Discussion point: Should engineers be allowed to place refineries themselves?

Hi (again).

I've shot this idea down in the past but I'm kind of coming round to it now. I don't really need to elaborate on the point much, the question is fairly simple. Should engineers be allowed to place refineries independently of their commander.

Pros:

Stops teams getting held back as much by inexperienced commanders in the earlier parts of the game.


Cons:

Removes from the RTS element of the game. If a commander is being distracted and lacks the ability to multitask sufficiently so that he can place that refinery, then that's part of actually improving as a commander.


Others:

Would probably require making refineries free. Probably makes no difference after the first 5 minutes, but before that it could really be a gamechanger, allowing you to effectively pitch up raxes on every front, rather than having to have some areas hold while you get a ref and rax up on another front as it is now.

 

Yeah, I like free engy-placed refs.

Most buildings are chosen and then placed by the commander, so it makes sense to give him that power.

Refineries are limited to finite nodes and they are almost always built after an engy decides to build one, not the commander. And the commander almost never denies an engy a ref.

 

... How about we meet half way. Let engineer drop a shitty (half res flow or less) version that can be upgraded by com.

We could also let the engineer calc a resource point to gain res for team and/or self. <-- this allows for gaining res in < 100 res moments.

 

There won't be any half-assery with this. Either the engineer can drop a full refinery himself, or he can't.

 

As much as I hate NOT getting the commander to drop refineries I will vote... Com only then. As was stated by 3D the engineer already has a ton of power.

Still what about the calcing res nodes idea?

 

Yes please. Games shouldn't be decided regarding a persons ability to hit specific pixels (looking at you midbridge).

It will probably affect the early game of games a bit, increasing the amount of resources each team gains from the start. (Considering each ref costs 100 when dropped by com). They should be free when dropped by an engineer however.

Just add something else later on for the commander to do, like commander abilites, etc.

 

My immediate thought on this:

Allow engineers to build refineries themselves, BUT, only after the commander has selected a refinery for that position (i.e. allow a commander to highlight a resource node and select a refinery but require an engineer to go there to build it). Could take resources when selecting it and refund resources if the other team builds there first.


Pros:

Keeps the commander job of placing refineries.
Lets engineers build refineries without having to wait for 3 years


Cons:

Unintuitive for new commanders
Probably the hardest of the 3 types to implement
Would need a GUI element added so an engineer can see where the commander has selected refs to be placed


Alternative:

Allow engineers to place and build refineries, but only when there are 2 engineers within an x unit radius (encourages teamwork, might do pros and cons later)

 

Let me get this straight, you're suggesting that a com should have to preemptively "mark" a ref point somehow and then an engy can go there are get a ref "automatically" dropped? So what's the disadvantage to "marking" every ref point on the map at the start of the round? If I'm interpreting things properly, then it would sound like even more com button-pressing for the same I'd button-pressing.

Also, anything that requires an arbitrary number of teammates to be present is frustratingly horrible. Flags that need 2+ teammates need to die a painful death.

 

That's kinda sucky. I'm more or less in favour of a flag-drop version if the comm is busy. Pros would be it would be free and quickly dropped, cons would be a 1/3 income.

Supposed to aid the quick trading of res nodes that goes on in shifting front-line maps, like isle etc. Also would be a bit sneakier.

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To be honest, I wouldn't like more things taken away from the commander. Research without resource use is simple, but sort of meaningless to me. People will just complain at you anyway, and there's no real need to worry about what you do. I used to plan what I could do based on resources and time. Some paths yielded much better results on low res and on the back-foot than others, and it was important to know what would take a lot of time and what the yield would be for that time.

Now what has essentially been done is that the cost has been moved to the frontend. The vehicle expenses are what you have to know more about, and timing doesn't half matter. So if you really want to be a good comm you'll know what costs what in a vehicle, which is a little divorced from the procedure to be honest.

It used to be common knowledge that comp was expensive, abs was light and cheap, and reactive was heavy. It used to be that bio was a pretty good quick tree, with the drawback that the heavier weapons the tree contained were more limited. Chemistry had the benefits of having good access to weapons but a limited armour that would probably need upgrading.

Physics was a well-kept secret for anyone not too scared to use it. Electrical was what everyone hounded you to get, especially as BE, but would sometimes fail due to costs and a difficult engine.

Now...it's like...go for whatever first, and if it doesn't work, research everything else. Without upfront costs, I feel like people don't need to do real strategising as comm, and just need to silence the yellers so they don't get blamed later.

Except that tank costs return to bite them in the ass. So it's more of a hidden cost now...which is a bit weird.

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Erm...sorry, I seem to be in full tirade mode today >.> Sorry for the off-topic.

 

I would rather see you add a visual cue to the commander interface whenever someone says "ref" in chat, removing ref dropping altogether just delays the problems with new commanders until he has to drop a rax.

 

If players could drop refs, then they'd be free. No interference with rax dropping.

 

Yeah, but a com that doesn't drop refs, won't drop raxes where and when you need them either.

 

Don't disconnect the commander form the battlefield any further, ref dropping increases your situational awareness. I don't care that the commander should be looking at the minimap - the minimap is awful and confusing.

I've already said all this before but what you should do is:
1. Replace the "Requesting air support" with "Requesting assistance commandork" & have an event the commander can jump to. 90% of problems sorted right there once the commanders know to use it.
2. Make the ref nodes into buttons/triggers you can action with the Use key (E) and have this send the commander a audible alert & an event that they can jump to using the space bar. Preferably also text alert over the UI that disappears after 5 seconds, not the in game text chat.
3. There really should be ways to ping your location on the minimap to the commander. This wold also resolve 50% of the problems people have with getting the commanders attention.

In an ideal world the commander would have a "task" list of these events raging from 1-9 and able to jump to them independently. They would expire after a couple of minutes and to prevent spam the commander would be able to mute a player to ignore their pings & requests.

Bang, just give simple tools to strengthen the connection between player & commander. This stuff is especially beneficial for the people who do not have a microphone.

I believe everything pertinent was said already here

Especially...

 

Make engineer places refs free but give only 50 percent of the res, commanders can upgrade it to 100 percent of the ref and the ref will automaticly upgrade it self ( takes time ). This way commanders still have to do that. Another thing I want to point out I have noticed yesterday evening commanding some maps is, damn when shit is going down and game is going pretty fair you have so much fucking shit to do, from running to reputting down new bases to building refs to coordination and research.

Especially the cyclopean game where lots of stuff went down with a lot of changes in bases and even a full on base swap due to synchronized apc rushing. I had to run from my base to new base whilst researching putting down raxes vf's and refineries.

Its a lot of fucking work to do it properly and well. Not half assed rax vf base thats it. Its good like this though.