Spitfires

[GLaDOS]

So I posted a thread in the PS2 beta forums on Spitfires, and figured I might as well post it here too, so here goes:

"So there have been a few threads (that died pretty quickly, sadly) about how the Engineer needs more toys, including autoturrets. Now for those of you who say that things like that are terrible in a game and require no skill, etc., let me tell you this. PS2 is both a twith skill-based shooter and a tactical shooter. If you have worse aim than someone but ambush them, you'll win, providing you can aim at all. If spitfires return in a similar fashion to PS1, they'll just emphasize the importance of tactics, which is fine. In PS1, you could place a fair amount of turrets (too much for PS2, but I'll get into that later), but they sort of sucked, they were very frail and could only kill you if you paid no attention. They also had to be place a certain distance away from each other. If you were a tactical idiot and just stuck them everywhere, you were a hell of a lot less effective than someone who thought and put care into sticking their little turrets in just the right places. Therefore, you needed to be skillful in order to kill people with turrets, just in a different way than shooting someone normally.

So now that we've cleared that up (I'm sure there will be NO replies arguing about it ), how should our beloved spitfires work? I think that they should be similar to PS1 in their effectiveness, and also require a distance between them, but we shouldn't be able to place quite as many. Possibly starting with 2, maybe 3, and certable up to about 5. (note: by "starting" I mean with the first cert, which should be somewhat expensive. You should have to specialize as an Engineer to lay these down, to prevent spam. Certs increasing the amount deployable should be cheaper than the initial one, but not cheap) I'm not sure if they should have a resource cost, as manned turrets do not, and I feel like if they do, it should be a bit less than a grenade, considering that they're not particularly effective. You would obviously have to give up your manned turret if you chose to have these. They should have rather limited range as well.

So now for my final idea. In one of those threads I mentioned, someone (I'm not sure who) said something about having empire specific spitfires. I think this is pretty awesome, and I have some ideas for what they could be. I'm not going to try to come up with names, though, because I'll just embarrass myself.

TR Spitfire: A rapid fire chaingun type thing, capable of the highest DPS (in most situations) but with the lowest health. Pretty similar to the OG Spitfire, except MOAR BULLETZ, as is the TR way.

NC Spitfire: A sort of semi-auto shotgun type thing. This would be okay, though, since all turrets have limited range and it would have a rather tight spread to make it pretty much equally effective throughout its entire range. It would have equal DPS (or maybe just barely lower for balance reasons) to the TR Spitfire at point blank, and somewhat lower beyond that. However, it's shotgun nature would give it the highest burst damage, so if you turned a corner, saw one and an enemy or three, said "oh ****!" and jumped back around while it only got one shot off at you, it would do more damage than the TR Spitfire would.

VS Spitfire: Shoots a continuous laser. Lower DPS than both other turrets, although not by *too* much, but can be placed on walls/ceilings. This is probably the best way to show manuveurability (**** I can't spell) in a turret, and can allow for some interesting placements by creative VS CE'ers. Like the Magrider and Scythe (ideally, regardless of how they are now), it would require a bit more thought to use it's advantages well, but could be very useful once those are mastered.

So, any feedback? Also, if you are going to say "No, automated things don't belong in PvP, they require no skill, blah blah blah," please make some effort to disprove my argument on that."

Ideas, anyone?