Noah said earlier that bE would want the Tau units to be of the Tau race, since it's your character you're advancing, instead of the other mercenary xenos. (Kroot/Vespids) I bet Brent wouldn't wanna make the stealth suits into the basic units, since they have jetpacks. Tactical equivalent - Firewarrior (Customizable into a Breacher or Pathfinder with heavy loadout expenses) Devastator & Apothecary equivalents in one class - Drone controller (Sniper/Heavy/Medical drones) (The player sets up the control unit & orders the drone of his choice around.) Jump/Ground assault equivalents replaced by - Pathfinder tetra, 2 seated light scout vehicle. Transport - Devilfish Tank - Hammerhead (possibly not with the Railgun for the standard, too OP for main tank.) Ordnance - Broadside Thoughts?
Since we're going to have the Terminator equivalents & possibly Dreadnoughts in some phase, the Tau's specialization would really shine on those categories.
I can see stealth suits being perfectly viable. Obviously their stealth would cancel when they use their jump packs (Same way the striking scorpions does if he starts running)
I do not believe the Breacher is strong enough to require "heavy loadout expenses", at least not if you can choose to pick part of their loadout, to give the Tau more customization. As I said in Discord, then I still think you should add Vespid and Kroot as possible alternatives, even though it is highly unlikely that the Devs will make a single faction have several races :/ I think the Railgun would be good enough for the standard Hammerhead, though it should obviously have a low RoF. The Hammerhead might receive the same Armour debuff as the Eldar Falcon have gotten, to make it more balanced. It would be interesting if they got some kind of battlesuit instead, maybe the standard Crisis Battlesuit, but that would only be a dream ^Okay, the Crisis Battlesuit would be way to week for this, as it is more inline with a Space Marines armour than a Predator or Falcon. The Broadside was actually a good idea for Ordnance, and it would make the Tau feel even more different to play, though the Riptide might be better suited (remember that a D-Cannon doesn't even pwn the gates). Since the 5th faction won't arrive for at least 9 month (possibly a year), do you then have any suggestions for a TEQ? The Broadside and Hazard Close Support could fit into this role, and the XV104 Riptide would then take the Broadsides place as the Ordnance. Also, the Crisis Battlesuit could technically work as "Veteran" units, or maybe even as Heavy Support (no jetpack) and as "Jump Troopers" ("lighter weapons"). The biggest problem with the Tau is that it is very hard to make them fun to play against, especially for the squishy Eldar and short ranged Orkz. The Tau players would also encounter a bit of troubles, as they would have serious problems if the enemy ever reached melee range. But I must admit that you have made a good suggestion for how the Tau could be implemented Stealth Suit should be there somewhere
you need to try and make Tau work without drones though ... that would require the bE team to divert server resources to the operation of a NPC during a battle which they have said repeatedly would effectively mean one less player in the match for every NPC being rendered etc, so basically no NPC's in battles, which means no "pet classes" or "group character" ... which means unless the player themselves "spawn/play" as the drone in some manner the likelyhood of drones in EC is minimal, youd also have to find a way to have whatever the playable character classes for Tau are that they conform roughly to the animation model size examples we've seen so far, eldar arnt a lot smaller then SM like some people expected which might mean that the team are using similiar sized models for different factions for various reasons ... like hit box management, usage of cover, terrain mapping interaction, etc solve these problems in a simple manner and the results would be far more likely to be a workable addition to EC's faction/class roster
I meant the drones to be player controlled. As if a "vehicle"- but your drone controller would be within the drone's operating range to keep the controllers away from their own spawn area.
I think the drones would be somewhat akin to the Hunter's Pet in WoW, as the pet can't really do anything and therefore do not require a lot of AI power to run. The drones would obviously just use "Stand your ground" until the Drone Controller told it to move to the target location or to follow him.
even if the devs manage to resolve the issue of the servers/engine supposedly having to choose between rendering a player or an NPC/AI (and pets are AI even when under "player command" since they arnt under "player control" ... your not actively moving that particular model via K&M/controller) youd still have the problem of such models negotiating terrain mapping, the management of their hitboxes and their potential balancing, most "pets" are generally smaller then a player and unlike in tab-targeting MMORPG's, in shooters the ability to hit a smaller target becomes relevent when considering the potential threat/survivability level of such smaller hitbox enemies, numerous "pets" would also enable a team to gain numerical superiority easily acting as "force multipliers"
