Hey guys. Stopped reading after the 16th page. My eyes burned.

I have a simple(rer) solution that would allow IG and other individually "weak" races to be added in as well.

Anyone here played ALLODS online? It is a F2P mmo. So what?
Well, there is a race of furries. They are tiny animals, fluffy and small. Kinda like fat racoons.
Other characters tower over them. So how do they survive?

Well, in there, you don't control 1, but you controll 3 of them in the same time. Thats right, 3.
NPCs? No. They are NOT npcs. They are a part of your "character". Your character is made of 3 of them.
For instance, the one on the right holds the swords and attacks with it. The one on the left holds the shield and defends the whole squad with it. The one in the middle holds extra items like healing torch. Clothes apply to all of em. Items are equipped by the furry that has that role.

What about the damage? Damage is equally spread there, but that doesn't have to be the case. Why not IG be a little more powerful since they are a group, but degrade in rate of damage as their soldiers die 1 by 1? Why not allow group leaders to take individual damage, so if you kill him, the squad receives less benefits, but still functions? Why not allow medicine both heal and reinforce a squad like in DoW RTS?

And what about headshots? No problem here either. Headshots do extra damage. Let the guy who got shot take that damage and perhaps die or have little health left.

Finally, stop thinking in numbers of 10 per player. I'll say 3-4 is enough. They are, I stress, NOT NPCS. This means it will not decrease FPS much (as tested in ALLODS).
The only problem I see here is not being able to focus on a "main" character in the squad. But honestly, IGs are rarely special as they die so commonly.

IG maintain the Imperium, and are they basic soldiers. SMs are the Special Forces, and lead the most hardest invasions, or defend against the hardest invasions. IGs ARE really weak, but a squad of them isn't. Making a character made of around 3 or 4 of them bypasses the problem by making their health and damage a pool of health and damage, and makes them unique to play as, which I find very appealing and convinces me to play IG instead of SM, which I'm a zealot for (SM).

Opinions?

The main problem I have with it is it'll be very hard to get all three of them to share a piece of cover, get them through doorways with player collision, keep them out of each others' line of fire, etc.

Basically, while you technically may be controlling the movements of your little fireteam, there's still going to be some kind of rudimentary AI determining where they stand relative to each other and pathfinding them back to you if they get separated. And anyone who has played an escort mission knows that AIs are notoriously suicidal.

Besides, with a little extra equipment (equipment which is 100% canon for Imperial Guard to use) the power gap is not really large enough to justify it.

I could see a version of it for Heavy Weapons Teams though. HWTs could get one buddy that follows them around and carries the heavy weapon, if he gets shot you have to "resupply" the heavy weapon at a nearby ammo source. Yes, you get new heavy weapon buddies from ammo boxes. No, I don't know how they managed to fit him in there.

The heavy weapon buddy would need to be given a very cautious AI so that he's not constantly getting himself killed though, because that'd be annoying.

Rofl

But on the main topic, ALLODS also managed to fix all the problems you've mentioned.
When going to doors, the furries align themselves closely together to fit through it.

It is NOT AI. I'll stress it again.
It is a CHARACTER broken into 3 pieces.

The Pathfinding and alignment may puzzle you to think they act as NPCs, but they aren't. If you move close to an object, the furry near the object goes away from the object. It doesn't hit the object like an idiot, it just comes close to its furry battle brothers.

Think of the 3 furries as a water filled balloon instead of 3 NPCs. As the balloon touches a wall, it doesn't go through the wall but rather becomes squashed, smaller, tighter, more concentrated to the centre of mass. Similar logic for doors.
Now apply this to the squad of furries, and you'll get the idea of how they function. They are NOT npcs.

One may question how will the individual damage they receive will happen. But that's simply done by giving the "character" multiple (critical) hitboxes.

Now another thing is staying in cover. As I said before, we should allow IG to be more special than other races. So why not give them a squad formation button? Tap to switch between (3) formations - Far apart, normal, and tight formation. That will allow them to utilize cover more efficiently. Of course, the tight formation questions the utility of other formations. But my answer to that is simple. Far apart saves from grenades (advantage of IGs perhaps) and makes the enemy aim for longer time due to constant target switching. Normal is there for all situations, so you'll be prepared for all, as staying in tight formation will get you killed faster and staying far apart will prevent efficient use of cover.

What about running into the enemy? That is the little problem here. Most of your squad may be running towards cover, but there might be that one imperial guard who sticks out of it for the enemy to take out, and the tight formation may not do justice to him there either.
Unfortunately, I have no solution for this. But I think it can be very well ignored and adapted for if this idea gets accepted and the IGs make it into the game, don't you agree? I mean, not everything is perfect. IGs will both have advantages and disadvantages - the disadvantage here being what I mentioned.

Honestly, I don't see much problem in it. Sure, you'll take damage on your overall health pool, and that IG will die. But that's about it. He will die, and the enemy will no longer be able to damage you because the rest of the squad is behind cover.

One thing you might wonder about as well is how this impacts stealth. There is a much bigger chance of spotting 4 IGs than 1 Orks perhaps. But here I question you: How stealthy you think this game will be? I'll say there will be too little stealth to care for such thing. The tight formation will also help in this.

As for the Heavy Weapons team (good point on the buddy btw ), the solution for the dead buddy is also simple. I mean, he is there to carry the ammo and help set the gun up. The Main gunner (Heavy Weapons Guy, lol) is strong enough to carry the Heavy Bolter AND the ammo on his own. He's Heavy Weapons Guy, alright? BUT, it is an added extra strain. This is where the squad loss penalty kicks in. If you lose your buddy, you will run and setup the Heavy Bolter significantly slower than with him. Let him be there to just give you speed bonus in both running speed and weapon setup. If he dies, all these benefits go, and Heavy Weapons Guy will return to being, well, just Heavy Weapons Guy.

What if Heavy Weapons Guy dies? Let his buddy take the role. Because, well, why not? He has the gun - he can use it. Let's assume they are both strong and experienced enough to utilize it.

Oh, forgot to add.

The line of fire. I assume you mean 1 squad of IGs interfering with an other squad of IGs. That happens constantly in all games. Players blocking players. This has to adapted to. However, it is a whole different problem if Friendly Fire exists in that game. But even then, it is not unsolvable. Why not make the shots register to where you aim at only? So that it doesn't accidentally hit an ally. Basically, like in Half Life and TF2.

Also, when controlling the IG, the reticule will be the general aim area of all the IGs in your squad. It is basically a flying bullseye for them, so each one takes a shot with their own aim. What this creates is random fire, as not all IGs are sharpeye accurate. It will basically be randomness of the shots, or recoil. Longer you hold the fire button down, the randomness (I forgot the real term of it) gets higher, making shots less accurate as the reticule increases, just like for individual players in other FPS and TPS.

Well, losing a third of your health because one of the guys in your little "fireteam" was too dumb to utilize cover is still annoying. It also raises issues for medics: do they carry spare squad members in their first-aid kits?

Not to mention convergence issues will cause a lot of havoc with friendly fire. Not only do you have to keep yourself from walking in front of teammate's weapons, but you have to keep the rest of the little fireteam from doing so while also making sure that their shots won't pass through any friendlies as they converge on your target.

It's much easier to give everyone carapace armor (making them as tough as the Tau), give the lasgun its canon magazine capacity of 150 shots, then give it a high RoF and low recoil/CoF bloom to compensate for its low damage. Throw in some of IG's iconic leadership mechanics and you've got balanced, competitive infantry.

Edit: While making the scan rays for the entire squad originate from the center of your screen rather than from individual squad members would greatly reduce the friendly fire problem, it would also introduce the ability to shoot through walls as long as you can get the camera clear.

This is an issue Warframe has with its hitscan weapons, though Warframe is able to largely ignore it because it's a PvE game.

I have mentioned the possible fix for that in my previous post. Perhaps you didn't see it.

As for med kits, yes.
But not really carry inside them. Why not make them pop out of nowhere - as in teleport like they do in DoW RTS?
Sure, it sounds unrealistic, illogical, and perhaps stupid - but we should remember that the realism of this game is not to be questioned. IGs CAN teleport. Not exactly in the lore and fluff, but at least in the games. The reason for this is for convenience. Let the squad reinforcement teleport in. It doesn't break anything, unless you want this game to become forced third person ARMA. I would definitely tone down the realism for the sake of better gameplay and convenience. And unlike 1 strong Imperial Guard, it doesn't go against the common logic of the lore and fluff.

Losing health is what you have to get used to. As I said, Imperial Guards have their own advantages. But they come with their disadvantages as well. "All power demands sacrifice". The method I've mentioned allows for a different gameplay style, and would attract people without breaking the lore and common sense.

Sorry bud. As much as I like the IGs I cannot accept 1 Imperial Guard going lone wolf and beating a Space Marine. I've read too much of Warhammer 40k for that. Played all the games too. Just doesn't fit in my mind.
IG heroes and special units? Sure. But basic Infantry? No.

Not even the carapace armor can make them equal. It will make them a little stronger, but still weaker in overall compared to other races. Otherwise, why do we have the so expensive and painful-to-produce Space Marines? If a basic IG was as good as an SM, Ork or Eldar, there will be little point of making Space Marines. They are ALOT of hassle to make, and they take a lot of time to make too, with included failures. IGs however train in months, or hell, even days. It makes sense to create Special Forces like SMs as the IGs are not enough to maintain the Imperium on its own.

Also, the carapace armor and the modified lasgun will leave less choices for customization. And modifying your weapon is heresy in the Imperium as you anger the Machine Spirit , unless you're talking about the Karsakins hellguns. But then, they would be considered Karsakins, not IG's basic infantry.

I would leave the decision to the Devs. I'm pretty sure it will be a LONG time before they start adding new races. Neither me nor you are right in their ideas here. Let them choose.

Yes you have a point on the hitscan weapons. Let the devs think something up for that one. It is technically possible to fix that, but it all depends on the amount of time the devs will spend on this situation, and how experienced they are in programming.

A possible fix for this is letting the IGs fire only something that's in their line of sight. As in, if a squad of 4 is near cover, and 1 of the IGs stick out of it and you press the fire button, only that 1 IG will fire while the rest will remain without action.

The huge magazine isn't a modification, that's the canon capacity for a standard lasgun powerpack. A lot of games tend to ignore the lore on that point because at first glance an assault rifle/battle rifle with a 150 round magazine sounds ridiculous.

Lack of recoil is an inherent trait of all las weapons due to the lack of a physical projectile (las weapons generate heat instead of recoil), and rate of fire differences are easily explained away due to the huge number of variant lasgun STC patterns.

And really one of the funny things about the Imperial Guard in most of their games is that yes, one lone Guardsman can't take down one lone Space Marine barring some extreme luck. But ten Guardsmen with a Commissar actually do fairly well against eleven Space Marines... at range at least. Because they don't scale the same.

I understand this is something that is hard for people unfamiliar or new to IG to wrap their heads around. It's easy to feel at first that IG units are overpriced for what you get, but it's very important as an IG player to get a good understanding of how those units interact when they're all on the battlefield at the same time.

That and the tanks. Our infantry kind of need to be a bit weaker than average anyway to make up for the fact that 1 Leman Russ can take on 2 Predators and win.

Xspy70, you should have probably read a bit more of this thread before posting. But alright, let's not nitpick. I'll instead ask you some questions.

Do you really think it is absolutely necessary to implement overly complicated (as perceived by some) mechanics into this game for just one faction (possibly two if you add Chaos Renegades)? Imagine the work needed to be done for such a concept to work and the possible complications that could make it difficult and of course the questionable end performance of it. Again, is all that really necessary?

Is it not simpler to have Guardsmen work differently than Space Marines, utilize different weapons and tactics, possibly have increased survivability due to their smaller hit-box to off-set their lower hitpoints, have their lower stats hand-waved to a certain degree to make them, in the end, be different and hopefully mostly compliant to the lore yet still not underpowered and sub-par compared to other classes?

After all, the regular Ork Boyz have nothing on Space Marines as well. One on one an Ork Boy would face a similar disadvantage compared to a Guardsmen (just slightly lesser in scale), yet they're going to be a regular playable and certainly not under-powered class.

Hey man, don't blame me for being creative. And certainly don't blame me for not reading 21 more pages of heat

You're right. It is quite a hassle. But hey, ALLODs did it, and so can they.

Well, by now I give up on trying to issue a different approach. Let IG be individual. I'm a Space Marine anyway, and I know how many will be slaughtered (No offence to IG players here).

Though I would hate to see IGs (if ever released) to go against SMs again. The lore wise is so stupid. I don't want a reason, I just want them to cooperate for once.

Maybe they should combine Space Marine and IG (and maybe Sisters of Battle) into one faction "Imperium"?
Regular troop will be IG infantry which goes up the ranks to become other IG units and finally the Space Marines. It can also be the Free 2 Play class of the Imperium (although IG require tactics the most, so I doubt this idea myself as I write this lol). I just want to play WITH them, not against them for some stupid reason.

To be honest, the only reasonable way I see them ingame is being NPCs, there to support SMs. It would disappoint a lot of players, but would save the devs the hassle to implant and balance the IGs as a playable race.

I also have a question. They said they would add (probably) more races to the game. But the max players in a server size will stay the same. Wouldn't that be somewhat bad as the max numbers per faction would decrease with each new race?