The game keeps evolving around focus firing engineers first or covering your engineers, waiting for them to arrive at a capture point or retreating to them when hurt.
I cant remember how many times people left the combat in mid game due to lack of an engineer.
Lack of any class should not be such a big factor.
Even in combat resonance engineers supporting the captain are priority targets if you want to take out the captain.
Their healing capabilities are very easy to use and heal more then the most dps any class can deal even with 100% accuracy on a stationary target.
This gameplay is just dull, repeatative and has no room for creativity and doomed to fail.
Thats why t3 is broken as hell.
I cant believe nothing has been done to healing still after all the complaints.
The game keeps evolving around focus firing engineers first or covering your engineers, waiting for them to arrive at a capture point or retreating to them when hurt.
I cant remember how many times people left the combat in mid game due to lack of an engineer.
Lack of any class should not be such a big factor.
Even in combat resonance engineers supporting the captain are priority targets if you want to take out the captain.
Their healing capabilities are very easy to use and heal more then the most dps any class can deal even with 100% accuracy on a stationary target.
This gameplay is just dull, repeatative and has no room for creativity and doomed to fail.
Thats why t3 is broken as hell.
I cant believe nothing has been done to healing still after all the complaints.
I’d like to tell you a true story…
Combat Reconnaissance mission where I was the captain. I took a Recon Interceptor (because not being an Inty Captain these days is suicide) and upon launch I saw we had no Engineers. I pointed this out to our team in the hope someone would switch to Engineer. Our opponents had two that I saw.
Their captain died and we wiped them out. Nobody ever spawned as Engineer.
Maybe it’s a lot worse in T3, but T2 the Engineer is an advantage, not a requirement. A good team can play without them and do well.
Thats the problem ever since 0.8 came out, with increased healing module effectivenes. Now(after engy frig turret nerf) when Engy frigs are no longer swarming everywhere, players start to focus them more than before.
Maybe it’s a lot worse in T3
“Worst” might not be the right word, but the thing, that engy frigs play more major role in T3 is a valid statement.
It’s repetitive and boring coz we have only that one strong combo. If we had a couple more options, things would be alot more interesting.
Instead of nerfing healer squads - we could do with suggestions of buffing other role combinations that counters healer squads easier and/or wins matches easier-better.
SCon has 9 roles.
3 of them used for healer squads Engineer+Guard+Command
We still have 6 that can be used to make 2 more combo squads
For eg.
CovOp+LongRange+Gunship and
ECM+Recon+Tackle
Where each role complement the others in the same combo just like the healers do.
So we could have a DPS combo and a sick DEBUFF combo for example. All that’s needed is tweaking the roles better to work with each other. Currently alot of us here are discussing ships and roles as individual elements and trying to balance against each other which is fine but it don’t hurt to start talking about them working as a unit.
Healer squads seem badass OP coz it’s the only one we have. Less of an issue if we had 2 more to work with.
This… could be deadly… If you have an empire sniper and your on Teamspeak, the sniper hangs in the back and when he sees that the ecm or tackler is on a target, watches for those stuns and then opens fire on an easy to hit target
I would even consider swapping the Tackler for a Covert Ops. Three interceptors have a better chance of sticking together for those hit and run attacks.
As for the necessity of Engineers, I think they will always be needed in a full team composition. Perhaps if the healer squad has become a bit lacklustre, consider using (other) fighters and interceptors instead of a Guard or Command. Squad play is more fluid then, in my opinion, because those guarding the Engineer are able to fly between the front lines and those supporting from behind.
It wouldn’t hurt to give the torpedo back to the Jericho frigs at all levels. a carefully planned attack with a tackler and an ecm on an engineer softened up by a torp is an effective means to level the playing field. If there was a valid counter to teh engineer like a high powered torpedo that would go a long way to balancing things imo
Most promising ability right now for a healer counter is ECM’s module deactivation. But some of the heal modules don’t have an activation cost so they are free to reactivate. And alot of those heals are also dirt cheap to maintain making energy + ion missiles worthless against frigates. Not to mention the latest missile role restriction only made it even more impractical.
Am fairly sure the game design / balancing department can come up with a host of practical counters on their own but for some reason they’re not. So either these guys over-estimated the strength/effectiveness of the other roles or they haven’t sat down and thought it thru yet.
it’s team based game with certain abilities spread through certain classes of ships. They are all designed to work together in a certain way, but with many possible combations and tactics for victory. whinging about not having an engy frig in a pub match, or that multiple engy frigs are OP in pub matches, is a side effect of pub matches in general, but is not a reflection on the balance of the game in any way. They are slow and clumsy as xxxx, and you got no chance against an interceptor at close range if u r by yourself. Drop a nuke maybe. It’s all balanced.
Lack of a class being so effective at outcome of the match is a balance issue. You can not relate it to being a pub game.
This isnt a side effect it is a terrible balance issue. I wouldnt make this thread if the ships are actually meant to work together somehow like you stated. It is more like engineer tripling the effectiveness of the team and you can replace all other classes on your hearts content as long as you have an engineer present. Noone would cry if there is no recon, no long range, no ecm, no guard etc on team.
Noone is debating their 1v1 capabilities or their balanced attributes.
The original topic is about how they force the gameplay style not about how they fare in 1v1 situations.
However i cant stop replying;
I dont want to hear any biased engineer opinions anymore saying they stand no chance against inty at 1v1.
I am a 1400+ rated interceptor only player and i say if you lose to a inty (excluding good covops ) at 1v1 quit playing engineer.
Only a covop might actually kill a engineer at 1v1 .
Other interceptors cant even deal more dmg then their healing abilities and probably would give up trying to kill an engineer after few minutes.
I have tested against a stationary engineer who didnt fought back only healed himself and after 15 min of shooting his shield wasnt even down.
I dont even think Mischa 77 has even flew a single recon or ecm against an engineer on 1v1 yet comments about them.
His argument is to drop a nuke with 2 charges only to kill an engineer. Yeah 2 nukes surely would balance the never ending healing abilities.
I would kill you 2 times with nukes at 1v1 and you would kill me like 100 times after . Great call indeed.
A ship with two guns can’t kill a ship with two self-healing drones, so you say they are unbalanced? Great logic!
I can take an Engineer one on one in almost any Fighter / Frigate I own. Command Fighters can deal enough DPS from their 4x turrets to bring them down, as can Guard Frigates and other Engis (who arguably do better at it than Commands due to superior ‘tanking’ ability). Gunships with Overdrive + Crit Bonus laugh at engineers, and assuming they can stay out of the firing line the LR Frigate’s six gun loadout could hurt… though their Disintegrator / Guided Torp is arguably the better approach.
Finally, all of these classes can do much better with a simple application of drone-destroying ordnance. Drop a minefield on a fly-by, or fire a Cruise / Guided Missile with enough splash radius to knock the Drones down, and the Engineer loses one of their biggest offensive and defensive bonuses. A real sharp-shooter could manually fire on the Drones instead, which works just as well.
Without their Drones, Engineers are in trouble. I’d wager that the Interceptors could handle them once that happens, especially if you use Modules properly (Recon can halve a ship’s healing rate remember - that goes a long way to damaging an Engineer’s ability to tank fire!).
A ship with 2 guns shouldnt be able to kill another ship be it engineer or any ship receiving the healing buff ?? Great logic indeed…
You need to manually aim drones, ships etc which requires pretty good skill vs auto heal drones ,passive healing buffs which requires no skill at all ? Great logic indeed.
When was the last time you saw 2 recons in a team or a 1 recon in 2 consecutive matches if it was that easy to kill other ships with recon modules ? Thats probably why developers share your logic.
You are actually admitting the game is pretty unbalanced without even knowing by saying you can kill them with frigates and fighters . Proving that some ships dont have the enough dps to overcome engineer healing and you even argue it must be the case which i find absurd. You can agree to disagree !
This case is true against all ships receiving the passive heal from engineers. Some ships dont have the firepower or means to overcome that much heal. Pls kill a good interceptor receving the healing buff with any of the ships you own. You cant because the inty will dodge half the shots but receive all the healing . The healing will be more then your effective dmg.
Havent you ever chased an Inty carrying the bomb from one station to another with almost all your team but you couldnt even bring down even the shield cos it was receiving constant heals ? I have been on the Inty pilot seat in this scenario more then you can imagine. I have seen 3 stations taken down under 2 min with this strategy no matter how good the opponent was.
These are all balance issues related to engineer healing.
Please take notice i am not saying Engineers as a whole package is OP. I am saying healing limits gameplay style,strategy. I wouldnt mind tripling engineer hull or dmg as long as their healing is cut by a large margin or redesigned to require some skill to use.
You are actually admitting the game is pretty unbalanced without even knowing by saying you can kill them with frigates and fighters . Proving that some ships dont have the enough dps to overcome engineer healing and you even argue it must be the case which i find absurd. You can agree to disagree !
Read what JasanQuinn wrote, and then read again what you wrote here. o.O
Cov-ops have no problem killing engy frigs. As for other two inties they are not supposed to kill engy frigs alone.
If engy had a hitbox, manuverability and speed of recon, i would not mind recon having same chance of kiling engy as engy would have against recon, but there are a lot more things what recon can do than engy frig can, but killing engy(or guard) is not one of thous.
This is not a Deathmatch game, not even Team deathmatch(but close to that). Ship dont need to have a balance of equal chance against each other.
My recon kills engineers just fine thanks. Spy drones nerf the healing so I can out-dps their regen easily. If you can’t kill engineers 1v1 in a recon then you’re not a very good recon.
Haven’t tried flying ECM in a while but I bet it can too by ion beaming the engineer’s healing modules out of commision when it hits hull.
Skill factor should be ignored in comparison. This should be compared the way - If you with recon would fight against yourself with engy who would win? And besides 1v1 if you cant take engy down in less than 5 sec or drain energy, they can just bail out with warpgate. And then goes option to chase after them, and hope that in those 5k range they wont be able to kill you before you reach them, etc. etc.
When it comes to it its very hard to compare two ship classes who are so different. Tbh I dont remember a single time a recon ship posed threat to Engy.
Overall making judgement from being on one side is pretty pointless, and this is where i fail - I rarley play Recon.
fine, forget the ECM then since I don’t play it, but I find engineers easy to kill in my cloak/spy drone/parasite recon, the only skill you really need to master (same for all inties) is applying damage with your guns and staying in their blind spot while avoiding mines, which is a somewhat tricky skill to master but pretty much essential for any inty fighting frigates. I don’t agree at all that a recon can’t out-dps engineering heals, at least in T2, because spy drones debuff regen by 50% which is a very nice counter.