping the sabotage part of it. Cool mechanic. I would definitely try mastering that. .. Didnt read most of the topic yet...just throwing it out there
