I absolutely love playing the Engineer class. You can do well at any range, from point-blank with shotguns, to at a distance with battle rifles. You can support teammates with ammo, repairing MAXes and vehicles, and lock down rooms or road with mines and turrets. But... there's still a few things that I think could really, really benefit the Engineer, just from play time and situations where I've felt that 'I could use this...' And so, I give you a few of the ideas floating around in my head, to see if you, the community, or even the developers themselves, think I'm either on to something brilliant... or on something hallucinogenic. IDEA #1: MANA Vehicular Resupply Package Arguably the Engineer's primary 'ability', save for the Repair tool, the MANA Ammunition Pack IS useful. But, Engineer is the ONLY class to get absolutely no variety in the 'class specific' ability. So, I propose the Vehicular Resupply Package. Simply, it replaces the default Ammo Pack with one that resupplies vehicles with ammunition when they get nearby. Cosmetically, it could look like a deployable, much smaller version of ammo towers, or just a bigger version of the tossable ammo box. Either way, you'd lose the ability to resupply infantry, and gain the ability to resupply vehicles on-the-fly. IDEA #2: MANA Anti-Aircraft Turret I know, I know. The Spitfire just came out, everyone went bonkers over it, blah blah. But, I still think there's room for another turret in the Engineer's toolbox, and that's where the MANA Anti-Aircraft Turret idea came about. It'd basically be a flak cannon similar in damage/mechanics to the G-40 Ranger, but with a super-exposed seat off to the side, kinda like the Russian ZEUS-23 AA gun. For those of you who say that this could step on the toes of the HA/MAX when it comes to anti-air, the Engineer already does so for vehicles with the AT missile turret... why not complete the package? IDEA #3: ACE Long-Range Repair Tool Basically, take a normal repair tool, make it overheat quicker, cool down slower, and give it an 'alternate fire' of being able to look at a vehicle within, say, 200 meters, and heal them for a set percentage over time, something like 15%... but at the cost of INSTANTLY overheating the gun, and putting it into a cooldown state. There have been many times where I've tried to repair a friendly vehicle, and *just* barely didn't make it in time to keep it from exploding. Something like this would help tremendously. IDEA #4: Anti-Air Deployable Tesla Coil Giving the Engineer even more flexibility in dealing with threats to themselves and their team, this Tesla device would replace landmines, and would charge up for 15-20 seconds after being built. When an enemy aircraft passed within a set distance (the number in my head says 150 meters), it would discharge an electrical arc, dealing moderate damage to the aircraft, on par with an anti-air rocket launcher, and then charge up again. Engineer's could charge it slightly faster by focusing their Repair Tools on it, but in doing so, if the tower were to take ANY damage, it would reset the accelerated charge. A non-'focused' tower would not have such a drawback. IDEA #5: Preventative Maintainence This would give the Engineer a Triage-like ability, but with any vehicle they are in. Heal occupied vehicles for 0.25% health per second, regardless of what seat you're in, and it is constant, whether you're getting shot at or not. Obviously, it's not a very big amount, but, it could stack with other sources, and *might* just give you the edge you'd need to stay alive just long enough/not explode to get out and properly heal the vehicle. Hope you guys enjoy these ideas, and lemme know what you think.
Idea 1 is probably my favorite just because whenever base siege extends longer than expected you tend to run out of ammo but tone it down to personal usage as to give around 10 rounds or mags for your own vehicles and would need to resupply another with nanites in a terminal, as ammo sundies would become quite pointless if they no longer serve a critical purpose. Idea 2 seems to just hurt the pilots too much as currently just strafing a base with rockets or nose cannon could result in your vehicle getting set on fire due to the number of anti aircraft weapons already available. Idea 3 is in my opinion highly exploitable as the number of organized outfits who could just keep their sundy alive from far away is a very real problem. especially with the fact that cool downs could be reset by spamming "e" at nearby terminals. Idea 4 again is just adding insult to injury against pilots as well as deter any aspiring pilots from entering the airgame other than to fly galaxies as it is the only thing that wont explode when you sneeze at it. Idea 5 is ok but as of right now all it will do is make Guerilla Mag riders even more annoying to kill as experienced mag drivers are near impossible to kill unless you can quickly burst them down with c4 or tank mines. It would also render auto-repair useless (or OP if it stacks), the devs obviously wanted auto repair implemented so they went with nanite auto repair for vehicles and gave it a delay as to not deny players their kill. If it was implemented disable it when the vehicle is on fire as to prevent the frustrating "I almost had him" moments. Overall the ideas are not bad but I can't help but think that all of it is just to make the engineer even more independent from other classes or people, of course I'm not saying that it was the intention of the suggestions but in a game that makes you rely on other classes the engineer is nearly independent as it has tools to deal with vehicles and infantry (other classes rely on the engi but not vise versa). This is probably why the heavy is hated as even without over shield it has the capability to deal with air vehicles and infantry in one loadout, it's the jack of all trades master of infantry gameplay, second only to the max.
I'm in favor of the MANA AA turret, (Give it the firepower of a single Ranger, or something.) and the Engineer Triage; (This needs to be a really low percentage, and I appreciate that you picked .25% ahead of time with this in mind for balancing Sunderers and Galaxies; I do feel it should have a short range like the Medic's Triage though, and that it should get a base multiplier for the user in the pilot seat, so as not to penalize Lightnings too much for having no crew.
#1: It'd actually do two bad things: - Resupply sunderers would become redundant (why getting ammo instead of repair/shield/blockade when you can just throw v-ammo pack next to your sundy?) - Tank campers who spam choke points from far away (and who are nearly exclusively Engineers) would now have unlimited ammo too. Bad idea And regarding the rest I'm backing Rogueshadow up. My own humble proposition would be: ACE - MANTLE L: Replacing offensive power of MANA turrets, MANTLE shields are for engineers who prefer providing cover for their allies. Upon construction, MANTLE would project a transparent force wall, which stop any kind of projectile, missile, beam or grenade but DOESN'T stop vehicles nor infantry. The "L" stands for "Large" as this is one of two possible modes for MANTLE unit. Large version should be as tall as a MAX and as wide as two of them, standing right next to each other. That shield should be about half of Sunderer Deployment Shield in health pool but slightly stronger in resistances, however its health should constantly drop similar to Heavy Assault overshield. ACE - MANTLE S: After switching the firemode while holding the MANTLE unit, the produced shield would be greatly concetrated, making it only a bit taller than a crouching soldier (MAX shouldn't fit perfectly behind the shield) and as wide as 1.5-2 soldiers. An upside of reduced shield area, the shield "beam" itself is much thicker, becoming non-transparent and non-passable (although it'd be good if you couldn't actually stand on top of it when jumping over - just slide to the side) by both vehicles and infantry. Health (and natural lifespan as a result) of the "S" variant should be about 2x better than the "L" version. [MANTLE units cannot be repaired and could "flicker" for a second upon being hit with EMP] "L" variant would be mainly used in open field battles and for protecting the vital vehicles from enemy fire while "S" version would be used in CQC and as a temporary roadblock for vehicles in narrow passages. Alas it'd be hard to balance such shields and prevent exploits (as I said at the beginning of my post - camper tanks. They'd benefit greatly when given an option for setting a temporary peek-a-boo barrier that they'd use to shoot through while not receving damage themselves). But hey - it's a mere suggestion after all
I like the cover shield idea. I also thought it'd be interesting for engineers to get a deployable nanite bubble similar to the medic bubble, except that it slowly autorepairs MAXes and vehicles within its range.
