Engineer's need fixed

when engineers were introduced the servers were always full,. it wasn ot a problem to obtain points or obtain the certain level of fun factor,so the limitations placed on the engineer at that time were justified,. but now thier are few people who still play and the engineers are a memory hog/waste at this point in time due to these reasons.

Spawn timers,
after wave 9 if your base isnt up most likely it wont be unless you have people watching your back, the timers are a heavy concern of mine.after wave 9 its all about the timer,30-70 seconds is too long to wait to build your next base peice and they need to be shortended or taken out completely,

palidan,
too big,only good for out doors, too slow too weak doesnt take dmg well at all,waste of server memory ,bring back the smaller tank and have it shoot slower or take mor dmg or whatever,palidan is a giant memory hog,<lagfest>

toilet car,
useless casket on wheels doesnt shoot cant go up stairs ect,waste of memory,add a diffrent vehicle ,or take it out,.all it does is lag people,

ball turret,
its nice n big but its power output is less then the energy turret,useless to use if the energy turret is better which it is, waste of memory again,bring back the link turret and lower its power,

blocks,
too easily destroyed by others,the overall desighnes could use fixed,use small blocks,add more of them and make real base desighnes.

link dmg,
engineers are underpowerd,when a lvl 100 cant solo a skarj on wave 11 unless you have multiple links,thats a waste,link dmg needs to be up'd alittle,to make us depend on blocks and sentinals then say blocks are a hassle,

i love the engineer class,at the time they came out all who did the codeing did great ,but now we either have to go back to,or update to todays needs as a player, if you think the engineer is overpowerd, i challenge you against mystic <weapon master> lets see who gets top score, >:/ only way the engi will be overpowerd if other engis link up to him/her and now a days thier arent enough people on at one time to do that,and even then only 1 person realy benfits from it,.
i know im a whiny crying player but im also right,and regardless how people see my complaints i only seek to improve on the flaws,

I know you usally play later at night but there's always other people that can link you. And when you say that only 1 person benefits from linking a turret i'm assuming you are talking about the person in the turret. How do you come to the conclusion that only 1 person benefits from it? all the xp gained is divided up between the shooter and the linkers equally I believe.

And as for them being underpowered I can't say I agree. I've scored 2350 with a lvl 75 engineer. 1 sentinel, no turret so nobody could link me, and most of my kills were with the link gun.

but then again hobo you are a pretty good player a bit above average

, but still have you seen anyone else come close to your score hobo as an engineer without a turret that is not me? Good players will score above normal so just because your score seems right doesnt necessarily mean it is right... I can bet you, that there were medics on, you either had a triple or rod, and took the dd a good number of wave or am i wrong? Its the way we play...

And yes the paladin is a lagfest, with just one engineer making a paladin creates bad lag can you imagine the number of engineers above lvl 90 that could make a paladin on the same map? That's A LOT of lag... i count over 10 of them; thats like having 10 paladins if they wanted too, scary sight

. So either fix the the bug with all that lag or bring back the goliath which never had that lag problem in the first place.

yeah the timer is pretty long especially in higher waves; people ask me why i don't link them in a base on those higher waves, cuz frankly if you know how to use the rod, dd, and triple correctly you can stand a better chance out there killing than in a base. I feel the timers limit me, just stand there try and avoid getting hit by red skaarj, null warlords, and titans for around 90 seconds just to make a paladin or turret that eventually gets blown up in a sec or two...

And the toilet car yeah pretty much useless...

I also doubt the link turret will help people score higher just will make the game funner... for ex: the maps where the high scores are made from engineers are on Ringballdeux and Romamoon station both of which are long range maps. So here's the question which turret do you think will help you score higher a link or a energy? keep in mind the link's alt fire has a limit to how far it can reach and it's fire rate is slower too.

Just make the link weaker but at least insert it into the game, experiment with it szlat and see if its possible to implement it into the server. Remember when you tested out the scoreboard and the radar on a server of yours, you can do the same with the link turret to test and see and reduce the power to where it seems right...

have to agree and disagree
as a general rule I thought camping was discouraged on this server...
the constant babble of where is the base? don't break my blocks! is getting irritating
the engineer class has brought in a large number of new players and does teach them to play as a team
but when just two players out of twelve are actually moving around and not huddled in a base it's getting silly
I for one rarely play my engineer at all anymore, partly because I find there is not enough variety available in playing style I like using different weapons, moving around, so that could defiantly be improved
but once you get down to it I see (once again) lots of complaining regarding this class and little in the way of solid improvement suggestions

I wasn't saying that there's NOTHING wrong with the class, because I agree that it could use some changes, but I don't completely agree with how wrong mystic seems to think it is.

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

have to agree and disagree
as a general rule I thought camping was discouraged on this server...
the constant babble of where is the base? don't break my blocks! is getting irritating
the engineer class has brought in a large number of new players and does teach them to play as a team
but when just two players out of twelve are actually moving around and not huddled in a base it's getting silly
I for one rarely play my engineer at all anymore, partly because I find there is not enough variety available in playing style I like using different weapons, moving around, so that could defiantly be improved
but once you get down to it I see (once again) lots of complaining regarding this class and little in the way of solid improvement suggestions

Add to the list is the constant build something for me, find something for me, etc. That is the reason for the downtime at the beginning and between waves, to find stuff

Mystic wrote:

Spawn timers,
after wave 9 if your base isnt up most likely it wont be unless you have people watching your back, the timers are a heavy concern of mine.after wave 9 its all about the timer,30-70 seconds is too long to wait to build your next base peice and they need to be shortended or taken out completely,

That is part of the strategy...choose your first spawn wisely. If I spawn in a later wave, my first thought is to lay out a couple of small blocks. I should be able to get 2 out for a barrier before the wave starts. Then I spawn a def sent. After the 30 sec spawn timer I will most likely spawn another depending on the situation. Two blocks can be sufficient to minimize melee attacks, while the def sent(s) should take care of most projectile attacts. I may spawn a mini turret instead of the 2nd def sent to help keep my shield up, and work on getting some dren for later.

palidan,
too big,only good for out doors, too slow too weak doesnt take dmg well at all,waste of server memory ,bring back the smaller tank and have it shoot slower or take mor dmg or whatever,palidan is a giant memory hog,<lagfest>

I'm not sure what you mean by memory hog, but yes the palidan seems to have issues.
I would say don't nerf it yet though...I can't make one yet

toilet car,
useless casket on wheels doesnt shoot cant go up stairs ect,waste of memory,add a diffrent vehicle ,or take it out,.all it does is lag people,

I played around with a map package that lets you place a modified tc on a map. It had an afterburner on it for alt fire...maybe that would make it more useful...especially on large maps. (It was a while back, but I think it had a machine gun on it too)

ball turret,
its nice n big but its power output is less then the energy turret,useless to use if the energy turret is better which it is, waste of memory again,bring back the link turret and lower its power,

The Ball turret does 45 points of damage with a fire rate of 0.25 (the animation rate is 0.45)
The Energy turret does 30 points of damage with a fire interval of 0.30.
The Mini turret does 20-25 points of damage with a fire rate of 0.15
I don't know if FireInterval is equivalent to FireRate, but I assume that the energy gun is slower than the ball. For some reason the ball turret has a separate animation rate, which may lead to why it looks slower.

Also, the Energy turret isn't very effective on metal titans

blocks,
too easily destroyed by others,the overall desighnes could use fixed,use small blocks,add more of them and make real base desighnes.

Szlat mentioned a while back that if anyone had ideas for new wall designs post them.

link dmg,
engineers are underpowerd,when a lvl 100 cant solo a skarj on wave 11 unless you have multiple links,thats a waste,link dmg needs to be up'd alittle,to make us depend on blocks and sentinals then say blocks are a hassle,

Link alt fire is very powerful. I think up to about wave 9 it seems to be more powerful than piercing link. After that the monster DR makes the piercing wep far more powerful.
Compared to the other inf weps (medic gun and inf) I think the eng link is the most powerful.

Why should a Eng be able to compete with a WM? They are supposed to be a support class, not an offensive class.
Engineers don't always get high scores because, most of the engineers are playing to level and support the team. You don't get points for shield healing, or linking a turret.

I think the uniqueness of the engineer class is what makes it so appealing to many players. Sure there are other servers with the eng class, but many of them don't offer any challenge.

I suppose the Engineer class has been out long enough now to warrant a review. I am always open to suggestions, but I am also aware that we need to keep things balanced. So if I can make things better for Engineers I will, but I am not convinced I need to make things easier for them.

So, some quick comments:

Toilet car and paladin. I never really wanted these - Druid put them in. As such, while I personally think that both should go, I am not going to touch them.
The Paladin was put in due to high level Engineers wanting a powerful vehicle. The killing power of the Goliath was too much, and spoilt the game for most other players, and had to go.
If we remove the paladin, what then for high level engineers? We could nerf the goliath and put it back, but if it isn't any more powerful than a hellbender why bother?

Link turret. This got removed as it was way too powerful. See these threads. We want the link turret back and Link turret

It seems to me there are 2 main styles of play for engineers - hiding in a turret with def sents or free and roaming with inf link and shield blasts. A number of engineers start roaming then hide for the later waves. We need to ensure both styles are equally playable.

If you get loads of engineers in a base linking to a single turret with loads of def sents, it can be quite difficult to beat. But does this make the game boring? At least it leaves the rest of the map free for those that want to play a running game. Note that the person in the turret will always get significantly more xp compared to those linking due to the "healing" delay.

As far as balance goes, I am interested to hear what Elite has to say - having very high levels in all classes? Although Elite perhaps plays the roaming style more than other engineers. What is unnecessary and what would be better? Remember though the engineer class is still pretty powerful, and I do not really want to increase it's power. But I am prepared to give and take.

There has been talk about engineers maxing way too early, and not getting much benefit above level 90. I think the following are helpful:
weapon speed (50), health (100), DB (80), DR (50), Armor regen (125), armor vamp (325), construction health (110), eng awareness (10),
ghost (85), loaded eng (150), shield healing (45), shield regen (60), vehicle eject (50) = 1240 points = level 177. And that is not including things like Smart Healing, Retaliation and Shields Up.

Other sorts of questions are

Should we increase armor vampire and/or armor regen?

Should we add extra levels of construction health bonus?

Should engineers get more xp for shield healing? This would encourage more engineers out of the base

Should the engineers link alt-fire just do normal damage against people/monsters and only do excessive damage/healing on vehicles/turrets/sentinels? But still keep the range short.

Should we have more levels of loaded engineer so high level players can spawn more items? e.g. 2 ball turrets, or 3 defense sentinels?

Spawn Timers. Do we need? Purpose was to slow engineers down on building up a base, and not being able to spawn everything at once. But they could be reduced.

Ball turret. On paper it should do more damage than the energy turret. However I am not entirely convinced about that in practice.

I did at one stage code an extra engineer ability so that the magic of the weapon they were carrying would be transfered onto the turret they entered. Imagine a vorpal mini turret? However, the engineer class would have to lose some serious strengths to get an ability like that. Or perhaps we give that ability to the WMs?

hey guys just a couple in detail quick ideas that i think would help re-balance engi's after reading some replys

medical sent -a few hp per zap would go great with 1 defense sent,
knockback sent-knocks them back alittle-from blocks mostely<monsters>

build timers- could be knocked down alittle,40-70 seconds is alittle long

HUT artifact for engis- makes huts/ full enclosed shacks,sniper bunkers more of a building then a block

boost palidan fire rate or remove palidan for a extra sentinal,

add a effect to the engi link gun to help roamers like reflect or quickfoot

i think these little things would be helpful and not over balance what do yall think?

build timers could be reduced a bit for sure
the healing sent could cause some balance issues
removal of paladin is ok with me to (too big too slow)
knock back sent is a cool idea but could end up being too exploitable
how about a door that only players can activate

good ideas Mystic

Szlat the magical minigun turret would be awesome an AM with a energy minigun turret

but before any changes lets make sure the balancing of the engineer isn't thrown off again it has the capability to overrun this server

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

....but before any changes lets make sure the balancing of the engineer isn't thrown off again it has the capability to overrun this server

Agreed

Okay szlat here are my ideas:

first off the paladin at my level with armor vamp 10 and armor regen 3 is pretty powerful during waves 1-10, after that waves 11-16 the paladin falls pretty quick if there is no one to link. Another factor that makes the paladin deadly is the nuke it makes when using both the altfire and normal fire at same time while using the stunt vehicles to quickly crush any nearby monster; which quickly heals the tank by about 150 to 200 health. But remember it takes a while to charge in order to make the tank crush monsters.
I have quickly racked up points up to 2000 by wave 10 with this but due to the lag i have refrained from doing so ( at least with the paladin)... ps I also use the triple and rod while in the paladin to help.
The idea about bringing back the goliath but nerfed is a great idea at least to see which is more convenient, the goliath or paladin, because if you really ask me the goliath is a very powerful long range vehicle but terrible at short range, the goliath is so terrible at killing monsters short range that it can even damage itself while doing so; but as for the paladin it can crush warlords on walls and queens on roof ( things I have practiced) which makes it an excellent weapon for short range attacks.

And since most of the maps that are chosen are small the paladin is an ideal choice something the goliath wasn't, so as a brief summary the bigger the map the better for a goliath but the smaller the map the better for a paladin...

Also this is just an idea but to avoid making the minigun turrets blow up can you make the purchase of vehicle ejector a prerequisite in order to enter or use a turret ( just a thought)

The engineers right now are pretty much balanced maybe a little below by being limited to their building capabilities. I have scored up to 3500 without anyone linking me ( taking the dd every wave, had a rod, triple, and 225 adrenaline on with low levl players)... so the main suggestions i can make are increase the armor vamp of the engineers from 3% to 5% so it can be equal with the weaponmasters cuz I continually find myself running for my life during waves 11-16 something weaponmasters dont have to do as much, or at least reduce the cost from adding +5 to each levl to adding +3. For ex: first lvl would cost 6,9,12...ect.

Also is there a way to increase the amount of armor regen (perhaps adding more levls), cuz 3 (which I have) health points per sec is ridiculous when healing a paladin which has 1800 hp. This can take up to 6 minutes just to regenerate a paladin if you dont have vamp.

And yes adding the effect of a weapon to a turret should be mainly for the weaponmaster (IMHO), I consider the WM kinda weak.

Another idea is implementing the repulsion type mechanism the ion tank has into the toilet car kinda like the one the paladin has just without the damage, and maybe increasing the distance the monsters are thrown or repelled...

Thanks for the thoughts Elite, I will have a think about them.

Elite wrote:

Also is there a way to increase the amount of armor regen (perhaps adding more levls), cuz 3 (which I have) health points per sec is ridiculous when healing a paladin which has 1800 hp.

I thought there were 5 levels?

Elite wrote:

first off the paladin at my level with armor vamp 10 and armor regen 3 is pretty powerful during waves 1-10, after that waves 11-16 the paladin falls pretty quick if there is no one to link. ......The idea about bringing back the goliath but nerfed is a great idea at least to see which is more convenient, the goliath or paladin, because if you really ask me the goliath is a very powerful long range vehicle but terrible at short range, the goliath is so terrible at killing monsters short range that it can even damage itself while doing so; but as for the paladin it can crush warlords on walls and queens on roof ( things I have practiced) which makes it an excellent weapon for short range attacks.

I think politically we wil have difficulty bringing back the goliath. The paladin was put in to replace the goliath when it went. Perhaps we need to try something else - a manta with lots of armor ? Or some other vehicle?

Elite wrote:

Also this is just an idea but to avoid making the minigun turrets blow up can you make the purchase of vehicle ejector a prerequisite in order to enter or use a turret ( just a thought)

Nice idea. I have added code in which may make the mini less likely to crash by always ejecting the player - like the energy and ball turrets do. This isn't live yet, so we will have to wait and see what the effect of that is.

Elite wrote:

The engineers right now are pretty much balanced maybe a little below by being limited to their building capabilities. I have scored up to 3500 without anyone linking me ( taking the dd every wave, had a rod, triple, and 225 adrenaline on with low levl players)...

Glad to hear the top level balance is not too far off. And at low levels the Engineer class is certainly easier than the AM class.

Elite wrote:

so the main suggestions i can make are increase the armor vamp of the engineers from 3% to 5% so it can be equal with the weaponmasters cuz I continually find myself running for my life during waves 11-16 something weaponmasters dont have to do as much, or at least reduce the cost from adding +5 to each levl to adding +3. For ex: first lvl would cost 6,9,12...ect.

Engineers have the benefit of being able to deploy defense sentinels, which should drastically reduce the damage the turret takes, even though they can't move. So they should need less armor vamp - although I understand the armor limit is a lot higher than the 350 health vampire needs to reach. In a way I don't want engineers to be powerful enough in a turret to survive without defense sents - otherwise the eng will place offsensive sentinels in a different part of the map, and dominate too much. Engineers run out of things to buy before WMs, so I am not sure that reducing the cost helps that much. I would probably prefer to allow the Engineer to deploy 3 defense sentinels - which not only benefits the engineer, but those around him.

Perhaps one option might be to reduce the delay on the shield regen. At the moment it only regens if you haven't taken damage in the last 5 seconds. Perhaps we should remove this condition?

Elite wrote:

Another idea is implementing the repulsion type mechanism the ion tank has into the toilet car kinda like the one the paladin has just without the damage, and maybe increasing the distance the monsters are thrown or repelled...

I still think scrap it. To make it useful would require making it as powerful as the scorpion in some way.

Bah Elite, your just that good

Anyway a few ideas to throw out.

Well if we wanted to add more things to buy for the Core Engineer how about this based on an earlier comment.

"Rapid Build"
Reduces the Build Cooldown on all Engineer artefacts by 10% per level.
Cost = 10,15,20,25,30 (100 Total Points)

Basically this allows engineers to build things faster. A 30s CD turns into a 15s CD at max level.
-----------

Also, I've seen it thrown around that early on, Engineers are a bit too powerful due to the alt-fire of the Eng-Link. You could lower the damage for the Eng-Link to that of the normal Link but then add an ability that costs a bit of points to bring it back up to the current damage level. Something like 2 or 3 levels for a total of 20-40 points. It would stunt the early growth a little.

------------

As for the delay on Shield Regen, I dunno as I'm a mixed bag about that. On one hand it would be nice but on the other, at it current regen rate, it regens more then Regen 5 (5 Health vs 7.5 Shield). It would be nice if it would go all the way to the shield max of 250 if you had the points in Shields Up but for always having it running with no delay, I think It might be a tad Op'ed in its current form since Shields are slightly better then Health.