Anyone else dislike the new sabotage?

Agressive and rushing grenadier since 1.6

Because devs dont want restrict classes and people have a free will you have
to make every class so its usefull if half the team plays as it.

 

right, i like the way this is going, people are thinking about the role of the scout.

okay, so something I realised a while back, and i think i posted a bit earlier in this thread, was that there are two options for the scout:

firstly, something that I think he should retain no matter which direction we go in. The has skills and abilities that can give him the upper hand in anti infantry combat, if used cleverly, despite not having the brute strength of the rifleman. This is a feature which makes the scout interesting to play and to fight.

now looking at focusing the role of the scout:

Option 1.) Rambo, create disturbances behind enemy lines, disrupt and evade. This man is an anti structure weapon primarily, and by focusing on this role we create the "minigame" where the scout sabotages the base and must be tracked down and destroyed before he can destroy the base.

Option 2.) Offensive squad assistant (/squad leader). Just as the engineer is good at helping his team in defence, healing and building, the scout will be good in offense. Large offensive sabotage damage that doesn't do damage over time (so is fairly useless when used without a squad), the ability to rush up to turrets and disable/destroy them very quickly, the ability to point out enemy units in the same way that commanders do with wall hacks currently- these are the abilities this sort of scout holds. This sort of scout might be allowed several of each type of the grenade options he currently has, might be given more squad like roles like the ability to give ammo or health, etc. I put squad leader in brackets because I think it's more fun if any class can be squad leader.

Alternatively we use skills so that a player can choose to be one of the above but not both, if both seem like a good idea. The "hide and seek" minigame of the rambo scout (Which is definately what we have at the moment) is fun for the scout, but very frustrating/boring for players that want to fight a visible battle and win or lose the war in a full assault sort of gameplay. Sprinting around the map in a jeep sabbing refs is also a major pain. In summary, i vote we go with option 2, the teamwork option, because that is why we play empires.

which do we want? once we decide on what the scout is for THEN we can start looking at how to make him that sort of thing. currently the scout is a mishmash of abilities and nobody really knows what it's for. if anyone has any other ideas for a role for the scout please speak up.

 

Why not make it so that the scout can choose between kits that define
his role (maybee primary weapon, selected defines the kit) like,
squadleader, sabbotage or whatever. It would make it possible to test all directions at once.

 

obviously its number 2, since number 1 is what we have right now

 

The scout has no role; his play differs game to game. We already have anti-building, anti-tank, anti-inf, and anti-turret roles in the game. Leaving him AS IS is quite redundant.
However, the scout IS anti-building, turret, inf, and vehicle in one class. His methods are...tweaked, however. In everything he does it requires support.

Point is, his roles either need to be buffed, or tweaked to be different, yet still the same.

 

I agree with what you are saying about all of the roles being filled, and the scout being a jack of all trades. This is why I believe we should be somewhat changing all of the classes

for example,

currently, in order of effectiveness:

anti-building
grenade spam [engineer]
large tanks
grenadier
light tanks
others

what I might do, 'if I owned empires' style, is I'd remove grenade spam from the engineer. that would no longer be an effective way of taking down buildings. to fill the "power vacuum" at the top of that list, so that infantry still have an effective way of taking down buildings, I'd buff the grenadier's mortar VS structures, so that it was as good as grenade spam, and also

I really don't get it though. the best builder/healer etc and, when fighting on good terms, such as having the element of surprise, a very capable anti infantry class, the engineer, is also the best anti building unit? should be the scout/gren in my opinion.

 

What we need is to make it so these classes are CLEARLY DEFINED. The Engineer is the most overpowered class, gren being second, scout being 3'rd, and rofl being last.

Engi can:
kill turrets
build turrets
build
heal
revive
shoot
deconstruct
lay ammo
build cameras

gren can:
kill turrets
kill buildings
kill tanks
kill infantry

scout can:
kill turrets
kill buildings
hurt tanks
kill infantry

rofl can:
kill turrets
kill inf
kill tanks

At the moment, each class does NOT support its name. *Grenadier* is only effective in the beginning, then it's an inf killer. Rofl is the best tank killer/inf killer. Scout just kills everything silently. Engineer kills buildings, inf, and heals buildings, inf, and tanks.

 

Except for the scout, classes ARE clearly defined.
Riflemen excel above all others as anti infantry, but still have anti tank and anti building capabilities.
Grenadiers excel above all others as antitank, but still have some antiinfantry and anti building capabilities.
Engineers excel as a support class and as a antibuilding class, but still have some antiinfantry and some antitank capabilities
Oh and

what?
sure, whatever.

 

These classes all have clearly defined primary roles, but should not be completely useless against any match-up.

The engineers primary role is support, which can be subdivided into healing and building. Revive is an extension of healing and the ability to build turrets and cameras is an extension of building. Engineer seismic spam is a problem to which many people have suggested solutions and should probably be discussed further in the relevant threads.

The grenadier's main role is anti-tank with the possibility of anti-infantry/emplacement depending on what happens with the mortar. There is a known issue with grenadier balance with tanks but no clear idea on how to solve it.

The scout has no main role and therefore nothing to compare its effectiveness too. Also I disagree with your assessment that it can hurt tanks, it can stun tanks but otherwise is useless against them.

The rifleman's main role is killing infantry, a role which it fulfils very well although some would argue too well. The weapons choices that the rifleman has allow the specialisation for a particular situation while still remaining within its role.

The grenadier not scaling with the tanks is a known problem and as soon as someone has come up with a good suggestion for it, it will probably be fixed. Scout has some problems in that its current form it is impinging upon the rifleman's role. The engineer is a healer, he is supposed to be able to heal everything.

 

People really need to stop simplifying the classes so much... what about range, ammo limitations, the ability to make or break through defenses, accuracy while in different positions or moving, things that they cant deal with and all around unique abilitys. Right now a rifleman is better then a gren at close range vs tanks by a ton. Grens are better vs turrets at long ranges then engis, and scouts have the ability to really piss off the enemy team if they get close to their buildings(Dot probably should be removed).

With some small modifications to all the classes, there's tons of design space to be had. Make seismics throw as far as stickys, reduce rifleman grenade damge vs buildings, and you now need a tank/gren/scout to kill an mg in the open. Make rifleman accuracy shit while moving, give them an armour buff to compensate, give the scout a shotty and no accuracy penalty while moving and you've got a new linebreaker. Hell, If you buffed the throw range of stickys and seismics, you could make the case that there's no need for grens either. Not that it would be all that convincing, but you could still make it.

The classes aren't just anti this/anti that... They're anti this, within these parameters, with pro this while with these, but suck against that so require this kind of support.

 

Make a table, go on. With a table showing effectiveness here and effectiveness there. Show range, ammo limitations, etc and then give them Percentage ratings to show how much they come into play. Then post it in a new thread, ask people to vote on the %'s individually, take an average and submit it. Then you can start using it as an official chart for people to refer to when suggesting certain things get buffed or nerfed. Even better, the devs can refer to it when thinking of new things that need to be done.

This could really make a difference, so why not try it. If you don't do it, who will?

 

Agreed.

However, there are certain generalisations that we can make in the game.

for instance, currently, the grenadier. He is average (on par with) engineer in terms of anti infantry, i.e, a significant threat in the right circumstances. He is not a significant threat to tanks. His anti building ability is average. we can agree on all of this.

I'm not going to suggest changes in this thread, god knows how many times i've explained my ideas, but simply put: we could change him. We could decide that if a team uses teamwork, they should be allowed a significant anti tank threat, so that a squad that works togethat can guarantee that they will be protected by their grenadier instead of killed by the first tank they meet. One might say that a rifleman could do the anti infantry job, and you could shift the grenadier to a weaker anti infantry role and a greater anti tank/anti building role. or you might want him to be better anti infantry and anti tank, but worse anti building, and give anti building duties to the scout.

 

Sabatoge is inherently annoying because it makes 1 person jeep around pushing E on stuff so someone on the opposite team has to jeep around calculatoring stuff. Adding "x is under attack" warnings would make defending against it require less babysitting, which is a good thing.

Sniping is lame and intelligence gathering can be done by anyone. I guess the scout leans toward the role of special forces, sneaking around causing mischief and softening stuff up for a real attack. What can the scout get thats mischiefy, good with teamwork, and not annoying for either team to deal with but still relatively good?

 

i played a 4 v 3 map, i was com for the 3. 1 of my players was running around at random refs being usesless, and my and the other player were running around trying to save refs and our main because they had 2 scouts sabing everything. it makes it much to easy for 1 player to have a giant effect on the game, i say remove the initial 50 percent dmaage part

 

Which removes any hope of teamwork...

 

Then remove the damage over time, which would require scouts work with at least 1 other person on their team to kill buildings. The damage over time only encourages people to lone wolf it.

 

This is what it was. The scout was never used. They basically made this powerful enough to make people want to play scout. They skewed its power level so much that it made It seem like a playable class.

I'm all for remove the damage, or at least tucking it away on a skill. The scout has problems that need to be fixed, not hidden beneath an unbalanced mechanic.

 

Scout was great in 2.12...you could top the scoreboards with way better k/d than the rifles
But that was because of smg2 + enemies at half health = dead

 

Ah the smg2.

 

So point is, Sabotage is borkenly powerful. Again, please note the point I made about sabbing forward enemy barrackses under attack. You can outsab three Engineers who are frantically repairing the thing.