Good point. The support shouldn't be more powerful than the rifleman, so either the machine gun is bulky and less accurate (must be setup properly when prone and more of a spray shot effect, better for holding a position rather than advancing) or, more likely, the machine gun is just removed and the support class gets weapons about as strong as engineer's or weaker. The idea is to take away some of the engy's extra abilities and create a new class with a different playing style/strategy.
If the machine gun is less accurate and more bulky, then people won't really bother playing the class simply because he has a god-awful gun that can't kill people. Also at best his role conflicts with his armament. What you're suggesting is effectively a medic-machine gunner. Machine guns are static. More often than not, medics aren't. Now you have a class that can only fulfill one role or the other. If he gets say, SMG, then the idea is okay.
the only prob with the engi is (as many have pointed out) the ammo box. there was an ammo box suggestion on here recently which would probably solve it: you can only use each ammo box once (armory ammo boxes you can use 1/[however long it takes engi boxes to disappear], or would regen ammo automatically) but get max ammo from it when you do.
But if you get 1 ammo from an ammo box, what if you needed bullets, or a mine? Failsuggestion. I say do a NS style thing, SLs and Comms can drop ammo.
I suggest: 1 SMG2 1 Calc Seismic grenades A sprinkling of skill That's the recipe for minced rifleman.
Seriously, people are overestimating the rifleman advantage. At very long ranges, maybe, but a prone engineer will be plenty accurate at anything you can actually see, and most of the time it just comes down to who sees the enemy and starts firing first. I mainly play engineers, and I've never really felt like I'm being dominated by riflemen -- usually at longer ranges, it's whoever goes prone first wins, and at closer ranges whoever shoots first wins. I don't have a problem with those (they make planning, positioning, ambushes, taking the enemy by surprise, etc more important than being good at aiming for the enemy's head or something stupid like that.) The main problem is just the fact that the engineer has unlimited ammo from his box, particularly with seismics. I'd like to see demolition taken away from the engineer and given to the scout, but there are problems (hide + demolition would obviously be broken if the scout could instantly blow up a VF/rax/radar.) Maybe planted explosives with a long timer, which other scouts can disarm with sabotage and engineers can disarm with their calc -- so sneaking in alone and planting one generally wouldn't help, but scouts could be used to take out frontline buildings while your allies cover the bomb. There would need to be some sort of protection against 'bomb-spamming' even when you have an ammo box, though (maybe just each scout can't replace their bomb until their old one goes off, or something.) Of course, seismics and deconstruction would be weakened to make the scout's abilities more important.
hmm... engineers are overused? lets change brenodi to grenodi so that everyone has to play grens on that side! And lets make NF become the Union army and shoot everything with muskets! Engineers are perfect were they are.
I doubt it. Sabotage just isn't good enough, period. It's too difficult to get close to any building that matters (especially when people are actively fighting over it), for not enough gain. One extra guy rocketsniping or using a mortar would almost always be worth more than a scout trying to sabotage (never mind a tank, which is also much better.) Scouts need at least one of these: 1. The ability to hurt/disable buildings from at least moderate range. 2. The ability to actually kill buildings (at least small ones and/or walls.) Every other anti-building ability has both of those advantages (and they are huge, huge advantages; and usually the range advantage is much higher than just moderate, up to 'nearly infinite' for rocketsniping.) Hide isn't really that great for situations where it really matters -- sure, you can sneak into the enemy base to annoy them, but lots of luck using hide to reach an active rax people are fighting over. You can do it, sure, but it's massively harder than just mortaring the building, and much less effective. Basically, sabotage was a nice idea, but it hasn't worked, and just taking away seismics isn't going to make it functional. Scouts need something totally new if they're going to be the main anti-structure class. (I would worry as much about how they'll beat grenadiers at killing buildings as I would engineers -- are we going to remove rocket-sniping, first of all?)
If you are in a position to nadespam, I'd give you a reasonable likelyhood you could sabotage. 50% of a buildings health going is a lot. Especially if you take into account seismics being removed. Maybe scouts should get seismics, and engineers should get something different to a grenade. Maybe make cameras and radars a throwable item with less health, that would explain their failure radius.
I dont know in which world those posters here life but in the world where I life a rifleman needs 3 bullets to kill any engineer and because of almost no recoil you hit almost every time. If its not very close range (sticky throwing range) and the engineer has an smg2 you will not see the engineer win if both players are at equal skill.
I dunno what world you life in, but if you see someone, and they don't see you, they die. At least in 2.12 2.2 combat fails.
It fails. I demand being capable of killing people who are unaware of me. And they fucked up my smg2.
You can nadespam from behind cover. And you can throw those nades further than you think -- they're not heavy ones like stickies. Maybe they should be heavy. That's not taking into account odd map structures like StreetsOfFire, of course. Plenty of fun tossing seismics at raxes and refs in the little trenches under the bridge. Are you serious? Jeez, I should've been a tester. Look at what they've done to the game without me. Keeping in mind, of course, that I haven't played it so I don't really know... From what Empires is like now, and from what I've seen in other games, I can say that giving overwhelming advantage to surprise, cover, and position is important. It's one of the biggest differences between strategic combat and crazy charge-in-screaming-like-a-lemon gunfests. Did they make people tougher to try and let them compare more to tanks or something? Because that would be stupid. Make the tanks weaker instead. This is a team game, lone wolves should be easy to kill in all circumstances, especially if they have nobody to cover them and get taken by surprise. Charging forward with no cover and nobody to guard your flank should = instant death, no exceptions, whether you're a lone rifleman or inside a heavy. I hate this way of thinking. Skill should not be important. What should matter is who has more friends with them, and who is cunning enough to take the enemy by surprise. I don't give a damn who is better at keeping the little cross on the screen pedantically fixated over the enemy's head; the skills that matter should be teamwork, leadership, planning and taking the enemy by surprise. No amount of personal skill with your gun should help you if you screw up on those points; a competent player who works with their team should be worth more than the greatest Empires player who ever spawned who ignores their team and tries to go off as a lone wolf (putting aside the fact that someone who did that would, by definition, not be the greatest player ever.)
Its remodelled in a way that you cant lonewolf and take out entire squads alone like it was in 2.12. You need more skill to beat more enemys alone thats what I mean. In 2.12 skills is more important than in 2.2 because a riflemanwhore was/is able to kill alot of people in seconds. It should be not possible to jump behind an enemy wall and kill the 5 people hiding behind in 2.2 And you need more skill because aiming is more important than in 2.12. You can almost point and click in 2.12 but not in 2.2
This would require too much micro on the part of the commander. Plus I like to be able to go grab some ammo as soon as I spawn, rather than pester com for it.
