Suicide Engineers

[Mystic~]

I don't know if this has already been discussed elsewhere... Is it possible to review and make some balance changes to engineers please? Perhaps to a lesser extent techs/hotwires as well.

My issue is primarily with free engineers being able to charge down the more advanced classes at close quarters and just throw a remote C4 and detonate it killing their enemy and themselves in the process. It's a cheap and effective tactic that is often not possible to counter, i.e. being unable to kill them in time to save your character unless you manage a one shot kill with a PIC/Rav and being free they obviously have nothing to lose in trying it out.

The same also applies to tank battles whereby you destroy the enemy tank only for you to also be taken out by their last ditch suicide C4 charge—there's no reward for winning your skirmish in these instances other than you destroyed their vehicle.

My ideas are:

Force engineers to run (if sprinting) when they have remote C4 selected.

Apply a safety that prevents remote C4 from being detonated if the player is still in the blast radius.

Apply a small negative points penalty for every player suicide to deter engineer suicide bombings.

Make remote C4 heavier and reduce the current throwing distance by 1/3 - it's twice the size of timed C4.

-- OR introduce a feature whereby throwing distance becomes dependent upon how long the player holds down the mouse button. Click to throw it at your feet or click and hold a little longer for a greater distance. I imagine this would work a bit like charging a volt rifle, but with less delay and causing the player to become stationary.

It's use in destroying buildings would remain unchanged, it could still be thrown over bridges etc. However this would now prevent many instances whereby players hide behind corners in third person only to throw C4 in your face or whereby an engineer with a full stamina bar can out run and suicide into someone with depleted stamina.

[yosh56]

This was literally one of the biggest complaints when beta 1/2 were around. More on that later.

[Henk]

I like idea 1, and make him hold it with 2 hands to make it seem more realistic, like it's a heavy thing to lift.

Idea #2, don't like it

And the negative points wouldn't really matter to me if it means i killed the other guy or that tank.

Shorter throwing distance would take some getting used to I think, I wouldn't be happy if I missed the MCT because of it while i'm infiltrating a building.

[Ap2000]

Force engineers to run (if sprinting) when they have remote C4 selected.

Apply a safety that prevents remote C4 from being detonated if the player is still in the blast radius.

Apply a small negative points penalty for every player suicide to deter engineer suicide bombings.

Make remote C4 heavier and reduce the current throwing distance by 1/3 - it's twice the size of timed C4.

I don't undertand what you are trying to say with #1.

#2 would be a bad change.

#3 This is ok.

#4 Wouldn't change anything.

Why not just make a delay of, let's say, 3 seconds between you pushing the mouse to detonate and the actual detonation?

Any enemy infantry can easily back off. Of course this means that they need to persist for a few seconds after a player's death.

However, this also makes the engineer quite a lot worse as a unit.

[Mystic~]

I don't understand what you are trying to say with #1.

It would work by automatically forcing engineers to jog when a player selected their remote C4 preventing them from dash-sprinting and throwing a heavy pack all at the same time. However a good player would still be able to get round this by running into range before changing weapons.

Why not just make a delay of, let's say, 3 seconds between you pushing the mouse to detonate and the actual detonation?

I think this would cause a lot of complaints.

How about if there's a short delay 0.5 - 1 seconds before it can be detonated from the time of placing? This way it would still be possible to strategically detonate remote C4 in real-time when countering incoming enemy rushes.

There needs to be some sort of 'C4 ready' event trigger that can be synced with the end of the double beep sound instead of instant detonation upon throwing. Out of all the possibilities so far this seems to make the most sense, infantry would have a better chance of avoiding being hit in the face and tanks get a little longer to gun down any engineers that pop out of destroyed vehicles before their C4 can be detonated.

[Ap2000]

I think this would cause a lot of complaints.

How about if there's a short delay 0.5 - 1 seconds before it can be detonated from the time of placing? This way it would still be possible to strategically detonate remote C4 in real-time when countering incoming enemy rushes.

I don't see how it's much different from what you just said.

[Mystic~]

I agree with where you were going - a small tweak to timings could fix the problem without creating any unnecessary development. However I'm talking about time to arm and you're talking about time to detonate which are two different things. What you suggested has implications as to how they can be used and I even gave you an example.

[Madkill40]

Remove remotes, allow 2 timed.

[DoctorB0NG]

Remove remotes, allow 2 timed.

[[TmX]Super-Kh]

remotes are pretty crucial in engie rushes,if you remove them then engie rush (which is a game changing rush most of the times) won't be a thing anymore

[boxes]

Have a set timer for when the remote detonates, and reduce remote explode radius.

Also maybe reduce Engineer health to 75 and Adv.Engie health to 150. Increase all weapon damage to MCT by 5x.

[Agent]

The most sane and easy-to-implement solution would likely be to set individual character movement speed in such a way that an engineer isn't going to be able to run up to competent anti-infantry units that see them. This would still allow for engineers to easily sneak up on other players to plant C4 on them, and essentially keep the mechanics predictable, while still giving a substantial advantage to other infantry when in direct combat.

This also means that Engineers remain effective enough in mega-close combat, which is nice. You shouldn't be running up to people with explosives, and expecting to not get hurt. =P

[RoundShades]

The most sane and easy-to-implement solution would likely be to set individual character movement speed in such a way that an engineer isn't going to be able to run up to competent anti-infantry units that see them. This would still allow for engineers to easily sneak up on other players to plant C4 on them, and essentially keep the mechanics predictable, while still giving a substantial advantage to other infantry when in direct combat.

This also means that Engineers remain effective enough in mega-close combat, which is nice. You shouldn't be running up to people with explosives, and expecting to not get hurt. =P

Idk, the only problem with this is inside of structures the defender can still die 5 times and still get a quad-kill with remote c4 (I am looking at you "jessica!" at last Pug...)

...could the remote c4 get a wee bit more of an infantry damage nerf?

[Agent]

(I am looking at you "jessica!" at last Pug...)

*whistles* I know not what you mean!

Idk, the only problem with this is inside of structures the defender can still die 5 times and still get a quad-kill with remote c4 (I am looking at you "jessica!" at last Pug...)

...could the remote c4 get a wee bit more of an infantry damage nerf?

I'm still of the opinion that the damage itself isn't such a big issue, especially when playing defense. I have absolutely no problem with how C4 is used defensively in very-close building-defense combat -- engineers/hotwires aren't that hard to kill, especially when they're busy repairing.

The main area that I genuinely think Engineers need to be balanced, is their capabilities in close-to-medium range encounters (think tunnels on Field or Canyon) compared to other classes, and movement speed modification should be enough to even this out. By slowing an engineer down, they're not only easier to hit, but it's going to be more difficult for them to get within range and land kills/damage. That's a rather significant nerf by itself really, and it's not like we can't modify damage if speed doesn't turn out to be enough -- let's stick to one tweak at a time.

Also, since it hasn't really been brought up: tweaking infantry speed might make infiltration more difficult for engineers/hotwires, which will further degrade their ability to be used as offensive units.

[SFJake]

Add dodging (NOT ROLLING) to the game. Make it require a heavy amount of stamina.

There you go. You can dodge the god damn blast on reaction.

[Madkill40]

In hindsight players at this point should really not allow Engineers to get close enough to them in the first place but anyway, remove sprint from Engineers? That'll hamper them. (Because really, an engineer that can sprint? Super unrealistic hurrhurrhurr)

In all seriousness, maybe just tweak remote C4 damage so they only take 75% of a T2's maximum health and armour? (T1/Free Infantry will still get killed (so an engineer can still die from their own scrubby ways)

This hampers building kills as well but not too much, pretty sure most of the time there's 3-4 engineers on average make it inside a building to kill it anyway.

Additionally 1 Hotty/Techy won't be able to lonewolf a building which is also another good advantage.

Reducing the damage to remote C4s is a much easier tweak than anything else suggested, right?

Lets make suicides remove points from the team using suicide bombers.

[RoundShades]

Actually, my biggest problem is the C4 splash damage. If defending a doorway with c4 in the beginning, it is too good to place 2 c4 at a doorway and get 4 guys that walk across. Maybe the non-attached damage of c4 should be lowered by 10% but not the splash radius overall?

That is only if a considered ChemSprayer nerf comes, as both are needed to keep ChemSprayer sane. Still seems too static to have an OP ChemTroop and the only way to defend against him is also OP AKA engis in buildings with c4 bricks because you have to deal with 20 before you get the MCT and can't necesarily backpedal them without either stepping out into base defences or abandoning the MCT in general.

All that is also considering the MCT health buff, which I like but defence of it is a little too easy with c4-death-c4more.

Also, in that regard, and this would be less fun but make sense, but a respawn timer would be nice. I just know it would also be a bad idea because it's less fun, especially if you die a LOT trying to fight an uphill battle, but that would also stop the same engineer you killed off a MCT from spawning at the same MCT. I mean, unless coding was implemented to not grant players spawns in the same building each time, to mix things up.

[Madkill40]

I mean, unless coding was implemented to not grant players spawns in the same building each time, to mix things up.

I thought the code was already there to stop players spawning in the building that is being attacked?

Hence why I don't think I've ever spawned in the building that's being attacked before.

[RoundShades]

No clue. Okay, here is an idea that is not mine, and is not the whole idea, just a part of it, but here it goes...

What if, character specialties decided their speed and weapon-damage, and engineers ran at 85% current speed, while shotgunners ran 100% and autoriflers ran 115%, and anti-infantry had resistance to bullets while anti-armor had resistance to explosions so if grenadiers ran at 85% they would take 60% damage from splash like tanks or c4 and engineers also take 60% damage to c4 as engineers.

That would give anti-infantry the most advantage to kill an engineer by backpedalling, and would actually make engineers relatively safe against other engineers because c4 does less damage to explosive classes, thus nerfing bitch-use of c4 against infantry.

[eiMer]

i'm with bro,

the splash damage is too high, even the hottwire fights. I normaly win them with using 180° turn around remotes by passing enemy. I also abuse the suicide engineers a lot, and its definetly the splash.

remove the remote for engineers or reduce splash

[Mystic~]

I like the sound of these:

Reduction in splash damage (radius)

Reduce the sprint speed for engineers

Introduce latent arming - so that remotes cannot be detonated until after the beep sound, 0.5s or something small. They'd then be used less like heavy grenades with more emphasis on their placement.

Aside: Grenades need to bounce less and do more damage (particularly against vehicles.)

I think engineers should definitely keep the remotes, because they're the only way to counter a rush of 4 or more players during the early game (especially Chems which I agree are over powered) and as Super mentioned they're important in quick building rushes - timed always get disarmed easily if everyone dies.

I would like to see some sort of terminal time out/lock out (5 seconds) so if an infiltrating player is discovered, that the enemy player cannot continue to refresh health/armor and spam remotes. This would likely mean they'd get one opportunity to refill or change character for the duration of fighting off the infiltrator.