https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1127961#post1127961
This is the second die-hard (props to Bruce Willis) post in which I'll be going over every detail that I possibly can to lay out the major issues with certain aspects of the game.
This particular bit of the series is concerning Equipment as a whole but mostly relating to their use in PC - also known as "spam the **** out of the drop uplinks and nanohives".
Edit: Forgot to add this.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AijMolZU5dtXdEFzUDNYLXNhMEhYNGtmbDRMOUdmaUE#gid=0
Nanohives
Considering their spammed use in PC there's obviously something going on here and it has nothing to do with the ammunition restoration that the Nanohives hallmark on. In fact, it's that used in tandem with Nanohives that repair players. Now, this isn't a big issue considering that - theoretically - a repair tool is much better but this is not the case. The reason for this is that Nanohives (particularly the Wiyrkomi Triage Nanohive) are just too damned effective at what they do.
I know this is sacrilegious, especially coming from someone who is a dedicated armor tanker, but it's the honest to god truth. In PC the general rule is that Repair Tools and Nanite Injectors are for all intents and purposes frowned upon because both of them have two things in common.
1.) They both put the user in danger, replacing their weapon.
2.) They're both less efficient than the nanohive itself.
Looking at it from a mathematical standpoint, two Triage Nanohives overlapped can repair 140 HP/s over a combined area of 121.64 meters for multiple players. The very best repair tool (Core Focused Repair Tool) can only provide 105 HP/s in repairs over a fixed range of 10.5 meters and can only repair a single person at a time. This just isn't feasible in the heat of combat and is the sole reason that Nanohives (R) are the predominant choice in PC battles.
The downside, of course, is that the nanohives have a limited amount of clusters. This isn't as large of an issue as it may seem however as they can be 'refreshed' upon the death of the person who deployed them or restocked at a Supply Depot. Despite this, many nanohives offer 'reserve' nanohives for when they do burn out.
While on the topic of nanohives burning out, there is a large issue in which nanohives will be deployed an burn out due to the game mechanics deciding that the placement was a failure. This has occurred a great deal of time in bumpy terrain but it does sometimes occur on flat terrain as well. They also have a remarkable tendency to slide around a lot - even when pointing directly at the ground for their placement they will slide 5+ meters (discovered this when doing hit box testing on Scouts, greatly interfering with our 'track').
Another interesting aspect is that Nanohives (R) give Triage points in tandem with Resupply points. This makes them incredibly effective at war point accumulation as a few players throwing grenades and taking a bit of damage will make short work of acquiring enough war points for rewarding an orbital to the squad.
I can find no legitimate reason that Nanohives should be better at repairing armor than the equipment that was designed, slated and even titled for that purpose. Is this to say that they should be nerfed? No, but it is to say that in order for Repair Tools to be effective, Nanohives first have to be checked and balanced. More on this later.
Drop Uplinks
The undisputedly most used equipment item in Planetary Conquest and for good reason. As stated above, it's more efficient just to die and respawn than to put another player on the line to bring you back, potentially losing two clones instead of the one as well as prevent that player from dishing damage out on the enemy. This is however the exact reason that it's spammed to hell and back.
This isn't to say that it's not a bad tactic or that it isn't useful but I am almost -positive- that the animation from the Drop Uplinks in tandem with Nanohives is a good reason for FPS drops in Planetary Conquest and that much is obvious from opening the map to spawn somewhere and seeing it drop. I assume that this is from the animation but this is a game mechanic issue, not a balance issue.
They are way too visible, however, being able to spot them from 25 meters away on the mini-map without actually physically seeing them in game. You can identify and locate them from behind walls and even entire structures. The worst part about this, however, is that they give away the position of the person who dropped them. There's been a few times in which I've actually spotted a team of enemies who were trying to flank only because they dropped an uplink - which came up on the minimap despite none of them appearing on it.
They're also remarkable for fast deployment, with the absolute best reducing spawn times to three seconds. Considering that they can be deployed en masse there's no reason to use objectives/CRUs as a spawn point unless there are no drop uplinks nearby.
Speaking with members of the CPM and bouncing ideas around there was talk considering a cap toward how many uplinks can be fielded for a team but I'm against this as I feel that while it will benefit organized teams it will hurt players in Pub Matches and Faction Warfare. There would be no greater frustration than not being able to field drop uplinks because Johnny Nobody put too many down in the Redline.
On the other hand, I do feel that equipment should be regulated by type. This was an idea mostly proposed by Kane Spero and I feel that it could work (within reason). If you're carrying drop-uplinks in all of your slots it's possible to field six at a time as there can be two active per type, rather than per equipment item. So imposing a limitation on all equipment would definitely reduce the spam and make for more thought behind the placement.
Continued on next post
This can only happen, however, in the event that Drop Uplinks have their map visibility reduced as the only viable option for them is to be spammed to ensure that there is grounds for spawning as they're just too damned easy to find.
[center]Repair Tools - A.K.A The Reason You Died[/center]
The concept is great but the implementation is a little weak with Nanohives usurping them as much as they do. Getting Triage and Guardian points is also a plus but inevitably there's far too much risk for too little reward as you're sacrificing your weapon in order to support your team.
Different variants perform different functions with one variant (the Axis) working better on vehicles. This is something I frown upon however as we no longer get Triage points for repairing vehicles because of one particular corporation (I won't name them) abused this function by doing it in the Redline and dropped orbitals without the risk of being killed. I feel that this was a hatchet fix for something that needed a scalpel. It's easy enough to impose a cap on how many triage points one can attain within a certain amount of time and they do this already with infantry repair - even then it'd be a much easier fix to prevent the accrual of triage points for this purpose inside the Redline.
Another issue with repairing vehicles besides not having any reward for doing so is that you can't repair enough damage to make up for the damage being put out by AV. The vehicle driver utilizing a Vehicle specific repair module/booster is a better option anyway as it was designed for the large amounts of damage needing to be recovered. There should be a rewarding sensation for helping vehicles this way and I feel it would a long way into balancing vehicles as a whole by implementing more team-work options.
Aside from vehicles they're not that great for infantry either. Some variants will extend the range quite a bit but the issue remains that the player using them is 9/10 a Logistics, which is very slow compared to other suits. You can't repair while sprinting so if the player runs out of range you're not benefiting them. Combine this with the fact that breaking line of sight will cancel the function and it's just not worth it when you have Repair hives that heal for more HP anyway.
While I know I'm going to crucified for outing the information - I also feel that you should not get Guardian points for repairing someone while they call in an orbital. Don't hurt me though [:ugh:]
[center]Nanite Injectors[/center]
The (second) most underutilized but most respected piece of equipment in the game just happens to be the one that puts the user at the most risk. There are some players that like the adrenaline rush of running through gunfire to revive a friendly player but I don't think it's worth the risk involved. Much like the Repair Tool, the Nanite Injector forces the user to abandon his weapon but with the added expense of having to run out (more times than not) in the open to revive the person.
This presents a number of problems as they themselves could die or what is more likely to occur is that the person they are reviving dies again. They also have no option to opt out of the revive and there has been some isolated cases of the injector being used for boosting (won't name names!). Fact is, whether you like it or not you're going to be revived and you're potentially going to die again as you scramble for cover. The person who revived you is also going to be scrambling for cover but in the same instance they're trying to pull their repair tool to finish off what little bit of armor did not come back when they revived you.
Now, I'm not sure if this ever got fixed but I'm fairly certain it didn't, there's another issue imposed by their use. As you use better injectors they repair more armor on revival, which is good for the safety of the person being revived but you don't get more points for that. This means that it's better for the person doing the reviving to use the standard/militia injector and repair the rest of the armor damage to attain more points, which as you know goes toward the squad's next orbital.
One last thing I'd like to mention is that, as you will see in the provided spreadsheet, there is ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT to using the Prototype Aurum Injector over the Advanced Aurum Injector as they both repair the same amount of armor but the Prototype costs more CPU/PG and Aurum.
[center]Active Scanners - Wait, we have Active Scanners?[/center]
These finicky little things are amazing at what they do but the lack of war points for them means that they're the most under utilized equipment item in the game. Hardly anyone uses them and if they do they're doing it solely for the sake of using it. With TacNet providing information on enemy locations that gets shared between players (this is being changed mind you) their use is somewhat lackluster.
The reason for this is that all you have to do to provide your team with the location of the enemy is to aim down the sight of your weapon at the target in question and their chevron (the red arrow above their player model) lights up and they appear on the map. As stated earlier, this is being changed but in the mean time it severely hampers the use of the Active Scanner as there is more valuable equipment to be used instead.
Some of the prototype ones are very useful though - even TOO useful in my opinion as I've outlined in another thread:
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1127559#post1127559
Essentially, a Duvolle Focused Active Scanner will pick up -ANYTHING- in the game besides a Prototype Gallente Scout Gk.0 with all skills level 5, two Complex and one Basic Profile Dampener. This is just insane, especially given that it has a scan range of 100 meters at a 60 degree angle.
So let's do the math on this in our next post.
Using the formula: [u]area=1/2 a*b*sin(x)[/u] we can find that the area of this scan is 4,330 meters.
On a map that is 400*400 = 160,000 meters, this equates to 2.7% of the map being scanned at a time. This doesn't sound like much but when you consider the location of where objectives are in the map and the redline locations, it starts to dawn on you just how powerful this tool is. This is all under the assumption that we have no idea where the enemy is, which is not likely the case.
Again, this is the most powerful Active Scanner when used for defeating low profile signatures. The most powerful in terms of range is the CreoDron Flux Active Scanner which with 28 db scan precision can pick any Scout that does not have all skills at level five over an area of.......... [u][b]Brace yourself[/b][/u].....
[u][b]20,000 meters. [/b][/u]
This may be a bit TOO powerful considering that you have to be running a Scout with all skills at level five to dip beneath it considering it's massive scan area. We won't really know until the TacNet changes have been implemented and more players start relying on - let alone specializing into - Active Scanners. For now we can only wait and see.
[center]Remote/Proximity Explosives - The Step Child of Splash Damage[/center]
These are an oddity to me. In general they're bad because you can have more active than you can carry which means that, unless you're rolling Logistics, you're going to be making a lot of trips to the Supply Depot. Beyond that there's no real payout for having higher tiers unless you plan on mixing them (standard/advanced to have more out at the same time) which as I've stated earlier probably shouldn't be happening in the game in the first place. This isn't to say that you shouldn't be able to deploy a lot of proximity mines though, but we'll get to that in a bit.
There's no increase in damage, no increase in splash radius and their resource costs go up exponentially like everything else. So you're dropping hundreds of thousands of skill points to use more of them but again this falls on the fact that you can have more active than you can carry so it's a cyclical issue of having to build a suit around them (Logistics with explosives + nanohives) or run back and forth constantly in order to get more.
Proximity Mines by themselves don't hardly do that much damage and they don't cover that wide of an area. Combined damage works wonders but considering that they only have a five meter range you're going to have to choose between covering more ground and doing less damage or going for the kill by placing them in a single location. To top it off they're absolutely ineffective against anything besides HAVs - Dropships for obvious reasons and LAVs because they explode AFTER the LAV has driven over them if they're moving at high speeds, often only killing the gunner (if any) but leaving the vehicle itself unscathed. Either way the damage of Proximity Mines needs to increase or the amount active/carried needs to increase, one of the two.
Remote Explosives are actually pretty well balanced (all bugs aside) as they're mostly used for a defense role and can be killed by practically anything. A single shot from any weapon will set them off and grenades work wonders at clearing them out. Despite this, not having an increase in splash radius keeps them in check and you're having to put some thought into their placement to avoid them being detonated by the enemy, rather than you.
Beyond this they act like other pieces of equipment in that they don't go away after you die, making them useful regardless of death as you can just respawn and detonate the remote explosives anyway. Unfortunately, Proximity Mines do disappear - making them less useful than they already are.
[center] Proposal: 'The Repair Dart'[/center]
I've discussed this with some of my corp-mates (Logistics players) and they seemed pretty excited at the proposal so I figured I'd share it with the rest of you and see some feedback. This idea was mostly inspired as a hybrid between the Brink revive system and the healing method used in Killing Floor.
Considering the limitations in efficiency of the Repair Tool and the Nanite Injector in terms of Planetary Conquest I toyed with the idea of mixing the two into a Repair Dart. Essentially it retains the lock-on capability that the Repair Tool has but instead of having to keep the lock and hold the trigger down to repair the player, you simply lock-on and fire a dart that does the job for you, repairing the player over a certain period of time.
As an example, we'll say 45 HP/s for 10 seconds for a total of 450 HP repaired. This isn't so far out of the realm of proper balancing as it's what the repair tools do anyway but it allows the Logistics to switch back to their weapon and continue fighting. Obviously there would be a cool-down in effect to limit the usage of it, which I feel would be well balanced to coincide with the time at which the dart is repairing, so 10 seconds. This would allow the common Repair Tool to still be useful as it allows for Guardian points and some variants are better for vehicles, have longer ranges and more targets.
This could also be beneficial in utilization for reviving as you could lock-on to a fallen ally and fire the dart, which would bring them back to life and slowly repair armor over time. This way the Nanite Injector is still a viable alternative, repairing the armor damage instantly as opposed to time lapsed.
Combining the two into one piece of equipment would make it more enticing to use in tandem with other options like Nanohives, primarily keep a gun in the Logistic's hands and allow him to help his team-mates in more ways than just putting down Drop Uplinks and repairing with Nanohives. It also gives them the option to choose a more specialized method like the Repair Tool and the Nanite Injector which would perform better but with less versatility.
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