I'm so disappointed my fellows Engineers. We've been asking for deployable shields and / or barricades since beta. I've been reading this suggestion on this forum how many times.... once per week in 24 months? Now it comes out the november news for our class is going to be the automated turrets from Planetside 1. I do not dislike the fact we're receiving new stuff but those turrets are not really so "new" for this class. They basically do the same thing MANA do, but automatically and with less firepower. Like recon devices they're likely to be spottable, and they will probably have a reduced firepower to prevent instakilling. So we will deploy them, forget and wait to get a kill. Like landmines. Personally I kept my fingers crossed for the shield, and I still believe it would a much more interesting and team-oriented feature for this class.
My only worry with this is that they're going to have a rather small No-deploy AOE due to being like a normal turret. Imagine a hundred engineers dropping these things in a tech plant or biolab..... D:
Imagine having a hundred engineers equip the 3 claymores and dropping 300 claymores all over a biolab.... D:
If there is a fairly large No deploy zone then that should be fair. Maybe something just a little smaller than the sunderer nodeploy. Probably add an ammo limit and time limit as well. Maybe it's got around 100 bullets before running out, and lasts for 2 minutes? Personally I'd rather it be significantly weaker than a MANA turret, since it doesn't put the engineer into a vulnerable state, and automatically acquires targets.
If they work at all like they did in PS1 (I have my doubts, but we'll see) then they will have a small no deploy zone - IIRC it was maybe a 20-25m radius. They were fairly weak but capable of killing unwary or weakened infantry and rarely land a finishing hit on a vehicle. I highly doubt they will do any damage to vehicles in PS2 though. I used to run as an engineer fairly often in PS1 and would do a full heavy loadout of ACEs (they were consumables in PS1) and drop a mix of mines and spitfire auto-turrets. There were limits to how many of any one deployable you could drop in PS1, too - something like 8 mines and 4 turrets - if you placed an additional one the oldest deconstructed. It became a game of "see how well I can hide the turret" so that by the time the enemy found it they were already taking damage. They also made nice early warning devices, as the engi who dropped it would get a notification if the turret killed something or was destroyed. They also had a very unique sound effect, so if you heard one going off nearby you knew immediately that there were enemies near. I'm not suggesting nor necessarily hoping they are implemented like they were in PS1, just giving a little comparison. I think there are a lot of things that could be given to the engineers as deployables that would make great additions, so I think it will be interesting to see how these play out.
Somebody doesn't like engineers. Sunderer nodeploy is way too big to be applied to the turrets, especially if they're not super strong DPS and I'm sure they'll take a little time to lock onto a target. I don't mind it being as powerful as the turret because the turret is hardly actually used these days. Also, 100 rounds is incredibly few if they have anywhere near a decent ROF.
I don't like TF2 engineers. An automated turret makes PS2 Engies much more similar to TF2 ones, and the last thing this game needs is TF2 Minisentries. Sundy sized no deploy would be probably too big, but they do need a relatively large nodeploy zone to prevent overuse and over-stacking. Depending on how high the RoF is 100 rounds can be quite long or very short. If in the case it was identical to the MANA in terms of power and accuracy, then it should only have up to 300-400, without resupply capability. It needs to have an operational time limit, by both deployed time and number of rounds fired, otherwise the OP argument could be made if some are deployed in convenient locations. The main argument would be based on the target locking ability. Lock on time needs to be long enough so that an average player can react or get into cover before taking too many hits, although it still needs to be able to get shots off. It shouldn't be able to target players beyond around 50m-70m, but definitely should rend anyone as close as 15m. As for accuracy and dps, maybe force it to fire in 5 round bursts, with approximately 1 second of delay between shots. Probably make it so that 1 burst if all bullets hit at 10m is lethal, but give it some kind of CoF so that it is ineffective at the edges of targeting range. It definitely needs to be vulnerable to cloaks and EMP, Infiltrators would be easily swept if it wasn't. A build time of at least 5 seconds would be nice, since it would be kind of nasty to have an engie be able to panic deploy them. It should be a defensive/support device, not a clutch save.
Auto-turrets existed in PS1, which came out before TF2. The turrets wouldn't be machine guns mounted on a stand, but more like assault rifles, or perhaps SMGs. They wouldn't do as much damage as some of the heavier LMGs, and would need to lock on.
If PS1 auto-turrets are well balanced for this game then I'd be totally fine with it. It's the TF2 scenario that I want to avoid at all cost. If it gets to the point where it's the engineer's main method of killing infantry over their primary, then that's most likely a balance issue. If a single one has a ridiculously short TTK at range, and requires extensive team effort to kill ONE, then that is a major balance issue. And If it gets a rocket launcher on top after hitting it with a wrench several times... then I want my infiltrator to have a one hit back stab kill, with an outrageous french accent.
the only way i will accept this is if they either give the full xp of a regular player kill or if they dont do any damage or barely do any damage and just mess with your hud or something like the emp grenade effect.
Dont panic, they´ll cost resources. They´ve worked in PS1 really well and they´ll work in PS2 really good as a anti Infiltrator weapon (can´t wait for it).
I think they worked in PS1 because bases were distant from each other, and bases themselves small. There were a finite number of places you could 'usefully' deploy them, and pretty much every player had the option of an emp blast and/or EMP grenades as a last resort. Not saying it can't or won't work in PS2, but I think they'll be so utterly watered down they'll be a little anaemic.
I'd like turrets emit a laser sight beam to a target they're locking on to, like turrets in league of legends. So the player instantly knows he's under threat, and where's that threat is coming from. I'd use them as early warning system. I.e. place a turret overseeing one door, and guard other door yourself.
Yeah, don't worry about minigun and rocket turrets. The power of the auto-turrets is that they are small and can be hard to see, but once you do, they go down easy. If I recall correctly, they also beep when they are targeting.
Really? You have trouble with turrets in TF2? Ever heard of grenade launchers? Even if somehow your demomen were incapable of taking it out, just send the dream team. Also the Engineer has to work for quite some time to make the turret really dangerous. Never mind, TF is not really what this is about. The only problem I see for the turrets (as long as they are not insanely powerful or sturdy - which I think unlikely) is the netcode. I already get killed by people that are not even around the corner yet, or are still sprinting. I definitely DON'T want to turn around a corner and catch a sentry-salvo before said sentry even renders.
