Currently engineer frigates are mobile healing platforms - projecting a healing aura that moves with them. When used in groups, they can provide a mobile wall of heals nearly unbreakable healing power (I think almost everyone has played against a group of 6 engineer frigates and watched as all your targets are insta-healed to full health whenever damage pauses for a split second).
I suggest that instead of having the heals move with the ship, have them stationary in space. Essentially the shield/hull aura mods would drop a beacon/drone/whatever which would heal its given ship attribute in a given radius. The beacons themselves could appear on the map/screen in a similar manner to warp gates so that teammates can see where the heals are. This would also go along with the idea of engineer frigates building things in space (such as warp gates, mobile barriers, drones). Additionally, the delay on launching a new healing beacon could be slightly longer than the duration of the heals - encouraging tactical and coordinated use of the modules.
Take for example the Nanodrone cloud T3 Mk.III:
Currently: Heals 176 pts / second in a 4500m range @ 17en/s
Proposed: Drops a beacon that heals 176 pts / second in a 4500m range, costing (lets say) 450en. Beacon lasts 36s with a 40s module cooldown
This could have a profound impact on games, requiring the engineer pilot to really think about when and where they drop their heals rather than just bunching up and moving together. Take beacon hunt for example. Say your team holds beacon A, and there’s only 20s left before the next beacon activates - but your team is getting hit hard and people are about to go down.
- In the current game state, you don’t really have to think - you just keep fighting while your nanodrone cloud and mass shield generator heal up your teammates.
- With the proposed changes you would have to make one of several choices. Amoung those options:
- Activate your modules, helping your team for the moment but leaving you without heals when you get to the next beacon.
- Save your modules, hoping your team can survive till you get to the next beacon where you will drop your heals.
- Activate one but not both of your modules, giving your team some support but cutting your healing at the next beacon.
Thoughts/Comments?
i don’t really like it, but I get what you are saying.
I play an engineer a lot, and it is hard to stay alive without team help once people start to notice you. It is wrong to claim imbalance when the circumstances are rare that there are so many engineers on the enemy team as in the situation you illustrated. Much more often, I find us lucky to have 2 engineers on one team of 12, and because I am one of only two ships, the + is a giant target and it becomes ever harder to be useful in battle other than the first one to die to focus fire.
I do feel there has to be a price to using the mass shield and nanodrone cloud paid by the engineer. It doesn’t feel like a choice as it currently stands, just something I flip on when I spawn and away I go.
Some kind of movement penalty, or increased damage on the engineer ship while Mass shield and Nanodrone are up would force the engineer to really decide when and where to use the buffs and be more aware of where they can and cannot go.
it would add an interesting twist to the gameplay, I suppose, but really, most of the time i am rather preoccupied with just staying alive so I am not sure how viable adding additional mechanics would be without overloading the pilot.
Placing a cost on the use of those mass buffs would also make the other engineer modules more useful, as now you have to consider the penalty of using the mass spells. Remote hull and shield would be useful when you are trying to reposition or get away and might become something you’d want to hold onto, etc.
A final thought: nerfing the engineer would mean that the damage output overall would need to be retuned or ships strengthened, because you have to assume that those buffs would not always be freely available.
Good Idea in theory, I do like how engineers should be able to build things. What if frigates were the only ones that can build drones or heal stations. It would add a twist, but to be implemented would be daunting to say the least.
I do feel there has to be a price to using the mass shield and nanodrone cloud paid by the engineer. It doesn’t feel like a choice as it currently stands, just something I flip on when I spawn and away I go.
Exactly. I’m not talking about nerfing the engineer, so much as making it more about skill and timing than just being there.
I really like the remote hull and shield generators - they provide extremely strong heals for a short period of time with a long cooldown. They can be extremely effective when used at the right time - for example right before your captain goes down - or inneffective if used when your team is holding up just fine.
Seems to go with the direction of other ship classes and modules that have moved away from the constant-buff mechanic recently - the valkyrie module for example now only works for 10s with a 50s cooldown.
I’d also like to see more rewards for flying support ships. Buff assist point are nice - but what about direct healing related ones too, like 30 pts for healing a teammate 10k health?
I love the idea. Although it probably wouldn’t completely solve the healing imbalance, it’s a step in the right direction.
Not a massive fan. The healing aura moving with the ship makes some things easier, but having it static would make just other things easier. At the moment you can focus an engineer and if you kill it, it’s healing is gone, pow. With this I can drop a healing zone and then it doesn’t matter what you do to me because I’ll heal for the next 36s from beyond the grave anyway. It would also make me more mobile because I can burn to a beacon, drop my healing zone and then immediately start burning to the next beacon because my work here is done.
Could still be a good module idea anyway. Just make it not stack with the regular nanodrone cloud and mass shield generator and you could add these modules and give the engineer the choice of which to take, but I don’t think swapping one for the other would really accomplish anything, it’d just shuffle the problems around rather than solve them.
Looks like they liked my idea
and this is the topic. i remembered reading it and didn’t understand a word of it lol.
Binky’s comment above applies to what’s gonna be happening soon.
This change would take some fire of the engineer class, which seems to be needed, but also make healing alot harder to counter.
To avoid the differculty spike in countering healing, you could make the healing beacons destructible and not hard for enemys to spot if it is in the open space.
If they would be destructible, i think this would be a very good idea.
Healing would be far too difficult to counter, people would hide the beacons, even if you killed the culpret, he can go on healing from beyond the grave for the next half miinute, respwan and put it back there in less than a minute.
Something like this would shift the dynamics of the game too harshly, unless the beacons took a missile slot and healed for significantly less.
This change would take some fire of the engineer class, which seems to be needed, but also make healing alot harder to counter.
To avoid the differculty spike in countering healing, you could make the healing beacons destructible and not hard for enemys to spot if it is in the open space.
If they would be destructible, i think this would be a very good idea.
Healing would be far too difficult to counter, people would hide the beacons, even if you killed the culpret, he can go on healing from beyond the grave for the next half miinute, respwan and put it back there in less than a minute.
Something like this would shift the dynamics of the game too harshly, unless the beacons took a missile slot and healed for significantly less.
Read the patch notes ;)wt