To prevent Mashav's thread becoming overrun, I want to open this one where we can think about how the idea of the scout needs changing, without walking on how the scout is currently. The Issue with the Scout itself is how the class is presented. Is it scout, sniper or sabouteur? Is it all of these or none? When we look at the idea of a scout, we run into this wall: Solutions towards making the Scout more scout-like, and improve it's reconnaisance abilities are mainly centered around the idea of a passive revealing aura or something like this: This still doesn't solve the problem we have which is that the Scout is a powerful tool when used specifically, but one cannot use the class for a whole map without being useless in certain situations. Other classes have this problem, but because they all combat a large area of Empires by nature when they are useless it is a small part of their role. [Just to qualify, I mean a grenadier is useful against tanks, but is also pretty useful against infantry and buildings too. A rifleman is useful against infantry, but can be useful to an extent against buildings and vehicles.] Scouts have a small useful area - i.e. saboutage, and a useless large area - i.e. everything else. With the advent of the shotgun, the scout will become an anti-infantry unit to some extent, but there is nothing to differentiate the class other than saboutage, at that point - and having two "light" classes (rifleman&scout) is not a good idea in any game. I think we may need to rethink the scout class from ground up, exploring all the options in such an open game as empires. We need to think differently than we have before, because "patching" the Scout may not be an option forever. For a long time people have been saying to get rid of the scout too and just plonking everything into the Rifleman class, but I think we can do better. Why not try designing our own class to fit into Empires with a new distinct role? Aren't we the one's that know the game best? Can't we do this simple thing? tl:dr The point of this thread is to create a new fourth class which will inherit the scout weapons and abilities. In short, to Rebuild the scout class as something different.
The first point that we need to address, as well as the reason for my massive dislike of scouts: emp_recruit: "im going to go snipe!" me: /rage In its current form, the sniper rifle sucks. The most common reason for the pathetic amount of damage is to prevent 1-hit kills from across most of the map. Do we want to deal with a class that can snipe? if so keep the rifle and increase the damage to allow this. If we take the idea of a scout litraly: a soldier performing reconnaissance duties, why not increase there ability to provide information to the team. Give the scout the ability to place tags on important targets, say the enemy CV and the 4 tanks that massing in base for a rush. Nothing kills a rush faster than giving the opposing team a chance to prepare for it. This will give the scout something to do, as well as an achievable goal for the game. The class skills for the scout need to be reworked, specifically hide. With hide, it takes a long time to get from one place to another, as you have to stay prone. New skill set: Fade: what hide is now, but make it a passive skill Hide: Once hidden, you can get up and run for a short time while remaining hidden. Think of this as a short duration squad hide. This is only a starting idea, what do people think so far.
Nothing you've said is even remotely new, so its not long to ponder over it. Scout rifle as a sniper rifle is a yes/no decision, but keeping it in is not. It can be reworked to not be a primary weapon or as a utility tool or it can go back to being a sniper. Some form of innate hide/moving hide is a common suggestion that I endorse. Right now its main problems in going forward are what specifics and sabotage, both of which have also had many suggestions. Also, the lack of interest for scout change among the devs and the split of ideas among the community have hampered progress. As for Scouting scout... The main reasons a "Scouting" scout doesn't work is Time, Distance, Scalability, Availability of information and Useful vs Fun. Time: Because information about something that occurs only a short time later isn't all that useful. Finding out what research the enemy is getting is pointless when you can't stop it and you'd know when its done anyways. For time to no longer be a reason, there must be a lot of it (e.g. games are 10 times slower) Distance: Because seeing something far away that can get to you in about 20 seconds isnt useful. The size of the maps isn't nearly big as it needs to be for information to be useful, a rush can cross the map in about a minute. For distance to no longer be a reason, the maps must be much larger (e.g. Maps 10X longer) Scalability: Information gathering doesn't scale well with the amount of people, just like ammo. You don't need 5 engis with ammoboxes, why would you need 5 scouts to tell you there's someone there? In order for Scalabiilty to no longer be an issue there needs to be a lot more information to process (e.g. 100+ players per side) Availability of information: In order to have an entire class deal with information, you would have to seriously restrict the flow of information to everyone else. You can see just as far as scouts can and can tell people just as easily. Availability of information will always be an issue, mainly due to the ability to chat with anyone. Useful vs Fun: If you do make it so that the "Info Scout" is useful, you've essentially created a second "commander situation". You need one to function as a team, but someone may not always want to play one. Edging out a hole from the other classes that must be filled by a certain class is adding for the sake of adding. In order for useful vs fun to no longer be an issue, the class must be fun to play, and not be required to function. I think it would be really fucking awesome if we could fit something like that in, but It doesn't fit in empires as we know it and it would no longer be empires we're dealing with if it did.
Currently, the engineer has many defensive combat support capabilities. Scout needs skills that accentuate his offensive combat support capabilities. Scout should share some abilities of Engineer such as revive, albeit not as powerful, possibly with some sort of means of ammunition distribution. Scout is potentially very effective in supporting infantry in a combat context, with skills like enhanced senses.
exactly my thoughs, scout should act as a squad support and a close range fighter. Concs ,smokes and stuns would fit in tht role just fine. Sab would stay but it would loose its DoT and halving buildings hp abilities, but in return it would greatly decrease buildings defence (50% more damage taken, negative sab effect for diff building stay ) hide removed (its really useless aside sneaking past turrets) scouts can't be targetet along with other units (but one scout can be marked) scouts with radar immunity are not targetet by turrets sr either removed or changed into somekind of pistol slot tracer gun that would make enemies appear (camera like targets) both on mini and on hud in short: -everything that encourages scout rambo and scout pussy camper is removed -scout becomes an important teamplayer who must stay with other guys i don't fucking care he is named scout ,name doesn't matter, role does
The name would probably be changed to fit the new role. Okay guys, personally, I think it would be good if the scout had the heal upgrade, not engies, and yes some ammo scavenge/packet ability would be good, although difficult to work in. But these are things we know, can we think of anything different? Nick, the scout rifle is going out or staying crippled. The shotgun will replace it. Hide being on a stamina-type bar instead of as a crouch only skill might be good, but does lead pretty easily to abuse too. What we want is completely different things that won't take from other classes. We've had hundreds of threads doing that or making the same things in different ways, let's see what's missing in empires and add that major function to the 4th class. Let's see if there's actually something that we don't have that could fill a class without rebalancing
We don't have shotguns, and those would need balancing. ;| And as I've said before, there is no reason to remove the scout rifle. There's good in making it better though. Sabotage definitely needs a rework. Scout's shouldn't kill buildings without standing on them. Radar Stealth, Vehicle Speed, is useless for him. Buff/Replace.
i believe the scout rifle has only future in non-infantry combat what about having it overheat vehicles or something? like if you have a scout or 3 shooting over and over with the rifle on a med it overheats and can be finished off by something else i really have no idea if this would work
Ounin, have you actually written out "your scout" somewhere? Because from what I'm getting from your fragments of info, you basically want the scout to just be a toned down engi with a couple of differences just because you want it...
If you remove hide i strongly suggest you should incorporate "turret invisibility" or something, basically if you crawl or duck turrets cant see you
hmm maybe crawling without skill would work againts mgs, but with skill both mgs( if running )and mls (if in vehicle)would ignore the scout?
Engies need riflemen and grenadiers for protection Riflemen and grenadiers need engies for cover/ammo/health Grenadiers need riflemen for protection against infantry Riflemen need grenadiers for protection against vehicles/turrets ==> everyone sticks together Conclusion: all 3 classes should benefit heavily from scouts nearby, and scouts should be dependant on the other 3 classes First i'd like to say that i've gotten used to the features from the scout class. If any of them would be entirely removed, i would definately miss them. I also still don't like the idea of messing with other classes, just to improve the scout. I do believe it's in the communities power to come up with a good 4th class without changing the other 3. What i consider to be one of the many possible total solutions: Problem with sabotage: it can be usefull but it's so damn slow Personal favorite solution: scout can only sabotage turrets and the radar Reasons: 1) I find no joy in sabotaging armories etc, knowing everyone is fighting while i'm proning from building to building without achieving much. 2) If an enemy scout keeps sabotaging our buildings, it just makes me lose time trying to find him and/or repair the buildings while i'd much prefer to go to the front. It annoys me. Many don't even take the time to repair it anymore. 3) Spawning with half health or getting ammo at half speed is annoying. Same goes with vehicles. 4) I use hide a lot to sabotage turrets so my team can pass. I've often waited for a scout to sab a turret before moving up myself. This is teamwork. We stick closely together. He goes ahead from time to time to take out an obstacle and at every turret we meet up again cause he needs my protection and i need him to take out turrets so i want to keep him alive. 5) I'd still like to have 1 building that can be sabotaged, without annoying the other team, while providing great benefits to the team. So i'd like a scout to be able to sabotage the radar still showing their units to us while also showing our units to them (so they don't find it out too easily). This does not affect (read annoy) the enemy and the scout is doing his job: spotting things. Only 1 scout has to infiltrate a base for this and after sabbing one building he'll return to the front again while those fighting at the front can now see what's coming at them. Problem with scout rifle: While it certainly can be usefull, it tends to make you go solo Possible solution: Give the scout rifle very few ammo Reasons: He has to stay close to his squad either for ammo from engies or cover from riflemen. Therefor he'll actually be sniping people that are close enough to our forces to be a threat. He'll be taking out those annoying players that the riflemen and grenadiers can't seem to deal with (small windows etc). With any other weapon he'll be staying closer to his squad anyway since smg's are not so very accurate. Somewhat related: giving the scout the ability to drop ammoboxes will make him go more solo, instead of less. Hide: Works pretty well for me. It often saved my life on the front. I often used it to save other peoples lives on the front. It only slows down gameplay when you use it to prone all the way to a base while visiting each and every building there time after time. Concussion nades: Effect should last at least twice as long. With that it would be perfectly usefull, to the scout as much as to any other class. It should last long enough so a rifleman can run up towards a turret and throw stickies at it, or for an engy to jump on it to decon it. ==> teamwork Smoke nades: it's more annoying than usefull imo, i'd rather have scouts to have stun stickies or concussion nades Stun stickies: Too hard to hit something and too quick to disappear to be usefull ==> longer throwing range and longer lasting effect Vehicle speed and radar stealth: In a vehicle i'm never a scout. Radar stealth might be usefull but since i can't see its immediate effect (don't know how far it hides me / if i'm manually spotted by someone / etc...) i won't feel any better with it so i'll never use it. I have no suggestions for the skills really Scouting roles: 1 Passive scouting role: While it looked promising at first, it has the problem that 2 scouts in a squad won't reveal more than 1. The scout would still be the class people would only need/want 1 of. 2 Active scouting role: Instead i think it's better that they can spot vehicles and infantry like everyone else, but that they stay visible on the minimap a lot, lot longer. What about several minutes? Since i've seen people complain about commander group attack orders, perhaps that could be removed and the scouts could become its replacement. Comms would only be able to give attack orders for individual units by clicking on them, not by dragging a box over an area. Since he can't be everywhere having scouts nearby to help you with that would be pretty nice. I wouldn't make spotting units as easy as it is with the Flower menu, but have it require the binoculars or something. He'd be scouting ... from within the group. I could use people like that in my squad. I'd send him to a point 50 meters ahead of me, then we'd rejoin him there, and he'd move again.
I say we combine the concussion grenade, with the suggested changes, and the sticky stun grenade, keeping it as it is, using the throwing distance of the normal grenade. after that, we remove the smoke grenade, leaving the scout with said combo grenade. I suggest this so people won't be dismayed when they find out they brought the wrong grenade with them and they can remain hidden and stun vehicles at the same time.
Changing the other parts of the game to make the 4th class fit isn't required, but likely it will be much better if room is made. For those who want a "Scouting Scout" removing cameras, radars and comm targets would defiantly make them more useful. For my suggestion, all that I want is seismic throw distance nerf, dig in buff and ML buff. Small things like this can open up large amounts of space. The main reason sabotage is so unbalanced is that it has no good delivery system. The sabotage itself is actually fast, its the getting there that's slow. If sabotage had no DoT but could be delivered easily, then it would encourage teamwork like a motherfucker. Removing the ability to sabotage anything but turrets and a radar means that the scout is used less for teamwork. Sabotaging turrets is a noble idea to help teamwork, but the slowness of getting to them means that you're usually better off with someone else in your group just killing the damn thing. Also, if your group actually gets to an enemy base, you've taken away one of the most powerful teamwork mechanics in the game by eliminating the ability to 50% the rax. Once again, thats the delivery system. And anyways, the only difference between what you want and what is, is that the option to sabotage the armoury is taken away. Essentially, you could have just ignored that armoury. This is the main problem with DoT on sabotage. The constant need for repair means that you do have to go around and keep finding the scout. Before when this was done with the actual balanced DoT(.33 per second rather then 1.33) you could actually ignore it. Your buildings would be reduced in function if you didn't repair them, but they wouldn't up and die on you. This is also a problem with sabotage right now being a play style rather then a tool. If its so annoying, then repair the building. Its a useful utility that gives an advantage to the enemy team. Using sabotage to help your teamates is a good use of teamwork, but once again, the delivery system stops it from being relevant in most groups. This would still be incredibly annoying. The DoT killing your radar/turrets will still override any other effect of the sabotage in annoyingness factor. Also the scout doesn't have a job right now, thats its main problem. Trying to create a job after the name is one way, but saying that it is already his job is just incorrect. Likely, I'm guessing that we'll just see more scouts with ammo upgrade. Also, that still doesn't solve the other problem with the scout rifle that it begets more scouts, because of the inability to deal with them in the long open spaces empires has. And yes, giving someone the ability to give themselves a resource (health, ammo, repairs) does give the ability to go off. It slows down game play whenever you try to advance anywhere with it. Changing this to allow more freedom of movement would speed up teamwork and is one of the possible ways to give a good delivery system for sabotage. I think this was already planned... I think a couple months ago drag said he either put it in or was going to. Also, the scout can also just run up and sabotage it by himself when its conced. They're rather useless yes, and in 90% of situations you'll need a different grenade, but they have some limited use. There's not much reason to touch these at all, unless you want to buff them (one suggestion I remember was that the smoke cloud drains stamina Longer lasting effect maybe, but the throw range is the whole point of stickys. You get a powerful effect at the cost of range. Even with this, plently of tanks are killed by normal stickys and stuns can help when you're with your team This is also one of the big things, the abandonment of classes to non tank driving. Rifles and scouts are almost never seen driving tanks. As for the skills themselves, I've said vehicle speed goes to 20% speed, +20% reload and + 50% rearm. For radar stealth, I've said immunity to cameras, radars, comm targets and turrets (hence why the buff to mls to make my scout more useful) on foot and in a vehicle. You had better be talking about scouting as a possible role and not as the scout's possible roles. Making the scout "scout" is only one of many ideas that have come up. Pretty much. As I've already explained, information gathering is usually tedious and required to function. Making the scout required "just because" means that you're not just making room for him by edgeing out other things, you're just downright trying to force it in. Also, you make the comment of "50 meters ahead of me". Unless its the very start of the game, likely thats where the front line should be. Having the scout be that far ahead of you also means that he's going to have to be hiding along slowly in order to not get seen by the other scouts. Unless of course they actually have to target the person they're aiming at, which means they're useless anyways. You probably should then. Trying to deduce what you're trying to work towards when all we have is scattered fragments is just annoying. This reminds me that I need update/rewrite mine...
Dont forget that if you want to give the scout tons of passive scouting skills the player needs something to do or it is totaly boring while he hides in a corner and secretly scouts. I personaly want a more aggressive attack class. Maybee give the rifleman more armor (needs to be visible) and other defensive skills so he can soak up bullets for the rest of the squad and the scout will be the damage dealer. OR in short make the Rifleman more like the TF2 heavy and the scout combat skills more like the TF2 pyro.
My view is that he should be made an assault specialist, like a counter weight to the Engineer that is a defensive specialist. I really don't think that it is that much that stops the scout to be used in this way now, except player mentallety, i have used scout with smg2+accuracy upgrade+concusion grenade to help in assaults to a great effect. Just remove the sniper and give shotgun, alternative give shotgun turn sniper into vehcile heat weapon. The primary changes i want is to give him defuse mines as inherit and radar+camera. Seriosly that fills the passive scout info need and also give less things to the engineer class which i feel is a good thing. Also buff his concusion grenade so he can make a time window for his squad to charge in. Sabotage is a good teamweapon, a scout sabaotage an enemy rax in a few seconds and righ after the engineer throws his grenades and gren uses mortar and the rax is gone with teamwork, similar vs towers. The hide skill could be turned into a neotokyo hide, a hide that you can run with and is dependent on your background but also gives you turret immunity, make it dependent on stamina. Also why do you want to change only the scout class? Everything in the game is balanced to each other. Like the comm wallhax hampers effective use of scout smoke and the engineer radar+camera hampers the scout info gathering aspect. To improve his assault capabilities he should have the ammo boxes while the engineer keeps heal and revive and the scout should get camera and the engineer keep radar. Also the grenades to long fuses nerfs grenades which inturn nerfs all the good scout grenade (we have discussed this on the forum and it is beyond me why this is not fixes, it would solve the long throwing distance), and that the engineer imba overpowered seismic nerfs the use of sabotage (this we have also discussed and reached semi consencus to only allow seismic OR grenade in generall refill at armouries wich would also buff the use of armories adn remove nade spam!). So changing the scout very much effects everything else.
