Proposed Changes for Balancing the Engineer Class

I echo the sentiment of removing the tanks. I play on an Oz server running druids 208 (something like that), which has less restrictive stats caps then your server has (I think weaps speed has a cap of 200). Nevertheless, on this one map, 2 tanks side by side dominated the whole map. The 10 other players basically gave up and chatted, monsters spawned all around them and they never died, except come wave 16 (ironically, that was me, and i was trying to score).

Another thing is monsters tend to attack those closest to them, not always the tanks. Those desperately trying to score by spamming the monster spawn points up close get attacked more often then the 200 weap speed tanks up on the hill doing the real damage. They can spend almost the whole map without getting a single rock thrown their way.

so question...by taking the tank off and adding a turret thats like a tank...does this mean im still going to get things blown up in my face from across the map like i do when we still had the tanks?! Cuz that was my only problem with the tanks....

As Pyro said, the reason for removing the tanks was they were too powerful. Likewise the link turret.
What is the point of producing a new too-powerful turret?
Not a chance.

Ok so out the window it goes...<_<.....

Still.....2 person turret...o.0...(heh..thats gonna be in my head a for a bit..)

Tanks got to go, but I do strongly believe that the higher powered turrets should be able to do significantly more damage than a hand held weapon, or have other abilities that compensate for being totally stationary and unable enhance the turret with magic.

All of the current turrets have disadvantages that you have to take into account when placing them.

The link turret scans ultra slow and has limited angle of attack. It is also tall and cannot be manned well if placed in a low roofed room, otherwise your view is blocked.

The ball turret fires from a very wide angle and is apt to be blocked by obstructions, it also takes up quite a bit of floor space.

The mini turret is open, it also seems to do less damage than commonly handed out magic weapons. Its greatest boon is its ability to quickly orient on a new target.

Turrets greatest asset only helps low levels and engineers ie. infinite ammo.

The big advantage of most turrets is that the player does not get damaged whilst in them (minigun turret excepted). The other advantage is range.

Current rates of damage for turrets are:

Minigun turret: 140 damage/sec

Energy turret: 100 damage/sec

Ball turret: 180 damage/sec

Link turret: 214 damage/sec

Which does not sound a lot compared to a standard link gun doing 150 damage/sec, or 225/sec with maxed weapon speed. So the Engineer's link gun is more powerful than a link turret.

If you then consider a +4 link doing 315 damage/sec with max weapon speed, then in a way it implies the turrets are quite underpowered.

However, the goliath only does 120 damage/sec. If you put a goliath next to a person with a +4 link, which would get the highest number of kills? I think most people would agree a goliath can certainly score effectively.

With every advantage comes a disadvantage...The link turrent has the most advantage..with being able to be linked.(power boost..)..

with 2 Fire..primary and alt.(alt take out baddies that are too near)....most helaht..most enclosed..and overshield like thing.....Thought it may be true it may be tall this is usually countered by the room that is needed for them to spawn..(or it can be just you have it on external view?..I have mine on internal....not for vehicles thou)

Also you left out the Energy turret...This turret has more the height issue than other turrets..and also is open at the front (vs the side like the mini..)so you receive damage..(but healing as well..)....
It has an advantage small focal point..in the distance..but close up...obsatcales can block one fot he 2 beams..(halfing fire speed..)..as eahc one is strong..but slow..

So with every turret there are advantages...and disadvantages...

So also I agree ...

But still a link turret..linked if you got 25% Xp..

.....very interesting..heh...thou the link is likly to be taken out/ put in later...

Oh and grizzled...with the new idea of engineers 'boosting' the power fo turrets..they would become more effective than the handheld weps.(as 2 played would be dedicated )

Szlat wrote:

The big advantage of most turrets is that the player does not get damaged whilst in them (minigun turret excepted). The other advantage is range.

Current rates of damage for turrets are:

Minigun turret: 140 damage/sec

Energy turret: 100 damage/sec

Ball turret: 180 damage/sec

Link turret: 214 damage/sec

Which does not sound a lot compared to a standard link gun doing 150 damage/sec, or 225/sec with maxed weapon speed. So the Engineer's link gun is more powerful than a link turret.
If you then consider a +4 link doing 315 damage/sec with max weapon speed, then in a way it implies the turrets are quite underpowered.

However, the goliath only does 120 damage/sec. If you put a goliath next to a person with a +4 link, which would get the highest number of kills? I think most people would agree a goliath can certainly score effectively.

That is certainly more information than I had.

"there are 3 types of lies,
1. little white lies.
2. damming lies.
3. statistics."

~Mark Twain~

I hope I got the quote right, Im going by memory, and that has been known to be faulty.

Tanks score effectively because of the massive punch that they have as far as single shot. They 1 shot kill most weak monsters and can easily finish off some of the more powerful ones if they have been damaged. You don't need to be that accurate either, just hit in the weaker monsters general area and you can easily pick up a few kills on a smaller map.

I played on family room last night with a good group of people. Elite Engineer was on an playing with his toys (tanks). I did not have any problem surpassing his score and staying a couple of hundred points ahead of him. I only mention this because I have heard other players with higher level characters than I was playing have trouble with that map with thanks on it. On wave 16 I had died 3 more times than he did and I ghosted once that I was able to recover from. Despite this I was still 400 points ahead.

I'm not saying this to brag or point out how good I am, the fact is I'm not that good as far as being accurate with a weapon or using the best tactics to get score. I have never broached what would be even close to the high score table. My high scoring moment of truth was with a penetrating lightning on an ONS map on a titan wave then a huge group of them got bunched up and each shot I was hitting 6 of them while berserk. I managed an 1800 something score. My pet seamonky could have done as well in the same circumstances.

I seem to have been diverted from my original purpose.

The high scores from tanks are due to large area effect and large single shot damage.

The high scores from link turrets are due to multiple people linking to them .

Along with the fact.....that!...the turrets...and the tanks have one thing a link gun +4 doesnt...range+zoom+splash damge..alogn wiht the fact that the only reason link turrets and tansk have less damage a sec..si cus they realese alot more punch with each shot

Ina link turret..i can....aim to waayy far bit of the map zoomed in.....hit the ground near a nali or titan...hurt them...and seeing its more punch..prolly kill them...

So heres an example...in X time..A shoots 100 damge ..but ..B shoots 120 damge once...right after the first 20 damge of A hit the target...
doesnt matter that the shots are in the air..point is that 120 all hits at once....soo...if you want to varry said effectiveness... changin their speeds/punch would work...

Now heres a thought i jsut had..
Tank too muhc?..
What about the also so underestimated...Pandilien!...
It got a bit of a punhc..not as much as tank...no zoom..AND its team play cus that big shield shields itself and those around it..

...thoughts?

-Jason_x- wrote:

What about the also so underestimated...Pandilien!...
It got a bit of a punhc..not as much as tank...no zoom..AND its team play cus that big shield shields itself and those around it.....thoughts?

I think all vehicles will be going from everything except VINV. The list of vehicles available in VINV will be determined by the runtime configuration - so Dru can include Paladins and even Leviathans if he wants.

Szlat wrote:

Linking to Turrets I want to encourage Engineers to spawn turrets for other players to use. So, the suggestion is if an Engineer links to a turret, the turret gets a 100% damage bonus, and the Engineer gets half of the xp. Only applies to Engineers, and only for direct links, no chains.[/list]

So the way it is looking at the moment is if an Engineer links to a turret, the following happens:

if the turret is not at full health, the linking heals the turret. No xp to the engineer. No damage bonus on any fired shots. No sharing of damage xp - the turret operator gets it all

if the turret is at full health (and has been for the last second), then the engineer is not healing the turret and can be considered as improving its performance. Damage done by the turret doubles, and xp from that damage is shared between the turret operator and the engineer.

If two engineers link directly to the turret, and no turret healing is taking place, the damage is tripled, and xp shared three ways between the two engineers and the operator.

and so on. 5 engineers linking to the turret would give 6 times damage, and a six-ways split of xp

Non-engineers linking to the turret get nothing - they haven't got the skill to improve the performance of the turret

soo what if youve got one turret with like 10 engineers linked to it..o.0....
1000%!!! :S....max pwnage...ooh Id lie to see that ..

If you want to see the power of the link, look at the high score table. Awhile back a group of characters:

-9/18/06: SICKENING!!! Level 50 Medic_Mach climbed his way up the table with an awesome highscore of 2628, shattered the old most link gun kills record with 417, destroyed the old most mo-mo-mo-mo-monster kill record with 6, and finally proved dat teamwork can get u to the high score table! The medic link chain trio of Medic_mach, Grizzeld_EMT and gussy decimated nalis and titans alike in CTF-Tutorialclassic while surviving the whole ordeal as one unit! Huge props to those guys!

I was playing at level 64, gussy was level 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 through this map.

As for turrets being better at long range than a weapons master, it just means that the weapons master is not using his long range weapons. Comparing the link gun to the other energy type turrets is not a apples to apples comparison. Even without speed switcher you can pound out an amazing amount of damage switching between the lightning gun and sniper and that is not even mixing the avril in. Between these weapons, you can do more damage at long range than someone spamming at medium with a flack cannon.

i wasnt saying that ,...I as comparing to link....

thats all..

And i for one knwo the power fo the link..wiht damge bonus of 34 and speed of 12 ..i can only get a 1k score wiht the use of link + shield gun (sheidl gun for ealier waves..cus my damge bnous/speed cant take out faster than the wep masters...)...thou for skaarj/warlords/all waves after wave 14... i have to do slash damge weps like flak or rocket.....:/..

Szlat wrote:

Szlat wrote:

Linking to Turrets I want to encourage Engineers to spawn turrets for other players to use. So, the suggestion is if an Engineer links to a turret, the turret gets a 100% damage bonus, and the Engineer gets half of the xp. Only applies to Engineers, and only for direct links, no chains.[/list]
So the way it is looking at the moment is if an Engineer links to a turret, the following happens:

if the turret is not at full health, the linking heals the turret. No xp to the engineer. No damage bonus on any fired shots. No sharing of damage xp - the turret operator gets it all

if the turret is at full health (and has been for the last second), then the engineer is not healing the turret and can be considered as improving its performance. Damage done by the turret doubles, and xp from that damage is shared between the turret operator and the engineer.

If two engineers link directly to the turret, and no turret healing is taking place, the damage is tripled, and xp shared three ways between the two engineers and the operator.

and so on. 5 engineers linking to the turret would give 6 times damage, and a six-ways split of xp

Non-engineers linking to the turret get nothing - they haven't got the skill to improve the performance of the turret

So theoretically the whole map could consist of 10 engineers standing there in a link chain feeding a turret. Sounds fun.