Look at your map for a sec, those 3 center refs, you know how hard it is to keep those to begin with? If you assume a 2base setup, forward base on the cliff, you can effectively secure 4 refs right there, Depending on where you push forward, you can cut off the enemies resources, without even using a scout. Why even have a jeep with scout, if you can take a tank and destroy all those refs just as easily, and even kill some inf and other tanks in the meanwhile. This isn't a new issue. And everyone saying how this isn't tested, how much testing does it need to know that a building dies in a minute? Did you know that a scout in a jeep can't jump over built walls? It's surprising nobody is even getting creative by blocking off their refs, or doing double forward base push, which on isle will allow you to secure 7 nodes, without much effort to fend off scouts. Also stop putting the 8 seconds up as a fact, it doesn't take 8 seconds to kill a building, it takes 10 seconds for him to respawn, it might take him 8 seconds to walk up to a vf, but it definitely does not take him 8 seconds to kill a building, unless the building was at 10% health, and even then it would take him more than 8 seconds considering he has to get out of his jeep first. Fear the change? Does any of you ever play an RTS? Because I don't recall any rts games where you can expect to fend off units without sending any troops there. That's right, it's different than not being able to stop a scout in a jeep, or not feeling like chasing after a scout in a jeep. I think it might just be better to remove the armor from jeeps, because that seems to be the real problem, if you take the following things into account: 1. Scout needs to hide when in the vicinity of turrets, jeeps can bypass these. 2. Jeeps can easily drive past loads of mls and tanks. Let's go beyond this, lets say the problem with the scout is that it's almost impossible to find him when he's fully hidden, this is the real issue, the scout sabbing your building isn't nearly as annoying as a scout being hard to find, even with enhanced senses. So, I propose 2 things, jeeps don't need armor, they're cheap transport. Commander needs to be notified of sabs, minimap icons could as well switch color. Wouldn't that fix a lot more than just nerfing sabotage to useless levels? Because that's what it is, useless, nobody uses it for the half damage, and it's easily fixed while a scout actually has to spend a lot of time getting into your base and remaining undetected. That's one unit being completely useless. See it like this, scout sabotage keeps the game fresh, map control can change in an instant, it's a sneak attack that requires vigilance. Things you leave undefended, and neglect, mostly areas devoid of any activity, can easily be taken down by scouts.
Im in between on this. I think that the old sabotage values were too low and the ones now are too high. Something in the middle would suit fine. As it been pointed, the real issue is the complete invisibility ability. YES in your base you can change your class to a scout and get enhanced senses ( a tactic i use frequently) but what about those non-base refinery. When you are aware that they are sabbed, you get to the refinery. If the scout is still there invisible, you can't just switch to a scout class and spy-check. You have to melee or shoot the ground, you are an easy target for the scout waiting for you. If you melee , a few surprise bullet and you are done. If you shoot, a reload and you are done too. I'd prefer a lower starting damage with a higher over-time damage. Another annoying thing is when the scout is still there and you begin to repair the structure. He can easily destroy the work you've just done while still being invisible. What about a small visual indicator ( a bit like the engi tool sparks) or simply making the scout a bit visible while sabbing? If an enemy is around, he would need to choose his time to sabotage the building or else he'll give out his position. Conclusion : it is really annoying that an infantry(only 1) can do a lot more damage than you can repair. Even when a tank is attacking a turret or a building, with the engi tool you can hold out the building waiting for backup. Maybe forbid sabotaging while an engi is repairing on a building?
And one big problem is the smoke. Building are often smoking for no reason. Until the smoke doesn't work probably, please mark building which are sabotaged in the same way like damaged building.
yeah, ONE unit being able to change map control in an instant is a PROBLEM. And even if you are vigilant they can sab radar vf and rax in a fortified base with few problems in mid to late game. My suggestion? Give them shaped charge or satchel charges or some type of placed explosive, maybe just a timed block of c4 to use as anti-building, and have sabotage disable turrets and possibly some anti-tank function. Sabotage as it stands is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to balance...
I don't see how you would want it balanced, it's done by a weak infantry dude who can get run over by a jeep. Tanya is a similar unit, can take out a whole base if you're not paying attention. An apc filled with engis in cnc can take over your whole base and sell it. Or you could put one in a barracks and spawn even more engis to take over the rest. How is it balanced? Simple, its a weak unit. The points made in my post above still stand, IMO it's not really the sabotage.
Are you joking? Let's look at those. First, the far-lower-left and far-upper-right ones are inside your starting bases. If someone can just walk up to them and sab them, then let them collapse without anyone on your team noticing, you're doing something wrong. You also circled the res node on that tiny little island that is only accessible by one bridge. Hello? That's the single-hardest res node on the map to reach. A gren, of course, can mortar-snipe it from a distance... an engineer can toss grenades at it from below. But a scout has to get up close, which is a bit of a problem when the bridge is so easily destroyed. The others are near places where people are likely to set up bases. (Aside from the center ones, which are supposed to be almost impossible to hold.) Yes, you know what this means? You actually have to work on holding territory. You can't just slap a res node down and call it a day. But this was always the case; grens, engineers, and tanks were always able to take down undefended nodes quickly. This just lets the scout do what everyone else has been able to do since day one.
... Ok what the hell, you've obviously never even played this map before so where are you pulling this crap from? There's a fucking ladder to that "untouchable island". And the "in your base" has little affect when you can reach it from multiple directions. The "base" on this map is one of two areas, either ON the hill where you start, or below it. Not both, and sure as hell not all 3. Grenadiers can destroy nodes quickly? Nine mining no longer works sorry. And it takes what, 8 seconds to sab and then let it die? How many mortars can you fire in the time it takes to sab? 2? 3? Not even close to enough to kill. How long have you even been playing this game? Or do you play only scout and literally have no idea how the other classes play? I can't run around in ANY other class and kill more than one node "quickly". This is ridiculous...
Can we PLEASE stop the ad hominem bullshit here, it's getting fairly annoying to have to read through several insults before you get to the point the poster wants to make. And the island referred to by the above poster is the the eastern-middle ref which indeed only has the bridge to access it and not the south-eastern ref which I assume you are referring to
Yeah I had the wrong island. It's still the same thing, as if we who feel something is imbalanced are wrong and find a way around it. Without even a seconds thought to the fact that the "fix" might have been a tad bit overboard. Many of the arguments are "just do this" and even in those cases the scout has easy ways around them. It's one thing to balance the scout, it's another to completely buff the hell out of one ability to the point where it can easily be abused by anyone who knows what they're doing on most maps. *shrug* Just like any change I'll play it, but I hope scouts continue to be worked on and the sabotage ability is at least considered for change once the other issues with scouts are also adjusted.
Basically in my view, its a sabotage not destroy skill. However quickly they can do it, they shouldnt be able to destroy the building from full health, perhaps not at all. it should only take a percentage of health off plus the other effects it has.
"Scouts are weak" Scouts are no weaker than an engineer. In fact, in combat, Mashav who pretty much strictly stays scout, dominates the player information board. Granted, Mashav is good as fuck, but even me who plays scout almost never has gotten a considerable amount of kills, sabs, and even sticky stunned the enemy com vehicle for a preemptive vehicle rush. Scouts are not under powered, they just have useless skills overall. Roflmen, excellent infantry on infantry combat, and their stickies do virtually unrivaled damage to vehicles (EXCEPT THEY HAVE TO GET CLOSE ENOUGH). Gren's, only good ones can take out large groups of players, they have a good all around purpose. Grens can take out vehicles, infantry, and buildings, but they're mediocre at it in comparison to the more specialized classes (Riflmen/Engi). Engineer's are the most useful support class, they can fix buildings, build walls, turrets, drop ammo, cameras/radar, revive, heal; these guys can do it all, but they're almost useless at fighting vehicles, and only decent at infantry combat. Scouts? They can go invisible, they can sab buildings, and they have sticky stun nades, flashes, and smokes. They are every bit as good at fighting infantry as an engineer, but they can't do anything to vehicles really. A scout is really kind of useless, and only in general promotes a "lone wolf" game style. One, their original Sab was useless over all, I agree that over time it should be able to destroy a building. But I would like some kind of rate where an initially sabbed building stays at it's full health, and over time exponentially takes more damage from being sabbed. On top of this the effects should remain the same, half health, half armor, see what the enemy can see, etc etc etc. The only one other useful thing a scout can do is hide up in the enemy base and use his binoculars to say "I NEED ARTILLERY FIRE AT THESE COORDINATES." Of which is generally useless, IMO, I've never seen a team use it for any other reason than the commander to give "attack this target" commands. The whole point of something being sabotaged is so that no one initially notices that whatever has been sabotaged is not running properly. I think that because of this it's okay for a sabbed building not to pop up as a certain color on the mini map. But the smoking buildings problem needs to be fixed. Jeeps aren't the problem either. Jeeps are fine, they can take a plate of armor, and a relatively fast engine. If you hit a mine, you're still pretty boned unless it's composite or reactive. And if your jeeping it, you're going to be noticed by someone. Someone mentioned that an APC full of engi's can take down an entire base. Well fucking a, it's EIGHT engineers, all working together to destroy and entire base. Eight engineers should god damn well be able to ass rape a base IF they can make it in. One scout shouldn't be able to entirely wipe out a base because no one knows it's being attacked. You can't tell with the smoke bug, and most the time you can't find a decent scout. Even with enhanced sense's you can't always find them, it takes a lot of experience and diligence to find decent scouts sabbing shit. Not to mention a scout can keep sabbing things until you've got no charge left in your calc. An engineer has to sneak WITHOUT any invisibility, drop an ammo box, and either hide in tree's or set up a shit ton of walls, nade spam the hell out of a building, and then in some cases even decon it while they nade it. Taking a building down as an engineer is still harder IMO than as a scout who is walking around a base sabbing shit an eventually somethings going to die because one engineer can't keep up with it or always find the scout even if they DO switch to scout with senses. This subject sucks
I don't really. On some maps i do go scout and screw around with melee, but i could do that with any class. I don't think I've yet to play a round as an actual scout in 2.23(besides escort)
I like the knocking the buildings HP down a % over time. Like barracks would lose health til it has 25% left. that would make it quick work for a tank or anything that wanted to finish it, but still not completely obliterate it.
Dizzy, you're missing they key fact that SCOUTS CAN NOT GET ATTACKED BY TURRETS. Everyone forgets this ;-;
If scout is so overpowered, why am i not seeing more of them on the scoreboard? Plenty of grens, engies and rifleman, but only the occasional scout. This isn't a rhetorical question btw. I'm honestly wondering how something can be overpowered and unpopular at the same time. Maybe because they're pretty much useless for anything other than sabbing atm. And although sabbing might be be powerful the class as a whole is still severely lacking and thus unpopular. Still, sabbing can be countered and far more easily than two or three engineers that will lay waste to a base in less than 2 minutes. So might as well leave it so scouts can have some fun being useful for something. Until a proper role for them comes around at least. And as an aside, I've yet to see any games be decided by scout sabbing.
You only need one or two scouts to sab an enemy base. Scouts don't get good points for sabbing, they're not high up.
2 scouts working together can make half your team (5 people) go on a chocolate egg search for utter minutes and still not find any scout and have engineers being meeleed 1 by 1 while trying to repair the buildings yea i was com, i've seen it happen and i raged... we were losing on the front anyway, but still was some pain in the *ss having those bloody transparent cockroaches with a baseball bat in your base
