I have now been an Engineer for a couple of days and I actually like it over Scoundrel. However, I don't see projector being useful at all and UAVs don't really do anything either. Now what i'd like to see happen is that UAVs be more like a few of the falcon abilities for the Runewardens in Achaea. Like have the UAV seek out a player if they are on the same planet, Asteroid or Station. UAVs to follow targets. UAVs able to circle above you and be able to detect enemies, a specific target, faction or simply anyone that gets within three locations from you (i.e the same distance of a QPC).
I also would like the HUD goggles to be wearable because it seems weird that you can't do that already.
I also would like BOT LIST and TURRET LIST ALL to show how much longer they have before they decay. I don't know if our stimjector shows it's lifespan or not, if not then I think it should. Same with anything we make that decays over time.
Also it would be nice to be able to send our carry bot to go retrieve turrets or workstations if they are in the same area as you. Well, as long as they are not carrying a turret around. You'd have to BOT TURRET STOP before sending them off to get something to bring back if you already have them BOT TURRET.
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "We're called
Scatterhome after what everybody does at
the end of the night when it's time for
someone to pay the bar tab."
(Scatterhome): You say, "Which by my
calculations, it's your turn to pay."
(Scatterhome): Brantar says, "That's what
my calculations have come to."
(Scatterhome): Paavo says, "My math adds
up to that, yeah."
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "Bastards."
I still fully support the idea of our trans bots skill being a voltron-esque move. I would call my a Mobile Weapons Platform (NO IT IS NOT A BEAST!) :P
Not to give away my ignorance to some things, but what is a "voltron-esque move"?
Voltron was 5 lion bots that came together to form a much larger robot. So the idea here is that our trans move (final skill in Bots) would be to combine our bots (possibly not UAVs as that would be odd) into one giant bot with the functionality of all the others.
Hey, we've got a thing in Lusternia called Acquisitio where we just pick up everything in the room. Any chance we could have a setting with our carrybot where it would do that, up to it's capacity? Maybe "hoard"? It would have to be able to on/off as some folks probably don't like picking up other's junk when they die. But It'd be a nice little bit to have.
Hey, we've got a thing in Lusternia called Acquisitio where we just pick up everything in the room. Any chance we could have a setting with our carrybot where it would do that, up to it's capacity? Maybe "hoard"? It would have to be able to on/off as some folks probably don't like picking up other's junk when they die. But It'd be a nice little bit to have.
I feel like that would be an issue when it comes to quest items, though the game may have solved this by denying people the ability to interact with items unless they have the quest flagged. What sort of things do you need to be picked up that don't already go to your inventory?
junk. I don't always realize that someone else has died here and left their junk. be nice if my guy just took it all. And that issue exists in Lusternia as well, but everyone uses Acquisitio.
Personally the extreme ease with which all of my bots and turret are killed, and the massive amount of time it takes to re-build them in combat turned me off the class. Two of your skillsets can be completely removed in a few rounds of combat with minimal effort, and gadgets alone don't feel strong enough to justify it. I would suggest bots follow a similar paradigm to priest/luminary angels/seraphs from aetolia/imperian/achaea and be untargetable entities.
Personally the extreme ease with which all of my bots and turret are killed, and the massive amount of time it takes to re-build them in combat turned me off the class. Two of your skillsets can be completely removed in a few rounds of combat with minimal effort, and gadgets alone don't feel strong enough to justify it. I would suggest bots follow a similar paradigm to priest/luminary angels/seraphs from aetolia/imperian/achaea and be untargetable entities.
I don't know the class well enough yet but turrets are an area control method similar to lusternia druid/mage. I would say that if someone can use a balance or two in taking down a turret, that is a balance or two they are not striking you. Learning to take advantage of that is going to be where you need to focus.
Bots, on the other hand should have some way to protect them for a short time or maybe an emergency quick rebuild. I agree that two skills should not become useless AND put you way behind if the tradeoff is out of proportion. IE: if the attacker comes out way ahead after destroying your equipment.
The real trick to ent classes is finding the balance for destroying ents as a strat.
Maybe a new use for UAV, since you can have multiples, is a cover for other bots. As long as a uav is present it must be destroyed before you can kill one of the higher priority bots/turrets? Just spitballing to get some ides rolling.
Inferno and Airstrike both 1 shot all of your bots at once (carrybot and tank, I think, take 2 hits from Inferno). The first can be interrupted, yes, but all it takes is 1 to go through and you're royally fucked. If a Fury sees you use repeat, they can freely inferno because you can't stop the repeat to interrupt it.
Airstrike you have to crash pretty much the second it starts otherwise bye bye to your bots, since they aren't affected by cover (and cover is irrelevant anyway since you permanently have encroachment vs a Scoundrel). Even then it's not a sure thing, depending on how they time the airstrike.
Give a barrier-esque ability to the UAV, 1 minute cooldown and blocks all incoming damage to your bots/turrets for ~6-7 seconds. Bots/turrets can't be used while the barrier is up, except to repair. Gives some form of counterplay to airstrike, and allows protection against random infernos if timed properly. Also halts the Engineer's offence momentarily. Long enough cooldown that there's still windows where the ents can be destroyed. The cooldown would be player-specific, not per UAV... alternatively, have the cooldown bot-specific but overload the UAV in the process, destroying it.
The class also doesn't really feel/play like an ent or pet class. The bots don't passively attack; they just enable a skillset of active abilities. That is, a list of important abilities are gated behind the presence of 4 bots.
The parallel to angel/seraph that kaedok made is a good one. Bots are more like an angel and less like the old woodlore animals or domination entities, where:
killing the bloody lemming was a critical strategy
taking advantage of the free time while the other person killed the lemming was also a critical strategy
Angel/seraph was never killable because without it - no more sap. No more absolve, etc. Basically, the angel was half of the class and a bunch of abilities were gated behind its presence.
If someone kills the carrybot, goodbye interrupt. You guys are saying it goes down in 1-2 hits and that aoe attacks can take them all out a the same time as well. Each of the 4 combat bots has critical abilities.
I wish I had a log of my spar last night with Vorn. He used the nanoseer ability that allows him to redirect a portion of his damage to everything in the room, dropped a single vacuum sphere, and hit me with 2 or 3 rounds of health dps and my entire entourage and turret were dead. My only "counterplay" was to leave. Failing this, 2/3 of my skillsets were removed in mere moments. Feelsbad.
Honestly, I've never liked entity driven classes when they are things that can just be killed. The entity has to either be powerful enough to justify it's ability to be killed, or be easy enough to recover without losing too much momentum. Balancing that always feels like a nightmare.
Also IEDs can aoe, depending how they're set off. I think that is what gritblast does as well, if you don't have an IED primed. And outgunned in gunslinging. I assume cavein hits bots.
Is there a reason that there can't be more than one turret active in a room? Does this then mean that engineers are balanced around two skill trees and not three when it comes to bashing and anything group-related?
For PVP, I think engineers are the "area-control" type class, so it's reliant on dismantling others' turrets when necessary, to make space for your own.
In hunting, I think turret + bot claw is the same TTK (time to kill) as plain bot claw (because claw does higher damage if it's not lugging a turret around), so if the area you're hunting is full of turrets, it's not a bad fallback.
The main difference between turret + bot claw and plain bot claw is that the turret method relies more on passive damage as opposed to the more upfront route of plain bot claw. And that's not necessarily a bad thing - passive damage means that you still do damage even if you're lagging or disconnected.
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
I think one of the issues is that Starmourn has opened this door to allow multiple attacks and methods to be used on mobiles (within reason - apparently I still can't SQUASH something, but other classes can use their instant kills). I haven't run the numbers, but is bot claw (plus bleeding) more effect than a Claw-Claw-Turret Control combo or using a junk jet plus turret control and finishing with a magnotron?
The additional flexibility of the system probably is going to require additional flexibility from the players, but right now I'm still at a loss because other classes don't have to use different types of bullets or not be in the same kith stance, and so on when hunting in groups.
I'm glad clawing does more damage, but what if I don't want to claw or my strategy doesn't revolve around clawing? Shouldn't my junkjet or taser do increased damage (or provide an additional effect) to level the field when I don't have a turret deployed?
I'll still run the numbers, but am I missing something?
Only scoundrels can, and it's not any faster than just shooting something in the face. It's slower, in fact, by a large margin after some testing. The only advantage is that you can use two sticks and a rock to do pull it off because subsystem damage is static.
Could our Gadgets PULL skill please be useable on non-faction or guard mobs again please??? To separate aggro mobs in the same room etc. As it is right now it will not work. When I try to use it I get a message that "You cannot target mobs with ranged attacks." No matter what I'm targeting.
16:24:34 You order a deployed turret with a mounted shardflinger barrel to stop fighting.
16:24:34 You order an aerodynamic drone to stop fighting.
16:24:34 You order a small unmanned aerial vehicle to stop fighting.
16:24:34 You order a crane-armed carrybot to stop fighting.
Had to do ORDER LOYALS PASSIVE a few times more than once because of the bleed and and the shard falling out of the bot. Can you please make it so that the bots and turrets are exception to the PROPTOSS damage or at least, make this bots remember who their boss is.
It's why I eventually stopped being Engineer, cause AOE is prevelant in combat and having the majority of your offense wiped by enemies and allies alike was frusterating. If they fix that I may go back to Engineer.
Comments
I also would like the HUD goggles to be wearable because it seems weird that you can't do that already.
I also would like BOT LIST and TURRET LIST ALL to show how much longer they have before they decay. I don't know if our stimjector shows it's lifespan or not, if not then I think it should. Same with anything we make that decays over time.
Also it would be nice to be able to send our carry bot to go retrieve turrets or workstations if they are in the same area as you. Well, as long as they are not carrying a turret around. You'd have to BOT TURRET STOP before sending them off to get something to bring back if you already have them BOT TURRET.
(Scatterhome): You say, "Which by my calculations, it's your turn to pay."
(Scatterhome): Brantar says, "That's what my calculations have come to."
(Scatterhome): Paavo says, "My math adds up to that, yeah."
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "Bastards."
Any chance we could have a setting with our carrybot where it would do that, up to it's capacity? Maybe "hoard"? It would have to be able to on/off as some folks probably don't like picking up other's junk when they die. But It'd be a nice little bit to have.
And that issue exists in Lusternia as well, but everyone uses Acquisitio.
Bots, on the other hand should have some way to protect them for a short time or maybe an emergency quick rebuild. I agree that two skills should not become useless AND put you way behind if the tradeoff is out of proportion. IE: if the attacker comes out way ahead after destroying your equipment.
The real trick to ent classes is finding the balance for destroying ents as a strat.
Maybe a new use for UAV, since you can have multiples, is a cover for other bots. As long as a uav is present it must be destroyed before you can kill one of the higher priority bots/turrets? Just spitballing to get some ides rolling.
The parallel to angel/seraph that kaedok made is a good one. Bots are more like an angel and less like the old woodlore animals or domination entities, where:
- killing the bloody lemming was a critical strategy
- taking advantage of the free time while the other person killed the lemming was also a critical strategy
Angel/seraph was never killable because without it - no more sap. No more absolve, etc. Basically, the angel was half of the class and a bunch of abilities were gated behind its presence.If someone kills the carrybot, goodbye interrupt. You guys are saying it goes down in 1-2 hits and that aoe attacks can take them all out a the same time as well. Each of the 4 combat bots has critical abilities.
I think that is what gritblast does as well, if you don't have an IED primed.
And outgunned in gunslinging.
I assume cavein hits bots.
In hunting, I think turret + bot claw is the same TTK (time to kill) as plain bot claw (because claw does higher damage if it's not lugging a turret around), so if the area you're hunting is full of turrets, it's not a bad fallback.
The main difference between turret + bot claw and plain bot claw is that the turret method relies more on passive damage as opposed to the more upfront route of plain bot claw. And that's not necessarily a bad thing - passive damage means that you still do damage even if you're lagging or disconnected.
- Ilyos (August 2019)
The additional flexibility of the system probably is going to require additional flexibility from the players, but right now I'm still at a loss because other classes don't have to use different types of bullets or not be in the same kith stance, and so on when hunting in groups.
I'm glad clawing does more damage, but what if I don't want to claw or my strategy doesn't revolve around clawing? Shouldn't my junkjet or taser do increased damage (or provide an additional effect) to level the field when I don't have a turret deployed?
I'll still run the numbers, but am I missing something?
- Ilyos (August 2019)
It's why I eventually stopped being Engineer, cause AOE is prevelant in combat and having the majority of your offense wiped by enemies and allies alike was frusterating. If they fix that I may go back to Engineer.