Right now in game it is really pointless when i Aim binoculars and click (with the goal of telling my team where the enemy vehicles are) just to get yelled at for spamming... sorry their were 5 tanks + 1 enemy Cv... etc etc So for starters (and this is not really related to my idea)... can we make it have a cool down feature like "A scout 30 miles from the enemy has spotted enemy vehicles" and then whatever i see with the binoculars gets painted on the minimap as long as i don't move like 100 ft from where i reported... i.e. my team got the notice... their are enemy vehicles being watched by the scout.. and all updates just be silent red blips on the minmap... Ok now for my idea. Was thinking about scout snipers and specifically the movie clear and present danger where the snipers use that laser target designator to mark the target for a smart bomb to hit. [I realize the idea is sorta already in game now where "requesting artillery at my position, wait no, the enemy position" and your team is supposed to provide it... ya fucking right... you only see arti tanks in training-maps where theirs 300030300 res and all vehicles are already researched, and they sure as hell aren't going to help (or have any amazing skill) to hit targets at random areas of the map, let alone drive there etc etc... i.e. the current method is very impractical] So what if a scout could mark targets and turrets (which have a limited range as is) can "see" the target because the scout is lasering it and then engage a target further away... What i'm suggesting is here's a turret [T]... and here's a giant hill [Giant Hill]... and here's a valley [Valley]... ok so the missle turret can't see over the hill cause it doesn't have line of sight... but what if a scout is down there.. and he lasers a tank... then can the missle launcher start firing rockets indirectly into the sky (like javalin missle) and it comes down where the scout targetted? With this idea then it becomes very versatile what a scout is capable of. (it's akin to calling in artillery, but in a modern sense that the delivery system is not people shooting the cannon but some turret) For example imagine the scout now has a map showing where his teams turrets are (with shaded circles around each indicating the maximum effective range they can kill when given a lasered target)... So now the scout can go out and observe the enemy and to make things interesting, the scout can choose routes on the map which keep him in proximity to a friendly turret so if the need comes that their is enemy vehicles... and their to far away for the turret to lock... then the scout has a anti material/vehicle capability by enhancing the lock on range of nearby turrets (which may or may not have a line of sight to the target). And then what about machine gun turrets... and a bazillion enemy infantry... ya theirs the CV's bumper that works good for that, but now a scout can basically camp near a turret and provide long range machine gun fire (hey remember that movie armageddon when the guy uses the goggles to aim the minigun ) And ya this scales up well when we get airplanes because instead of adding in giant turrets that people sit in for killing air targets, that a scout with binoculars and fill that role (or ya we can have turrets that just automatically kill anything that flys in the air ) Another thing could be the scout helps out in maps where the com has setup a defensive position and has all these turrets but the enemy is to far away (or not in line of sight of the turret)... well the scout can flip out the binoculars (help the turrets see) and start raising hell on any enemy that approaches to close (but to far, or not in line of sight, for the turret to automatically engage). This idea is not uber powerful because it requires someone to build turrets... it works good for scouts which defend a base for example... and it works good as a short range offensive ability. The enemy has no way of killing the turret (which may be out of sight behind some hill) or spotting the scout (unless the scout is standing in the middle of a field) so the only real way to balance it is by either limiting the kill strength of the scout-guided-missles or the rate of weapon deployment (or by limiting the amount of fire-mission-requests the scout can use until he gets more "ammo" from a ammo box) Hmm a jeep, a engineer, and a scout. Makes for a good early round team that can quickly setup a turret (supply "ammo" for fire missions) and mark targets far off for minimap purposes and have a lethal option on closer targets. The turret is protected from enemies (to a degree) because the turret can be built out of sight... this sounds like more fun then flying a airplane lol. (The kind of fun that people that like scout rifles and jeeps would love to do)
Sounds good, but I doubt it would work in practice. People would build go engi, build turrets along a wall, switch to scout, and then spam missiles. Otherwise, it's a good replacement for arty. Because, that just doesn't work at all in empires. Only way I've ever seen it work, is in BFV, where the arty tank would 'alt fire' to get the view of the person who had the binocs, and it would automatically follow their shots, so they could get right on target after a few.
The idea is interesting, but i'm not sure if it's even capable of working. It does sound pretty cool to extend the range of an ml turret by laser painting, but i'd probably not want the distance too long, and only work on mls. It'd actually be kinda cool if you could boost level 1's like this, but i'm thinking level 3's would be overpowered.
Perhaps have the missiles dumb-fire (not guided) in the direction of the lasered target, then you could maybe get a few hits in on vehicle squads rushing your base if you see them early, or bombard tanks which are hovering just out of turret range picking off your base, or launch a salvo on the ninja rax that has been dropped right beside your base.
I don't see what this has to do with shotguns and snipers, but it's a decent idea. I'd say spotting should drop a temporary camera+radar on your binocs crosshair, and an individual spot on a target should give artillery some massive accuracy advantage if they select it. Also, Artillery should have rotatable turrets, but have to deploy to fire weapons.
It has nothing to do with shotgunning because its been said (and practically requested by some people) that the scouts are loosing their sniper rifles and becoming nothing more then shotgun wielding infantry (that idea sounds pathetic). This idea is about rejecting that idea, and getting scouts out their to fill a more specialized sniper/observer type role. And since snipering is not 100% about killing as much as it is about collecting information, (and calling in the occasional airstrike/artillery), it just made sense to have this ability (i.e. a way to call in a sort of artillery (that will ACTUALLY SHOW UP)). And scouts checking their maps and planning their kill zone around the availability of such support (i.e. position of nearby friendly turrets) is pretty cool also. All of that sounds cool to as far as making the current arti tanks more usefuf. Maybe a small addition to your ideas is a either a way to hit farther away scout-marked targets, or a way to select a target and then have a big circle drawn around it on the map so the arti driver knows how close he has to be to hit it. And here's just some stuff i dug up from my ebook collection which is sorta like my idea (but not wireless like my idea lol) (starts on page 1, and picture page 2, ...) http://wolfsfiles.googlepages.com/1.jpg http://wolfsfiles.googlepages.com/2.jpg http://wolfsfiles.googlepages.com/3.jpg Ok these are just for the lol's... I saw the phrase "Scout-Sniper" on bottom of first page... so that was all the reason i needed http://wolfsfiles.googlepages.com/lol_1.jpg http://wolfsfiles.googlepages.com/lol_2.jpg OMFG!!!!! read bottom of first page... "exact details of which are classified - is apparently able to connect the rifle into the local sentry gun matrix, allowing the Scout-Sniper to redirect sentry gun firing arcs when in hot contact." Hmm that's a bit like my idea lol
Sigh, please play different servers more often before making an opinion. the training server has normal res output and multipliers. on money, you don't ever strain off the research path your using unless the enemy gains something that you need some sort of special anti-rail armor for....(what could it be) if you strain off your path for something like we all know bio ml will only ever work against infantry... and std armor. your team will definantly lose, giving the enemy the advantage of DU/HE mediums or DualRailheavy/1rail1HE heavies, possibly throwing some DU in there... biomg/HE medium for nf, HE/Missleboat heavies or BioMG/Missleboats. LONG before you get there, all because some noob wanted bioMG. The point im trying to say is, an experienced team and there comm will go for artillery some times, no comm would dare go for artillery with 5 "bignosednoobs" on each team. its ALL a matter of strategy.
Uhm u mean like one shell instead of 4? Well than you could give the scout a mortar instead, its the same
While I love Enemy Territory, that wouldn't exactly fit the scout. Although really, it would be nice if the scout's abilities and the "death from above" in the rest of the game worked together better. Right now, nobody really uses the scout to scout for arty or mortar; it's too easy to use them without it. When aircraft bombers are added, I assume it'll be the same way. Perhaps... 1. Scout markers should cause targets to take more damage from mortar / arty (you spotted their weak point, or whatever.) 2. Killing a scout-marked target with either should award the killer an extra point. 3. In addition to the existing systems, when you successfully hit a scout-marked target with either, you should get immediate feedback ("marked target hit!" displayed on your screen or something.) This would be very useful. But really... mortar doesn't have long enough range for this to be useful (you can nearly always see who you're firing at anyway), while once arty arrives it barely matters (people just spam it.) Maybe earlier-game arties, as suggested in another thread, would help this... making the mortar more of a long-ranged weapon instead of the close-to-mid weapon it is now would help, too, so people using it have to rely more on scouts than they do at the present.
How about call in 1 shell of white phosphorus (to destroy infantry) or anti-personal-mine-dropping-round (to deny enemy vehicle / infantry access)... (their can also be a regular high ex type round for destroying a mine field) and a fragmentation round for large splash damage and a nuke round, or a electro-magnetic-pulse round for disabling turrets(and vehicles/buildings to maybe) [it blows in the air slamming to plates together or something which is a way to make a high power magnetic pulse, short of using a nuke ] in an area... o and my favorite a smoke-grenade-artillery round for smoking a large area fast (i think white phosphorus is used for making smoke also but the effects can be split up to two different rounds). If you hit a tank with one of the anti-tank rounds mentioned, then it should blow the tank up... that's the difference from the grenadier. It's also like a sniper-rifle in a way... where 1 accurate shot = 1 kill (or many kills in the case of some of these special purpose shells lol). It's not like the grenadier can kill a tank with 1 rocket or 1 mine or 1 mortar, but for a scout... all his weapons are precision and lethal and surgically accurate so this makes sense. A grenadier should just be a rifleman with a grenade launcher on his rifle actually lol. It would also be interesting to see what happens when 1 team relies heavily on tactics involving heavy tank assaults, and the other team relies on a few scouts to do a light weight (but very versatile and destructive attack). Hey a scout can call in arti on a resource tower and level it way faster then a engineer can run to it and decon it... so scouts can destroy (and observe, and defend themselves, and give the team options (i.e. a arti smoke screen can really be useful), and calling in arti on the enemy vf is equally useful), engineers can build, and riflemen do small unit rifle work/support (riflemen are today more useless then scouts... except on maps like escort... their weapons are basically for defense of themselves where they wait for a com to make tanks) and grenadiers drive vehicles because their to afraid to blow up on a mine. (although i always go engineer when driving for ammo and repairs). My point is... all of it fits... scouts aren't useless in this scheme... and also in this scheme a team can loose because they don't have scouts... i.e. a scout can level a rt fast with artillery and a enginner is needed to build... if you streamline your forces to rely on specialized infantry and tactics then you can overcome the enemies vehicle-only assault with ease. The best thing is the scout doesn't need orders from the com (or someone to shoot arti for him) to be effective or for arti to arrive. And if they get the ability to laser targets for a nearby missle launcher to fire indirectly at, then their relying on something the team would of built already. Imagine... it's early in the game and you find the enemy trying to ninja up a barracks and walls at the middle of the map... theirs a scout nearby who lasers the enemy engineers for arti... (this is 10 minutes into the game, theirs no vf)... here comes the rain! Boom. Area secure, riflemen and engineers of your team show up to clear the area (because the enemy is bound to come back to try and save their buildings). Another twist on this... the enemy has many turrets built, so you call in the magnetic-pulse round to disable them... your team rushes... at some point your next shell is a smoke round to obsecure the area (or maybe a arti round on incoming tanks). The scout alone can't hold the area, but he can support the teams attack. EDIT: ya this talks about generating high magnetic fields (1000T)...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnet read the bottom about "Exploding electromagnets" Wonder what kind of magnetic field strength a nuke can generate lol
