You must construct additional pylons!

It's been brought up before about engineers building lightning/offensive sents with no base and just sucking xp from the area. Which means free xp for doing nothing.

To solve this, pylons (a la star craft) could be imposed onto the engineer. One would require setting up a pylon before building other objects; there would be a limit as to how far away the objects could be; there could be prerequisites to building certain objects; there would be allowed one pylon per engineer.

The one pylon restriction per engineer prevents a map from being engulfed by one person's sentinels. Especially with a sent specialist playing and every other room ends up with a sent of some sort in it...

The lightning and offensive sentinels in particular would require building at least a few blocks within range of the same pylon the sents are to be built around. (which isn't necessarily needed if the pylons are destructible as covered below)

As for the object for the pylon itself it could be the ground panel of a power node (from ONS). Or could even include the floating top part, as destroying the node could remove power to the objects around it? Which would also make bases less impenetrable. Being destructible also removes the need of prerequisites as one would have to build blocks to protect the node in the first place.

What are your guys' thoughts?

ok I think you get'n alil overboard there but thats me

Not really needed in my opinion. yes the sents are powerfull, but that compensates for the actual engineer being weaker, having no vamp, healing or weps apart from a link gun. look at the AM, the rod has a massive reach and then can dominate maps with it, the Medic has pets that move around the map.

My style of playing is exactly what you have mentioned, i set my sent up in a position where it will ge me the most kills, then run around shooting things. i see nothing wrong with this, its just how the engineer is played. just as a medic would spawn monsters.

I always create a small base with a defence sent for any other players who are on, and most engineers will fall back to a base at wave 12, 14 and 16, as lone sentinels are destroyed in seconds on these waves without persistant linking.

agreed... sentinel placing is only useful in the earlier waves, and the later waves need defense sents, restricting the XP gain of the engi in those waves

You've been playing starcraft ghost beta haven't you?... its a nice game, I must admit I might be tempted to test it out. The pylons would restrict the amount of space an engineer can expand to. I do not think anything that involves nerfing will please the players who play the engineer class.

I am not keen on trying to force people to play in a certain way. So I do not go along with the concept that sentinels can only be placed in "bases".

As F8_AL said, the engineers are significantly weaker, and the use of sentinels balances it out. The key question is are Engineers outscoring the other classes? Not really, so the free use of sentinels cannot be overpowered.
To be honest, they score most when they are in a base. If we forced engineers to keep in their bases I think it would not be a positive step for the game.

Although I think the thing that irritates me most are the engineers who go into a base where there are defense sents but they put up an offensive sentinel.

That is pure selfish behaviour, and gets no thanks from me. But, like free speech, I will not stop them doing it.

I'm with you there szlat. or they place a miniturret of low health instead of maybe linking the ball or energy turret with max health and max damage and speed of the shooter.

Szlat wrote:

Although I think the thing that irritates me most are the engineers who go into a base where there are defense sents but they put up an offensive sentinel.

That is pure selfish behaviour, and gets no thanks from me. But, like free speech, I will not stop them doing it.

I disagree with you Szlat. What annoys me more is are the engineers who set up a base and turrets with nothing but off sents in place, but expect people to link them. Engineers, if you want someone to link your turret you should have at least 1 def sent in place so that the linker isn't constantly robbed of xp. If he's healing your turrent 90% of the time, he's not getting xp for that. And don't rely on your linkers to put up def sents for you. I think it's better for the linker to have a lighting sent so the linker can have some adren for shield blasts.

Jefe wrote:

Szlat wrote:

Although I think the thing that irritates me most are the engineers who go into a base where there are defense sents but they put up an offensive sentinel.

That is pure selfish behaviour, and gets no thanks from me. But, like free speech, I will not stop them doing it.

I disagree with you Szlat. What annoys me more is are the engineers who set up a base and turrets with nothing but off sents in place, but expect people to link them. Engineers, if you want someone to link your turret you should have at least 1 def sent in place so that the linker isn't constantly robbed of xp. If he's healing your turrent 90% of the time, he's not getting xp for that. And don't rely on your linkers to put up def sents for you. I think it's better for the linker to have a lighting sent so the linker can have some adren for shield blasts.

As I have said before, I set up the turret first, then an offensive sent, and then a defensive sent. My reasoning is due to pupae and flies which the offensive sent can take care of while players take care of other matters. Last, I place blocks to protect everyone. I'm sorry if this offends other players but pupae and flies (RED) are extremely hard to see and hit and can bleed health from the turret real quick.

Jefe wrote:

... Engineers, if you want someone to link your turret you should have at least 1 def sent in place so that the linker isn't constantly robbed of xp. ...

Good point.
Even if the turret does not get hit, the linker will only get at most three quarters of the xp that the turret operator gets. Without defense sentinels, the linker can get very little xp indeed.
So I agree with Jefe's recommendation - do not link a turret unless there are defense sentinels there - unless you are a very very low level eng.

I agree with demon, its still fair to place an offensive one in the base, just so long as you put up a defence too. The lightning sent is a good form of defence anyway as it draws allot of attention.

The other thing you have to remember is that we are all out to get xp, and placing and lightning sent+ defence sent as opposed to defence+defence will yield an awefull lot more xp, so why not??

F8_AL wrote:

I agree with demon, its still fair to place an offensive one in the base, just so long as you put up a defence too.

The other thing you have to remember is that we are all out to get xp, and placing and lightning sent+ defence sent as opposed to defence+defence will yield an awefull lot more xp, so why not??

As an engineer you can form whatever base you like. You are free to play in your own style with what tools you have.

If you place a defense sent and a lightning sent, then you will get the most xp you can. But a person linking you will get more xp if you put down 2 defense sentinels. And since you will always get at least 33% more xp than the person linking you, if you want people to link to you then you ought to make their deal as good as you can.

First point. If you are sitting in an energy turret, I will get more xp from spawning a new energy turret than I will from linking you.

Second point is the rate of linking benefits.

A turret by itself does 100% damage and all the xp goes to the person in the turret. This is also the situation when the turret is being healed - the healer gets no xp

A turret with one linker does 175% damage, the operator gets his original 100% and the linker gets 75%

A turret with two linkers does 225% damage, the operator gets his 100% and the two linkers split the extra 125%

with three or more linkers, the turret does 250% damage, the operator gets his 100% and the linkers split 150% between how every many of them there are.So a fourth linker adds no extra damage but absorbs some of the xp.
So a linker will never get more than three quarters the xp the operator gets.

So, I am happy for you to form whatever base you like, and people will link you if they want to.
However, I will get irritated if you put a lightning sentinel in the field, then spawn a turret under my defense sentinel.
(I am not getting at anyone in particular here - just highlighting a style of play that is getting prevalent)

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

As I have said before, I set up the turret first, then an offensive sent, and then a defensive sent. My reasoning is due to pupae and flies which the offensive sent can take care of while players take care of other matters. Last, I place blocks to protect everyone. I'm sorry if this offends other players but pupae and flies (RED) are extremely hard to see and hit and can bleed health from the turret real quick.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with that, in fact that's exactly what I do and I tend to link you when you're on because your bases are made thoughtfully.

I usually run a light sent and a def sent until the later waves, depending on how many def sents are in play and the layout of the map/base. Once I start taking damage in the turret, then I put up a pair of def sents the next wave. I feel that it's the shooter's responsibility to protect the turret, as Szlat said, to keep XP equitable.

Szlat wrote:

F8_AL wrote:

I agree with demon, its still fair to place an offensive one in the base, just so long as you put up a defence too.

The other thing you have to remember is that we are all out to get xp, and placing and lightning sent+ defence sent as opposed to defence+defence will yield an awefull lot more xp, so why not??
As an engineer you can form whatever base you like. You are free to play in your own style with what tools you have.

If you place a defense sent and a lightning sent, then you will get the most xp you can. But a person linking you will get more xp if you put down 2 defense sentinels. And since you will always get at least 33% more xp than the person linking you, if you want people to link to you then you ought to make their deal as good as you can.

First point. If you are sitting in an energy turret, I will get more xp from spawning a new energy turret than I will from linking you.

Second point is the rate of linking benefits.

A turret by itself does 100% damage and all the xp goes to the person in the turret. This is also the situation when the turret is being healed - the healer gets no xp

A turret with one linker does 175% damage, the operator gets his original 100% and the linker gets 75%

A turret with two linkers does 225% damage, the operator gets his 100% and the two linkers split the extra 125%

with three or more linkers, the turret does 250% damage, the operator gets his 100% and the linkers split 150% between how every many of them there are.So a fourth linker adds no extra damage but absorbs some of the xp.
So a linker will never get more than three quarters the xp the operator gets.

So, I am happy for you to form whatever base you like, and people will link you if they want to.
However, I will get irritated if you put a lightning sentinel in the field, then spawn a turret under my defense sentinel.
(I am not getting at anyone in particular here - just highlighting a style of play that is getting prevalent)

Yeah that is very annoying. There are a few guys who don't build thoughtful bases and I can add a few other scenarios - 1 large sent most of the match and no def sents or they'll use a HB right in the line of fire of their own turrets or other player's turrets. Speaking of HBs I just feel like *something* needs to be done about them because they don't encourage team play and in certain maps can completely dominate. Not only that they can take out several players when they are destroyed, unlike a turret.

Assuming it can be done, I'd like to see a) a linking system similar to turrets added, b) damage output lowered, and c) for skymines to stop knocking players around when they pass through the line of fire. Basically a linked Bender should be as powerful as a current Bender.

Well The lightning sent is a must for every engineer, It helps to kill small bugs and it attracts them so when they are attacking ur sent u just kill them as easly target with ur turret.

Ive found nice strategies with the lightning and def sents, the other sentinel with the plasma shoots is kinda useless for me.