"More" squad powers suggestion. Just thought of afew good squad powers I think. Names might not be good. Rifleman: FIRE: All squad member deals bonus 10-20% damage from all weapons (including tanks guns) for a minute. Great Moral: All squad members gains a temporary 20HP for a minute (when finished if player has less than 20 hp he will only go to 1 hp and fatigued.) (this might go well with grenadier?) Grenadier: Great Moral: (same as 2nd Rifleman) Charge yet again but different: Whole squad invulnerable for 2-4 seconds (basically charge and sticky a tank really). Scout: Mass Sabotage: All squad members could start sabotage any building for 1 minute. Radar Bugged: All squad members will be shown as enemy friendly (if squad is NF and uses this the BE will see them as teammates on rader/minimap) Engineer: Field Repairs: All squad member tanks (if driver) even not engineer will have their tank automatically have their tank repaired over 30 seconds (May not fully repair tank and it repairs tank at a slow rate so in middle of combat may help but not too much to uneven) AHH AIRCON IN TANKS FINALLY!!: (Not a proper title I think :p ) All squad member tanks will cooldown faster by 10% for a whole minute. If these might by anychance might be low maybe included in game, ahh you guys best decide how much squad points it costs.
So when a squad of units suddenly appears on your radar advancing towards your base you're going to assume that they're all friendly just because they're the wrong colour to be enemy? I think that's going to be more of a hindrance to be honest.
The only ones that I think might work are the scouts.. We learned in the beta tests that the squad powers can be overpowered mainly when they involve helping tanks.. I personally feel the squad powers need to be for inf use only and not to help tanks.. The gren has the "fire" skill.. And I don't think the great moral would be very helpful because 20 hp goes really fast and engy squad leaders already have heal. Charge already kinda sucks for scout and the people with sticky's could just get the stamina or speed upgrades. For the engy I dunno if the cooling idea is better then the current heal or revive skills and if we add 3 or 4 powers it would need a lot more work then its worth.. Then the field repairs was tried in testing and it was over powered and removed. edit: I would like to see the squads used more in larger maps though.. maybe the squad aura can get bigger with map scales.. I dunno how it works..
All squad powers except armor and the scout skills are fine. Those 3 need replacement [Believe me, 30 seconds of unlimited sprint is long enough to sticky 3 tanks if you coordinate]
I'd say the only skills that really need changes are the stat boosts, damage up and armor up. When any other power is activated, you KNOW they're active, but those two... Eh. Not much of a difference.
Engineer has the ability to mass repair armors of his squad mates, but this isn't instantly. by 2 hp per second up to 30 second, all squad members have regenerative health.
as long as radar stealth / weapon silencer / armor / healing upgrade / damage+ / vhc speed and.... wow, i have barely started... is no longer THAT obsolete, i would be happy. the 2-4 sec invulnerability sounds fun too. [/rant]
Grenadiers gets a squad power where all squad members' explosive weapons have larger range and does more damage for 30 seconds. Riflemen gets a squad power for accuracy boost, lowering recoil for all members.
Let's see, here are some ideas of my own. But first, I should say: I'm going by the assumption that all squad powers should be "flashy" in the way mass hide, artillery strike, and mass revive are. Yes, those are fairly powerful, but they're also fun to use, and I think that's another reason they're so popular. Primarily, the main class that needs a new squad power is riflemen -- they don't have anything popular at all. I'm thinking the best idea would be something similary to Arty Strike, but against infantry only. Some possible thoughts: [*] Suppressive Fire. A large amount of wide-spread, relatively low-damage gunfire originates from the point where the squad leader used the skill and pointed in the general direction they were aiming for a few seconds. (Yes, this seems sort of 'magical', but honestly, so does squad revive or squad heal. Thematically it fits, and is fun without being overpowered.) [*] Gas Strike. Drops poison gas into the targeted area from above. Does no damage to vehicles or buildings, but slowly damages infantry for a while. Problem: I assume this would be more difficult to implement, since we don't have poison gas right now. [*] Anti-Infantry Bombing. Like arty strike, but it drops explosions similar to Explosive Grenades, specialized at damaging infantry and doing low/no damage to anything else. To compensate (vs arty strike), it could cost less, cover a slightly wider area, drop slightly more for a slightly longer period of time, or whatever. Finally, one last idea that I don't think is suitable to riflemen specifically, but may be worth considering in general: [*] Rally. Creates a temporary spawn near your location. The spawn is represented by a small sensor-equipment-style building widget (and therefore it can't be placed in nobuild locations or anywhere you couldn't drop an engie radar); that widget can take damage from even small arms fire, and if it's destroyed the created spawnpoint is lost (that keeps this ability from being used to effectively just drop a spawn in the enemy base and overwhelm them -- no more than squad revive can be used for that, anyway, since it won't last more than one spawn. And it costs tickets.) It vanishes after a while anyway. While this might sound amazing, compare vs. mass revive and it's not that unbalanced if it costs the same amount or more.
Suppressive fire sounds fun. Giving infantry infinite bullet ammo [not shotgun pistol] while it's in effect would be good too.
Riflemen should have a special ability that drops smoke screen in a line from the area he is looking at. 6 squad points. An alternative is a overhead plane that flies by and machine guns fires in a line from where the user is looking (like those company of heroes plane attacks)... the shots would be powerful enough to damage or kill infantries thats not covered, and barely do damage to buildings/vehicles... 8 squad points. EDIT: A new alternative would also be a small napalm strike setting the area on fire, damaging infantries, overheating vehicles, and burns down buildings. 10 or 12 squad points.
Smoke would really fit scouts more, since they already have it. And I doubt it is worth 6 squad points. (Even revive is only 5.) And the others... yeah, I don't think we should have squad powers that cost too much; I doubt it balances them the way you think. They're not supposed to be that overwhelming. Anyway, I mentioned this in another thread, but I'll put it in the thread where it belongs: How about an 'ignore mines' squad power that lets the entire squad ignore mines for about 30 seconds? Replacing the ability of defusal to let tanks ignore mines, of course.
