Here is my problem: the last few RC's have introduced a new way of handling squad benefits. The aura effects that were added are definitely a step in the right direction. The others, well, I'm not so sure. The squad skills are either massively overpowered, or near-useless. The two that spring to mind are the scout's hide, and the engineer's insta-heal. The former is just ridiculous, and was the single factor which has totally ruined maps like district for me. The latter is pointless, as somebody pointed out: if you have an engineer nearby, you have a very good chance of having either 100% or 0%. The method of activation of the skills is also too clumsy to use in the heat of battle. The free skill slot now seems rather obsolete to me too: you should get your skill, provided you stay near the squad leader. Giving another just seems excessive. Removing it gives you the opportunity to earn 4 skills, rather than just 3. Personally, I would find a slower early game more rewarding (think: no more early L3 turrets). And finally is the issue of the squad leader himself. He is not chosen by his squad, he is just there. Now I know that there are ways of changing squad leader, but none of them are as simple as they should be. For someone with such power, should they not face the same selection process as the commander? Also, he always gets the aura skill. Why doesn't it work so that he gets the skill at a strength determined by his proximity to the nearest squad member? As a lone engineer, I find it much more useful to start my own squad and rambo it with a free health regen skill (which seems more powerful than the normal one?). So basically I want to know what other people think. Please vote once on each issue. My opinion: the squad system should not be released in its current state. With only one or two more RCs to go, I think this is a real problem.
I think the scout squad hide should be left as it is (in my opinion one of the best gameplay changes for district in a long time) It finally adds an extra dimension to infantry levels meaning a barrage of riflemen and turrets no longer cause a stalemate and there is finally a way of winning it without waiting 3 hours :D It can also be easily countered with cameras and observant players I do agree that the other skills are a little underpowered or useless though Maybe make the grenadier skill temporarily improve vehicle weapons or amour? Also possibly make the Engineer one revive ( but working properly) with fast building upgrade(costs like 2 squad points)?
Every skill is useful in it's own way, some just need to have a drawback (price increase or something else) and others need fixing. Mass hide is useful for evading turrets (a very good way to end the game or pull a quick sabotage run), insta heal is nice if you can't reach all your teammates at once. Mass revive needs fixing, as does artillery strike. I think you've identified one of the major problems left over from basically 1.0. The gui is very clunky and unresponsive. We should try to improve it. You still have to earn your four skills, as they only become available after you've earned the points (still need 20 points to get the second upgrade), the only exception being the free one you receive for joining a squad. I'm not sure if we should remove it, since an early boost in defensive or offensive capabilities can help shape the ending of the game both ways. The only one really benefiting from the free skill in the early game is the engineer, with either repair upgrade, lvl 3 turret or revive depending on the map. The first one is very useful in speeding up the base building process, the second one is useful securing positions (for a little while anyway, and decent grenadier, rifleman or engineer can take it out easy) and the last one is mostly for flag based maps and for a squad pretty much a must have. The only thing that would really change is early game rushes as a grenadier can block off chokepoints with mines and the enemy team probably doesn't have defusal yet. Most people don't care who their squadleader is, but it would be nice to make an addition to the squad menu to change the SL more easily. Maybe highlighting the name and a "make SL" button. Election would sort itself out as it's very easy to form and dissolve squads so that seems a bit obsolete to me. People can always leave the squad if they're unhappy with their squad leader and he refuses to yield his powers. Myea, solo squads shouldn't get aura skills, just like they don't receive the free skill. Maybe we should change the aura effectiveness as well. We're not done with balancing anyway. We can still change a whole lot. One thing I would like to see is squads being used in a more situational manner and actually achieving objectives. Most often people hop into a squad and go troubadouring around doing their own thing, or a squad goes and try to actually achieve something but quickly gets separated by either dieing or overextension by the enemy. Squad cohesion is still a ways off and we should figure out some way to make squads a more involved experience.
I only see 1 problem with the skills and thats armor regeneration with an engineer squad leader. My reactive heavy tank healed itself in under 2 mins fully...a little over powered...but fun to use >_< as for the mass hide....use cameras. fixed
I agree that slow starts will make more interesting games; as people fight over the central areas without imidiately having a barracks; so i really agree that you should only get the free skill while in your squad. there should be no bonuses for being in a squad if you actually just want to run around on your own. :mad: also: squad leaders should not get the aura bonus unless there is at least one squad member present in the squad radius. otherwise, everyone can just join their own individual squads and get free bonuses. again; not working as a squad should = no bonus. I think that if you had to press E to activate a squad skill, the system would work a lot better during combat- no more using the clunky F menu. in other words; you select which skill you want to be ready, and then pressing E activates it. The hide skill in my opinion IS too powerful. but this is only because you are still hidden while shooting. as a scout with silencer, i can sit in a corner, almost invisible and activate the power, then proceed to kill a whole bunch of people without them having a chance. the idea of hide is to hide: to get past people, turrets; to get the drop on people. not to go on a killing frenzy as the invisible ninja. once the squad powers are tweaked to cost different amounts of squad points per use (see: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=3052), then i think the whole thing will work really nicely. -------------------- i mean come on, it IS really good right now. it's nice. it's just a bit rough around the edges
I think the squad leader skills make everything unecessarily complicated and introduce something that will be very hard to balance. Does it add a lot (think about it relative to 1.07). Squads would still have a big purpose if there was an aura that made everyone stay together.
This is what I was trying to say, thank you Evan. IMO, the scout hide thing is never going to be acceptable, no matter how much it costs. Dudes running around being invisible whilst shooting? How does that make any sense at all? Don't give me the "cameras" line again, because they do not always work (if you want, I can give screenshots to prove this). And even when they do, all I see is a large diamond (which sometimes does more to obscure my view). I don't want to shoot at shapes! It makes no sense in terms of plausability ("fuck realism", yada yada) and it makes no sense in terms of gameplay. If you want to sneak past turrets, it should be exactly that: sneaking. Not charging forwards gunning everyone down like a predator on acid. Last night there was a game on mvalley where NF really had a good start. We set up two squads, one to secure the dam and the other to pursue the CV to the north. We lost the game, because whoever was comm got out of the CV and got run over, but before that the squads were working really well. My point is, it worked because during commander voting we discussed and agreed that this would be our strategy. Each squad had its own objective, relative to the landmarks on the map. I believe that this is the only way that squads will ever truly work as a team. They all have to know their objective, and it has to be specific. Some kind of menu is needed for the leader to give orders to his troops. Something like "Guard/Capture/Assault the (landmarks here)". These could be set by the mapper (for example the dam, resource nodes, or flags) but some should also be created dynamically around groups of buildings, for example "The D3 Base". I mean, squad leaders can't even set an objective outside of their line of sight! In a perfect world, these objectives would be set via the spawn map. I realise that this is probably a lot of coding, but to me it seems like a better long-term solution; this is why I am frustrated by the late addition of these skills (which I do not see as an adequate solution). I would rather wait until 2.0 and have something that it fun and useful to play with than have a quick fix JIT for 1.08. The benefit of being in a squad should be that you are protected and supported by your near-by players, whether that's providing ammo or firepower, or spotting targets. If this is done properly, then all these gimmicky squad leader skills become entirely unnecessary. As it is, I hesitate to say that of the new features, only two (the aura, and limiting squads to five players) do anything more to encourage teamwork. P.S. Sorry for the long post.
Lay a camera, its not hard to aim at a diamond Please...lets not go back to the rubbish stalemate of turrets and riflemen. District is actually fun now with people doing captures and counter captures rather than just being stuck between 2 flags This feature should not be completly deleted + look at the votes and not just the comments, it appears that a lot of people are satisfied with the the squad skills (I wish they were more vocal though)
I like them. I think that you should lose your hide after shooting, maybe lose it gradually (1 shot = still hidden, 3 shot = sorta hidden, auto fire = not hidden). It's not going to happen a lot each game (maybe more in district) so I don't see it as a huge problem
You can still rush forward and take flags stealthly with hide! just not blast people away while still invisible.
Wow. Is this dream? I agree with Headshotmaster. I think the armor regeneration should be taken out because that makes very rarely built and used repair pads even more useless now because now you can use your engineer tool and squad leader to fix your armor free of costs. Repair pads cost money to place. Also yes, use those cameras for mass hides. That's what for they are.
I think some way of reducing the need for squads to get that first skill thing would be handy (eg a slower start) but then theres the problem of engineer building being even more tedious. In fact, slower more tedious early building could be good for squad work as you'd never want to be a lone engineer early on , so it'd encourage small teams to go around together. I rarely seem to end up close enough to get squad skills, but thats mainly as the squads dont have a clear objective. A good comm could probably work it well, like "squad a do this, blah blah blah, turrents". 1 Person squads shouldnt have an aura skill though, its silly. How about the squad leader only gets the aura if theres another squad mate in range?
I got out of my lurking to say this. Scout super hide sucks. Make it like 10-20% invisible, just enough to screw up view in dark areas, not in the middle of the sun.
Brilliant idea! While we're at it, lets make the HMGs and Scout Rifles fire nerf darts instead. Being killed by someone you can't see sucks.
I meant only loose about 10-20% transparency. The whole thing I said about not being seen in the dark but in the sun should of fixed that for you.
Just making them 80-90% transparent doesn't change that much, but it's a lot better than being 10-20% transparent like the wording in your original post made it seem.
I think the lack of turret detection is the thing about the squad power and is most useful about ending the annoying turret stale mates. Losing that would just be sending things backwards :eek:
I manage to kill hidden people and get killed while hidden. <shrug> A squad leader isn't a squad leader until there is someone else in the squad...as there is no one to lead if just by oneself...so there shouldn't be the free aura bonus for lone squadleaders. I've not seen people going solo in squads, but I'm really suprised that I havn't seen it. If it was a snake it prolly woulda bit me. Unhappy with the squad leader? I'm sure you wouldn't be alone so just leave and form your own? Theirs 26 to choose from right? I know there's Zebra...but X...xeon ..xylophone? I didn't notice I don't think theres a whole lot that can be done game feature's wise that would force people to work and stay with their squads. I'm assuming most people on empires live in a european/western culture filled with self realization and free will. Best way to get people to work in squads is for the squad commanders/members to communicate with their peeps. Limiting the sqauds to 5 to a squad is great. Its kickass when at the start of the map the comms like " Alpha go east, Bravo take south" Thats aweasome. But I did just have a light bulb turn on... maybe give the squad leader an option to kill any member if they go awol or disobey the orders to get with the squad? Perhaps just kick them from the squad? would add a touch of realism eh? "accidents" happen all the time in war. Gen. Patton was killed in a car "accident"...
