Maybe instead of adding bridges, make a section of the bridges already in game destructible. It could be a hole just big enough to keep vehicles from driving through but infantry can get around on twisted girders or something.
Ok how about a magazin improve station ? It works like this, placing it gives weapons a bonus to the count of mag bullets in a Small AOE circle. How much depends on the class, maxes and heavy assult get the least with 15% infiltrator gets second with 20 % LA, Medic and engi get a bonus of 30% but only at max level. It has 3 stages , each giving +2% so you start with 9% and have to get to the 15% etc. Certs:200,300,500 Basic Carbine: 39 Bullets at max level The Special Providing Advanced Magazin also known as S.P.A.M will help in locking down hallways. The idea is bad and nobody should want it. But its the general way i would like the things to go.
I feel as if the sentry gun should basically be a TS2 Inquisitor with a 200 round mag/ammo pool and a 25m range. It should distinguish between friend or foe, but not give a **** if a friendly stands in front of its firing pattern. Perhaps a RPM of 400-500 would be balanced and a damage of 60-100 so that alone it is very weak but in great numbers it can be very powerful. You can cert for just one (30-100) and then cert more into it in order to get more turrets (one per each of the three additional levels). Turrets are meant fo point defense and you cannot place them within 5 meters of each other (to prevent walls of Dakka) and are destroyed when you switch to another load-out not using spitfire turrets. The cool down is solid and non-upgrade-able and is locked at 15-20 secs between placements. Turrets are hilariously weak at a mere 250-500 health (250 seems a bit low to me, anything above 500 is pushing it). It should also have a subtle beeping sound that is always on, and a loud-ish sound whilst firing. A possible balance to this (but increase damage to 143-167 if you do this) make it so that the firing range is 90-270 degrees so that placement is strategic-er. Just my initial brain-storming for that. AA turret should be established as an air deterrent as opposed to an aerial murder weapon.
I again want to voice my opposition to only having two utility slots. If I want to have a turret, an ammo pack, a wall and some sort of miniature generator, I should be able to carry them. The utility section for engineers should consist of separate "subsections" where there would be multiple items for each section for you to choose from. For example: Manual Turret: (One slot open) - AI - AV - AA - Auto Turrets Fortifications: (Two slots) - Wall - Pill-Box - Camo-screen - Etc Utility: (One slot) - Portable Generator - Vehicle Repair Station - Drop Jammer - Etc Explosives: (One slot) - C-4 - AI Mines - AV Mines So, for example if I wanted to be a logistical command engineer, I'd grab some auto turrets, a wall and pill box (gotta get that field base up and running!) with a portable generator just in case (no idea what the portable gen will do, but it sounds too cool to pass up ;P), Finally I'll grab some AV mines to keep the area around my field command safe from pesky tanks. As usual I'll have my repair tool and ammo packet to keep my allies in top condition. THAT is what an engineer should be able to do, not the one trick ponies we are now. Hmmm. Ammo pack or mines? Stupid choice. I should be able to have them all out at the same time and MOAR! Just my two cents, -Q
I LOVE the idea of some kind like barricade or shield.. If you are fighitng on an open battlefield, you can "build" it and it protects you. Of course you can destroy it like the shield every infantry has.
I would like to upgrade the turrets AA AV that you can find at a base. You can destroy them too easy. If an engineer could upgrade them, defending a base would be more attractive.
So do I, but I wonder about griefing opportunities. Perhaps a round bubble that boosts the protection of faction forces in the zone?
apply temporary upgrade to vehicles apply temporary upgrades to maxes apply temporary upgrades to ESF and other air vehicles apply temporary upgrades to shield, turret, pretty much anything mechanical... i can go on for an hour but i give it a gold star.
Honestly a year later and the class which has the most wiggle room for exciting development has: nothing.
I'd like to see an item that when dropped forms a small pad to step on that grants fall damage immunity for a few seconds like a Gal drop does. Would give Engineers the ability to do assaults from above.
I think a not OP, but still very viable and fun thing for the engi to use would be a deploy-able shield in place of a turret. Not sure if any of you had played Firefall, but I thing something very similiar to that shield would be awesome. The shield is the big blue thing. I think this would be very fun, and make the game much more strategic.
I've long wanted to see upgrades that become specializations. As an example if you are a ground or air vehicle pilot you could opt into a set of tools that benefit that playstyle ( think basic re-arming, buffs, etc) Then you create a loadout used when attacking or defending bases and this loadout would have access to a variety of tools like what has been mentioned above. One tool or ability I would like to add is an AOE repair similar to what a medic uses only it would work for vehicles, maxes, and personal turrets. This ability should also have a triage equivalent that allows passive repair over time while an engie is in a vehicle. It would need to be timed to avoid another harasser esque level of annoyance, but would benefit the battlefield greatly. I don't believe one engie should be able to carry an army's worth of material, and having to make choices makes the gameplay more meaningful. The chance to actually have an engineer corps in a platoon would be epic to take part in. Just imagine a whole squad of engies all with specific specializations that when brought together creates a great backbone for a platoon to make use of. As to the bridges, I know there are plans to have light bridges implemented that can be flipped like control points and only the correct faction can pass over them so it wouldn't need to be added for engies alone. The size and scope of PS2 is the perfect environment to really make use of specialization in all classes. To mitigate some potential abuse you could have these "advanced" loadouts unlock after the player has reached a certain level. So you have engies level 1-50 just using basic tools and after they hit level 50 they can start certing into specializations. They could cert into each one a little and build up over time or pick a specific one and get it advanced quickly. This setup would provide meaningful choice and make the battlefield more fulfilling in the long term meta game.
Maybe a little AI auto turret that does like 50 damage and has a tiny rate of fire of 400rpm that would tickle the enemies, or a AA auto turret that would do like half the damage of one arm from the burster max
We do absolutely need more items/abilities. While this isn't a specific suggestion, I think it would be pretty cool if we had the ability to make a LARGE useful item if more than one engineer worked on deploying it at one time (ie, maybe it's a big turret, or a shield of some sort, that requires 4 engineers simultaneously to construct/spawn.) This would encourage teamwork.
I always thought a fun thing for an Engineer to be able to make would be their own little jump/launch pad. I mean, there's no way that could be OP because what are the chances of you being able to aim it with any accuracy Might be considered as stepping on LA's toes though.
Hmm..Ya know I've just thought for a good twenty minutes. A lot of these things would be overpowered as crap if every engi could just spam them but ah.. what if they found a way to make them require more than one engi to construct? Basically you get like... 4 engineers together with the proper tool (Likely group tools will be their own category.) And they each have to focus on the construction point until its built. any exp will be shared between the four. To keep them from just say setting up a big automated turret and swapping to heavies or from setting up a repair station and going quad max, maybe make it so that if they swap classes the built object loses a portion of its timer. This would let engis build some REALLY cool things without having said things being abused to absurd degrees.
I've overflown this thread and boy...there are good ideas, but most stuff is just incredibly op and game-breaking. Some things appear to me like a medic wanting to insta-rez with his aoe-heal or a teleporting infiltrator. No offense guys, I cherish active engineers with their ammo-packs and the ability to actually repair things other than their own vehicle in the field, but most of the stuff is either too complex to be easily inserted into the game or would be nothing but a gamebreaker or xp-farming-tool. Ideas I can't befriend with: Mobile vehicle repair station: There is already a sunderer-cert for that. Giving engineers the ability for this sounds more like an excuse for those engineers who only repair their own vehicle, so they don't have to leave their ride at all. Also: XP-farming in a vehicle-rush. Speaking of vehicle-rushes: They are already hard to counter, this would make it near to impossible. Mobile vehicle resupply-station: Pretty much what I wrote about the repair station. Bunkers: Though I personally like the idea, it would be hard to balance this. Imagine a base completely surrounded by bunkers full of infantry and burster-MAXes. Even if you gave these bunkers a deploy-radius like the Sunderer-deployment, it would be ridiculous how far they will be deployed around key-facilities during the respective alerts. Bridges: I think the hardest part for the Devs is to balance each continent to an extend that single outposts are as defensible as much as they can be taken. Then each base has to placed in a way that it doesn't make defending/conquering the next base to easy or difficult. The tool for this are the outposts themself, as much as the geological properties of the landscapes. Deployable bridges or jump-pads would break the whole balance. Auto-turrets: I loved these things in BF 2142, but I don't see them in a game with 2000 players per map. Seriously, each base would be plastered with these things. Friendly fire would be a problem. And imagine this: Each turret would be a second gun to each engineer. Combine this with the zerg-problems some servers have and this game is dead within a month. Deployable shield-/ability-recharge stations: As a medic I dearly love my aoe-heal. But if I imagine a room full of player with fast recharging shields, heavies with even higher frequency of their additional shield and medics who almost constantly heal with their aoe-heal I'd say this is imbalanced to the top. Repair-turret: Rather not. Taking down a vehicle with one or more engineers repairing it can be hard enough as it is. Now allowing the engineers to repair vehicles at larger range would be almost impossible to counter in zergs. The rez-grenade is already a thing I can't befriend with(and I'm a dedicated Combat Medic), giving vehicles a range-repair would be even worse. Ideas I'd really love to be put in the game: Barricades/cover: This really sounds like a fun idea. Engineers deploying small walls to crouch behind in order for infantry to advance. In addition it could be used as a barricade to slow down infantry or stop tanks. It would need a deployment-radius of course so there are no closed circles around each base. Just enough free space so that MBT's can't pass through. Highly resistant to explosives and vehicle-weapons but slowly being destroyable by infantry-weapons, so it doesn't become a imba-cover. Also it should need a large, even area to be deployed so it can't be used to completely block infantry-paths that are already choke-points. However I'd say a single class except the engineer should be able to destroy these things fast. Let's face it: Most vehicles are piloted by engineers, so a vehicle-barrier that is easily disposable by engineers wouldn't make that much sense. Maybe show the LA some love for tactical use except flying. It should need a bit of time though, so it can be countered. Maybe like hacking. AA-turret: I really dig that. There is only one problem I see in that regard: Engineers no longer giving a damn about repairing burster-MAXes. Even if you make these turrets less effective than burster-MAXes, a lot of players only care about their own kills. As can be seen with those ego-engineers only repairing their vehicle in the field just to get into it again while they are in no risk of being killed while repairing other vehicles(I'd say you should get XP for blowing these kind of players up in their vehicles. Some sort of deserter-kill-reward). To counter this and to add some balance, the AA-turrets could have an extended cooldown-time so the engineer is kinda forced to care about his MAX-mates. Vehicle-upgrades: Hard to balance but interesting. I'd say there is only one upgrade you could take with you at a time which can be applied to only a limited number of vehicles at a time. Something like "Engine-specialist" to slightly increase the speed and acceleration of a vehicle. There was a game-mechanic in Battlefield 2142 I kinda would like to see in Planetside 2: If a soldier with certain unlocks took a seat in the troop-transport, the vehicle had aoe-effects of the respective class with points being given to the soldier inside. Maybe this upgrade-cert could be used like the Triage-cert of the medic, so the engineer gives the sunderer a repair-aura while the medic gives the vehicle a healing-aura based upon the certification-level of Triage. Both effects not multiplying with additional engineers/medics of course. So each Sunderer would have additional reasons beside the turrets to have soldiers sitting in it.
