Make it like SC2 High Templar feedback? Limit it to one heatstroke for 30 seconds/1 minute for one tank or something, and make it fill the bar by 1/3?
This. It easily makes the squad skill less effective against armies of tanks and more a skill used to effiently get rid of one tank endangering friendly units. Maybe even restrict the skills range? Im just defending this suggestion cause this is most likely one of the logical skills a scout could have as squad skill AND it is something which could become really useful sometimes. Also I meant the skill to overheat the tank just like you would overheat if you fired too much which is about 2-3 seconds. This doesn't actually completely render a tank useless yet a skilled squad can sticky stun, ammobox and rocket the fuck out of it. Basicly a squad skill only useful if teamwork.
The problem with this skill isn't that it'd be OP or whatever per se; the problem is just that there is way to dodge this skill.
... thats your argument? So basicly nukes are dodgeable ? Basicly homing is dodgeable ? Basicly plasma MG, which is the same just doesnt require any kind of squad points, is dodgeable. Sometimes even squad arty is undodgeable if the skybox is really low and it actually damages people. Still don't understand how a 2-3 second heat strike is bad. I mean it would be difficult to even manage to get the squad skill. Requirements: 3-5 squad points. 1min Cooldown after using the skill. Must be in range to show effect or else wasted points. Actually have a SCOUT as squad lead. Does not affect commander vehicles. edit: I am talking about a length of 2x the range of a sticky stun.
Nukes are endgame research. Homing does damage, not heat damage. Plasma mg is rarely ever researched, because it's a waste of time. However, if you make the squad skill only have 2x the range of a sticky stun, I suppose there would be no harm in implementing this, because it would be dodgeable, simply by driving out of range. I was under the impression that this squad skill would have unlimited range, like squad arty.
My 2 pennies worth; Like for scout to be able to beacon an enemy vehicle so it would behave like an engineer radar, should probably spot vehicles and buildings - not infantry too, might be a bit OP. So you could like ping it on an enemy tank that is retreating and get an idea of whats behind the lines. Allowing you to plan attacks and be more strategic, or as a counter to see where that jeep went that went behind the lines. It would be great to encourage more unconventional tactics but also as a counter as well. If you are lying in wait with your squad trying to sneak into a base you could zap a vehicle going back to their base to get an idea of how the buildings are laid out, how many turrets there are and where their command vehicle is - if he is moving or not. Basically buffing the abilities that scouts have to be an actual recon class that provides useful feedback to their squad & team.
There currently are undetectable ways to do this though, although they aren't very intuitive. For instance, you could have someone temporarily step into the comm chair and kill himself over the enemy main. I made a thread asking to remove this about two years back, but I'm too lazy to find it.
Your argument feels like flasche's whining about giving the com more power to potentially grief. He can already grief in a million different deeply ingrained ways! There's no problem with giving him just one more outlet of griefing if it means that gameplay can improve under a non-griefing com. You say that a scout heatbomb would be "unfun," but the scout already has a shitload of "unfun" mechanics. Smokes, flashbangs, sticky stuns (HEAT?!?!?), scout rifle, sabs, and hide are all "unfun" for their target. If the current mechanics are ok, then what's the problem with adding one more? This is especially damning since this one more "unfun" thing is fueled by teamwork. Teamwork is the life blood of Empires and we must reward it.
What the hell are you talking about? When did I ever mention a comm's power to grief? Yes, but those tactics have legitimate counters. Smoke nades cover a small area, and concs and sticky stuns are better. Concussion nades can be avoided because of their small splash radius. Sticky stuns require you to get up close to a tank, and if you let an infantry get close to you, you deserve to be penalized for that. Scout rifles are annoying, but then again, so are rifles/mortars/pistols/any weapon that can kill you. In fact, rifles kill more easily than the sniper, so the scout rifle is sort of a moot point. Scout sab does a lot less damage now, and hide is easy to counter with enhanced senses. However, for a piddly 3 squad points, the ability to remotely add heat to a tank is simply ridiculous. Reznov stated that it would have the range of 2x sticky stuns, and I have already stated that I would not mind that, because you could still counter that by simply driving out of the way. But think how annoying it would be to have a insta-scout heat stun with unlimited range; you wouldn't even be able to harass the enemy main in a tank or apc, because an enemy scout could stun you while you were driving to it, and you'd get raped by grenadiers. A good squad leader could literally just go scout, remotely stun a target, and then go rifleman/grenadier and destroy the helpless vehicle. Stop pretending that stun stickies are even remotely related to this suggestion, and for the record, it was Trickster who believes that heat is an unfun mechanic. I'm ambivalent on that topic, but I'm saying that the lack of any counter is what makes this mechanic unfun.
flasche's famously lame argument is only analogous to your current one. I don't mean to suggest that you would make such a pitiful argument. You have a lot of "easy to avoid" or "you deserve it" arguments. In general, I've found that those are just excuses. At the end of the day, these weapons do affect players. Why should a "bad" player be made to feel helpless just because they let a suicider get close to their tank or they couldn't avoid a conc? That's unfun. I would say those mechanics are just as unfun as getting overheated from a fucking scout on a hilltop. It doesn't matter if you could've avoided the heatbomb, it happened to you and you have to deal with it.
Well, that's the first time I've heard anything about that. Look, the fact is that there exists a method to deal with every scout tool thus far, but I don't think you're considering the ramifications of what you're proposing. If you can give me an actual way to balance this by giving the enemy a chance to avoid it, I'll gladly subscribe to this idea. But just imagine: NF and BE are in the middle of a tank battle on slaughtered. A single BE hide scout infiltrates SBend, and overheats every NF tank. GG, NF loses. Sticky stun have ammo limitations and range limitations. You often end up having to suicide to even sticky meds and heavies, and at best, you'll only be able to sticky 4 tanks (which is basically impossible unless you get in range without any of them noticing), at which point the enemy team honestly deserves to be stickied that much. You could put restrictions on this power (limit range, not instant heat), but then you run into the issue of which squad power you ought to replace. Squad hide is too useful, and I actually like recon a lot on maps like Blast, District, Urbanchaos, etc. What would be a passable idea IMO would be for this skill to gradually give heat to a target over time. That way, you would at least have a chance to escape before getting swarmed. No single person, however, should be given the ability to cripple an enemy team. Even more so considering he'd likely be on foot whilst most players are in tanks.
That's a shitty example for you. In sbend, tanks are typically crammed together. There's no way you're dodging a "heat arty". So even if you are amazing at "avoiding" unfun, you're likely going to get hit. So in that case, it didn't even matter that you could avoid this squad ability in open combat, you're not avoiding it in sbend. This is just like the conc that is "easy" to avoid. Sometimes, it's not so easy to avoid it and you have to deal with the unfun. I'm not sure if I could've come up with a better example myself. Thanks. But that's not your point. We're looking at the situation where a single scout coordinates (Teamwork much?) with his friendly tanks to spend a fuckload of (teamwork) points to stun (or almost stun) a bunch of heavies (or perhaps just the heavies in front & back). So you had to perform an absolute shitton of teamwork to even be able to perform this trick. Now you have to use even more teamwork to execute this maneuver. So after all that teamwork, you get to win. What's the problem? We reward teamwork. But maybe that's a little too abstract for you. Let's look at opportunity costs. If you perform the same shitton of teamwork to amass the tremendous amount of points to perform the sbend trick, what else could you do with those points? If you were a gren, you would use squad arty (near or perhaps not near sbend). How many squad arties used throughout the map would it take to "equal" the act of overheating a bunch of tanks in sbend? We take the squad points required for that amount of arties and we try to make this "heatbomb" mechanic require the same amount. Given that the "heatbomb" is pretty much locked at 3 pts, we instead must vary the percentage of heat or raw heat amount that the heatbomb gives to its target(s). We assign that amount and presentation of heat to the "heatbomb" skill and now it's as balanced as squad arty. This really is a great example because it removes the importance of delivery. You could be right next to the tanks, or targeting them (for instant heat or for heat arty) on the hill in center, or whatever. It really doesn't matter because those tanks can't move a whole lot in sbend. I really like this example.
I'd much rather use those squad points to move up a squad of grens and rape a base than to bother with stunning tanks. In fact, the only time I'd bother with it is when I'm with a gren or two and doing a ninja. Make sure the bitch can't run and it's GG. Wouldn't even have to get close.
Well my thought was that scout would be a life saver with that skill if a tank appeared close to your squad about to kill you or to stop an APC from reaching something important. It is rather based on being useful/helpful. i.e. - Stopping an APC/tank passing through the S-Bend to protect important buildings. - Stopping a tank (MG/Nukes/...) from killing infantry/your squad. Mass hide is more offensive in that matter. Heatstrike would be more defensive and not effective against infantry. This would turn scout into something that you would want to have as squad lead for various supportive purposes.
Well, then just give him, as I said, a jammer of sorts. Weapons disabled, speed reduced, but not taken completely away. the problem everyone seems to miss is that it would be hard to target stuff with it. It'd be really crap to aim it with f menu if its a hit scan. Id' be against it being a huge AoE, as that could fuck over too much res worth of tanks too easily. A hitscan that works like 2 seconds after activation to get you time to aim it mayhaps?
I don't like the idea of dealing heat. A stationary tank is a dead tank. This is the tank version of being headshot in your main base from the middle of duststorm. To prevent this from being OP but still useable would require a comperhensive list of nerfs that requires an instruction manual. Nothing here convinces me it encourages teamwork.
