To the people viewing this - just reply, positive or negative its all cool The premise: I started by thinking what kind of support we don't have. We have radar, heal and ammo pool replenishment. We have "tanking" and anti vehicle and a force multiplier(MAX). We don't have anything that contributes to ability recharge (maybe there is a reason to this that I am unaware off). Then I thought about how it would make sense for LAs to contribute to this. Wireless Nanite Generator Turbines within the jetpack generate energy along with thrust. Some of it can be transferred wirelessly to other locations at the cost of efficiency (less available fuel or larger fuel consumption). The receiving element can use this energy to recharge nanites for their abilities when the turbines are in use if the transmitter and receiver are within a particular radius of each other. Tool: A capacity limited item that is stuck into targets. Maybe a visual/sound indicator as well to notify allies or enemies if demanded by balance. Capacity can be upgraded. Amount of allowable active buffed TARGETS depends on the capacity. Buffs disappear when the host dies and LA needs to re-buff them. LA get exp when they use their jetpacks if their buffed teammates don't have topped off ability bars. Operation: LA sticks his buddies or randoms with the item. As LA uses his jetpacks the buffed teammates either restore nanites or get a bonus to restoration speed for their ability and the outcome is that they restore this energy faster at the cost of LAs ability duration. More dart buffed teammates - higher penalty for LA. They need to be within the specified radius to enjoy the effect. Why not Engineer? - Engineers are not strictly generators, battery packs, or any of the sort. Engineers build defenses, they lay mines, set up turrets, and make sure that the place is a fortress. This doesn't exactly fit in engineers role. This is a gadget, and it is inspired by real life gas turbines and wireless energy transfer. Engineers would build it, but that doesn't mean that they have to employ it. How does this make sense for LA First we want a tool cos we don't have one. Second, we are advertised as the most mobile infantry. I figured this should translate to our squad. Allowing people to get to roofs with grappling hooks and jump pads sounds like that's just begging for RL and mines and turrets on roofs of biolabs. Remember our ability is not to get to high places strictly, its to get to unexpected places and do it with shortcuts. Mobility shouldn't also strictly mean movement speed. What can impede a squads advance is whether their abilities are up or not. I figured that this is where LA could contribute. I feel that there is also synergy between LA and their squad. LA allow their squad to advance with the promise that their ability bars are topped off on most encounters. It discourages LA to fly off and encourages them to stick to the squad and actually attack flanks beneficial to the squad due to the active radius criterion. I also believe this, unlike grappling hooks and pads will encourage the use of multitude of LA due to the capacity criterion rather than a single one, i.e. a single LA cannot support 11 people at once (or it should be implied they should be able to do that). Technicalities I assume it would be obvious, but to prevent LA to LA exploit the ratio at which LA loses energy and receiver gains isn't 1 or higher. I also assume that the importance of the radius is understood. You cannot simply jam the spacebar in the warpgate and recharge your buddies. It should be implied that the penalty for having buffed teammates is percentile, otherwise this makes drifters preferable (not a bad thing I guess). Once again I stretch that having multiple buffed teammates would degrade the LAs fuel capacity substantially more than a single teammate. I should have mentioned that a player can only have 1 of this effect active on them. So, LAs can support X players if they have X capacity upgrades. To be practical I assume a reasonable count is 2-3. So 3-4 could support (math here, i'm too lazy and drunk).
