Sabbing refs should gradually reduce HP to 1.

I'm still with: "If you want anything more then the 50% health and decrease in the buildings performance, it should be on a skill. If its on a skill, you can do what you want with it."

Its closer to 2 1/2 mins. about 40 seconds to sab everything, and even if the very last thing you sab is a rax (which you would probably sab first) It would still only take about 2:20 to kill everything, and only about 1:10 to start have radars and refs dieing.

 

You put turrets near refs surely? At least one of those turrets will hit a bit. Any jeep has to get passed your defenses first, sure that happens often by most of my team usually calls it, if I don't, and then a man-hunt ensues. Keeping an eye on refs is important on any map, whether due to scouts or not, it makes less than no difference because chances are someone's exploiting you focusing at a point to slip passed.

This is not a great big problem, it's still a problem, just not as big as you're making out.

I like the idea of saboutage-focus skills. That gives a lot you could do with it.

I wasn't sure of the timing. I know it's really short because i've had whole bases die even when i've seen the first building saboutaged, and before anyone can spawn.

It's not like I don't have the frustration of everything being sab'd...that's my point. It's bad, really bad, but I wouldn't want to take away the most useful thing a scout can do by himself - i.e. take out refs. Everything else, you can nerf if you want.

 

As I said in my first post, these are the times:

1:42 for rax/vf
1:04 for ref/radar/repairpad
42 for armoury/turret
all including sab time of 4 seconds

But ya, I'm against solo killing pretty much anything besides people for the scout, unless there's a skill involved, and even then there should be a warning.

 

This.


The problem is, ikalx, the amount of effort required to recover a ref is more than the effort needed to sab it.

Look at the big picture:

Scout:
- Hold down e for 4-5 seconds.
- Move along, knowing full well that the ref will be destroyed in a matter of seconds.

Team the refinery belongs to:
- Doesn't even know the ref has been sabbed OR destroyed after being sabbed
- Refs cost 100 res each
- Requires a player to go and build the ref
- Possibly requires defence turrets 75 res a pop.
- Even these turrets can be sabbed easily without warning.
- If there is no resistance there, the comm will most likely have to go and build it, putting him at risk and delaying any team requests.

Also, I think that each team should only be allowed one scout. Might make another thread about this suggestion.

 

That's a good point. I don't really have an answer to that, except that saboutage should take longer anyway, and maybe refs should be cheap...like other people have said before.

 

I like both ideas.

A cheap ref say 50 and longer sab time say, 10-20 seconds or so, depending of the building getting sabed.

 

only read 1st page or so but how about something in the mid; sab can take ALL buildings (except turrets) down to 1%, and a scout has no way to deal dmg to buildings, but at 1% the building stops working and the com/team gets a message that a building has stopped functioning.

 

I like how most suggestions have titles demanding change : /

 

that statement coming from you? lol

 

I know I do it too, but I now see the the humor in it.

 

Big points are
1) longer sab time to destroy (i.e. less DoT)
2) notification when something is destroyed


Personally I liked the older sab when it just reduced effectiveness. For refs, you could go 10minutes without realizing you had a few ref that were only outputting 1/2 their res. Some of the other effects, though, were... interesting.

Something to note, it should take about the same amount of time to restore something as it did to sab it. So, if we do the "goes down to 1%" idea, will recycling it happen quickly enough or will an engi have to rebuild it all the way?

 

It's a good way of putting a point across quickly, I didn't intend for it to be humorous :p

 

Sorry but...

Sabbing is about where it should be. I've noticed times where cameras don't detect scouts, and that's what actually needs fixing. It should also warn that the structure is sabotaged, PROVIDED the scout doesn't have the silencing skill -- which should negate that, strategically. It'd make the skill more useful.

Your 'key points' are a somewhat overblown attempt to nerf what is basically the scout's only remaining strength in this mod. It's true that it only takes five seconds, but requiring very little skill? Infiltrating a well-built base in Empires is no small task, among one of the toughest things one can do.

At any time, somebody might see your cloak mirage, and it all goes to shit. You have to be very good to get in and start taking things down. And the moment you're noticed, you'll be tracked and dead. So you have to be fast -- when you do get in -- to do any kind of serious damage that two engineers can't recover in a matter of thirty seconds or so.

If they nerf sabotage, scouts might as well be removed from the mod entirely. That's the only remaining reason to keep them.

 

There's...you know...the scout rifle..

Refs need a resist to sab. END O' STORY.

 

The amount of people I know who can use the scout rifle with any good proficiency (that is, bodybag about as many people as a good person with Rifleman) can be counted on half of one hand. I prefer the SMG personally when I do get the urge to scout, because a lot of the battles when you're detected are up close. The accurate SMG has saved my ass numerous times in such situations.

A scout using the rifle is almost assuredly not focused on using his best skill in Sabotage, which can cost a sloppy team major resources. Depleting their team's resources is greater in importance than slowly eating their tickets, because it simply leads to victory faster.

As it stands right now, the entire anti-scout discussion is primarily an exercise in desiring to simplify the game ever further. The common thought here seems to be that if the scout is rendered more and more useless, then eventually players will no longer have to worry about what the scout can do. Where does one stop after that, and why should a mod be tailored to people who just want to make things easier on themselves?

Do I like scouts when I'm not the one doing it? Of course not. Do I bitch? Sure. Do I want them nerfed to the point of uselessness? Fuck no.

They're fine as they are. Fix what I addressed above, and then engineers will have a good reason to build cameras.

 

I'd prefer the most valuable building didn't get killed silently in 1minute though.

 

Then protect them -- either in person, or by thinking up anti-scout strategies. Altering the game to suit laziness or lack of adequate tactical response is not a good idea. The reason your refineries die is simple -- people blow them off. "Eh, it's just a refinery blowing up. I know where he is, we can always go over there and get him when I feel like it." "Who cares about a scout, it's all about my glory, and my score!" The majority of people on a team don't pay attention to what's blowing into smithereens until it's something they spawn from or ride things out of, and that's practically a universal truth in Empires.

Do you have any idea how many times I've bitched as commander about losing a single refinery, only to have nobody do anything about it? Should they add a feature where I can force you to go defend my buildings?

 

Hence, the mini-walls walling in refineries becomes useful. But there needs to be some more obvious defense.

 

My point was that players just need to start paying attention, actively responding to threats, and stop top dogging with only a hint of teamplay.

It would also be highly useful if cameras acted as detectors, which they don't at this very moment. That's a positive change to propose.

Enhancing the silence skill is also a positive change, whether to keep your sabotage a secret, to avoid cameras detecting you, etc. Nerfing the shit out of the scout or something is a negative change. We shouldn't be engaged in making proposals to remove or reduce the usefulness of shit that's already in the game, we should be expanding on it.

 

Hexydecimal... This is the second time in empires history that the scout has been based around an unbalanced and lone wolf inspiring mechanic.

Scouts were have never been really been equal with the rest of the classes, and if they keep being based around a single unbalanced thing they never will be.

Sabotage was never originally made with the damage in mind. Sabotage was about disabling, and weakening.

When you speak of this destroying the scout to the point of removal, realise how shallow a class it is without it. By buffing sabotage damage over time by 10 times in 2.23, they once again threw away the rest of the problems of the scout, the possible design space, for one thing so unbalanced that the class seems like its a stable and useful thing.

A mountain among endless pits does not make level terrain.