Total Engineer Overhaul - the "there are no heals!" class

Suggestions Balance
#1

Despite what the Devs believe about 0.8.4, it’s not going to fix anything. I’ve spoken with a few players and they all say the same thing - if anything, remotely deployed heals just make Engineers an even bigger target because you have to kill them before they can deploy their drones on the beacons - if you let them get there it’s already too late.

 

The only way, the only way the Engineer will ever stop being a bullet sponge is if heals are so weak you can power through them solo (as a Corp-mate put it, “then nobody will bother and just suicide and respawn”) or if the heals are gone altogether.

 

So this is the second solution - an Engineer built not around healing, but engineering.

 

Special Module - Point Defense Drones:

When activated, the Engineer immediately spawns two point defense drones. These have an unlimited lifespan and function exactly as the current drones do, except they cannot heal the Engineer. It takes 30 seconds for the module to recharge.

 

Active Modules:

 

Firewall:

Tier unlocked: 1.

Type: Area effect (radius Mark-dependent).

Duration: 20-30s (Mark dependent?).

Recharge: 90s.

Whilst active, all ships within the Firewall cannot be disabled - they are immune to Stasis Field, White Noise Jammer, the Metastable Field Pulse and so on. They are not immune to Engine Inhibitors, Recon Drones or any other debuff that reduces stats rather than disabling abilities.

 

If a ship enters a Firewall with such an effect upon them, it ends immediately.

 

Warp Gate:

This is unchanged.

 

Energy Emitter:

This becomes a Tier 2 module, but is otherwise unchanged.

 

Mobile Barrier:

This is unchanged save for one attribute - it now has a limited durability. Mobile Barriers are treated as a ship with 1 hull, 8,000 shield (higher on better modules) and 15/-15/0 resistance to kinetic, em and thermal respectively.

 

Assault Drone:

Tier unlocked: 3.

Type: Deployed Ability.

Duration: 90-130 seconds (Mark dependent).

Recharge: 120s.

Deploys an Assault Drone at your current position. The drone seeks out and attacks the nearest enemy, essentially functioning as a conventional attack drone with unlimited range. If the parent ship dies the Assault Drone dies as well.

 

Unlike normal attack drones, the attack drone does not need the Engineer to target an enemy - it will begin attacking as soon as an enemy enters its weapons range. If no enemies are in range it will stop moving until a target presents itself.

 

 

 

That’s it! Rant away.  :taunt:

#2

Don’t like the Assault Drone, but I’m gonna wait for this new Engi change the devs have planned before I write anything else about this. But yes, the rest of those modules I kinda agree on.

#3

similar to [Stir’s](< base_url >/index.php?/topic/20112-engineer-frigs-idea-for-passive-modules-support-structures/) - wont hurt to have it linked here on your thread.

#4

Well… IMO engineer ships are being targeted because of two reasons: they’re easy to target (all frigs are), and they’re important to the team. In the absence of engies I go straight for the guards. Basically, as long as the engie remains important to the team (they’re always going to be slow and somewhat close to the frontline, and thus will always be easy to target), they are still going to be hunted down. 

 

That said, the firewall looks pretty sweet. 

#5

I still think there needs to be a healing class. I think this is part of the fun for me when playing the Engineer. I don’t care that I am targeted by everyone on the opposing team. Why not just say that Engineers cannot stack their heals rather than deploying a remote module? I also agree with you on the addition of new modules to not rely so heavily on healing, but to expand the role of the engineer to be more versatile. I also like what [st1r](< base_url >/index.php?/topic/20112-engineer-frigs-idea-for-passive-modules-support-structures/) has to say about it. I like that the heal ability is passive and always on now, so I would not like to see that go away. I guess seeing these remote modules in game will determine how well this works though.

#6

Yes, change the engineers from healbots (or worse, one ship does it all), and building stuff and providing buffs and/or utility in other ways is how i want engineer.

 

We need healing in the game, because if you survive with less than 10% hp and theres no more enemys around, you might as well suicide and thats pure wrong. My wish is that they make engineers heal out of combat or heavily conditionally.

#7

yea they can - if they wanted to

 

get rid of remote, drone and aura heals

 

make it so you have to ‘dock’ with an engineer to heal then head back out

 

cant think of ways how engineers are supposed to score points with that system tho.

#8

Replacing a healer with a class that improves survivability won’t make a difference. People will still focus down the Engineers, unless you wanted to bring in a healer class AND an Engineer class, but then that would change the entire dynamics of the game.

#9

Replacing a healer with a class that improves survivability won’t make a difference. People will still focus down the Engineers, unless you wanted to bring in a healer class AND an Engineer class, but then that would change the entire dynamics of the game.

yes and no

 

engineers are prioritized because you cannot kill anything else fast enough before getting killed yourself

 

an engineer that improves survivability but do not actively increase DPS needed to kill anything when you are shooting at it will be an improvement.

 

ie. kill whatever it is you need to kill first, engineers later kinda approach which is the ‘dock to heal’ suggestion in my reply. that sort of engineer wont raise DPS needed to blow stuff up.

#10

Replacing a healer with a class that improves survivability won’t make a difference. People will still focus down the Engineers.

It would make a big difference, instead of “focus the engineer or we cant kill and the damage we deal will be pointless” it would be “focus the engineer or we cant kill as fast”. The big change would be that dealing damage wouldent be pointless, and engineers wont be able to stop the killing, only slow it down.

 

Maybe it wouldent stop the engineer focus, but it would lower it.

#11

It would shift the focus to actual target priority. Focus firing the Engineer is always worth it now because if you don’t all the damage you cause is gone in ten seconds.

 

Under the “no heal” model, it isn’t worth getting yourself killed or smashed up for the sake of killing the Engineer - you are better playing smart, keeping shields intact and picking off the front line, or at least driving them back. Priority targeting goes to the guy with the lowest health, or the guy who is out of position.

 

One thing that would matter quite a lot though is how current passive heals work. In a game with no common healing, shields are more powerful than hull. After all, as long as you don’t take hull damage you can still fall back and recover to full strength given enough time. Unless you bring a personal healing module, however, you will never restore hull damage.

 

To fix this there would likely have to be one of two things done; either give hull a passive heal like shields, or up the default resists to hull so that you can still “hull tank” without dying horribly.

#12

To fix this there would likely have to be one of two things done; either give hull a passive heal like shields, or up the default resists to hull so that you can still “hull tank” without dying horribly.

 

This might potentially spell the doom of Jericho ships if done badly. If done well, then Jericho ships at least have a chance to survive once their massive shields fail, especially the almost immobile guard frigates.

#13

This might potentially spell the doom of Jericho ships if done badly. If done well, then Jericho ships at least have a chance to survive once their massive shields fail, especially the almost immobile guard frigates.

My Crus-Q has 24k shield and 12k armor… I really don’t think I need any more armor (or armor resists, for that matter). I do need more shields because a single Recon can still drain that quite rapidly.