Give this man a cookie. That's a good point neko. I don't think they would, or at least, not easily. Currently it's, sit behind a wall and throw grenades at it. If engineers didn't have grenades... Then grenadiers would be forced to be used. And what role would that leave the engineer? As medic/slave ? Because they would have almost no ability to combat buildings. (deconstruct? Yeah right...) So who would bother? 1 per squad? And the new staple class is...?
Lol this thread is calling the engineer OP, as far grenades are concerned, because he can do so much in a few words. So a suggestion is to remove the seismic grenades and you worry about how you're gonna kill the turrets. Tell me, do you often sit there tossing grenades at turret farms? You don't use them as much to make the grenades vital for the engineer.
Engineer is the perfect newbie class to be honest, best class to learn how to play the game. You can build, you can construct and not get bored, you can do LOTS of things with it... great for noobs who want results quickly!
Clearly the only time turrets are used is in farms. Also you guys are high if you think deconning buildings is a viable bread and butter game tactic.
Not sure if sarcasm or... My point was that lonely turrets are not an issue for many players, maybe for a single engineer in an open man, depending on a situation. Frankly, I cannot imagine an engineer with the time or comfort to nade spam turrets in populated games, even behind walls, his priority is to run around and do stuff in the front. It's usually grenadiers that kill stuff. Instead of a throwable the engineer could deploy next to a building a device that does what seismic grenades do overtime. You got only one and it deals damage forever or until it depletes its battery or something. When you're done you can pick it up or destroy it and have a timer like the ammo box. In practice it would be the same thing as those big devices you see in Half-Life 2 λλλλλλλλλ along the coast which are used to keep the antlions away.
Why? People are only throwing nades at it because it's faster then using the calculator. If you make the engineer a bit better at deconning buildings then it wouldn't need a grenade. For destroying turrets buildings at range we have vehicles or maybe the grenadier. Although I dislike infantry being able to destroy buildings at long range. IMO infantry should only be able to kill infantry and vehicles at range. You can leave the "destroy building from a mile away" to arties and heavy tanks. Besides.. If you want to destroy those turrets you can move up to them as an engineer pretty quick anyway. You can even ditch the run-wall-run tactic if you have three or so engineers with revive. Or maybe.. you know.. We can actually make the scout useful again and have it sneak up to turrets and sabotage them.
He should build a missile turret or run up and decon. If he is confronted with a mixed farm he should wait for support of a gren, tank, or artillery... there is no reason an engineer should be able to annihilate a turret farm if given the time. Engineers should not be fucking empiresmod rambo.
Deconstruct is one of the most potent building destruction methods that dont cost money... you cant be serious in saying the engineer is useless without killing buildings from afar in a position he cannot be harmed.
ITT people who spam ideas but dont actually play the game much. Decon is shit because its melee. You try to not use seismics and try deconning someones rax, see how succesful youll be. Try to throw a calculator at buildings that are on an incline you cant climb. Try to decon a couple buildings next to eachother and see how fun it is to sit on your ass and wait for a recharge for 3 minutes. And the best part yet, try deconning that giant wall piece half the enemy team is hiding behind. Lets not even mention map sided engy buildables such as the bridges.
the point is that yes, it is far more effective to nadespam... its probably the most effective way to kill a building besides arty. Yea, 1 engineer nadespamming is more effective at killing buildings then ANYTHING in the game besides the expensive tank with the only goal really to kill buildings. No one is saying nades need to go completely, it just shouldn't be a 1 engineer job to clear a base. in the OP i even said nades need a massive buff if this happens. I have no problem with a single engineer being able to kill 1/3th hp of 2 buildings from a well aimed seismic, then finish them off with calculator. Repair upgrade eats through buildings iirc
For everyone who doesn't pay attention, because it's quite clear most don't, calc decons the same rate as repairing/building but it uses twice as much energy. This is why it is super hard to actually out decon someone repairing the building. If you wanted to do a simple buff to decon just make it not take twice as much calc juice to decon. It's still bad though for a lot of reasons zoom mentioned. Honestly I wouldn't mind if engy couldn't seismic slam everything from a ammo box but only if there was type of explosive that you setup or that thing ranger mentioned that pretty much sounds like old sabotage, with the difference here being the entire building doesn't start smoking purple and more then one can be placed. I wonder if it'll be any effective though, and just how annoying it can be to find to get rid of. That said caelo mentions only heavy and arty tanks should destroy buildings at long range, it's another idea that completely shits on early game. When we actually have decent pop games it's near impossible to kill a rax if most methods available require you to be right next to it. I mean gren still has mortar and that's rather effective but when you say infantry shouldn't do shit you have to realize what exactly you are saying. Scouts can still hide and sneak up to turrets to sab, I don't know why you say it like it can't anymore. Turrets still lose hp over time from sab too. Last thought is the fastest way to kill a building is sticky grenades I think if we are just talking infantry ways to deal with buildings. There's an obvious reason no one does that though.
I usually prefer deconstructing when I have time because it provides extra points and I can conserve ammo for later. Between the planted device and deconstructing options, I prefer the first one, because it's less tedious and let's you do something interesting like protecting your device from infantry spawning in that barracks until it's dead. Deconstructing is more boring for me and you must be always ready to switch weapon. However, you could deconstruct while your device does its job, so the building would die even faster :/ :\ :/ But let's not forget you would have to get close first, if the Barracks is unguarded, it's ruined.
Let the engineer build an earthquake device the size of a turret that damages buildings around him instead. It even fits the lore He has to build it and defend it... it makes sense and balances it self a bit.
Enlighten me Because late game it is really hard and early game with a squad outside the rax it is impossible? It's only hard if you are a lone engineer up against the entire enemy team and I believe that's a good thing. I did not mean to imply "shouldn't do shit", just that you'd need an entire squad. Or a single heavy tank (guarded by a couple of infantry to keep off those stickies and grens) Tell me when is the last time you've seen anyone do that? Because it's easier to throw seismics at (roughly) 4 times the distance... oh please... Which is something you can fix. That's what walls are for... Again something you can fix. See earlier in the thread. Maybe it is a good thing you need to clear out the enemy first before you go on and destroy buildables. All the issues you put down here are all because deconning with the calculator takes forever. Just buff that and remove seismics. I see absolutely no problem whatsoever with this except that it will change gameplay. But almost all ideas proposed nowadays are about changing gameplay anyway.
Squad against squad it's really really hard to take out a rax(which is every base, no one just drops a vf somewhere and if they do there's an apc right next to it) because people constantly spawn from it. Saying you have to clear infantry out first to get rid of a building is near impossible unless you are out numbering them 2 to 1 at least, nothing saves you from those super good rifleman though. Late game it is easier because there's always tanks floating around helping to destroy buildings. You did imply though, have a quote. Yeah a squad should do something though, I agree here. I had a scout do that to me when I commanded like last Saturday. Nearly 50-70% of the games I command I always have to deal with scouts sabbing stuff. If you mean why don't scouts do that now in the middle of a fight and not just to soften up some random base before you swoop in to kill it, it's because scouts are way too slow. Yes the 2 bigger reasons is not many scouts in the field and grens and engys can easily take care of them from a distance, but if the hide mechanic was changed to not be that slow ass prone crawl and more like tf2 or dystopia hide then you'd actually have scouts willing to run around the front lines being useful instead of slinking behind or on some random hill being useless. Scout needs soo many changes for it to actually work in empires fast gameplay, that's the main problem. It's a slow class in a fast game. I mentioned stickys because someone was talking about fastest way to kill something, and stickies are that way. Obviously seismics work better for a bunch of reasons, but when I mentioned reasons its not used I was more alluding to the fact your in a similar position that a engy deconing building is, melee range and with your pants down. Did you seriously say walls as a solution to elevation problems? A somewhat obtuse feature? Seriously? If it isn't obvious to a new person using it as an argument is simply awful. Not to mention being stuck in a rather bad position to get shot from and time it takes to build it. Playing this game ages ago and playing an hour here and there doesn't mean much at all. I'm with zoom 100% and I've said it multiple times before too, it's like people don't play the game. I'm not against change, I've been asking for all sorts of changes since I first joined the forums. It's just with a lot of these changes no one is considering how a lot of these need other changes for the whole picture to work, there's tons of knock on effects and so many times people go"it will just magically make things better".
Oh, sorry I had the gren in the sentence there as well, but after rephrasing I left it out, but even then I'd hate for the gren to also be able to destroy buildings at range. You have a valid point with the rifleman though, but I guess that's another problem altogether and should be addressed as well. The pinpoint accurate lasers they have are just annoying. I don't think blizzard or I or anyone else in here is thinking it will magically fix everything (well I'm not sure about blizzard... ). We can't expect the current dev team to solve all problems in one go, so we need to fix stuff and at the same time break other stuff just to move forward. There is 0 stuff in Empires that can be fixed without it affecting some other part. It just can't happen, so you shouldn't let that hold you back. I'm going to disregard that comment of yours about playtime, because it is irrelevant. Either I'm experienced and you should listen to what I'm saying, or I'm a noob and you should listen to what I'm saying as a novice, the people we all want attract and keep. Also comments like that annoy the crap out of me and I don't want to give Tama more work. Oh, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with suggesting things. If it is a really stupid idea you'll be able to pick it apart very easily. One last addition: You can disregard my playtime from 9 years ago, but really... The game hasn't changed that much. Sure weapons got other script values and stuff like that, but I've played from 1.03 to 2.0 and with almost every release they changed the crap out of some things totally changing gameplay. That didn't stop people suggesting things to change/fix with every release. Also people keep saying players don't play the game anymore. WTF are all those people playing RIGHT NOW doing then? Just sitting in spec? (ok some are, but meh...). Just because they don't play like YOU do, doesn't mean they don't play. Just because the player base has collectively forgotten most things, doesn't mean they can't play. But OK. I'll shut up and leave you all to discuss in this thread. I'm done with putting time into this.
A smart scout could pre sab a base 90% then tap all the buildings to 100% sabbed as the team comes in but I never see that tactic being used, I sometimes do it to get a ton of turret simultaneously sabbed so they cant work out where I last sabbed as easily.
Hell yes. This could basically just be sticky grenades with slightly different properties - you can only throw them about half an inch from your face, but they deal a lot more damage and have a long fuse time. In terms of gameplay, they should deal almost no damage to enemy infantry, but they should deal a lot of damage to yourself. That means you can't just run through the rax placing them at both entrances and all the spawn points, but you DO have to move between each placement, lest the last one destroy you. Also, I think the effect that an engineer can't take down a turret as easily is great; I mean, you can still build an ML but if you want to get through quick, either a scout has to sab it so you can then place your charge, or you need a grenadier. Edit: I didn't mean this should replace engineer grenades though - I think the original idea of making ammo crates not give grenades, or give them slower, is a good one to reduce the strength of the engineer & rifleman nadespam, and will allow us to give engineers a choice between say, 4 seismics, where 2 take out a turret, or 4 satchel charges, where 3 can take out a barracks (1 left for a turret; the trade-off being that you have to get up close).
Where did I say it was bad suggesting stuff? I'm saying people should spend a tad more time thinking it through is all, I've been seeing a lot of suggestions(not entirely recently just in general) where people pretty much say"wouldn't it be neat?" This thread is fine and dandy, I gave my 2 cents of what I'd like to see about grenades in general and I made a thread about the same exact thing a couple of years ago as probably did a few others. Other threads like that tank destroyer have all kinds of odd ideas though, with the basic problem of it really needing a basic commander input, as in controlling the number of chassis out, before the actual chassis comes out because it's nearly going to end up as arty 2.0. That's terrible, a fun idea side lined by how simple shit in empires works. Then there's other ideas that are the kind of beast that take out the empires out of empires. Most people have their own ideas of what an ideal empires is but most can agree it is a rts/fps hybrid and some people make suggestions that really take one side of that out of the equation, from super basic ideas like remove commander and make squad leads have comm powers, to implementing a heavy counter system that takes any type of skill, the fps part, out of the equation. People say this or that is better but I really have the feeling it boils down to which side they really want more of, which side they want less of. Or in other words people who spend a lot of time commanding want more comm shit, fps players want the comm to do less so they can speed up their side of the game. If you meant my wall comment that really does go back to play time, it's something I would never see a new person say and I would entirely expect a vet to know that it's not really a great idea or a counter argument. I see what you mean sneaky scout but it's still a time consuming process. Scout really just needs to be faster, empires in fuller servers is too fast pace for scout to really do much except annoy the commander.
