What should the role of the 4th class be?

You give any player a shot gun and nothing else and you'll see them running faster then any one else to the front line.

Then you just tack on skills that benefit the team. Like making him a walking camera. And giving him grenades that weaken targets and point them out to friendly's.(maybe even a self destruct controld by commander, hehehe)

Just give him skills that promote certain behaveures.

 

Crazy Ivan hahaa

 

Would you like to recode the game to only have 3 classes?

really, you could hide the scout class by not including it in the VGUI.

a couple of ideas that popped up in IRC last night that were interesting:

Scout as a forward support class, restructure engineer to base and outpost support class.

basically, let engineers be the class that stays back and repairs tanks, builds bases. Scouts support troops pushing enemy lines with cameras, radars, and ammo boxes.

whether scout should get some sort of med pack is something that should be discussed more.


Second idea:

replace scout with a team specific class. NF gets an ambushing type of class. Maybe shotgun and grenade launcher or something like that.

BE gets some sort of officer or leader class, with squad auras as class specific upgrades instead of personal upgrades. Either ability to equip the other 3 classes auras all at once or some auras that are unique to it.

 

Lol'd, but then I realised that it was true

All you can hope to do is give classes distinct benefits if the spawn 1st, 2nd or 3rd. On open maps, think cyclopean, there are no front lines. You often get strongholds in the main bases and corners, and sustained assaults on them with a squad or 2, but the majority of the map is contested, with fast refinery switchover and 1 on 1 combats when people happen to meet each other. the only times where you get real 'front lines' is when both teams are in the stronghold (BE have a rax in the northern half, NF in the southern) and they are walling up and pushing straight, or in chokepoint stalemates like you get in slaughtered. Then it's just people clusterfucking at the furthermost wall or noobing around at the back. Scout should benefit from this by being able to brave the no-mans land and when he gets past it be able to do something, like killing everyone before they know what hit them. The grens/rifles job is to make that no mans land as unsafe for the enemy and as safe for their team as they can, whilst the engi keeps the line with revs and heals, and puts a wall in a few feet further up when the grens/rifles have made a good enough dent. If you make him support, he will have no purpose. Engis will always be better. If you make him able to kill those in no mans land, he will have no purpose because grens/rifles can do it better. He must be suited to the last remaining post here, behind no mans land. doing damage both right behind the enemy walls and deep within enemy territory.
In those open maps, they should be able to promote that capture of strongholds, destroying turret farms, tanks and even barracks, allowing the grens/rifles to come in and do some killin', along with some engis to get a rax up and destroy theirs completely. That roaming gameplay will only ever be suited to engis, nothing can be made more versatile than that.

 

There is always a front line. If you are fighting, you are at the font line. If you are near your own building, it is a back line defense. Buildings are back line, Enemies are front lines. The two can cross and become surrounded, when they become one, you are in trouble.

 

No their isnt a frontline on cyclopean, you can win the map alone
by running in circles around the map as engineer or scout and destroying
all the enemy refs the whole game. I often do that and I normaly encounter
like 5 enemys in a one hour game by doing this.

 

One problem with this is that the engineer will become EXTREMELY boring to play as, and that would lead to shortages of players willing to play the class.

 

The is usually a front, but there is not always a front line, and it rarely stays still for very long.

The front is more or less the extent of your influence, the area of territory you control, the front line is when there's lots of fighting around that area, otherwise it's just people shooting each other randomly, open maps tend to be more oriented around base enclaves with tanks roaming around between them, maps like canyon and crossroads tend to have actual lines.

 

That is not entirely true. If you give people weapons suited towards different ranges and adjust their speed or supply requirements, they will naturally fall into these positions. It isn't an absolute, but it really doesn't need to be.

 

No they won't, engineers don't run in front, riflemen don't stay at the back, people run in the order they spawned and fight from behind a rock or wall like everyone else.

The only thing you can change is how they fight from behind walls, you can have them using the wall as cover and shooting from behind it, or you can have them rush round the wall and kill enemies on the other side.

I think there's a big problem with what I can only call 'romantic game design'. Which is the idea that people naturally adhere to these glamorous images of squad tactics and combined arms and all that bullshit.

The simple fact is people do what works, and what works in games and specifically empires is exploiting the limitations of the field of view and catching people by surprise, which means 'hide from the enemy and shoot when he isn't looking'.

Everything else is just so much fluff and WILL NOT GET USED.

 

For one I agree with hamster splatter.

 

i'm more in favor of keeping scouts, they are useful especially as their sabotage is quite powerful (in 2.23 anyway) as all too often the opposing team they dont see all their buildings die slowly

scouts should be armed as follows

sidearm: pistol1

primary: smg1 / smg2 / a team specific scout rifle something like a AS Val for NF and G36 for BE

grenades: same as current

equipment: binoculars / weapon silencers

although what binoculars should do? ... something like squad arty? but uses double squad points? this sounds a bit overpowered...

so what about a directional camera? whatever the scout sees in the binoculars appears on the minimap?

skills: as current, but replace weapon silence with some form of target jamming so they cant be detected whilst moving normally by cameras and the enemy commander

this should give some versitility to the humble scout, able to either take a more ranged supporting role (scout rifle, binoculars and whatever), a lightly armed covert assult role or a spotting role

 

So you want nothing changed except they act as a camera, and a target jam skill. Somehow think that this won't bring them back up to scratch.

 

Scouts do best when they can silently sneak through the front lines and sap unmanned refineries and any other structure other than cameras. The sniper rifle's practically useless as a weapon, but it can panic and distract a lone engineer trying to build a turret. Scouts may end up turning towards their pistol or SMG if they're detected.

The scout's grenades can be extremely useful if used properly (which I have yet to figure out the proper technique and situations,) from the sticky stun to halt enemy vehicles and give teammates the chance to kill it to the 'flash bang' which can potentially blind the enemy (and I've had this happen on a few occasions, although never killed because there wasn't anything to follow it up.) I've yet to see any real practical use for the smoke grenades.

Its also funny as hell to sap all the enemy buildings near the enemy commander and then hit the commander with a sticky stun.

 

i feel so outnumbered by everyone else, but i think the scout as a class is relatively fine, ive done alot of damage to bases and then killed a bunch of people and i dont think its a waste for someone who is decent to be a scout. what makes sense in posts i've read is to have the scout rifle as an upgrade option and not just in with the other guns.

 

i forget who said it but i like the idea of

riflemen - anti-infantry
gren - anti-tank / indirect fire
infiltrator - anti-building
engy - support / building

but a stealth class is also nice for niche purposes so why not give them both to scout?

as for specifics:

primary weapons - shoty, SMG1, or SMG2
secondary - pistol 1
grenades - smoke or conc,
special - scout kit or demolition kit
scout kit = innate hide + innate enhanced senses
demolition kit = sabotage (as is in 2.24 not but with smoking buildings fixed)

new skill = communications link - if scout kit is chosen all nearby enemy infantry (range = enhanced senses range) are shown as targets to teammates, it demolitions kit chosen then all nearby buildings/vehicles (range = enhcanced senses) are shown as targets to teammates.

and have radar stealth give a nerf to nearby turrets but not disable them (either smaller radius, imperfect aim, longer lock on time, or can not lock on infiltrator if prone/crouching)

 

Keep scout as a 'scout'

- Give him a better weapon - AR/Shotgun whatever.
- Take away hide.
- Give him speed upgrade from the get-go.
- Have him act as a portable camera giving wallhacks to nearby teammates.

 

Well the 3 main archetypes that have showed up are sorta as follows:

"Special forces" (Stealth Assault unit) The kind of guy that scales a castle wall, eliminates any imposing threats then opens the gate for the rest of the army. The SAS, Navy Seals. See GitS:SAO

"Scout" (Recon/Intelligence unit) The person who goes ahead of the army to find out information. The Intelligence agencys. See Light Cavalry

"Captain" (Party buff unit) The Leader who boosts morale. The person who's presence changes the outcomes of battles. Heroes. See Braveheart

 

The scout should emulate all 3 in one way or another as the engineer is both a combat engineer and corpsman.

 

Yeah but only because all classes have to have some fighting ability in a game that's about fighting.

The rifleman and grenadier are only combat classes, the scout can be another combat class, there is still room for a more speedy and close ranged style of fighting which isn't really covered by the other classes. I don't see the need to invent a bunch of new aspects that really aren't needed in the first place to make a class useful.

Empires needs builders so it has the engineer, it needs something which can fight tanks so it has the grenadier, it needs something which can kill infantry so it has the rifleman, but killing infantry can be done in different ways, at the moment the predominant method is hiding behind walls, trench warfare, in earlier versions because weapons were so powerful in spray mode people used to rush and spray people behind a wall. I'd like for the scout to be able to do that. Not as well as the game used to allow because you could kill six or seven people with one clip easily, but maybe two or three people should lose to a scout which gets the drop on them. A shotgun is an ideal weapon for this sort of thing because it can have a distinctive noise and limited fire rate, meaning it gets less useful the more people there are, which means large numbers are inherently resistant to scouts, but the combat style still applies.

So i still think inherent speed boosts and a powerful primary weapon is the answer.

I don't think scouts should be anti building, being able to kill buildings should depend on how many people you have, not what class they are, because blowing up a base needs to be a team effort, bases mean victory so you should need a lot of people to kill them, as long as you have a lot of people it shouldn't matter what class they are, you have pushed the enemy back and they deserve to lose their base because of it. They don't deserve to lose it because nobody wanted to guard it against invisible scouts or nadespamming engineers.