I'm siding with caution, I'd rather them make sure the launch content is as good as it can be before they go aiming for their stretch goals. It doesn't rule out the techmarines making launch but I wouldn't be getting overly hopeful about it either. Deciding what stretch goals to go for is probably something they can give to the founders to vote/debate over, at the moment it's hard to guess because we don't have the full list of what is guaranteed for launch and what is on the stretch goal list.
Naturaly techmarines and mirror classes for them but I would not restrict the repairs to techmarines only. GW pictures most of the tank crews to be familiar with their tank from inside out so the tank crew at least should have a common sense how to repair some damage to their vehicle. Naturaly I would leave the major repairs to techmarines cause they got the tools for the task. Now this also means that no I would not make devastators a support class that can repair vehicles. They are not ment to do that so no.
What constitutes 'major' repairs? Is it repairs on a vehicle that falls below a certain health level? Is it repairs that restore X% of total health? Is it restoring X amount of health? I'm not knocking the idea, but you will spend forever trying to balance what 'major' means. The easiest (imo) is to have the techmarine have the quickest repair speed, while with the repair kits other classes can carry be a slower but still viable option when you need to rep up.
Well you are right Trovanus that the quickest and easiet way to balance things would be repair speeds but I have seen this in other games (BATTLEFIELD!) when just a huge pile of people start to repair one thing and it never gets blown up. So I would say that after the vehicle drop below x then no other character than specialized repair unit can repair the vehicle. And even then you could only repair it to a certain level cause lets face it. If a rhino is missing its from armor you just can't fix it unless you have extra plating at hand. So I'm kinda thinking the mechanic could be close to the machanic that was in battlefield 2 bad Company where you could not repair vehicles after they took enough damage. Also the damage was modeled on the vehicles.
Point one you're misquoting me here, you said my ideas would make "killing a tank" too complicated, I said you see complicated, I see tactical advantage/disadvantage. It's not about randomness. I never said it was, lots of programming in games is based around random number generation and calculations, when you break it down it comes down to a big bunch of ones and zeros. So? I'm simply coming up with ideas for a game to make it "in my opinion" more fun, also the ideas I am using are straight out of the damage systems used on the 40K TT and are the sort of damage types applied to vehicles in the BL stories, so they're well used already, just not in an FPS yet. Other than the difficulty of actually shooting someone riding in a tank? Yeah I've been playing computer games since I got my 1st ZX81 back in the day, probably been sitting behind a computer of some sort for about 30 years and played every style of game (although not every game) that there is, you're confusing simply ideas that I would like to see implemented with something that would be bad for a game and stop teamwork. You'll have to explain where you make that connection, as I really don't see it. Acronyms differ from genre to genre, I used CC for close combat as that's what I've seen used a lot on these forums [shrug] I could have just type melee. I agree that it will be difficult to get close to a tank, but a tank cannot hit you in melee combat and I would assume once you are closer than the length of the barrel on the main then you are inside it's minimum range and it can't shoot you with anything more than the stormbolter mount. Seat swapping keys?? Maybe you have a different view of how a tank should work than I do, personally I don't think your view should become the tank when you get in it, the driver should have his caera set inside the tank looking out of his view point, the gunners looking out of their gun ports and any passengers should just see the inside of the tank itself with a possibility of looking out of port holes. If it turns into a game of tank commanders then in my opinion the game will be broken as it's supposed to be an infantry based game with tank support.
But by introducing a % based chance on events happening, you are adding randomness. Mechanics only adds tactical adv/disadv if the player is able to accurately predict what is going to happen if they do something, when they have to deal with something that is based on a % chance any predictability goes out the window. To know what I mean, go play TF2 and try to predict when you will get a random crit, it's a % based mechanic and is almost always turned off for tourney play because it removes skill from a battle and replaces it with whoever got lucky with the rng. That may be true, but they are predictable. Recoil patterns and bullet spread are rng based, but they are predictable. You know that weapon X pulls up and to the right, the bullets may be random within that pattern but you know generally to pull down and too the left to keep the majority of rounds on target. Also to simply things down to 'a big bunch of ones and zeros' is like saying if you break TT down it's just a bunch of polymer chains, it isn't an point in your favour. But this isn't TT and straight porting damage types and balance is just going to end in a disaster. It gives you a good idea on what it should do but it isn't going to be the end balance because turn based, dice decided battles are incredibly different to real time, skill based battles. There is a reason that these mechanics aren't in more FPS'. Much much much easier than you think it will be. If people can get headshots on sprinting targets at 300m in Planetside, they can aim at a SM sized target inside a tank significantly closer than that. Do not underestimate the skill of shooter players or their ability to learn. Look up Pavlov and his dogs, punishing players to trying to help their teammates will condition them. They aren't going to see a teammate in need and go "I need to go help him" they are going to go "He's screwed I don't wanna get hurt" and teamplay dies a slow death. Well this is the comp game you may want to brush up on comp game acronyms. Not everyone is going to have a reasoned argument nor are they going to be as forgiving for making a 'noob' mistake. It's called risk-reward, generally the riskier something you need to do is the more of a reward there needs to be to make people want to do it. Noone will want use AT melee if the lascannon is both easier and far more effective. That's why short ranged weapons tend to be far more powerful than ranged (with the exception of sniper rifles) because they have much more risk (have to first get close enough to damage) so you reward them by giving them a significant advantage in cqc. If that's what you want, go play ArmA or Rising Storm or Red Orchestra. This isn't going to be that sort of game, if you can't tell already. I don't believe that you seriously think that bE is going the make tanks far more 'realistic' but leave infantry in the thirdperson jump around funtime mode. Firstly having that extended level of realism is going to be a lot of work for the devs to properly implement and secondly it is going to alienate the majority of players who aren't realism nuts, there is a reason realism based games are much smaller in scale and played by vastly smaller numbers of players. Well, I hope you didn't spend too much on a broken game. Tankers won't ever out populate the infantry but there is going to be a lot more than 1 in 50. Players are going to pull tanks if there are enemy tanks, they are going to pull tanks because their strikeforce leader told them to, they are going to pull tanks because they are need to get across the battlefield quickly, they are going to pull tanks to camp bases that don't adequately shield the infantry from tanks and I can go on. You can't come up with arbitrary limits like this in a game where the players are given a choice in what they can do.
Techmarines as a hero rather than a class could make their introduction a lot smoother for launch/very soon after launch. Hero units will be much easier to balance because their power level doesn't have to hit a specific target - you can make the power level anywhere you want, and then simply increase their requisition cost to fit. It also means they don't need to have nearly the same level of customization and flexibility as a regular class, since people won't play them as often and will expect a specialized experience when they do. So frankly, if we really made a push for Techmarines as a requisitioned hero unit, it would be a lot more feasible for the devs to follow up than if we were demanding an all-out class. And as discussed earlier, having them be a requisition purchase that's tied to the resources of the battle would probably be much better for the game overall.
And the walls Return T.T This guy just making his points worse as he goes on its not worth making other people actually have to read. This isnt TT so you gotta understand people can learn skill and not depend on luck. People can literally Train themselves for days aiming on tanks to learn where when and how to show the pilot every single time. for Example and the only one needed look at CS. My roommate Literally practices Headshoting for good +30mins whenevr he feels like he got a littel rusty(idk he a CS nerd watevar he does wat he wants!) If it gives people an advantage or just a big challenge that they can try to overcome, people will learn how to do it and own it. For the Seat swapping factor look above just train yourself you get to learn how to micro manage your whole vehicle by yourself. and like Abize said, if u want that realistic don't wait for a "3'rd Person Game" We get its your opinion but you gotta also count in player determination to try and abuse and break certain systems and try not to let things that can easily be broken without any effort by the players be added to the game. RNG GODS WILL LAUGH AT THE POOR FOOLS WORSHIPING THE WEAKER GODS AND NEVER GRAND THEM WHAT THEY WISH FOR Going back to the original purpose of this chat, Having Devastators as repairers doesn;t seem like it would mean far tank fights if a horde of these guys are sitting around the tank I still wanna see each faction having there own way of repairing things !( i know would never happen tho cuz balancing factors) SM regularly repair their vehicles, Eldar self regenerate hp when out of combat enforcing the hit-and-run tactics eldar usually use, CSM do regular repair or watever idc for em they just mur 'eads for ma Pole!, Orks gather nearby debris and slap it onto their tanks and repair chucks of a time of hp
