Alright boyz... your going to hear a bit of salt right now. After going through various threads on the forums and reading through the factions list I found my self a bit distraught. How the hell do Painboys get into the game over Mekboys, or Wyrdboys? After a previous post I made about possible classes and the game developers possible archetypes for the factions, I found a pretty big issue. The developers follow a style of Assault, Heavy, Tactical, and Support which is prototypical for games in general now, and I feel is one of the best ways to make really solid squad combat whether it be a tab target mmo or a shooter. The problem with this system is sometimes classes can be a bit stagnant. When you incorporate talent trees or a perk system, thats really what distinguishes variety. With a game as big in concept as Eternal Crusade or Planetside 2, it wouldn't make sense to make a single focused support class (In almost every faction besides eldar this is present). In warhammer you have various regiments that do specific tasks. With the orks, the oddboys fill the roll of the support. Whether it be healing nobs, fixing ork war wagons, protecting people with force fields, or teleporting your boys behind enemy lines, all of this stuff serves vital rolls in the tactics behind the ork army. In an ork society, there are very loose guidelines on what certain oddboys do. There are painboys, who employ spikey gadgets, animatronic prosthetics, and a variety of saws and other things, but when it gets down to it they still go out with the rest of the boys and fuck shit up. Their roll is really just to support the boys and make them not die too fast and stuff so they can still kill other things. BUT WHAT ABOUT MEK BOYS??? What about Weird boys? Their rolls as supports in the ork army is so crucial, especially the mekboys. If this game is going to feature vehicles and turrets, and stuff like that whos going to fix em? That also just brings up the question of not having an engineer class, which is strange to me. If we are going to see talent trees and/or a perk system maybe the best idea for the orks is implementing an oddboy class which can focus on one of 3 different talents. It seems to me this would make more sense. You could easily combine the assault and tactical class together and just make that a path option to become a rocketeer and fly around killing things with a sword and bolter. It's a shame that mekboys and weird boys might not see light in this game. There are so many opportunities right now in pre alpha, I'd love to see a full Warhammer 40k game with all of the cool bells and whistles.

I thought oddboyz were like a savant version of orks. They say and do things their dna was programed to do that other orks don't get therefore odd. Example the santus reach book has one that seems to understand advanced electrical engineering and concepts of physics, but he doesnt actually know what he is saying all the time. They just seem kinda rain man like to me.

Yes, but every ork more or less has this DNA. Some Orks can unlock certain parts of this knowledge better than others. I'm pretty sure all mekboys, painboys, and weirdboys fall under this category of genetically talented orks, or in ork society the oddboys. If you were to implement only one of the oddboy types, you'd be completely neglecting the other ones. I just find it funny that in a game with speeder bikes and wizards, the orks merely get a painboy. Just doesn't make sense. The weirdboys are defiantly more of a rarity. Their presence in an ork army is kind of an oddity, no pun intended. Not having an engineer class is strange though.

You make it sound like they will never put in Mekboys or Wyrdboys!

Pretty sure it's planned for after "release".

I agree with you though, don't get me wrong, Mekboyz are drastically needed for all factions.

My pressus tank keepz gettin' shot up and repair kitz arrnt enuff wiff all dat plazma flyin' rownd!

Yeah, I know they might be included as playable hero types. Would be super awesome to have mek boys running around with the evil suns. I feel like vehicle healing is just as important as player healing in a game like this.

Ahh, prehaps sparks shoot'in out me cheeks iz too epic for da run-o-da mill lad...

I'm mostly posting about this because I am worried that engineer class might be overlooked. Implementing a whole other new class instead of editing one of them seems a bit much. The incorporation of a oddboy class could give variety to the current base support we have, the painboy, which is solely based on sawing off limbs, for the better or worse lol. Would be nice to be able to talent towards an engineer type versus a healing type. Maybe have the tree look like:

Oddboys
Mek boy: Focuses on vehicle healing and construction as well as team support with force fields and firepower
Pain boy/mad doc: Focuses on dps with cool cybernetics as well as risk reward healing style, emobiying the title of mad doc!
Runthard or Weirdboy: I think weirdboys might be too powerful unless you incorporate a risk system, maybe a heat meter that will end with some brain melting? Or you could have a runthard who leads a bunch of squig and buffs fellow orks and debuffs enemies? Wouldn't be too op and could be really sick.

We don't have a full progress tree in the game yet. So we may not have a set mekboy character model, but we will probably have a progress tree branch that focuses on any and all vehicle related interaction (repairing, driving, etc.)

I actually would prefer a Painboy being a "class" over the Weirdboy being a one. Because Orks are said to be focused on melee. We're going to be taking a lot of up front fire from the opposing team; Ork teams are going to need a medic close hand (I wouldn't be surprised if painboys functioned similar to Apothecaries)

Weirdboys are definitely going to be one of the "heroes"

Runt-herders I don't think will be in the game, because there are not going to be AI grots(snotlings)/
imperial guard / heretics(cultists).

What about the inclusion of the tyranids? Aren't they going to be AI units? Seems like you could have a consistent AI that fights in certain incursion areas, or that guard towers and stuff when players are away if you can have a raving group of alien bugs roaming all over the place? Throwback to Dark Millennium Online... I'm pretty sure that this was something that they were planing. Many new FPS have been incorporating AI troops as a kind of living breathing shootable flora in games like titan fall, CoD, Halo 5. I really like that, would be extreamly immersive to have a bunch of squigs, grechin, Imperial Guard, and heretics blowing up and running amuck. The more hectic the better, until server crash lol. Having a pseudo pet class in a shooter is always fun, Runtherds would be sick as hell in this game as a support class. Maybe another hero?

yes there will be AI controlled Tyranids, BUT that's for PvE, its not PvE if both teams are players
Titan Fall and Halo 5 are not even the same genre of game that were going to get at full release of Eternal Crusade also those being AAA titles. Also those AI were not intelligent to begin with.

I thought that the PVE was in the same kind of realm as the PVP? Or is it instanced? Because if the server can handle a infestation of AI tyranids roaming around the battle grounds, couldn't you implement faction AI characters that guard outposts and are dropped in by support vehicles and drop pods? This of course is only plausible if you have said resources like you mention. I think the devs are trying to mimic this with the free to play orc boys, you could easily just make all of those guys AI and implement other AI for the various factions if they are already implementing the servers with intentions to host a bloody waagh. Having some idle AI's at the players disposal would truly be magnificent and would defiantly add to the immersion of being in a constant war. I'm still not quite sure if Eternal Crusade is a battle ground simulator with a warhammer 40k skin, or if this is a video game that embodies Warhammer 40k universe which is a bloody chaotic warring mess... I hope the current devs more or less are going for what THQ was going for years ago with Dark Millennium Online.

Either way, AI is in the game. Just need to do the programming and stuff for a character like the runtherd. Obviously things are easier said than done, and there are always little quirks when working with specific game engines and such matter. Hopefully we can see it in the game.

Lets move through this one point at a time:
Behavior, in their twitch stream have stated there will not be AI controlled factions outside of tyranids.
Mostly due to technological contraints on Behaviors end. Behavior is wanting as much of their server use for players.

Free to Waagh has been either scrapped or postponed until some point after release.

Behavior isn't going with Dark Millenium, so far they have expressed similarities to Planetside 2. Right now Behavior is using the Lobby based shooting arena as a testing ground for weapons and environment interaction ( jumping over railing, bullet pathing.) and hopefully with the addition of Elder and Orks; inter-faction balance.

AI is not ingame, its in the Developer only test server. which is not available to either Founders and Steam EA