Delaying explosives doesn't nerf it. Maps in Empires are hudge. You cannot quickly move to a refinery that is being shot. When it is shot, You will go to kill the enemy's one on that place and rebuild Yours, as You just won't make it to the refinery before it's gone (unless it's very close to the rax). Getting ammo from corpses is imo bad. Empires is not a ammo-starve game where You count every bullet entering the chamber. You have enough ammo most of the time and if You don't then You will bring an engineer with You. Scout's scavenging ability would not be used as engineer box has infinite ammo, unlike scout... You say take away box from engineer? No. This thread is about changing scout, not changing the whole game mechanics to find a purpose for the scout. We could just as well take the "armor spy" skill from grenadier and give it to scout. It sounds good, it gives the scout an informational role and increases effectiveness of his teammates when they are near him. On the other hand, it doesn't give him anything overpowered, as he is useless against vehicles, so it's not likely he will run off, away from his team, lonewolfing. If this upgrade wasn't invented yet, it could be added to scout to give him the right purpose. But it was.
A) An ammo box only exists for a limited amount of time and then disappears. B) Ammunition can only be deployed after every few minutes. C) Ammunition can't move. Scavenging will allow players to get out of the base quickly as they can get ammo whenever they're successful in combat and then quickly move on instead of squatting on an ammo box. It offers an alternative source of ammo as it occurs on a different interval than engineer ammunition. Just because an engineer can provide ammo doesn't mean that it's good to only have one means of getting ammo. I'm sure you've once filled up at a box for like 15 seconds and then promptly died.
I knew it. The only possible role left for the scout is Necromancer. New Necromancer class gets: Revive Raise zombie (kills an enemy corpse and raises a zombie) consume soul (kills an enemy corpse and heals the necromancer) Vampiric Aura skill Vampiric Aura squadleader skill and a shotgun Assuming that doesn't get implemented the scavenge ammo skill will support the scout going off on his own and sneaking into bases and stuff. Plus sometimes all the engis hoard their ammo boxes and the comm won't drop an armory.
Disagree with Blizzerd, on the topic of giving scouts HMGs. Give it to a designated support class. Strange as it sounds, I actually cannot see the scout doing anything else than being separate from the rest of the guys when doing his job. The part where a scout is hidden, sabotaging, and debuffing enemies, softening them up before the other classes bring in the main punch appeals to me a lot. To make that work easier for a scout, make him aware of his surroundings more, (innate Ench.Senses, which automaticly spot targets in certain range). Rework Hide into an Improved Hide, which would allow for even more stealth. Remove that useless scoped rifle, which is right now a weapon used "for teh lulz" and not to play competitively. Give the scout more StickyStun grenades, and have said grenades replace "Sabotage". Remove smoke, since it is useless. Keep flashbangs, but give them to riflemen too. Can't see why not. Shorten the fuse on them as well, since they suck now. Maybe give scouts something as "Improved Jump" so they can reach more places. Make scouts more self-sufficient, allowing them to take ammo and health from enemies or enemy boxes. Innate "sabotage" is changed to "temporarily disable turrets". With what I mention above, it is now a scouts job to work ahead of his team, actually scouting and sabotaging. I imagine it would play out like this: NF Scouts enter BE base. They tell their team that in 1 minute they will have all buildings sabotaged, and hence open for their own forces to attack. Scouts throw their SabNades at the buildings, and disable the turrets. Now then they move away, and start camping enemy barracks, while their teammates roll in with tanks, and finish off buildings that the scouts have disabled/sabotaged. Also, a stupid idea maybe, but how about Scouts acting as a "de-buffer" of enemies? Build upon the stuff as flashbangs and smokes that exist now. Scouts work to disorient the enemy with flashy smoky nades. Then attack with their lame scoped rifle, that drains all of it's targets stamina as well as doing additional health damage. Or some other gun, that removes people's ammo (mana steal!). Should be ways to cripple infantry as well, more than grenades.
topic: Who should the Scout be? answer: the class that should have gotten replaced after 2.12 instead of nerfing half of it to uselessnes while making the other half breaking smaller games ...
well i made a suggestion in megels official scout change thread v2 - but i got no replies, so i assume ppl dont like it. its a bit complicated and i dont really want to repost everything. i see that some skills the scout has are nice, but the overall concept is flawed (atm!) megels suggestion already is more like a replacement/redesign rather than a simple rebalance. i personally would like to see the second badly defined but more usefull class - namely the engineer - and the scout being redesigned into two completely new well defined (= intutive how to play them) classes (so a merge than a split - some argueable features go, some new get introduced) the one class would speak for itself, it would be the medic (very classic in war games) for the others i had somethin similar to the sergeant from RTCW/ET in mind. a 2nd support class, more offensive then the medics but still support. the current scout would basically fit in this roll, but to get this you'd need to play the game for a while. its not very obvious. especially not as long as he has the scoped rifle (which really should have been removed and not nerfed) also id seperate healing and ammo supplies to create a need for teamwork for both classes (actually megel did that with salvagin ammoz from dead bodies for the scout - but he left the engi untouched) well, i often said i seem to have a perverted view of how the game should be. but i think the concept i have in my head and that i never got around to post as a whole (youd need to read all my suggestion to maybe be able to get a picture of it - but it actually follows a game-wide concept) would add lots of fun, teamwork and action to empires. maybe i get around posting it some times. to put it in some words id make infantry more quake like (read: fast paced). id make the game more deadly, but with less effect as now (tickets). tanks wouldnt be pseudo-godmode anymore and there always would be diversity in tank layout on the battlefield (opposed to only having one kind of upgraded equipment). weird, isnt it but a big problem is, its hard to touch a thing without it having an impact on other things. and if you ignore them (like devs tend to do) you only create fubared balance and unimaginative gameplay like we have now. i'm unsure, but sometimes i think our devs dont even have the simplest form of a design document other than "we will get aircrafts in 3.0" ...
