[Suggestion] Expand Light Assault to also be The Command Class

Light Assault has been the most neglected class since the launch of PS2. Out of all of the classes, it has the fewest gadgets and also really only has one role. The other classes have the ability to change their roles and playstyles: Infiltrator - SMG Cloacker / Sniper ; Heavy - AV / AI ; Engineer - Driver / Defender ; Medic - Med Support / Assault.

What I am proposing is that the Light Assault class be given a host of Commander Abilities. In fact, this would shift the current command abilities into the Light Assault class. I realize that this will be a controversial suggestion, but please allow me to make the case before passing judgement.

The Comms Pack
The Comms Pack would be equipped in the Ability Slot, replacing the Jetpack. This would grant access to the Command Channel, the Orders Chat, the Re-enforcements Map Icons, the Objective Designation Reticle, and would enable the Uplink Tool. Additionally, the Comms Pack would grant a 100% time bonus to all Q-Spots by squad members.

As a part of this implementation, the Objective Designation ability would be greatly expanded. It would allow the Commander to not only designate Capture Points, but also generators and even "open ground". A radius would be created around the designation point which would be the Objective Zone. Additional squad bonuses would be granted for actions performed inside of these Objective Zones (stacking with other squad bonuses).

Physically, the Comms Pack would be a bulky pack with an antenna sticking out of the top. There would be no need to redesign the LA model, the Comms Pack would act as a cosmetic item that it tacked onto the player model's back and simply hides the jetpack underneath.

Squad Beacon
The squad beacon would be moved to be exclusively onto the Light Assault class. It would equipped in the Utility Slot, and would only be usable once and would have to be re-equipped at a terminal after each use.

Uplink Tool (Requires Comms Pack)
The Uplink Tool would be equipped in the Tool slot. The Tool would have its own pool of Nanites (1000) that would be either resupplied at a steady tick, or resupplied through Squad XP bonuses (each squad XP bonus earned by a squad member would put nanites into the Uplink Tool). This would grant the Commander a new set of abilities:

• Call Downs - These are drop pods dispatched from orbit that perform different functions. Some examples would be:
  • Automated AA Turret (200 Nanites) - equivalent to a single Burster, it would fire on the closest aircraft in LOS.
  • Phalanx AI pod (400 Nanites)- Exactly like the Phalanx AI pods found on some bases.
  • The Router (600 Nanites)- This is a teleportation booth that sends squad memeber to a destination point that must be placed before the teleporter will function (PS1 throwback). The range would be 100, and when the Destination is held in hand, the radius is show on the mini-map.
  • Supply Drop (800 Nanites)- This is a crate the has Equipment Terminals on either side of it - allowing Squad members to re-equip
• Air Strikes - These would be come in three sizes:
  • Artillery Shot (250 Nanites) - This fires large guided warhead at a single ground vehicle target. The impact destroys the vehicle and cause moderate damage in a 25m radius.
  • Bombardment (500 Nanites) - This delivers a rain of bomblets that are devastating to infantry targets.
  • Orbital Strike (1000 Nanites) - This brings back the Orbital Strike from PS1. A high energy beam is fired from an orbiting space station causing massive damage to everything in a 50m radius.

These changes would both be a huge nerf to the command abilities as they are used now, and a huge buff to the Command Class overall. Currently, the Squad / Platoon Leader are largely personnel management positions with very little actual power to balance out the responsibility. By making these changes, the devs will create a true "Commander Class" that will be used by dedicated Squad leaders, and will be identifiable as commanders by the enemy. It will also make it harder for squads and platoons to arbitrarily pass command back and forth among their members - that is intentional. This has always struck me as cheese, since the tactic is basically "find the last guy alive, set him as SL, he throws down a beacon, begin respawning." This would force squads to protect their squad leader and give them a very good reason to do so. On top of all of that, it would turn the weakest, most neglected class, into one of the most important classes in the game.

Yay for having a army of "Commanders" running around spamming airstrikes the second they can afford them. No thanks.

The rest is..Okay.

Omg yes, sign me up lol.

These are WIN!

That can be controlled by the income rate of nanites to the Uplink Tool. If the rate is 1 Squad Bonus XP (SBXP) = 1 Uplink Tool Nanites (UTN) then yes, a good squad could get to 1000 UTNs pretty fast. But that can be throttled down so that 10 SBXP, or 100 SBXP equals 1 UTN which would cut the number of Orbital Strikes way down.

And think about it, if you are in a squad and all your squad leader does is fire off OSs, after you've been putting in the work to play as a team, are YOU going to stay with that guy? I wouldn't. I'd be pissed. "Hey man, we could have used a Supply Drop over here by the point, but you wasted on a freaking OS against a single tank. You didn't even hit the enemy AMS. I am so done with you." That is literally what my reaction would be to a moron SL who doesn't know how and when to spend his resources.

Also, keep in mind that these are all examples. If anyone has some other ideas about ways to spend the UTNs, I'd love to hear them. I just wanted to get people thinking about what a Commander could be capable of, and give a "carrot" of cool new toy to the community versus just the "stick" of stripping the abilities away from "everyone" and handing them only to properly equipped LAs (which is exactly what I'm talking about doing).

Regardless of whether or not the Light Assault class has been malnourished, I see no reason why that is the only class given access to these abilities. (And I do not even agree with half of the prescribed abilities.)

That's fine. Why would anyone else care? Just because some people might have trouble discerning leader competencies without having it spelled out in some fashion, how can you argue that is not the exception and there is not a core group of players who would just leave the leader to manage his toys as he sees fit? It doesn't seem like an exceptional argument for inclusion. I don't care about criticism from other people about where I put my tank mines, and I don't particularly get any anyway, as long as I put them down.

Moreover, the idea sounds as if it were lifted from Project Reality.

The main reason is to lessen cheese / abuse of squad mechanics.

By making Command Abilities something you have to kit on your soldier instead of just cert into, it takes away a lot (but not all) of the lame uses of SL. SL should NOT be passed around like a hot potato to whoever happens to be in the right place at the right time. Comm channel and orders chat should not be open to any goon leading a two man squad. This is a part of a larger vision of Empire Logistics, which puts more of an emphasis on team play. This system won't prevent frivolous SL passing or comm chat, but it will cut down on it.

Your mines are your own. No one helped you buy them. Those players who would let a squad leader just "do whatever" are not going to generate SBXP at a very good rate. That's why I specifically linked it to SBXP. Good teams get good perks.

And the idea actually originates more from BF2142, where the SL often had something that made him stick out as a SL (the recon drone hovering over him).

Aaaand this is where you lost me. Without Jet Pack, it's not gonna be Light Assault. So why do it?
You might as well introduce a seventh class.

Engineer and LA mostly have the same weapons. The main difference between them is that one gets the jet pack while the other gets MANA turret and repair tool. Engi and LA are not one class, so why Command and LA should be?

Light Assaults should be given a Repair Tool that only works on Air Vehicles and Terminals. Then Light Assault would then be the "Pilot - Assault" class.

For those who are gonna complain because Light Assault can jump out of a burning plane and survive, avoiding giving kills when their plane is destroyed. Guess what? That's pretty standard in military planes: parachutes. The idea of a high tech future society shifting from parachutes to jet packs makes a lotta sense.

The "I destroyed the plane but got jipped on the kill" is SOE's fault for not granting "kills" except when a person actually dies. In military, they track "kills" as the number of a target unit destroyed, not actual deaths of the pilot/driver. Tank kills are # Tanks taken out, Air kills are number of airplanes shot down. To be a Ace in aviation, you need to shoot down enemy aircraft, not literally hunt down and gun down the pilot.

Ideally, every class could have access to a limited Repair Tool (as in it only repairs one class of Vehicle and Terminals) and then be comboed with a vehicle that comboed well with their class traits.

What in God's name?
...
A Light Assault IS NOT a Light Assault without the little flying back pack. Just give them access to the Comms Pack without sacrificing their most useful tool.

I totally agree on this idea. But there are some things that I would prefer. For one, the OS splash damage should have a smaller radius. Secondly, the jetpacks should be kept, but at level 1. This would create a choice between mobility, or teamwork. For those who are lone wolfs, then whats the point, but if they like teamwork, then this could work miracles on offense as well as defence. The spawn beacon for LA only is my major dislike. It should be available to all classes. (minus MAX) The phalanx turret seems a little op.

TL;DR Awesome, would rate 10/10, needs small changes though for balance

The issue with that is the ESFs, Liberators, and Valkyries have a special cert line which allows people to exit the vehicle while it is in the air and survive the fall. That cert line ("Ejection System" or "Squad Logistics System") is the parachute.

Of course giving pilots this ability to survive their fall comes at a cost of not being able to install other things in that slot. This is the "balance" behind giving pilots increased survivability; they have to give up Fire Suppression or Flares.

Being a Light Assault can negate this loss of cert line which is rather odd. It'd be like a certain infantry class allowing your tank to use NAR without having to equip NAR on your tank. In my view LA jetpacks shouldn't work when bailing out of a vehicle anyhow because it destroys the intra-vehicular balance.

On the other hand at least the one drawback to using a LA to pilot your aircraft was that you couldn't so easily self-repair. Your choices were:
1) Be an Engineer to self-repair but give up combat effectiveness for the Ejection System.
2) Be a Light Assault to gain combat effectiveness but give up self-repair (except NAR).

Allowing LA's to self-repair would essentially give pilots the ability to self-repair and retain their combat effectiveness without having to give up the Ejection System. That would render an entire infantry class as well as an entire cert line irrelevant.

Nice ideas. Maybe the commander could dual wield pistols. huehuehue...
I would also like the ability for squad leaders to double tap q on an enemy to tell squad members to engage. They would get a dorito with a box around it indicating they are a high priority target.

Pure Epicness. Give this man a battle rank!

" replacing the Jetpack."

You are loosing the whole point of Commander. Current LA is the commander just because of that ability to place beacons in good places up high.

Ground Vehicle drivers can hop out (and in) instantly without needing any special Certline. Not only is it silly to expect pilots to burn up in their vehicles, it's also a lot less interesting than letting them hop out and be able to continue the fight (like people in other vehicles). The whole idea of not recognizing players for Vehicles Destroyed with their vehicle is dumb.

Ejection System allows non-LA to use ESFs as sky taxis. Other than that, it's not used. Squad Logisics System is a great Certline, because it's on a troop transport and gives great transportation boosts (both into and out of the vehicle) to the pilot and tooops.

Yes, some players like to choose LA over Engineer when flying. While this can be viewed as a tradeoff, it's really choosing what to go without and a missed opportunity to not combine them. As a pilot, I really don't care about using an LA to escape death, and I don't care about dying, but as a Designer I can recognize there is interest from other players, and this is a great niche fit for the LA class. And it would make both LA and Air Vehicles more interesting.

What intra-vehicle balance are you talking about? That Ground Vehicles can't get kills on Air if they can just use LA and hop out? Ground Vehicles can just use Infiltrators and Cloak up and then respawn while Cloaked.

Vehicles drivers can use Engineer and thereby replace NAR. Is it the same thing? No. But neither is Ejection System and LA.

Look, I know you are used to how it is. I'm just saying that it's an oddity in the game's design that pilots die with Vehicles and others don't, and it's a chance to give LA a real role.

That's because ground vehicles... are on the ground. Pilots can safely jump out of their aircraft too without being a LA or using the Ejection System... when their aircraft are on the ground. Jumping from great heights is known to be often fatal, due to little things like gravity.

I might as well complain that my Lightning can't fly or something.

I'm not sure that "player interest" is good cause enough to make these changes that you're suggesting. We probably have "player interest" for lots of things, including built-in aimbots or flying mechs. "Player interest" should always be subordinate to "will this seriously mess up the game".

I was imagining balance between air vehicles.

Say you have two ESFs. One is flown by an Engineer who has opted for the Ejection System. Because they have an Ejection System installed, they can't have other goodies like Flares or Engagement Radar. However as a tradeoff, they can self-repair and land safely.

The other is flown by one of your revamped LAs. They have Flares instead of an Ejection System because they can get to the ground safely on their own. In addition to that with their new repair tool they can also self-repair.

The first ESF can self-repair and eject safely. The second ESF can self-repair, eject safely, and has an anti-missile defense.

Does this seem balanced to you?

These are hardly appropriate analogies. The point of NAR is that it automatically regenerates (the "A" in NAR). This is a far cry from having to leave the vehicle rendering the vehicle unable to engage in combat and the operator exposed to small arms fire when repairing it as an Engineer. The end effect is significantly different (Engineer repairs faster but is more exposed and combat ineffective).

Whereas both an LA and the Ejection System have the exact same effect: to land from a great altitude safely and without serious damage. By what mechanism the safe landing happened is fairly irrelevant... the end effect is more or less identical.

explanation would be too long, so I'll simply say: Nope.

i run 1 character, playing 99.9% engi, who always runs as commander of squad with me brother and a few others when i remember to open up me squad to randoms, think its a really bad idea then to force me to play L/A. just so i can command a squad, there are some interesting ideas about what a commander/squad leader can do but to limit it to just L.A. absolute C**p sorry to say

It is indeed like introducing a seventh class. But the idea is to be able to give players the ability to "mix-n-match" the LA and COMM gear. Perhaps the requirement for the player to have the Comm Pack to use the Uplink Tool is too much. If that requirement was removed, it might not be too OP. The idea for that requirement was specifically to "demobilize" the Commander class because I didn't want them acting like a Jetpacking LA when they need to be running a squad. LAs tend to be out in front of the squad where you would want a Commander to be behind the squad. That could totally be me overthinking it. The flip side of that would be, "Do you want an LA flying around with that Uplink Tool in hand?" Would that be too much?

The comparison between the LA and Engineer is an excellent one. They are indeed very similar in their primary weapons and their silhouettes. But look at the wide array of capabilities available to the Engineer Class. The goal of this idea is to expand the LA class to have the same level of support and game play options the engineer has. The trick is finding a niche that does not overlap with the other classes. That's why I started focusing in on a "Commander" role, because that type of role can be used to actually augment the abilities of the other classes - like the spotting buff. That's the sort of ideas I'm looking for to round out the Commander kit.

This cuts directly against one of the core goals of my idea: Don't step on the toes of other classes. I wanted to introduce a concept for expanding the LA in a way that would not infringe on the abilities of the other classes. The only real direction that leaves open is the "Command Class". If I had my way, no one would have med kits, because med kits infringe on the medic's role in the game.

That's right, he's NOT a LA, he's a Commander. That's kinda the point. The goal is to both Buff and Nerf at the same time. What is the LA's greatest asset? Their vertical mobility. I specifically wanted players to sacrifice that mobility to gain the buffs of the commander class. You're pretty much giving up everything else to be an effective leader. You're not a durable as a HA or a Medic, you're not as defensive as a Engineer, you're not stealthy like an Infiltrator, and you aren't as mobile as a LA. You give up all these things, and literally put a big sign on your back saying "I'm the guy in charge around here", and for all of that you get these abilities. The trick is giving abilities that are worth all of those sacrifices.

"So, why the LA class then? Why not make a whole new class?" you might ask (and other have asked). And the answer is not sexy: To make it as easy to implement as possible for the dev team. By tacking these onto the LA, a class which is malnourished anyway, you give the devs the ability to implement this whole new class without actually having to build a whole new class. That's the whole point of making the Comms Pack a simple cosmetic add-on (like a helmet or armor) that simply covers the jetpack up. That's the whole point of rolling these abilities into equipment slots that are already there, and function just like other equipment in the game. It builds on the framework already in place.

The OS splash was something I was just spit-balling, it would have to be tweaked. I'm imagining the "Inner Splash" would be extremely deadly and be large enough to wipe out 3~4 tank that were close to one another. The "Outer Splash" would be lethal to infantry only, and would be large enough to zap a medium sized foot zerg.

Also, an additional point on Air Strikes - XP from kills would be distributed to everyone in the squad as "Kill Assist XP".

On the jetpack, one thing I said above was to remove the requirement for the Comms Pack to be equipped to use the Uplink Tool. This would give Commanders the ability to use the Squad Beacon and the Uplink Tool, but retain the mobility of the Jetpack. The problem with that is that the Comms Pack becomes kinda lack-luster. It needs more buffs to make it an enticing alternative to the Jetpack. Preferably passive buffs that benefit the entire squad.

The reason for the change to the Spawn Beacon is specifically to stop people from just passing SL around to whoever happens to be in the right spot. To place a Beacon, you'd need to be the right class, with the right load out, and to have not used the beacon already. This makes placing a Beacon a far more deliberate act and also catapults the LA into being one of the most strategically important classes. This was my thinking on limiting it to one class. With all of that on the table, it might be a good idea to revisit spawn beacons to make them harder to detect. I know in BF2142, they were just a small device that emitted a fairly quiet beep. You had to track them down based on the pod drops, not just looking for a big flare.

Indeed, great idea! An alternative mechanic (since people have a tendency to hammer the the spot key anyway) is to use the same press-and-hold mechanic that we use on friendlies. You would hold spot on a guy, the wheel would fill up, and when you let go, he'd be designated as the priority target. It would be the default action of the Comm Rose. Also, 100% Squad Bonus XP to any squad member that kills the priority target. Love, love, love this idea.

This idea doesn't actually take that away. In fact, the original genesis of this idea had the Spawn Beacon supplied by the Comms Pack for the very reason of taking the ability of placing beacons in (what I personally feel) are cheesy locations (like on top of towers), but in writing up the idea I changed it specifically to allow that very tactic because I recognize that just because I don't personally like a tactic, doesn't mean it neccessarity hurts the game. I did however leave the Squad Beacon restricted to the LA and required to be equipped in the kit, because I think that "SL passing" does hurt the game and devalues the position of Squad Leader.

And after feedback, I'm willing to discuss removing the Comm Pack requirement for the Uplink Tool too which would give the Jetpacking Commander some additional options. The trick with that is that there needs to be additional buffs (like the one proposed by BobSanders) given to the Comms Pack to make it a viable alternative to the Jetpack.

I wish you'd take at least a little time to tell me why. Good or bad, as long as it's some feedback I can work with I'm giving people thumbs up on their posts.

OK, important point of clarification: THIS WOULD NOT STOP ANY CLASS FROM BEING A SQUAD LEADER.


I'm not yelling at you, I just wanted anyone who scrolls by to see that, because you bring up a very good point I should have included in the original post. Notice that I did NOT include Squad / Platoon Waypoints or Colored Smoke in my original post. That is because I feel like these are "The Basic" squad leader tools, and anyone who is leading a squad should have access to those. I don't want to FORCE you to play LA just to lead a squad. Being a Commander would give you a lot of the "Extra Perks" that are currently just laid onto all SLs. Does that change your mind at all? If not, can you tell me why?

Big thanks to all repliers!

ah ok i take your point, my initial reaction - without having thought it though to much atm -its because think they are good ideas and id like to be able to use them if i was a leader of a squad or platoon - which would then force me to play L.A. if i wanted to use said abilities or perks - like i say this is just my gut reaction without to much thought