Mass hide: I didn't vote this because it's only useful on flag map, but it is not as useful for comm maps. Recon: This is pretty much useless, except for some specific situations, but even for them, it's not helping a lot too. Charge!: I voted for this because there are many occasions when Charge can be useful. ex: to sticky enemy vehicle, allow fellow engineer to rush to the best spot for walls, TO DAT RESCUE...etc On flag map like escort, it can be as useful as squad arty, for me. (Some fags used to yell at me for Rifleman squad leader, especially on escort. But they are the dumbasses.) Armor: Basically useless. But if we make it 30% damage reduction and 2 squad points then I would actually use it a lot, though still might not be on my top 4 list. Damage: Basically useless too. But if it's buffed then I might use it a lot too. Artillery strike: Great skill, I don't think explanation is needed. Mass revive: Great skill, I don't think explanation is needed. Mass Heal: Great skill, I don't think explanation is needed. I think this vote has a point, there are always some relatively useless squad skills and class specific skills, I think we need to do something about it.
Somewhere on these forums in one of these threads, probably by Ounin, is a fuck tonne of posts by me explaining why some squad powers are useful and why some are not, and how 90% of suggestions for new ones are terrible. I can't be bothered finding it, but I'll give you the gist of it. Percentage improvements are a total waste of time. +20% accuracy, or armour, or any shit like that is just a waste of time. The entire point of a squad power is for direct action. It's taking an action as a squad. No-one fucking runs at someone and breaks lines down because they have an extra 20% damage or 20% armour. Squad powers need to have direct, actionable effects. Revive, Mass Heal and Artillery are fine currently, though Brutos' idea for artillery would make things nicer. Hide is ok, but it suffers from hide being shitty in general. If we ever fix hide then squad-hide would automatically get fixed with that. And as fun as charge is, it's never used when the points are important. All powers should be viable all of the time. More interesting ideas like near-invulnerability (for appropriate lengths of time), super speed, super-fast reloading with ammo replenishment, wallhacks (instead of the shitty attempt Recon power makes). They can be distributed properly, and I can probably quite easily write out a full rework if Brutos says he'll definitely commit to going for this overhaul. But seriously guys, instead of wasting time with stupid percentage changes and specific squad stuff, just think of intelligent, useful and balance-able things that would allow you to break battle lines, gain the upper hand and tip a local area of the battlefield in your favour. The class they go with is irrelevant, that's for us to work out. What we need is ideas for what can be done. What can make the difference on the ground. If Brutos says he'll go for this and we can put something together that's pretty awesome, we might even start talking about commander powers.
This is exactly what I want squad powers to be. Lets go into more detail: Engineer: Basically no changes. Might feel a bit underwhelming after I buff the other classes. The only thing that I would like is a particle effect for mass heal (Imagine the tf2 style red hearts). Scout: Hide stays the way it is. Recon is going be buffed and made into a second 5 point power. Use Beeerdude L4D style glow code to give real wallhack, Rifleman: Combine Armor, Charge and Damage and buff all percentage values. If we use real sedulously high values (double, triple damage) then I might add the L4D style glow to everyone who has the power active. So the enemy has a visual indicator why they are dying like flies and unable to kill anything. Replenish ammo is the secondary 2-3 point power. Grenadier: Artillery stays the same, maybe more damage (install kill any apc, or two shot kill them?). Really needs an indicator where it is going to hit. New power: Some kind of wall busting power. The squad leader explodes all unbuilt walls (<75% built?) in a large cone in front of him. Dealing minor explosion damage while doing so. Changing Max Squad Points The last thing that I really don't like is that squad points are just hoarded and might be left unused. A solution might be to just cap the amount of squad points your squad can have at (half, third) the rank points the squad leader has. A gren squad leader with 15-20 squad points is very dangerous but can't instagib the commander. Squad Combat and Vehicles As soon as most of your squad is in tanks it is very hard to keep on getting squad points because the range is tiny for vehicles. Either this stays the same, or I increase the range squad points are earned for when the squad leader is inside a vehicle. (Infantry point range might stay the same, the range could be extended for other vehicles only?)
Why don't you test it out though? In the beta version make damage buff 100% and make armor absorb 2/3 of damage, and see what happens there. At least the armor could break enemy lines, and I can assure you if you have lightning bolts or sparks are flying around buffed up soldiers it will look like there is some action going on. Just go with generic name shockwave, disorients players as well but doesn't damage them(it could shake their screen or push them or something).
Thats going to make the Rifle really OP I think. I agree with combining the powers and its a nice idea to give replenish ammo. But seriously - Double/Triple Damage? With the element of suprise on their side they are going to have an area lock down faster than you can say killspawn. If they have a rev engi then gg, the only way to kill that squad is if you run them over. There is pretty much no squad tactics in tanking which got me thinking - I know it isn't a squad ability but it would be realy nice to also have some aura buffs that are aimed at vehicle combat. Increase the aura when squad leader is in a vehicle. Engineer Lead gives engine cooling buff Gren Lead gives armor/damage received buff Rifleman gives damage dealt buff Scout gives vehicle speed buff
Frankly, im thinking squad defusal might not be shitty if vehicle squad range is to be increased, else it would be another mass hide, only really usefull on cockquests. I was thinking about some sort of emp bomb for the scout, to harrass vehicles, but I think it would only be used to stunlock them or even a cv which is bad. Might not be that bad if it only decreased RoF on enemy tanks.
i like most of your skill changes. recon is very cool. i had no idea it didn't extend to the squad but this new transformation would be super cool. 5 costs a lot but with a good squad you could make it up. i really enjoy the skills that involve the players like that. for rifle i think there should be less emphasis on dealing damage. the combat in empires already goes extremely quickly. it might be better to use emphasize defense (a converse to the scout skill in which you benefit from hunting). maybe a kind of invulnerability combined with stamina and a speed upgrade to really emphasize on pushing lines instead of hunting dudes. that creates a kind of objective for the opposing team instead of making a kinda chaotic turkey shoot. a squad point limit would be interesting. personally in regular play i use squad points a lot and i don't really go above 25-30. that kind of pacing usually keeps use of the squad points engaging for those who are in the squad. maybe people will just jump to other squads to hoard points? who knows! it's interesting though. due to the nature of the mobility of armor combat, range would probably be more appropriate for compensation anyway these are very cool skills and i like them
oh okay i THOUGHT it worked for all squad members then brutos said it didn't so i got confused but yeah right now it's a pretty neat skill but not as engaging as what brutos is suggestin
oh that makes sense now. it's useful for fighting in squad formation then at least. that's currently fair for costing two points but the new one is more engaging
Actually, how about switch recon for a radar jam, for 15 seconds enemies in the vicinity get their maps/mini-maps turned into staticy television screens. Shit, I would use that all the time, even if it was worth like 8 points. It really fits the theme of scout which is reconnaissance and disruption of logistics.
I sent Brutos a PM yesterday about squad powers and stuff. We never got a lot of time to discuss it because of conflicting schedules, but I figure I can post it up here and we can just discuss things. One thing I want to state before we go ahead. ALL VALUES ARE ARBITRARY. This means I just plucked them out of the air. If anyone starts bitching about individual values, going "omg that's OP" or whatever, I swear to god I will flip my shit and ban. Shit like that stifles discussions. It's the essence of the ideas that I really want to discuss. I've stated in there that I'm not 100% sure on one or 2 of them, and that I think they might need extra work.
Just throwing this one out there for the hell of it, but what if the other rifleman skill made standard bullets armor-penetrating for some amount of time for some amount of points with some cooldown duration? This would give a coordinated group of infantry the ability to temporary stop a group of vehicles or take out a scunt speed APC. I could already imagine this being a rape train of 5 HMG whores with damage and the skill gunning down a wall of vehicles, but it's just an idea. Here come the flames, better put on my suit.
Not a terrible idea. I'd prefer something more interesting but it's certainly an option. But I have to think about how we'd make that intuitive to a new player. Maybe they'd have to swap to bright red tracers or something.
why does nobody go rifleman as squadleader? cause theirs no benefit and you cant keep people alive rifleman squadaura: every point damage dealt by the squad in x radius around the leader heals the squad for x points. rifleman squadability one: doubles the effectiveness (range and healing effect) of the aura rifleman squadability two: ammo regenartion, it regens x bullets (only hitscan weapons) per second. It regens slowly and can be activated and deactivated. It cost x squadpoints per x seconds (for example 1 point every 10 sec). Reason for this suggestion. It would make the rifleman squadleader something that has a specific role. The engineer is a reactive squad supporter, he reacts if something goes wrong, low hp, death or low ammo. The gren and the scout leader have skills that are really good for specific tasks. The rifleman squadleader would be someone that would activly support his squad.
the charge combination skill should also have like an infinite capacity magazine where you don't need to reload for like 7.5 seconds or something like in doom so you got shotty pistol continuously firing at the fire rate for that time duration
