A small Idea for basic engineeres - Page 2

Warborn · 2004-02-24, 04:22 PM

Originally Posted by Krinsath

Well, a few things...

1) The vehicle repair tool does indeed take up a rifle slot.

Yeah, I know. Medical Applicator and BANK don't, however, and given that they're the most popular support tools I don't think the caulk gun changes things.

2) Advanced Medic is 5 certs...at a low BR that means they have given up being an AV trooper, a MAX, a Sniper, or even a SA user. It is a sacrifice to become a support soldier and they are NOT always as effective at killing (Suppressor vs. any HA = dead).

This is a pretty ridiculous statement. Who in their right mind, at BR2, blows all their certs on support? You've got to be really new to the game to do something like that. No person who is serious about contributing to a fight would buy Advanced Medical even before getting at least Medium Assault, unless they're one of the people who thinks the surpressor is a very good weapon, which some people certainly do.

3) Why SHOULDN'T they get experience for it? Are they not using their cert as intended? That's why ANT drivers get XP, they're using they ANT to do it's job. Same logic on the weaponry...when you get a kill you're doing your job. Why should support be second class?

Support should be second class because it is second class. Once I hit BR 20, I could, if I wanted to, have Advanced Engineering, and Advanced Medical if I decided to spend my two spare certs on another Adv. certification. But, the point is that I am absolutely not, by any means at all, a support player. I snipe, and grunt when the situation calls for it, and I do it well despite having so many support certs. The benefit is that I am also a greater asset to the squad, because I can also heal/repair guys.

The point I'm making is that you're asking why support should be a second class role, when support isn't even a role. Anyone who plays support only and doesn't use their weapon is not seriously playing with effectiveness and winning in mind, they're using a gimmick. The day that support people give up their ability to kill enemies with weapons is the day they become a role into and of themself. Right now, support is a little footnote after someone's real job, be it HA infantry or sniper or infiltrator or whatever. There are no non-combatants in Planetside.

4) They've giving up certs on the CHANCE that the guy they just healed is going to kill someone else IF they're in the same squad (which isn't damned likely). That's the kind of odds I'd expect in Vegas, and it's not entirely fair. Of course, the guy you just rezzed has no armor, so you need to fix that...what's that you say? I'm up to 8 support certs now? Boy...I'm glad I don't get any experience from this!

How much does MA cost? Three certs? I have no problem getting kills with a cycler or sweeper. I don't know what you're making such a fuss over. Unless you get Advanced Medical/Engineering/Hacking, you've got plenty of certs left over for weapons and armor and maybe a vehicle or two, but even if you got all support certs, you'd still have some left over to pick up even Heavy Assault, if you wanted to.

Mognoc · 2004-02-24, 04:38 PM

Warborn, in actuality, Adv. Med / Adv Engineering. Spitfires and a Motion detector around an AMS - Stops infil AMS Jackers. And I don't know about the non Europe servers, but our CE's do this a lot. One soldier I've forgotten the name of on Werner once was *the* reason we captured Voltan after a 5 hour battle, because she was Adv Medic and Engy, and kept rezzing our dead MAXes then repairing them, So the statment

Originally Posted by Warborn

This is a pretty ridiculous statement. Who in their right mind, at BR2, blows all their certs on support? You've got to be really new to the game to do something like that. No person who is serious about contributing to a fight would buy Advanced Medical

is not true.

SilverLord · 2004-02-24, 04:44 PM

I say Adv. Medic be able to deploy something, or give some other type of feature that would allow us to further utilise the cert.

Krinsath · 2004-02-24, 04:52 PM

Exactly Mognoc.

Support troopers are what win even battles (which is all we have anymore thanks to the pop lock fix).

AWACS aircraft are some of the most important aircraft in the US Air Force. How many targets have they destroyed? Exactly zero. They are totally support aircraft. However, they are force multipliers because they get the right things to the the right place at the right time.

Adv Medic and Eng can keep MAX units up and running (which is key if all you have at your disposal is an AMS...and, just for reference, there are times when no tower is available nearby...or in the case of the one base on Searhus...AT ALL). They can keep an offensive going that might otherwise stall due to logistics.

There are many people who play a support only role. They fly Galaxies, they transport troops in Sunderers, they drive AMSes. Their efforts are no less important than the guys actually in the base hacking the CC.

Warborn - I find your posts normally quite intelligent, so I'll chalk this one up to a difference of opinion, but there are a LOT of fixes that need to go in to make support worthwhile. Currently if people have it, it's because it's useful to THEM, not so much to their TEAM (or Empire or whatever term you want to slap on it today).

Incompetent - A while back I posted about seven or eight things that needed to be done to make these certs viable (Eng/Medic). An XP boost was one of many ideas, but not everyone is a BR20 super-soldier. We need low to mid-range characters with this cert as well, otherwise you end up with the zerg mentality of run, die, spawn, repeat. The crucial fixes that Adv. Medic needs is that

1) A player does not turn into a backpack until their spawn timer is up and can be revived at any point prior to.

2) Players are revived with 30 stamina, so they're not just giant targets with no armor.

Also, a good way to increase at least the basic certs would be to flip the support cert costs. In other words, basic med is 2, advanced 3. Do that to both Eng and Hacking.

Why don't Adv. Medics and CEs heal/repair at a faster rate? That'd be a big plus as well. XP rewards aren't the only fix needed, but they'd be a start as they ARE helping the war effort. Killing the enemy should be top on that list, but the background contributions cannot be ignored.

Warborn · 2004-02-24, 05:00 PM

Originally Posted by Mognoc

Warborn, in actuality, Adv. Med / Adv Engineering. Spitfires and a Motion detector around an AMS - Stops infil AMS Jackers. And I don't know about the non Europe servers, but our CE's do this a lot. One soldier I've forgotten the name of on Werner once was *the* reason we captured Voltan after a 5 hour battle, because she was Adv Medic and Engy, and kept rezzing our dead MAXes then repairing them, So the statment is not true.

What statement? I don't know what your point is. I never said they were useless, I just said that they're not a primary role. While there can be situations where a single Adv. Med has their work cut out for them, I really don't see the need to stick an easily-exploitable experience reward onto their job. Plenty of stuff in PS, from blowing generators to taking out vehicle terminals to killing a guy who was just about to hack your tower does not provide an experience reward at all, or provides one which does not at all measure up to the service you just did. But, really, what's the big deal? The point of the game is to have fun playing a large scale FPS, isn't it? Not to play Everquest with guns? I just don't relate to the scrounging for experience rewards.

If your gripe with this system is that you don't feel you're being rewarded enough for running around, Med applicator in hand, desperately trying to find people to heal, my advice would be to swap the applicator for a gun, and heal only when there's a lull in combat and a wounded guy nearby. Soldier and active part of the battle first, Medical fanatic second. Healing a single guy to full health, unless he's a MAX and you're doing his armor, takes seconds. I can't imagine an exp reward for something that takes such a small amount of time which would be both rewarding, and not easy as hell to abuse.

Warborn · 2004-02-24, 05:02 PM

Originally Posted by Krinsath

Warborn - I find your posts normally quite intelligent, so I'll chalk this one up to a difference of opinion, but there are a LOT of fixes that need to go in to make support worthwhile. Currently if people have it, it's because it's useful to THEM, not so much to their TEAM (or Empire or whatever term you want to slap on it today).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying support shouldn't be improved, and if they can give you more ways to help your Empire, then there should be an experience reward for it, absolutely. My point is that, in its current incarnation, support roles don't take much time, or inventory space, or equipment slots. As such, I don't look at it as a full-time job, and don't think it deserves an exp reward. If they vastly improve support in all its forms, which I truly hope to do, then absolutely an exp award is justified. But, until then.

BadAsh · 2004-02-24, 05:24 PM

I tend to agree with Warborn on this one.

Maybe perhaps if healing someone else and reviving for medics and repairing turrets/someone else�s armor/MAX (not vehicles because you'd just repair your own) would give a very minor exp reward for teamwork support... so that short term exploiting would not yield worthwhile results, but the career support guy would see gradual significant results over the life of the character.

Lithpope · 2004-02-25, 04:04 AM

Originally Posted by Warborn

Support should be second class because it is second class.

The point I'm making is that you're asking why support should be a second class role, when support isn't even a role.

Warborn, normally I respect your opinion but, these were two of the most ignorant statements I have ever read from you. I cannot speak for Adv Hack or Adv Medical but, I can speak from a CE standpoint ( ALL my characters have CE, it is an absolute must for me). Squad against squad Squad one or two CE's in one squad and none in another decidedly tips the balance of a fight in favor of those with the CE's. CE provides advanced warning of the location and direction of the enemy (Motion Sensors), it provides booby traps (Boomers), it kills or slows down the enemy ( Motion sensors, Boomers, Mines and Spitfire Turrets). While Rambo with his gun is running around fighting, the CE is preparing or has prepared the battlefield already AND in doing so has made life much easier for Rambo and his gun. The enemy not only has to watch out for Rambo he must also keep mines, spitfire turrets and Boomers in mind or he dies just as quickly if not more quickly. I cannot count the number of times I have dropped a Spitfire turret just prior to the arrival of an enemy grunt and watched him go down like a drunk at a flophouse or watched my Spitfires chew up a surge monkey who thought he was invincible. Combat engineering and engineering is the backbone of any battle and if well done, greatly increases an empire's chances of victory. A prepared and contiuously prepared position is a tough nut to crack because while your enemy is busy trying to destroy or dodge those defenses they are TARGETS and nothing more. All my characters started with Medium Assault and Engineering. Starting off they made a boatload of exp just repairing Phalanx Turrets and picking people off with them just by keeping them up and running and then manning them.

All that said, I happen to agree with you about the exp thing though. Don't see a need for it. I sure hope they do something sweet for Engies and CEs when they get to the advanced skills though.

Warborn · 2004-02-25, 04:08 AM

Originally Posted by Lithpope

stuff

CE doesn't count. I guess it was sort of implied and I'm an idiot for not actually saying it straight out, but I don't refer to Combat Engineering as support, and I don't believe it's what the original poster had in mind with this. CEs kick ass, and have a ton of incredibly useful tools at their disposal. And, yes, it can be a full time job maintaining your mine fields/spitfire nets/motion alarm setups. I'm completely aware of how time consuming it can be to be a CE, and really hope one day Adv. Medics get the same. But, for now, I just want to make sure you and anyone else who misunderstood me (through my own fault, I suppose) that CEs aren't the guys I'm referring to.

Lithpope · 2004-02-25, 04:27 AM

Warborn, fair enough Bro, I apologize for any implied insult. Hehe, guess I am a little touchy becaue I am a dedicated CE for the most part and take pride in my work

noodles · 2004-02-25, 04:40 AM

warborn and lithpope- You are both right about CE and my original post wasn't inteded for CE or hacking. CE already gets exp for kills from deployables. And hacking pretty much pays itself off for all the selfish uses for it, i.e. hacking equipment terminals, nme vehicles, etc. I'm not even saying that it should specifically be exp. There are really good argumenitive points against it. I'm just saying that it seems like engie's (and med's) just deserve more insintive.

The argument about br 20 is almost pointless because exp for anything would be pointless for a br 20. I understand that the insintive is still lost because, lets face it, killing someone is way more fun than repairing something. But if not exp than some kind of buff, or something.

2mthsTheSniper · 2004-02-25, 06:33 AM

How about (if it could be implimented) a system where by (and this is going to sound a bit RPG I know) the more an ADV medic (say) uses their skills, the quicker they get at it. Thus an incentive to start with and a reward once you've used it a certain amount.

If you wanted to go more RPG (and I know noone will) you could make it such that once a certain point is reached the either the basic abilities are available without spending any cert points (bit too much of a bonus) or perhaps you get the Adv cer points back. This would only be achievable through significant gameplay but would reward players and be a little extra in the game.