Well, i probably will never post on here again, just because reading alone suits me just fine, but here goes. Allow engineers to upgrade to special types of turrets. [When comm gets level 3's researched, the engi's are obsolete] Maybe a plasma turret that overheats vehicles? Upgrade for more range? Grenade turret? Who knows? Allow the jeep more armor or, a small mg. At the moment, jeeps are great for killing tanks, but usually they are just a means to waste res. Maybe a more humvee like jeep? [Not quite the apc though, cheaper, no spawn point, no grenades, faster, only 4 people, etc.] The scout needs something. ANYTHING. As of now, the scout is just an engineer that can't build, regardless who admits it. Tactically, he may be a killing machine at times, but we all know theres more to winning than a few kills. Not to mention the overused gag of sabbin' buildings. Scout's probably should be able to drop cameras an radars rather than engineers, recon is more their bit Engineer should lose the ability to build cameras an radars, they already are the easiest class to score points with, let them build something else? Make buildable parts of the map dissappear between 256-512 units away, and only see-able by engineers. The big white towers in emp_slaughtered are lovely to say the least, but they obstruct vision when not built, and this would allow more complex use of these. If you didn't see all of them in your FOV, you could use more of them without cluttering. (Don't quote me on this but maybe less to render at a given time, not sure how vis handles these?) I even recognize the things this idea lacks. but oh well. Mix it up a bit maybe, give comm the ability to train certain npcs like in traditional fps? Nothing gargantuan, but maybe a little comm squad, just to make things different. [use the regular player models, and similarly upgrade them, just little guys to order around?] trhats all i got for now... suddenly too tired, and too lazy to remember anything else pointless i may have to contribute.
- Plasma turrets are a neat idea not just nonsens - The new jeeps got manable mgs - There are various threads arround trying to give the scout a important role. - Cameras & Radars are a big part of the game as it is. So i think theres no chance to remove them - I support the idea that only engineers can see buildable structures - the devs dont want bots
This idea isn't that bad, I suppose, although engie turrets still have their uses (an engie can place one in a hurry at a key location... the comm's broad view often keeps them from realizing that a turret is needed there right now until it's too late, and they might be looking elsewhere). The rest, though... Well, actually, this one isn't that bad, either, but I think it's a regular suggestion, and we've been told we'll get a better jeep eventually. No. Scouts have lots of uses, but they're not really intended to be an uber class. They can snipe out key opponents (taking out revivers, say); they have special grenades (especially flashbangs on tightly-enclosed maps); and they can hide. Most importantly, though, you're drastically underestimating sabotage. Most people make the mistake of thinking that the effects it has on a sabotaged building are supposed to be the main purpose... that isn't it, those aren't so important. The important bit is the fact that it takes off half health instantly... that's faster than anyone else in the game can damage a building. Having scouts drop recon is silly. Who would construct them? But... radars and cameras don't score you any points, so what do points have to do with anything? Additionally, engineers are such a broad, easy-to-use class for a reason... the other classes tend to be more optional, but you need engineers. For the game to be playable, it's pretty important for engineers to always always always remain the most attractive class for new players... we end up with enough all-scout teams already, the last thing we do is to give players yet another reason to go scout. Regardless of your suggestions, scouts would still be a marginal class; that's how they were designed, so one or two in a really big game can make a difference. They shouldn't get more abilities; we don't want too many people playing scouts most of the time. This isn't such a good idea. The problem is, how would new players know that the buildable things are there? They're hard enough to understand as it is... it's important to remember the TF2 mantra of making things understandable at first glance. This would make it more complicated, which is a bad thing. This isn't Iron Grip... I don't think shooting through a bunch of AI troops would be very fun, and everyone would yell at the comm for wasting resources on them. Not to mention that working the AI in usefully would probably be non-trivial. On the other hand... it might at least make games with very few players more fun, which could increase the survivability of smaller servers.
Well uhm. Well, i intended the Scout's dropping cameras thing more as a, dropping them built kinda thing. I've heard plenty of complaints about people just being scouts. That alone seems to say that they need more. A rifleman is more capable of killing a reviver than a sniper in most cases. There is limited zoom, and the damage isn't too impressive. With the rifleman's "lack of lack of" range, its a simple spray and pray away. When your reviver happens to be an apc, you can forget the scout entirely. The smg's are good, but you can achieve the same effect with an engineer. The scout's grenades are underused, not any fault of the devs, but they don't always work. It can become more luck than circumstance in their succesful use, as anyone running down a hallway you are bouncing it in, is more likely to reach and kill you first, likewise, to get one any further, you have to step into the hallway directly and risk being unrevived. My point about the engineer is, they already have plenty on their plate. I doubt anyone would do any soul searching over forking over something to the scout. Sabotauge is a joke. Playing in any real game and trying to get anyone, even your own clanmate to follow up on a sabbed building is a nightmare. Its more an act of desperation in any attempt, and is easily foiled. Technically, a grenadier, a scout, and an engineer is enough to kill an entire base, but it just doesn't happen. I'm not saying remove it, but its hardly enough to justify it. One thing i forgot to mention, hiding the buildables would possible increase the longevity of maps. More people are willing to play if there are still things they possibly don't know about. Kinda that 100% completion bit they throw into most games. 512 units is just under enough room to fit 3 apc's in side to side, or 1 1/2 length wise. If you aren't within that range, do you really need to be jogging across the map to build something anyways? As much as maps are repeated and played, its hard not to notice them. I didn't even like the idea of bots. Was just throwing it out there as a possibility while i was already typing. None of these were intended to be serious cut-and-dry suggestions, its more so just to get someone to think about it. Nothing is horrible as is, if i disliked the game i wouldn't play it.
Hmmmm... In close combat a rifleman is more like spray & autokill and for distance use your iron sights. Timing of scout nades is just skill The scout shouldnt be good at killing people its not his role Yes sabotage is more something to bug the enemy than to obstruct him. To kill a base you just need one engineer OR grenadier.
The problem those people have with the scout is that they should stop playing a scout. There's no reason why a team should have equal numbers of each class; I think that, at most, two or three scouts in a 20-person team is more than enough, possibly even too many. Spotting needs to be improved (by removing the arty call spam so people can actually use it); then, one scout will certainly help their team. But I don't think you should ever need more than one scout per broad region of the map. Radars serve a different purpose... they're for defenses, not for detecting enemies at a distance. They don't belong in the scout's portfolio. That's a matter of teams not being organized, and, in my opinion, the primary fault in this case is with scouts who don't know what they're doing. A scout should stick with their team, try to figure out where they're attacking, and move ahead to weaken buildings as it happens, not sabotage random buildings and hope someone happens to wander over and target it. In any case, a scout is, by definition, going to be useless without an organized team backing them up... the role of scout is inherently one of support. NO. Jesus, no. This is a team game, not a FPS you play at home. Secrets are horrible things, and trying to deliberately increase the learning curve of a FPS is an indescribably bad idea. I strongly, strongly believe that everything there is to know about a map -- all its secrets, every single route through it, everything -- should be instantly and immediately clear from a single glance. Important locations should be obvious and have big arrows pointing to them. Any major routes should be marked on the minimap; anything buildable should have a big aura visible from around the map, or have an icon on the minimap, Enemy Territory-style. I don't even like the 'secret' passages on streets of fire; I think they're twinky, lame, and annoying. And at least they're limited by not letting tanks through. We want teamwork to happen. For that to work, everyone has to be looking at the same map; everyone has to know how the level works and where the routes are. I don't want to log onto a map and lose because my team doesn't know it well enough, and I don't really think anyone else would want to win just because they know the map better; when you get down to it, that's not fun. I want to have a real, competitive game, and for that to work, everyone has to understand how the map works, even people who are just playing it for the first time or so. JEEZ. I still can't believe you said that. You honestly think that, say, a team losing because a few of its engineers don't know about important ramps or bridges is a good thing? How can you possibly think that? Do you like joining a team where nobody knows what they're supposed to be doing? Map secrets are terrible, terrible things; they should be viciously ripped out of maps whenever possible, and every effort should be made to make them difficult or impossible to add. Maps that use them should be mocked relentlessly and never, ever, ever used on servers; they are empty, back-slapping fratboy trash that hurts gameplay so the mapper and his friends can have some shits and giggles, or so a few people can feel like they're "31337 players" because the mapper stupidly broke the game design with his awful, awful map. Having some depth of strategy to a map is a good thing, of course; it's fun to play a map and come up with new battle plans. Hiding things mechanically -- putting in routes, buildables, features, etc that one team might just not know about -- is not. It is a completely, utterly awful idea with no redeeming quality. Save those things for single-player FPSes; they don't have any place in a team game.
Lovely Idea!, This would really spice up the game. Tack it with research, like improved RPG's. I agree with this.
Perhaps this misunderstanding is my fault, but at any rate... At no point did i say anything about a secret passage. In this case, i read about as much of your post as you did of mine. There's a fine line between being blatently clear and being in the way. If anything, its more of an exploit now, (scouts hiding behind the unbuilt towers in slaughtered, pecking at you like a mesquito.) It detracts from the aesthetics of the map as well as gameplay. It shouldn't be something forced upon all players. I don't need to see the buildable tower from across the water, it does no good to me there! It does, however, encourage new players to sprint nonsensically across the map to build something in an area that is possibly not under your control. Aside from wasting tickets and giving points to enemy soliders, this action would contribute nothing to the team. Any "secret passages" that result from this are at the discretion of the map's author. The game isn't made for the maps, the maps are made for the game. As of such, you cannot blame the developers of the game, for the implementations of a 3rd party map. Anyone who would want to create secret passages are just as able now as they are without this feature. Afterall, all buildables are placed in the map by the author, not the player, so i could just as easily install teleports. Anyways, how different is this from the relaxation room in emp_streesoffire? I also said the exact OPPOSITE of what you are gathering about the scout. Matter of fact, you contradict your own statements. You argued before that scouts are able to kill important targets. Scouts already kill easily, but their implements of death are the same as the engineer so why pick it? Killing is not always the most direct route to victory. I've lost plenty of games with over 80 kills. My point is a scout need's to be less dependent on things it shares with the engineer, and needs more of a personal identity. I do not advocate a team full of scout's, I see scout as USELESS in most scenarios, and I support the further development of the class so that the inevitable 2-3 people you speak of picking the class are able to contribute more to the team. For the most part, you cannot control what people don't know about a map. That's like highlighting each teams spawn on the minimap so knew players know where the enemy is. There is nothing secret about streetsoffire's tunnels. They are there for all to see and all to use. If you don't notice a solitary door in 300 feet of concrete wall, you cannot fault other than yourself. Their presence aids in strategy, the only lack of knowledge therein stems from the fact that empires has large maps. If there were enemies in the tunnels. I would be in the tunnels? Despite this, all the resource points, and vehicles are restricted to above ground, thus the tunnels see less use. I'm sure this was a mistake as a result of your hasty anger. This, for the most part is a FPS I play at home. Furthermore, most team games, are played at home, and unless statistics are presented otherwise, most GAMES are played at home. Where were you going with this? I fail to see why you are being frustrated by this. If you can't respect another person suggestions, then i won't respect your feed back. I could just as easily attack you personally, but I won't. (at this point im sure you're gonna say "i didn't attack you personally") Congrats on making an ass of yourself. Ask for me to clarify rather than shootdown an idea that wasn't proposed.
I suggested "hidden" cams for the scout before. Not on this forum though. Also hidden in the way like the scouts hide works but with a cap on opacity funny, seeing as all classes can build
Plasma turrets would make it a total of 12 turrets needed to properly protect a refinery (3 turrets are needed to protect the ref and the all turrets from every side) (3 mgs, 3MLs, 3AAs, 3plasma)... However, placing more turrets would keep the comm more busy and that is a real issue (look here for a recent discussion about commanding). Moose read this please: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=5041
The plasma turret isn't intended to be commander based if you read just before that. Its intended to prevent engineer's level 3 turrets from becoming obsolete. However, when it comes to your regards to defense, the engineer's turret isn't neccesary for defense when the comm has level 3's. Aquillion stated they were still useful because they can be dropped quickly, which, engineer's must upgrade to level 3, the comm drops level 3's standard when researched. So while readily dropped, a attentive comm could do better. Otherwise Reef, I've read that thread several times, along with the organizing ideas thread, Other than the "ideally one idea per post", I am unsure what I'm actually looking for.
camras/radars to scouts: YES. totally agree. buildable parts of the maps dissapear: at first I agreed, it does get in the way. ideally it would only be visible to engineers with their tools out, although it would mean that new players wouldn't know where these buildable things are unless they accidently looked in the right direction, so really it would harm the game more than help it by making the game more confusing for newbies. humvee: on the way plasma turret: needless complication to the mod in my opinion. wouldn't add to the mod a while lot
None of this changes the fact that you suggested changing things to make them harder to understand and less obvious at first glance. That is a bad idea, no matter how you go over it. The game should be set up to be as straightforward and easy-to-understand as it can be... you presented an idea whose sole purpose was to make an important part of maps more difficult to notice, and stated this as a good thing. I object most strongly to your assertion that it's bad for someone to understand 100% of a map easily. I think that the optimal setup would be, if possible, for players to understand 100% of a map's underlying structure and mechanics before playing, if we could do that... a nice chart that set down all the important routes and locations would be good as a loading screen. Without that, though, we can at least avoid actively hiding things. Why do you want the game to be harder to understand? Why do you want to cripple the interface to hide things from new players? And it goes without saying that I dislike the secret room in streetsoffire. It isn't a big deal since (unlike your suggestion) it doesn't generally impact gameplay, but I still hate the idea of map secrets. Everything in the game should be designed to be as easy for new players to understand as possible; secret rooms and that sort of thing belong in single-player games. I don't object to the game having depth, but I think that the basic mechanics should be made as obvious to the players as possible, and this goes directly against that... it's easy enough for players to miss buildable bridges already if they don't know about them. My opinion is still that buildable map scenery belongs on the minimap, as it is in (say) Enemy Territory... Scouts have their rifle. It's a very specialized weapon for specific situations, just like the class itself, but it isn't useless, and the scout doesn't share it with the engineer. Scouts are not supposed to be an easily-useful class; they are a "bag of tricks". They have a scoped rifle, more types of tactical grenades than anyone else, they can sabotage buildings, they have hide, they can reveal vital targets at a distance with binoculars... they also have potentially valuable but often underused abilities like radar invisibility and enhanced senses. I don't think they need more than that.
Scouts have the SMG2 It's pretty useful, especially in tighter corners when there are armouries or flags nearby. If you're able to get hide plus enhanced senses or accuracy you can do pretty well for yourself. That's not to say that an Engineer would be less capable, but there are quite a few times when hide is reallly useful for ambushes I'm not sure how this fits into the argument though.
Aquillion, slander does not help you in the least bit. I don't know why you cannot cease to stop putting words in my mouth. I never said a thing about making SECRETS. I never said people understanding the game 100% would be a bad thing. This isn't a major change to gameplay, its a cosmetic change. If you don't know about the buildables, you can just as easily ask someone. If it is a custom map, chances are it has a concept drawing that would be of use. I said, if you wish you can go back to read it, that at no point will every the game be 100% understandable at a glance. That's why there is a manual to begin with, and there is people who still don't read it. These fratboys you obviously dislike so much, have just as much to make maps however they please. It's in the fact that bad maps, won't be played, and if they are, it isn't your place to tell someone who chose to play it otherwise. Maps are chosen by either the admin or the players. You act as if me releasing one of these maps with the unspeakable "hidden rooms" like you keep ranting pointlessly about, would thrust it into the games of every player. If the admin chooses to use a bad map, people won't play there. If players choose to play a bad map, then is it really a bad map? In this case, here's a suggestion, people should stop whining about circumstances they can change. Your limited understanding of therein is 100% understood by me. Maybe I'm using too many big words. Why you argue for the sole sake and purpose of arguing is beyond me. If then, the only viable arguement you have against this is how another game handles it, it doesn't exactly follow the part of this forums rules about suggesting making it LIKE ANOTHER GAME. I begin to wonder if this thread needs a loading screen, charting out what I am saying, so as you cannot derive these random meanings
Than more I think over Plasma Turrets build exclusive by engineers than more I like the idea. You could give Plasma Turrets a low ROF but high heat damage output. Making them less effective in the open but powerful at chokepoints. Like pearl harbor where Japaneses where focusing their attacks on leaving ships. Hoping to shut down the entire port if one where sunk at the port entrance. You could than counter that again with the crappy Bio engine. Of course if you make Plasma Turrets for engineers only available through research it is likely the enemy is already using more advanced engines already. This would give the game a additional tactical element. Rewarding thinking, punishing hothead actions.:p
Scouts are the chief gatherers of intelligence. Engineers build, repair, heal. I think the scouts should certainly get the camras. It just seems natural. Think of it like this: If scouts already had camras, would you be able to justify moving the camras to engineer? I doubt it.
I find that cameras are hardly built anyway. They're one of the first things I build though when I get to a trouble spot
