[Suggestion] New darklight options.

The darklight is a badly designed rail attachment. It takes a valuable spot, it works against a single class while other items there can work against any class, it reveals your presence evwn when you arent looking for infiltrators, the COF size on your screen is tiny, its range is short and even then it is bugged and will fail working in too close proximity.

To remedy this I want an alternative (not a replacement so the darklight lovers can keep using it) and a few additional options.

1: Darklight strobe light.
A new rail attachment. This one is inactive and needs to be activated with X. Once you do it creates a powerful darklight flash. All players facing you on your screen will be flashed like a flashbang, with 80% effect in 5m distance dropping to 20% at its maximum distance.
Any cloaker caught, even when not cloaked, will be revealed as if lit up by a darklight for 5 seconds.
The darklight strobe will then recharge before it can be used again.

ALTERNATIVE: Upgrade the current version. It gains the ability of using a strobe light when you tap X. Holding X for longer will activate/deactivate it.

2: vehicle darklight lights.
Vehicle lights currently serve no purpose aside from revealing your presence at night. A simple upgrade to all vehicles allows them to reveal infiltrators that happen to wander into your AOE.

3: turret darklight searchlight.
Allows players to equip a darklight on turrets to better look for enemy cloaked units, especially Flashes.
Using the grenade button while in a vehicle and having a darklight searchlight equipped will create a more powerful strobe-flash similar to the one described in 1.

4: Flashbang upgrade: Darklight strobe effect.
Flashbangs are some of the least used utility grenades, having this as a small upgrade could help it become a little better.

5: Deployable Darklight camera.
An engineer-only deployable. A camera can be places on floors, ceilings and walls. The camera will create a warning signal on the map if something passes through its vision, including cloaked units. It could additionally generate a strobe flash each time an enemy cloaker passes through, revealing them for a short moment.

As a former infil main (computer issues in CQC combat. im trying more classes now with a better computer) the only ones i disagree with is the camera and the dark light strobe effect. Im 100% ok with more things having the darklight effect ( or even just fixing the damned thing to work). The strobe will lead to really cheap kills, especially with CQB oriented weapons like the cyclone, kindred, or pump shotties. Extended exposure to strobe effects, especially when playing in a dark room or at night, can have negative effects on your eyes even if you are not prone to seizures.

in regards to the camera, we already have issues with targets... i mean... phoenix users being easy to kill. This item is more of a liability than a useful gadget. The only role I see this item being used for is hunting stalkers, which is in itself a waste of time.

Lets put some of your arguments to rest.
1: the strobe will not lead to really cheap kills. 80% effect of a flashbang is enough to see by but does make it harder to aim, which it is supposed to do. also that is 80% within 5m distance, farther out the effect starts dropping already.
2: laser sight is also best used for CQC weapons which are more often used in hipfire modes. That does not mean that a longer ranged weapon with a darklight on it would not be effective, in fact you could specifically equip one on longer range weapons to debilitate enemies who get in close.
3: strobe lights aren't just multiple flashes. The original strobe lights were on camera's and had a single flash, the strobe effect was its ability to be so bright rather than its ability to flash quickly in succession. This strobe light would launch a single flash, which would make it less problematic than a flashbang (or some weapons with a rather bright muzzle flash but actual RPM's behind their flashes).
Also never play in a dark room. Your eyes wont adapt properly as they try to adapt to the dark surroundings while you are effectively looking into a colored lamp. Playing in a dark room increases the strain on your eyes and can create headaches, tired eyes and the very seizures you are so worried about. If you play in a dark room, its your choice. Dont change gameplay mechanics for people who make bad choices when playing, just turn on your light.

The camera is automatic, the player does not need to view it himself. The description is right there.

Does that sound like "the engineer needs to access the camera after placement and manually spot/strobe enemies that walk through"?

i´m generally open for more Inteloptions be it to reveal infils or just general unit (infantry, vehicleand aircraft) reconaisance

I'm on board with this. Can I have a dark light lantern in my PMB? It can be nice and obvious, and reveals any infils who come close.

2 and 5 are no good for the sake of balance just as having infantry mortar teams would make the game unbalanced

Since you can have balanced mortars in the game I see no problem*.
Even if you did assume an imbalanced mortar system, are you seriously declaring that making the headlights&tail lights be darklights is as OP as firing AOE from a safe space into crowded area's?
Its a DARKLIGHT. It only works against infiltrators, and only at those who run close to a giant vehicle at that. A vehicle that you can still approach from the sides.

The camera isn't exactly OP either. Its basically a Spitfire turret, only it looks in one direction, does not shoot, does not have 50m range and reveals its presence (DARKLIGHT camera). The only reason its useful is because it gives more accessible information about who passes and allows you to spot Infiltrators. Infiltrators who should be fully able to spot the darklight shining in the area and either avoid it or take the hit of being revealed for a few seconds. Its not exactly OP material, just useful.


*mortars can easily be balanced out. For starters you make them work like a Glaive, deploy one and you have to grab a target designator weapon from it. The player still has to have direct LOS of the target. From there you can start piling up more ways to make them less of a sudden AOE bomb:
- the designator does not shoot a dart, but a visible laserbeam that needs to be held stationary on a target/wall/ground/ceiling, so its use reveals you and is hard to be used against moving targets
- the shells can light up to be easily visible.
- the shells can leave a smoke trail, helping players find the mortar.
- the shells could move slowly.
- the shells can make distinct sounds as they fly through the air so players know one is coming and can react.
- the shells could have a hitbox like Phoenix missiles, allowing you to shoot them off-course or detonate them mid-air.
- a smoke signal on the point the mortar is aimed at so players can see it.
- the shells don't have to OHK
- a COF could make the weapon inaccurate, for example the farther you shoot the less accurate

Many of these could make any mortar completely useless if you make them extreme enough, or make it a challenging feature of the mortar. Mortars aren't inherently OP unless you go out of your way to design one that is.

A team of infantry mortars bombarding a spawn or even the entrance/exit of a point building would be as OP as the ability to sunderer deploy next to spawn points before no-deploy zones were enacted.

With all of the downsides you can throw on a platoon using such mortars would get their butt kicked by 2 guys. Its not as if such mortars would have repeater abilities right? If that platoon doesn't time it perfectly and the people in the spawnbunker decide to shoot down one wave of mortars/take another exit they can easily waltz out and murder the guys using their target designators. And that includes the platoon having a safe spot to aim at the spawnbunker without being shot at while standing still and the ability to rotate out players constantly to keep the barrage going. Hell the defenders could place one of their own somewhere and bomb them back, and you could easily add a "disruption field" whenever someone tries to use a target designator on a painfield so a mortar can't fire there.

There are too many ways to balance a mortar for it to be OP. even if you did manage to set up a mortar barrage, the fact that you are better off spawncamping with normal weapons and that any predictable repeat firings from the same spot is just inviting a sniper to blow your head off while you stand still to fire one are reason enough to not consider them OP.

3 and 4 seems reasonable enough. Base turrets could use some buffs anyways.
2 used to exist but was removed because it was incredibly toxic.
Infiltrators are already the only class that can literally not do anything to vehicles (aside from combo of running crossbow with explosive bolts which is not even remotely effective so its not even really worth mentioning).

Edit: if you meant vehicle Turrets in 3 then that is a bad idea because of 2.

We did?
And what was toxic about it? The fact that a vehicle might actually be able to find you? You could add a small boost to infil effectiveness against vehicles, for example by introducing virus weapons which nerf a part of the vehicle to infiltrators.
3 is both vehicle turrets and base turrets. This is A-OK especially since it's more focused on Flashes and on giving vehicles an extra tool against infantry by blinding them.

Yes a Vehicle being allowed to find infiltrators just like that for free is extremely toxic. If you never actually play infiltrators and only ever get gibbed by cloaks you might not see that.
Base Turrets on the other hand could use more than a little help.

No what you seem to be talking about is your inability to avoid a giant easily avoided vehicle with well-defined lightbeams while cloaked, then paint that as toxic. Its strange anyway to call that toxic.

And I do play infiltrator! I don't use the stalker so I have to be always aware of my surroundings. In fact most of the time I'm not cloaked at all, since I apply actual stealth gameplay and use the cloak as an extention rather than assume the cloak provides invisibility and stomp around like an idiot. The cloak sound is more often than not what gets me spotted so I don't use it unnecessarily. Likewise I don't jump in front of vehicles and expect to remain invisible. If you have trouble navigating around vehicles then don't sit on top of them while doing so.

darklight laser on turrets, darklight headlights should have a slot taken,and no strobe effects pls. everything else is good

If it has no strobe ability then its only useful against cloaked units. I want to avoid niche equipment and give them some omniversal ability to use against other units as well. If its not a flash to blind enemies, then what would you add?

And who would ever sacrifice a slot to make their headlights darklight, a niche threat that can easily avoid it while there are far more powerful universal slot items out there?

If individual mortaring or mortaring requiring at least 2 people were to be done, the damage has to be proper enough to be worth it and w/o it being OP. The scorpion launcher is now bad because the game doesn't show the range on the screen anymore unless you personal waypoint for range.

The scorpion doesn't work like the mortar I proposed and you seem to think the mortar is only effective as a murder-weapon.

In my previous post I outlined how weak the mortar could potentially be. But with all the mechanics and how you can modify those mechanics you can make them balanced. There's more idea's ofcourse, like creating a few seconds of artillery denial whenever you use your target designator so spam isn't possible.
Mortars and artillery would especially be useful as a tactical weapon:

- as a weapon to make people move, "stay out in the open and you get hit".
- use it to flush people out of cover.
- use it to hold people off from your position, a smaller and faster artillery shell can do that
- give infantry a valid AV weapon in a small MLRS, only the missiles have a massive COF, limited turning capabilities and have to be guided to the target, revealing the user.
- some could cost nanites per shot, but have high-powered shots. This could be used as a balancing mechanic against overpops by making such shells cheaper if you are outnumbered.

Aside from pure murder capabilities, mortars and artillery could have tactical capabilities on their shells:

- screen shake
- smoke deployment far outside of normal grenade range
- class-specific special grenades (flash/conc/heal etc).
- deploy computer viruses that nerf an aspect of vehicles (turret turn ratio's, disabling scopes, slowed movement etc).


Besides that such mortars and artillery could be used as a call-in system, allowing players to call in large deployments for free and the cost of resources:

- two linked short-ranged teleporter pads.
- an AMS module, balanced by having to be outdoors and unroofed and not as strong as a Sunderer
- deploying a shield generator that creates a shieldwall or skywall. Should the shield be damaged it will regenerate after a while, so flanks and other tactics are encouraged to take them down. Again since its deployed by a mortar its not possible to deploy them inside and flanking should be possible.
- a low-yield and easily visible minefield. Players are encouraged to shoot the mines before passing, delaying them and revealing them.

There's more idea's you can come up with. It might be good to let the mortar fire a miniature ANVIL container and let the player pay resources when they unpack it, so you can select what type of item you get out on the spot. It would also require the player the ability to actually reach the spot, handy for deploying teleporters and AMS modules without making it too cheap.

I would say instead of destroying/debuffing vehicles allow the inf to steal unmanned and non deployed vehicles. They have to come up on a the vehicle and hack it. That means abandoning your vehicle would have the risk of them stealing it. The biggest risk for would be hopping to repair and being killed so they can steal it. This means a MBT would not have both gunner and driver hop out to repair, to avoid theft.

Just stealing empty vehicles isn't going to cut it I think. Besides that you need to add a rule that they can't steal deployed Sunderers as that would be too powerful. If the Infiltrator can only deal with essentially abandoned vehicles then they can't do much.

Instead you would need some way to get the occupants out of their vehicles. That way the infil can try to kill the users and steal the vehicle, giving them the method to fight off vehicles. I would say that a virus that nerfs the vehicle would be perfect for that.
A simple item, say a short-ranged sticky grenade but the size of a C4 brick, that sticks to the vehicle. It can only be removed by shooting it with small-arms and explosives. Its not threatening the vehicle on it's own, but will give the crew an incentive to get out at some point to get it off. Ofcourse some way to easily identify and destroy it may be necessary, like a big light.
To make sure its not too OP, the effect could slowly ramp up from nothing to severe. That way an infiltrator cannot instantly doom a vehicle by throwing one.

Also the Infil should not be able to just waltz into a vehicle. Rather they should need to hack it over a couple of seconds. Having a Stalker hang around a rock that is used to repair behind would be too cheap a tactic.

Man you're assuming a whole lot of things. What you suggested was literally in the game and it was deemed as toxic and therefor removed.
Also just assuming that "obviously that other person is to stupid to properly play the game so thier opinion does not matter".
You opened this thread to invite criticism and discussion yet you seem to just want to push your own view off "balance" onto others.