Listening Posts.

Agreed with Aquillion. The comm still needs to be able to highlight the most important targets.

Sandbag: The listening post doesn't remove the front lines. It will become an essential part of them along with the engineer radars and cameras after the comm wallhack has been removed. If it costs let's say 100-200 res, you can keep placing them to choke points and important places as your team moves on thus keeping up the situational awareness of your team. Destroying the enemy listening posts gives your team a great advantage, unless their engineers have done their work well and littered the ground with cameras and small radars. IMO the listening post is the best idea on the suggestions forum. Ever. It'll bring lots of new tactical possibilities without messing the balance of the game. CANT WAIT FOR THEM! :D

I think the listening post should detect all targets in its radius. You can still sneak past them by sabotaging or destroying them. The comm can't see where the listening post sees and having it detect only targets in its line of sight would be FRUSTRATING when you can't know what's a good place to build it and what's bad. In some maps you'd have to place them all over the map to deal with the shapes of the ground etc.

This has already been said, but it's worth saying twice: there should be some indication that you've been detected by the listening post or engineer gizmos. Like a subtle red light in the hud or something. Just don't make it flash or beep like the missile warning! Also: the radius of the listening posts and engineer cameras and radars of your team should be shown on the minimap.

 

Lol. I have to disagree with you there. The Empires forums completely needs us to take into account our devs limited time and resources to dedicate to the project. I've been under those guidelines since Krenzo left. It simply does not pay to make a suggestion beyong the devs ability to implement. If something is complicated, it won't get done. That's almost irrefutable here.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I guess in the end, my type of mindset ends up being a counterpoint to the crazy ideas getting thrown in a lot of the time. I doubt the mod will suffer at all from my lack of crazy suggestions...besides, I have Cold Trap for that now :p

 

Having it so it requires you to be in the line of sight defeats the point of it.

It works as is. Don't break it.

 

If you could do that though, could you make it have a penetrative distance/value. Like...it can go through 1 or 2 walls, but no more?

I suppose if our bullets actually went through walls you'd have something to work from lol.

 

Detecting or coding penetration is a bitch.

I've done it in lua, and it's hacky as crap.

If you were doing it for a VGUI, run every frame...
hudder:

 

Or just leave it as it is.

 

The difference is that this would give players a way to fight back against them.

We already have engineer cameras, and nobody is really bothered by them, so it doesn't seem likely that this would break the game. These would be even more vulnerable than engineer cameras, because they're so tall and easy to target from a distance (while cameras can be built behind some cover where nobody can reach them.)

 

Why can't we just go the Natural selection route and make motion tracking a research option? (Well something like it)

 

This was a great idea.

 

Fix'd.

 

I like commtagets though and the listening post would just make the commander drop some of them and give this way another advatage to the Engineer, yeeees they have low range cams, cams low range, listening far range and better vis, just another upgraded cam/radar which is dropped by the commander ...

That's why I would suggest to make the engineer pay instead of the commander by adding another skill which let you upgrade your cam/radar to a listening post, same like turret upgrade, this additionaly to the com targets but to cover the calc energy expenses lower the needed calc points for cams and listening posts, because during fights you often don't have the time to build a 140 unit building (without rep upg)
thoughts?

 

How would that possibly solve anything?

 

Solve? It's about balance, only engineers would be able to build the listening post fast, that's why they would have a advantage which shouldn't be free for them.

 

No it would just be another useless dynamic to the game

 

Eww horrible sucky models.

I have to redo them at some point.

 

And old half finished map I usually use for demonstrating models and trying out textures, has a wide variety of environments in the same place, outdoors, building exterior, building interior, underground, and is appropriately named lorem ipsum.

 

This will be an overpowered research, forcing people to always dive into the research tree that motion tracking is in; it is boring enough for commanders that every game revolves around about the same research routine. It would also be annoying to have everyone with essentially wallhacks. Legitimate strategies like assembling ambush points and sneaking past enemy frontlines will be impossible.

If there is going to be a commander-dropped camera/radar, it should only work when it is a certain distance from another structure (barrack, or maybe research radar) so they are not dropped in an area your team has no control of. It should also be easy to destroy and/or expensive so it can only be maintain in a secure area and used only defensively.