Engineer Buildable Ideas - gogogo?

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by Crazycarl

We need something to make the SG more powerful against/resistant to heavy classes, especially on AvD maps.

One major problem with sg's on AvD maps in FF, is too many multiple targets. The sg can generally take down heavier classes if it was only 1 heavier class. But it's completely useless as soon as you add in multiple targets, especially if they're coming from different directions. Thus you need multiple sg's to cover the multiple angles, and then the game gets annoying when you have 3-4 sg's on an AvD map covering all angles, because 1 sg is pretty useless.

So how about having the sg being able to multitask, by having a 2ndary cannon that operates independantly of the first. Balancing the numbers aside, 1 sg that can have a primary focus for 100% efficiencey, and a 2ndary target at less efficiencey could go a long way.

Both cannons could even be independantly aimed as well. So you could have an SG in a corner, defending the primary entrance, while also semi defending the 2ndary path.

Or have the both aimed in the same direction if you know that's where everyone's coming from. Effect the first person at 100% and then the next guy for less.

[Trailer]

The best idea so far imo is Hammocks. I really don't like sg regeneration, or anything that makes up for the engy being away from his gun. The engy is supposed to be close to his gun at all times. If a medic nail guns your sg from a distance, and successfully takes it down, the engy is not playing his position correctly. There are circumstances of course, but generally if I see a nail trail, or my sg starts taking damage, I am 9 times out of 10 close enough to wrench it before destruction. I discourage encouraging engies being away from their gun. "Without the sg, the engy is useless. Without the engy, the sg is useless." =)

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by Bridget

• Enemies wounded by the Railgun but not killed are marked for additional damage by the Sentry Gun for a duration relative to the amount of damage they take. Medics can remove this by hitting targeted teammates (indicated on a Medic's hud and the Engineer's hud by an overhead icon) with the medkit. Additionally, rockets could gain a small accuracy bonus and make hard-turns toward marked enemies.
  

• Sounds greatly like the Snipers tag, which you were so much against(IIRC)
  

  The Sentry Gun could have a built-in counter measures system on quick cooldown. Any explosive projectiles that come near the Sentry Gun can be shot down. However, the Sentry Gun's counter measures system has limited range, so any 'nades that fall too close can not be destroyed.

  Not bad, tbh. It would need lots of testing for balancing, but I think another idea is floating around out there.
  
  

  The Engineer can trigger a desperation mode for the Sentry Gun. In this mode, the gun deals double damage and takes heavily reduced damage for a short duration. The downside is that this can only be triggered on a level-three Sentry Gun and the Sentry Gun self-destructs after the effect is over due to "mechanical stress".

Oh, there it is! Although, the SG doesn't need to fully "self destruct"... it could just take heavy damage(making it easier to take down by an enemy), that can't be repared for a short(or even equal to the affect) duration. Maybe just shut down for the duration instead of take damage. If you think about it, it's kinda like "Death Blossom" from "The Last Starfighter".

[Peon]

Originally Posted by Trailer

"Without the sg, the engy is useless. Without the engy, the sg is useless." =)

That being said, this idea won't be a buildable, but it will continue with the same concepts being currently proposed here........how to beef up the SG, but force the Engy himself to play a role in it's survival.

Since the Engy is primarily a defensive class, then how about a force field that surrounds him, and bounces everything (and I mean everything) that hits him? BUT, he cannot move or fire at all while it's activated.

There's a multitude of uses that I can think of for this, besides shielding your SG, and I feel like griefing would be hard. It's up to the devs to decide how many cells it costs for activation/duration or both.

[Raynian]

All this shit is so complicated. What ever happened to being able to balance games by just changing numbers around, rather than throwing in all these new variables and conditionals and riffraff?

[Bridget]

If it were that simple, I'd imagine it would have been done by now.

Originally Posted by Iggy

Sounds greatly like the Snipers tag, which you were so much against(IIRC)

I was not against the concept of tagging people. I was against being able to be seen through walls. It's already enough of a challenge trying to get past a good Sniper. There's no need to punish players who happen to make it across the yard.

[episkopos]

Originally Posted by Raynian

All this shit is so complicated. What ever happened to being able to balance games by just changing numbers around, rather than throwing in all these new variables and conditionals and riffraff?

I would rather buff the SG in a manner that required some skill on the part of the engineer, instead of having TF2 style death turret that murders fucking everything and all the engy has to do is bash it with his wrench.

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by Raynian

All this shit is so complicated. What ever happened to being able to balance games by just changing numbers around, rather than throwing in all these new variables and conditionals and riffraff?

It's called "depth of gameplay".

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by Raynian

All this shit is so complicated. What ever happened to being able to balance games by just changing numbers around, rather than throwing in all these new variables and conditionals and riffraff?

Well that's the most sensible solution as better values could be derived in a matter of days. Not that I'm against new mechanics, but they take far longer to implement. It's even crazier when you consider that 1.11 values, while imperfect, satisfied the majority of players (I think).

If you act under the assumption that the sg should NEVER, EVER be anywhere NEAR as effective at stopping offense as TFC or even FF 1.0 and we must contemplate every byzantine method to try and come up with an alternative exotic system instead, then FF sg development over the past 3 years starts to make a lot more sense.

[Crazycarl]

I think what's taken us so long to make progress is we've spent a lot of time just tweaking values and we've found that it's not as effective or easy as one would think. The beta testers have a huge list values that they can tweak as they play, but every map and situation is different, and people have different preferences. So, for example, upping the sentry push can work great on one map but ruin games on another.

If we wanted to, say, make armor 50% less effective against sentries, or make them resistant to a certain type of explosive, that would be very simple to do and would let us buff the sentry just in situations where it needs a buff. A while back we separated the sentry push on airborne players from the push on players on the ground. That allows us much more leeway to mess with those numbers without getting ridiculous behavior out of the system. But the idea that we can just punch in numbers from TFC or from FF 1.11 and have it be the same now is completely false.

What we want to do is re-evaluate every class' role on the team and change the mechanics to follow suit. Once we have every class nailed down, it would be time to fix or scrap those maps that still don't play well.

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by CrazyCarl

I think what's taken us so long to make progress is we've spent a lot of time just tweaking values and we've found that it's not as effective or easy as one would think.

I'm not saying it's easy (it WOULD take a lot of testing) or the most long term effective solution, but it has been about 3 years without improvement and this does strike me as the sort of thing that could be knocked out in a few days or at least a few weekends if you had enough testers. If someone says it's "easy", I think what they mean is "a fuckload easier than creating and coding an entirely new entity or mechanic, then rigorously testing THAT."

Originally Posted by CrazyCarl

So, for example, upping the sentry push can work great on one map but ruin games on another.

Yes, I'm painfully aware of this. AvD has been suffering for years because of the timidity of changing the values.

Originally Posted by CrazyCarl

A while back we separated the sentry push on airborne players from the push on players on the ground. That allows us much more leeway to mess with those numbers without getting ridiculous behavior out of the system. But the idea that we can just punch in numbers from TFC or from FF 1.11 and have it be the same now is completely false.

TFC I understand, it's a different engine. As for 1.11, I'm curious how many new values the separation actually created. A simple separation makes it sound like just 2 new values, which is a ludicrous argument to saying it's too complicated to be tweaked properly. If it's more like 15 new (not duplicated fields for air v. ground, but genuinely new ones) values for 2.x v. 1.11, then that's more understandable.

I realize you understand the situation, but I kind of get sick of the rationalizations over this, so I'll make a different point: Since 2.1 up to the present day, the sentry gun has had weaker push in every single situation than TFC or 1.x. In AvD, sg push is often critical towards preventing O from capping too fast. Since this has disappeared, it's caused a massive unbalance in pub AvD and it's taken years for the dev team (as a whole) to recognize this publicly and the problem remains unresolved to this day. Tweaking the values, while complex and requiring lots of testing, could have have fixed this years ago.

[squeek.]

The current tentative 2.42 values of the SG push are bulletpush going from 4 to 7 and groundpush multiplier going from 7 to 10 for level 1, and 4 to 7 for levels 2 and 3.

To give you an idea of what that means, it makes it impossible for a HW to run towards an SG.

[Raynian]

Oh boy. That only leaves 8 out of 10 classes that can still kamikaze it.

It's such a good thing that the civilian can no longer bumrush a sabotaged SG on ff_hunted. Going to help balance a ton for that map!

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by squeek.

The current tentative 2.42 values of the SG push are bulletpush going from 4 to 7 and groundpush multiplier going from 7 to 10 for level 1, and 4 to 7 for levels 2 and 3.

To give you an idea of what that means, it makes it impossible for a HW to run towards an SG.

What seems like the more sensible idea would be to record the results of having a straight run at the sg's with each class for TFC and see how many classes the push from those stop in their tracks, then increase the push values in FF until you get similar results. I don't remember the numbers from memory for TFC, but I do remember that running STRAIGHT AT an sg in TFC was a horrible idea. It would kill you before you got close enough to do anything and/or stop you dead in your tracks. I guess this is a difference of opinion, but I think that the push / damage values should be high enough to make that situation a failure almost every time. To take out an sg, I think it should involve either subterfuge (sneaking past or attacking from a distance), outmaneuvering (using speed, air control and off-angles) or else collective brute force from teammates. I'll have to see it in action, but from what you're saying, it still sounds weaker than early FF sentries and TFC. If the class is too weak, I'm not sure what advantages there will be towards using ng over the new hwguy.

Originally Posted by Raynian

It's such a good thing that the civilian can no longer bumrush a sabotaged SG on ff_hunted. Going to help balance a ton for that map!

I cracked up at this.

[Elmo]

The sentries are also a little cleverer in FF than TFC I believe. Maybe not to a massive extent - but perhaps worth mentioning... I dunno.

[Hammock]

I've been thinking more about my "moving the sg around" idea.

My current idea of having the leash, even though I really like it and it sounds like a lot of fun to drag an sg around with you everywhere to go, could be extremely buggy and difficult to make sure it paths properly in every situation.

So this is an alternative idea to the sg moving concept.

And it's a Teleporter idea. Yes I know you said teleporters would never exist in FF, but this one would be soley for the sg, so hear me out.

This is a 2nd buildable given to the engy, only 1 teleporter at a time (no site to site and back again teleporting).

So this teleporter can work 1 of 2 ways.

1. When it is first built, it instantly teleports the sg to it's location, and is used up upon use, for this method the sg needs to have been already built, otherwise the teleporter is notbuildable.

2. The teleporter can be built at anytime, and the engy needs to be next to it to activate the teleport. It too would be used up upon use though.

In both scenarios the engy needs to be where he wants his sg to be. He can't be across the map and teleport his sg to a destination he is not.

The teleporter should have a low cost and should be relatively quick to build, this way it would be in the engy's best interest to use the thing to move his sg out of the way of spam, and to quickly advance his sg to the new location where the flag is.

There could be a range limit placed on the teleporter, so the engy doesn't just build his sg outside his respawn to level 3, then run to the enemy base and instantly have a level 3 sg outside their respawn.

This idea is meant for quick movements around his base, either to defend new locations, or to move his sg out of harms way.

[Bridget]

That's a great idea for solving non-problems.

[Hammock]

Actually being able to move the sg solves the 2 most major problems of the engineer and his sg.

Problem 1: Dies too easy to skilless spam
Problem 2: Unable to keep up with flag movements and becomes useless once flag is out of sg range.

Being able to move the sg when a demoman throws 2 mirvs and 4 nades at it, to completely deny all that damage to his sg is pretty damn good, and instantly being able to defend your front door when the flag is dropped there after a scout zooms out of the flag room with it, is also an amazing ability.

Infact my suggestions offer a far more dynamic alternative to the engineer play style. He doesn't need to hover around his sg to keep it alive, he brings his sg to him.

You just want the sg to be the most super powerfull thing out there, I completely ignore any suggestion that involves giving the sg a shield, and making it indestructable, as all you want is the engineer to be able to build an sg in a certain spot and never have to worry about maintaining it. Okay so what? What happens when the flag moves out of range of the sg... leave the sg behind and become useless.

Over and over and over all i read from certain people is that the SG needs to be an unstoppable unkillable killing machine, sugar coat your posts all you want by offering slight negatives to the suggestion, but the bottom line that's what you're looking for, and I honestly that's the lazy man's desire, someone who wants the game to be super easy for 1 class that's super easy to play.

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by Elmo

The sentries are also a little cleverer in FF than TFC I believe. Maybe not to a massive extent - but perhaps worth mentioning... I dunno.

They are now, but the net effect doesn't really pan out. I'm making these numbers up, but compared to TFC, you're more likely to see this scenario:

TFC:
With 10 people trying to run the flag, 8 of them die and 2 who are lucky and/or skilled come through unharmed.

FF 2.4:
With 10 people trying to run the flag 2 of them die and 8 of them take 20 - 50% damage.

The tracking in FF is pretty decent now, it's mainly the stopping power that needs work.

Originally Posted by Hammock

You just want the sg to be the most super powerfull thing out there, I completely ignore any suggestion that involves giving the sg a shield, and making it indestructable, as all you want is the engineer to be able to build an sg in a certain spot and never have to worry about maintaining it.

Over and over and over all i read from certain people is that the SG needs to be an unstoppable unkillable killing machine, sugar coat your posts all you want by offering slight negatives to the suggestion, but the bottom line that's what you're looking for, and I honestly that's the lazy man's desire, someone who wants the game to be super easy for 1 class that's super easy to play.

You say "you" and "certain people" but let's name names. Without that I can't tell who you're responding to. I agree that I think making an sg indestructible is a bad idea. I hate invulnerable stuff, that was a big turnoff to me from TF2. As for a shield, the only one I've been an advocate of is frontal splash damage protection for the ENGINEER when he's crouched behind his sentry repairing it; which is exactly what TFC had. Finally, I absolutely think the sg should be maintained. I think the sg should go down FAST without maintenance. I know some people are fans of the idea of leaving the sg alone and having the ng DM, but I'm not crazy about the idea. In TFC, as an engineer, I would protect my sg with my life and do everything I possible could to keep it up. In FF, they go down so easily, don't protect against splash damage, and don't prevent caps the way TFC did. Combine that with faster build times and they feel downright disposable.

If anyone actually is advocating the unstoppable killing machine approach, I agree, that's stupid, there's no purpose to that. What IS needed however is something that does a damn good job of stopping lone flag runners who are using no strategy whatsoever. The sg in its current state does not do this. The sg in FF 1.0 and TFC did.

[episkopos]

I quite like things as they currently are, an engy who wants to keep an SG up for any length of time has to position it next to his teammates, and the SG doesn't kill effectively on its own, but it provides D with some breathing room, so a heavily injured scout slipping past is less likely to carry off the flag. It also gives an obstacle which attackers have to take into account, and maneuver around, possibly affecting their choice of route into the flag room. In these respects it serves its function just fine.

Really, a gun that never misses is a pretty good deal for a class, the idea of it being able to take out eight people out of ten bumrushing it before it goes down is ridiculous.

I don't support the idea of the engineer being entirely reliant on his gun, in my opinion in would turn him into an uninteresting, repetitive, one-dimensional class.