scout need a purpose. (also HI! )

NO this thread dont suggest C4 hahaha

the scout seems to me pretty useless.

rifleman = infantry
granadier = buildings and vehicles
engeenier = medic, builder, defender, etc. = allrounder.

whats the scouts usage? sniping?
sniping is useless for youre team.

sabotage?
the effect is too small and going fixed in seconds..

now. when the scout whould going throw out the game. no one whould miss him.

but i have a idea:
the scouts ability to spot vehicles and buildings over long distances should be more usefull.

1. the binuculars should, when in zoom level 2. display NO FOG. making him more usefull.
2. i have think of implementing a coop system whit choopers and planes.
mean. in the F menu. you have on the buttom middle screen. a new menu.
"scout".
and in this menu you can select "call in airstrike" or "call in artillery strike"
these should work whit cooperation whit vehicle drivers.

a bomber should have a special weapon. a strong 5-15 big bomb run.
but he cant use it unless a scout have mark the target.

same whit arty. a fast barrage of a strong. spreading shell

practice:

BOMBER

-a scout see a barrack.
-he pull out his binucular and press F
-he select "scout" - "call in bomber"
-the nearest bomber hear the call and a special marking is placed on the
barrack.
- when barrack in sight of bomber a additional mark appear.
- this mark is in the air, and is placed on the best spot to drop the bombs (so all bombs hit the target.)
-- if its a moving target, the mark move whit the target. need some more skill
- when the bomber reach the perfect spot. a "NOW!" is to hear.
- in this moment. the pilot need to press a special key.
- bombs fly.
- if hit, the scouts say automatically "target hit"

ARTILLERY
- a scout see a barrack
- ......
- ...... -"call in artillery"
- all artillerys hear the call
- a marker appear on the HUD of the arty, show the best position and angle to fire.
- the marker only show the "mayor" direction. reaiming is key here. ( it should not go far off. only 2-4 pixels. the range make them to 5-10 meters )
- the scout can give tips whit voice commands. "scout" - "artillery call" - "up"
- if a normal shell hit the target a "now!" is to hear.
- then the arty driver can use the special key.


points:
every kill the bomber/arty do. give the scout 1/2 point. the driver/pilot recive the normal points for kills

pros.
- make the scout usefull
- arty have a better use.
- maybe balance uber-bomber strafes
- teamplay

cons
- lots of coding
- LOTS of coding
- only on lategame


ALSO

hi im new here! make some suggests.

 

Welcome to the forums.

Very nice ideas and the scout is indeed useless, it's funny you posted this now because we're trying to see if we can do something similar, very similar actually.

 

Hi!

This sounds great.
I feel sabotage is crappy. It should do more!

EG
Turret - Attacks own team(Muchless powerful)
Ref - Gives saboutre res
Radar - Shows the enemies research while broken
Repair Pad - Damages tanks!

 

I do like the idea of scout spotting giving aiming guides to support units in the area, this is a pleasant surprise as usually new members suggest stupid things that are mentioned in the sticky, this however is good.

I also think more weapons for the scout to spot things with, like tag grenades or something, a grenade which sticks to vehicles and buildings and which spots the target until removed by a repair pad. would grant a point for every four minutes or so of spotting, so if you manage to hit a tank with it and the tank stays alive for four minutes without visiting a repair pad, you get a point, can be removed by engineer repair tools if you use it on a building or the CV. It's harder to use than most of the other spotting tools but lasts longer, and the hope of getting a point would make scouts use it.

I think one of the best ways to get scouts to do scouting is to give them more ways to do it and make those ways generate as many points as sniping would, but also to make them impossible to do in addition to sniping, so either give them a different primary weapon (I suggested a tag rifle once) or make it so that you have to get close to use them. Scouts do need more incentive to actually scout, I wonder also whether they should get cameras and radars? Perhaps smaller versions of the existing ones too with slightly shorter range but easier to conceal?

 

thanks for the agree here

i have this idea in mind for 2 days now. and i think that could really do it!
but the bomber and arty are both lategame..maybe a.. hmm.. maybe he can sabotage vehicles?

it whould be different as to buildings.it whould damage the tank over time, or tak him.slow him down. and remove the armor on the side from where its sabotaged

so..
the scout go to a tank.

starts sabotaging. on the first seconds the tank cant move. after 3 seconds he can move slowly

when the bar is half full, the first malus starts
he is markt
he move slower (infantry slow )
he overheat faster


when the bar is full, all other malus starts to beginn.
the side from where the sagotage came have no armor more.
damage over time.
tank overheat after 1 shot completely.

to get rid of the maluses he need to go to a repair pod. or a engy repair him (need ca 15 seconds )

other ideas? i mean. whit the support marking have the scout a purpose on lategame.
but on mid game hes useless. bombers and arty is always the last thing to research.
maybe a weak arty in midgame?

also. im not a reall noob.. i have played 1.7...

 

bf 1942 ftw

 

Dont really read the whole thread, im lazy

Make it so that arty is inaccurate if it trys to hit a unmarket target and
accurate if you lock on a market target.

ANNNND... GIIIIEEF the scout the radar & camera to build

 

i agree whit you mayama

i was always confused why the engy have scouting/spoting tools and the scout/spotter not.
and "scout - arty" coop remove the need of arty feedback, what is good.
inaccurate hmm. maybe. but whitout help its pretty hart to know if it hit..

am i wrong here?. i have always the feeling the arty shell hit the "sky wall" when im shooting far..

 

that idea rules

that would be so awsome, going to snipe someone only to have them vanish completely from sight because of it is really anoying, also with a bit of team work with a grenadier you'd be able to rocket snipe buildings from the otherside of the level fairly accuratly.

 

we need still a idea for midgame..

 

Mid game is awsome with cyber kuns new scripts.

 

which server run those? (eurpoean )

 

Make it so the grenadier can deploy his mortar to get a range boost, and then make the scout spotting work for that as well.

 

nah, the scout shoul help.

a granadier dont need help aiming his mortar. and whens to far away, he just walk nearer.

its really hard to give support as arty, becouse the arty is voulnarbal and have no line of sight to the target. the scout is his eyes here.

the bomber pilot have a really hard time Timing the drop, here can the scout help too.

ive edit this post

 

And u take the piss of my spelling :p

No offence by the way nice ideas. Not too long ago i suggested about the scouts being able to laser and mark targets for aircraft like in Transformers. But I like all the ideas

 

eh. how about vehicle scouting!?

i mean, when you buy the wrong armor against railguns, youre f*ked .

maybe give the scout a new granade! its can be thrown far away and sticks to vehicles, once sticked, when a friendly look at the tank, he see, like the granadier status report, the armor and weapon types.

when someone now spot this tank ( whit F menu ) he will jell also the type of armor and the weapons on the tank.

 

And if you add the capacity for the mortar to be used as artillery then that applies to the mortar as well. I see no reason why it would be a bad thing, you could modify the damage of the deployed mortar or whatever else is required to make it balanced, and the tradeoff is that you are very vulnerable (stationary and an infantryman, more or less revealing his position by firing things up into the air).

I don't see the issue, it resolves the lack of mid/early game use for the spotting ability and adds a new role for grenadiers to master.

 

Yes these are all great ideas. Why not also let scouts act like mobile cameras? Maybe limit it to just his squad and him. Would encourage to work in a squad.

 

major con: telling artillery exactly where to shoot and what angle is HIGHLY unbalanced. All you would need is a stealthy scout hiding behind enemy lines marking each and every target sequentially.

 

To be fair, sabotage can be extremely useful at just the right moment. I've seen games won because one spy snuck in and sabbed a building just as our tanks pushed and opened fire on it.

With that said... most of the time, if you have tanks doing 50% damage to a building, that building was pretty close to dead in the first place. Sabotage can be helpful sometimes, but I don't think it makes an entire role for the class.

I'd like to see more things related to information-gathering in the scout's arsenal. They're a scout, after all, and it would encourage teamwork... and I don't think very many other games use this.

One thing I'd like to see is to have the scout's binoculars see more use. If that annoying automated 'need some artillery here' (or whatever) voice-call was disabled, I know I'd play a scout more, creeping to a high location and using the binoculars on everything in sight... it gives your team a small but appreciable advantage.

Another idea: Make it so a scout's binoculars mark targets like a camera/radar, with a brown triangle. Maybe have this require a skill for balance purposes. Yes, sure, wallhax and all that, but it's really much less annoying than the red comm triangles, since this at least requires a scout in position (who can be taken out) -- you're not just being magically spotted from the sky. This would make scouts more of a, well, scout.

Another possibility is to have ways for the scout to return useful intel back to their team -- let them learn what enemy vehicles are equipped with by holding their binoculars on them. Actually, why not make it so the scout sees more about a tank the longer they focus their binoculars on it? First they'd see its armor positions, like with armor sense (giving armor sense to the scout almost 'for free' like this is not a big deal, since they can't use the information themselves outside a tank and wouldn't be able to access it while in a tank.) Maybe its heat level, too. Then they get information about its weapons and ammo, armor type, engine, etc. The scout could then communicate enemy weak points to their teammates. Of course, all this stuff would eventually fill up the scout's screen as it appears... but they'd have to hold their binoculars on the tank with the mouse button down to get it, so it wouldn't be annoying (and wouldn't appear unless they wanted it.)

Another old suggestion that comes up from time to time is to give scouts a way to discover what the enemy is researching, and their progress. That's often useful information. Perhaps if the scout discovers this (by sneaking into/sabotaging the enemy radar?) it could be automatically reported to their comm, since your comm is the only person likely to care about it.

What would be even more interesting would be to have an entire 'espionage system' where your comm can see what all your scouts have discovered about the enemy's research progress. This would be best implemented with one of the suggestions for a better research tree... if it was done, then everything that your team 'knows' the enemy has researched (as a result of scouts analyzing enemy tanks, spotting enemy research, etc) gets marked on your tech tree, letting your comm take into account what the enemy has researched when setting their own research priorities.

What I like about this is that it turns gathering information into an entire game in and of itself. Empires has a lot of rock-paper-scissors technology in it, so it's quite suited to something like this; discovering that your enemy is researching a particular weapon or armor, say -- and researching its weakness yourself -- can be a big advantage. Perhaps the weaknesses and strengths of each weapon and armor should be spelled out in tooltips or some such thing in the tech tree, too, to make sure everyone knows. (They're sometimes a bit hidden at the moment.) And knowing that the enemy team is skipping mediums and going straight for heavies can be a big deal, too.

Maybe scouts should get the ability to 'flag' enemy landmines with their binoculars, putting them on the map and/or highlighting them in their teammate's views? This is an old ET standby, and worked very well in that game. While Empires mines aren't invisible, having them highlighted could still sometimes help. This would be a particularly useful thing if defusal is ever nerfed (which has sometimes been suggested in other threads) and 9-mining tweaked/removed (making the use of landmines to defend areas rather than as portable satchel charges more common.)

An ability that let scouts automatically pinpoint the location of incoming morter or sniper fire might be nice. Of course, scouts have a lot of skills already, so I'm not so sure about this.

Hmm... suppose that in addition to sabotaging, the scout could gather intel while inside of various enemy buildings? The radar could be used to report information on what the enemy is researching, of course, that's been suggested before... but why not extend that to other things, too? If a scout sneaks into the enemy vehicle factory, they could learn and report what equipment the enemy's using on their vehicles. If they sneak into the enemy barracks or an armory, they could report the breakdown of enemy classes (eg x scouts, y engineers...) A list of enemy buildings could be gained from an armory, too (which might seem useless at first -- but knowing that the enemy has a second VF + barracks somewhere can be extremely important.)

Maybe a scout who examines the enemy CV with their binoculars could learn who the enemy comm is, too.

Just some random brainstorming, anyway. How much use some of this intel is is debatable, but if it was automatically filed into an 'intelligence report' that your comm can view, I can see it as occasionally being decisive. (Especially if information on enemy research is displayed automatically when your comm is viewing the research tree themselves.) I can see keeping the intelligence report up to date as feeling like a 'role' for a scout mid-game (when many key research decisions are being made, hopefully based on that intel).