Thoughts on infiltrators (somewhat rambling)

[Krinsath]

As part of my PS education, I try to play as many different styles and as many different weapons/empires as possible...which probably explains why I have about nine characters I cycle between on a regular basis. I tend to believe that it gives me a more balanced idea about things because I'm on both ends of the equation.

Anyway, two things have always eluded me: infiltrating and piloting. Discovered my problem was going into hacking and trying to be a full infiltrator instead of getting CE and spending the early going as an assassin (thank you XP treadmill). Last night I feel like I reached my breakthrough point with the weaponry...just I've reached with most every other weapon system in the game. This has given me a much greater appreciation about what infiltrators face and what is an issue and what can be likened more to random complaints.

Real Issues:

1) Darklight flickering in 3rd person...I don't use this myself when I have DL, but it become obvious to me that it's a quite cheesy tactic. 3rd person cam in general seems a bit strange for non-drivers, so...just all around goofy.

2) The possibilty of people with "hacked" ATI drivers (i.e. - turning off transparency effects). I didn't believe such things existed before I'd be sitting still in the middle of a forest in a friendly SOI when some guy just walks up and starts shooting. No DL, I hadn't moved for a long while, no motion sensors (nor motion to detect), and no mosquito. If it is true, SOE needs to do something about that post-haste...it *is* cheating.

3) Spitfires and the Interlink facility. With the Interlink benefit, spitfires will open fire on cloakers 100% of the time, regardless of the cloaker's actions or relative location. That makes the Interlink far too powerful against a small section of the community. It's not a universal handicap, as soldiers can carry the weaponry to deal with it. The devs leave the infiltrator next to no ability to counter numerous spits with that benefit.

4) Even though this will be fixed shortly, the differences in visibility. It is MUCH easier to see a TR infiltrator than the VS one.

5) The bug where all infiltrators are clearly visible for a second after you spawn. Little unfair that.

6) Friendly names show up so slowly that infiltrators are often killed by friendly snipers (sorry to any cloakers that have been on the receiving end of any of my bolts!)

7) Inventory management is ridiculous. Give some sort of secondary slot, even if all it will hold is a grenade.

Complaints that aren't so valid:

1) That they are easily spotted when moving by snipers. I spent six hours as a infiltrator, killed probably three dozen snipers (sometimes to the point of stalking specific targets), was sniped exactly zero times. A sniper by nature has an extremely limited field of view. Examine your surroundings, locate potential sniper locations, make sure that you can't get a clear view of the sniper's face (i.e. - don't run directly into their scope)...then move around behind them and wait until they fire to unload a pistol clip into them and dance on the corpse. On the flip side of that coin, I've probably shot about a hundred infiltrators that just ran straight across my field of vision.

2) That they should be drawn like the AMS (i.e. - you don't see them beyond range X at all). Don't run when you know enemy snipers are looking at the area...they're the only ones with long enough range to really pose a threat. See also #1

3) That they will have to get Silent Run to go into Interlinked facilities. While on the surface it seems like a complaint along the lines of the forced zoom of the ScatterMAX, it really isn't. The forced zoom impacted the MAX at ALL times. The interlink only affects cloakers when they are in an ENEMY, UNHACKED, POWERED facility CONNECTED (sometimes through three and four other bases) to a POWERED, UNHACKED Interlink Facility. Yes, it will lower your effectiveness in base assaults to not have it. However, I discovered last night that a motivated CE cloaker can cause tons and tons of damage with boomers and mines inside of a friendly SOI. I can think of about five or six TR that will probably check the doors they're walking through a bit more closely now. Since this isn't something that impacts you 100% of the time, drawing the comparison isn't fair, and since the vast majority of possible circumstances are not prejuidiced against them, I can't take this one seriously either.

4) The recent RExo buffs nerfed the infiltrator. I think the majority of the suits I killed last night were Rexos, amazing what can be accomplished with boomers and paitence. I don't like that you're forced into starting off as an assassin that way (Infil+Eng+CE=7 certs...or BR4, which you can get in VR) but then again, it will be a very good training ground for you to practice not being seen and stalking the enemy...skills that are critical to pick up hacking successfully. Also, infiltrators shouldn't be able to go toe-to-toe with the combat troopers (as opposed to pilots, which is what I tend to associate agile with more) and come out on top unless they're stalking an injured soldier, or boomer him out of sight.

5) That it's harder to get kills as an infiltrator. Granted, I was on for a total of six hours and got about 80 kills, but those 80 were generally getting me a higher amount of XP per kill than I usually get as a grunt infantryman. Grunt infantry I usually am in an assault or defense and am killing people shortly after they spawn so I get about 100-250XP a kill. Most of the kills I got last night were 400-650 since I had to first locate and then stalk the hapless prey...er....enemy. Counter-sniping is the only battlefield role I can readily think of for infantry that beats stalking the enemy as a cloaker in terms of XP...and it really only does that because a sniper can carry much more ammo than a cloaker. What does that really mean? My cloaker has 89 kills and is BR7...only being involved in 3 base captures (Marduk and Kyoi...and a third that I must have wandered through in the middle). My MAX specialist is also BR7, also 3 hacks, but has had 201 kills. Same rank (actually, the MAX specialist is BR7.4), over twice the kills...that's noticeable.

All in all, I think that I've gotten a general feel for infiltrators. While I'm not the super hacker or anything like that, I do think I was rather effective in causing havoc, which is the real role of the infiltrator.

#1 favorite thing to do that I hate having done to me but will continue to do because it's so damn fun:

Saying "Well Met" just before you detonate the mine that blows the guy up.

Just because it's evil...and for those few that remember the beginning of this post...I still suck at piloting.