@Lazybum. Honestly don't know what to tell you. I looked at the number and was like "what? slower than discharge...maybe, huh?". Yeah I know what you mean about revive. It sounded pretty hokey when I wrote it, would be pretty daft if we kept giving away all these critical abilities by default.
Wasn't that a bug? I swear you had to basically spam impulse 101 or something in console to do that. I would think the reason they don't is because it lets engineers stack e build and calc build. Or it was made so they had to choose what to build or if they should save for a revive which works out fine in my opinion.
I will flesh out what I'm considering more later on after class and work, but in short, I'm figuring buffing e-build to go as fast as normal calculator, and tweaking amounts/time to be 100 charge to build a fresh ref. For the argument that engineers would be disadvantaged because their calculator would have a cost, keep in mind that I'm not going to give points for e-build/repair, so it'd still be better to go engineer if you're going to be doing that stuff for a good bit.
E-build shouldn't be as good as the calc, that would make the engineer class almost redundant. Classes need to have clearly defined roles and fulfill them, that is how you get interesting cooperation and teamplay. E-repair on the other hand is a good compromise towards the reality of low population games and relatively easily destroyed buildings. E-repair should be as effective as current e-build, i.e. not good, but better than nothing when a few players do it.
1) Only engineers get points for building and repairing. 2) You still can't e-repair vehicles. 3) There is still no e-repair/build upgrade. In other words, if you're going to be hanging around bases or driving a tank, engineer is still one of the best classes in the game.
Sadly, I think bringing ebuild to calc default levels is not a good option. Mostly because, as I said, it has limited ammo and that regen time is needed. The calc is actually a good balance regen wise, works perfectly for all kinds of infantry situations such as healing and revive. Take that into account. But certainly I'd like to see ebuild a bit buffed. Getting rank points, though, does not matter to me two shits. Mostly because I build and repair to save my fucking team, not get more skills. And if I could do that as effectively with another class I'd definitely do it. Just wanted to swear a bit so that you get that rank points mean jack all to anyone who's an engineer by trade. Because the reward is that you know you're massively helping the team.
I think you miss the point of points unlocking further skills which give you staying power, allowing you to do more. 10 points for revive doesn't sound like much but can take forever to get if you aren't engineer repairing and building everything in the beginning.
thing is this only counts for the first half of the game. then, unless in a vehicle, engis can actually become a massive hindrance as they cannot do anything against vehicles - while ofc you still need them. i cant even count how often ive seen 4 engis repairing a rax from the inside while there was one single tank shelling the rax from the outside. 3 of those 4 engis are a complete waste of a server slot in this situation, even if only 2 of them would have went gren the tank would have been a non-issue, so he held up 4 players for minutes. (ive seen worse aswell, at least 6 engis outrepairing another engi throwing nades from a crate not even in cover - thankfully thats less common ) ideally youd always spawn as engi, repair if neccessary and noone else does it, then either grab a tank or switch to a more useful class (and grab a tank). but empires is really inflexible when it comes to class choice (and allowing infantry later in game). you cannot just switch from engi to gren back an forth, you may have mines on the ground or a turret built, plus youll spawn with no juice. but at a point in game, where you desperately need repairs aswell, you need about 99.9999% of your team as grens - independent on player counts. (later game) tanks are balanced against multiple grenadiers (i finally excepted that even if i dont like it) so you have to allow for them. this is a move in the right direction. given the history of empires a bold one even. a good one i hope
We're talking about other classes. The lack of rank points is presented as a major disadvantage against the ability to repair and build relatively quickly, but if you're another class and someone isn't already taking care of it, having that ability at that kind of speed is a massive boost and buff which rank points mean next to nothing against. Let's put it this way, all the time I've been playing Empires, a beginning rush usually failed if the engies died and only riflemen and grens were left. The buildings go down because they take too long to build, and the rest of the infantry are killed. In this case, a beginning rush - which decides a moderate amount of the game, can consist much more of riflemen and grens than engies, because they just won't be as necessary. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I'm saying being able to play as an able rifleman while still being able to build/repair is a massively great bonus that wouldn't really be offset by rank points for me. Being able to play a gren like that is awesome. Because it's not like I have to solo build a whole base and "why wouldn't you choose engy for those points?" it's if I'm in any kind of situation where something needs building and it's not a whole base. Sure, rank points are great if I need to build a whole base, but otherwise that's no big deal. You'll get your points by killing and destroying instead - like everyone else. That's the other buff to e-build btw, you can do it while you shoot at people. Always loved that. In the face of all that, I don't really care about rank points tbh. My gren is pretty good without skills, my rifleman pretty tough. Sure they can be better, but nothing like the engy gets with added skills. They don't get class features through skills. So I'd be happy enough building that barracks and taking nothing for it, because I'll be shooting people anyway. My point is, not getting rank points for building as NOT the engy, is not really a downside. Your class still has all the other abilities that will keep it useful out there. I'm not objecting to this thing, just pointing out that it's really not a major downside. It's a slight one, but when you have more prowess against other infantry or vehicles, it's not very large. My reason for objecting is based purely on those numbers. It isn't sound to give all classes such a boost all at once, without changing anything else (other than maybe generic time to build). But try it, I don't mind. It would be awesome to finally have freedom of class choice :D
So here's where I stand on it. The cornerstone of all this, in my view, is actually going to center on the refinery, not the barracks. Why the refinery? Think about all the times you've been a lone character with the opportunity to build a barracks. Now think about all the times you've ignored a refinery simply because e-building takes too damn long. In a single round, I could easily say that I'll ignore building a refinery five times at least because I don't want to sit there e-building it. Building a barracks is important, but I feel that e-building refineries is actually even more major and a more common occurrence. Even moreso, think about all the times as a commander that you go to place a refinery, only to see that the two or three people near it are all rifles or grens. Or even worse, you realize it after the fact. As a commander, that's incredibly irritating to me. As it is now, I can't tell them to go build it because I know it'd take too damn long. Buffing e-build would give me permission to tell them to build it because now I know that they can do it fast enough to be worth it. I still want to note that even ignoring rank points, you still can't get anything like e-build upgrade and you still can't repair vehicles. Despite what everyone else says, I'd still consider it important to have an engineer with repair, simply because of how fast it lets them build. Would it be less important? Of course. But less important isn't the same as unimportant. (For the record, I don't do my math before I write my posts, so I don't know where this post will lead.) Right now, it takes 125 charge for an engineer to build a refinery without repair upgrade. The engineer tool has a cycle time of 0.2 seconds a repair amount of 1 and a recharge rate of 1 every 0.25 seconds. That means it takes 125*0.2 = 25 seconds for the actual build, with 25*0.25 + 0.25 = 6.5 seconds for the recharge (The extra 0.25 is the delay before charging once you stop building). If you don't stop to recharge, then it's 25*0.5 = 12.5 seconds, for a total of 32.5 seconds with pausing and 37.5 without. For the sake of completeness, if you have repair upgrade, it only takes 12.5 seconds to build a refinery because that puts you under the threshold for needing to wait for recharge. E-building is simpler in comparison; It's a flat 1 per 0.5 seconds. With 125 health to build a ref, that's 62.5 seconds from placement to completion, of standing there holding E. Frankly, that's crazy. So, here's my idea (and Empty's, mostly). I want to tweak it so that an engineer can build a ref in 20 seconds flat, 10 with repair upgrade. Then I want e-build to be near that, I'm aiming around 25 seconds. Why 25? Well, 20 feels too fast and 30 would mean a cycle time with an infinite number of digits past the decimal, and I don't like that. If that still feels unreasonable, then I'd push it up to 40 with the reasoning that players will rarely e-build something by their lonesome. Ignoring that extra 0.25 delay, that means a cycle time of exactly 0.11 seconds (With the delay, it's 0.108 seconds, but I don't like that number) for 20.25 seconds to build a refinery. Except I don't like 0.11 or 20.25 that much either, so if I shift it to 0.1 cycle time, 19 seconds to build a ref. Then if e-build is changed to .2 seconds, it'd be 40 seconds to build a ref on your own. But you know what. That's fucking insane. We're talking 6.25 seconds to build a ref with repair upgrade. We're talking four fucking seconds to build a turret. So fuck it. I'll change the cycle time on e-build to 0.4 seconds and allow for e-repairing. Fuck the numbers, fuck SpreadsheetPires.
You're right, I didn't thoroughly read your post. This part sounded like you were saying rank points were pointless. Which was what prompted my post. For other classes ebuilding, sure they can shoot and build, no sense in giving rank points for it too. Oh, I coulda sworn things recharged at the cycle rate, I guess it's a code side thing. Sorry for doubting you Ikalx.
It's not your fault if my post didn't make sense And with the times, I literally double checked before I posted. I do that pretty much all the time when it comes to build, just in case someone changes something under the hood. So I wasn't telling you random, but what I'd literally just timed :p You know, that's about the first time I've actually understood what you said, but even though I'm familiar with the numbers it took me a while :p Coders. Something simple will always come out complex ove:
not wanting to be the party pooper again but have you considered that you can use your weapon while you e-build? so the calculator would be really nice to not overencourage a more varying class choice and create the wrong impression of engis being less needed (since they still build and repair faster there still is a certain amount of them required - a gren in the midst of a rax repairing doesnt kill shit either and better be engi) or do you think its unimportant? bc being prone on a be-rax while ebuilding as rifle is quite helpful early on. i can imagine erepair buffing it a lot.
If your going to make E-building so damn fast, E-builders need their own tool that they should switch to when E-building. Obviously they don't have to do anything but hold 'e' to switch to the tool and start building.
as there is no tool, use the calculator model? its obvious enough and i dont think hard to grasp that only the engineer class gets extra features. if you want to have it super distinquished call his "advanced calculator" or whatever fits.
