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Making EODs and Repair Specs more enjoyable:


Noah_Hero

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Making EODs and Repair Specs more enjoyable:

I often recognized, that EOD and Repair Spec Slots are basicallly taken last because it seems that you perform better with the other classes.

Now how to balance this?

 

To make EODs more enjoyable I think the balancing should focus on what this class is made for: blowing up stuff! And what can you find at I&A to blow up? Radio Towers! But at the moment there is no reason to pick an EOD for blowing up RTs because you can also do this with any of the other classes.

Because of this I think for the EOD the most simple way to make him more enjoyable and increase his pickrate would be to restrict explosives to this special class (and the Repair Spec but later more on this). Because if done so the team would now really need this guys to get an RT down and if you play as EOD you would no longer have these frustrating moments where you have ran for like 3km to the RT just to see how a Medic is placing satchel charges instead of doing his real job.

Now to make this class not too attractive I would suggest to limit the choice of weapons for EODs by letting them just jusing PDWs like the Vermin or Protector for example.

 

Now I said that Repair Specs should also be allowed to use explosives. Why do I think so? Well basically because Repair Specs need them once in while and if you take them away from them it would probably really hurt their pickrate. But now you again would have a class that could exactly do what EODs are made for. To again balance this you could spawn RTs with a 75% chance of getting a minefield around them. In addition to this you could go two different ways to handle the balancing:

  • One option would be to just restrict the mine detector to EODs. This would not hurt any of the other classes because you basically never come across some mines at I&A and if so now again you would need an EOD.
  • The other option would be to place the mines so extremely tight that it would be even with a mine detector impossible to get to the RT without defusing them.

I personally prefer the first option but both options would work and make the EOD more valuable and enjoyable. But same goes for the Repair Specs because they now also would be able to bring down the other 25% of RTs without minefields!

Though I think that then the choice of weapons for Repair Specs should also be more limited. They absolutely should be able to use better weapons than EODs but also not weapons that are too good. For example they could go with all weapons that are on the same level as the MXC and lower.

 

 

This "package" of ideas would make EODs and Repair Specs a lot more valuable for the team, increase the fun you could have while playing this role but would not make them overpored because of the limited weapons choice you have.

Give me your opinions on what I said and sorry for my bad english (I am from germany).

Noah_Hero:)

 

 

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I like the idea of limiting explosives to EOD but I think it would work fine without the change to repair specialists, their ability to repair is enough to make them useful and popular with the need of explosives.

Without this change you also wouldn't need your changes to the RT.

Also I don't think any changes to their weaponry is needed, it is fine for them to be on par with the other support roles (medic, AT etc).

 

Anyway nice post and your English is perfect so no need to apologise!

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31 minutes ago, Jason. said:

Without this change you also wouldn't need your changes to the RT.

Also I don't think any changes to their weaponry is needed, it is fine for them to be on par with the other support roles (medic, AT etc).

Good Point!:):D

 

32 minutes ago, Jason. said:

Anyway nice post and your English is perfect so no need to apologise!

Thank you very much!:)

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I feel the same way, in that the EOD and repair specialists are often overlooked and basically a "useless" role, because (almost) everyone can take explosives and there are plenty of options to repair vehicles (and if there aren't, people don't mind just abandoning vehicles in the middle of nowhere). Therefore, I think your idea is nice to give them some purpose, but I fear it can only work when there's a lot of people on. When there aren't, you can't really afford to sacrifice someone who could be useful in the field fighting the enemy, just so you can blow up 1 radio tower or a cache every so many hours (not even sure you need explosives for the cache?), or to repair the occasional broken vehicle. And that's assuming everyone actually plays their role, which is not always a given on public EU1 / 2.

 

Therefore, I'd amend your idea as follows:

- Restrict explosive satchels and charges to EOD / repair spec, but don't put artificial crutches on them by heavily reducing their arsenal to just PDWs, so they can still be useful on their own in an AO.

- Restrict explosive satchels and charges to EOD / repair spec with the PDW limitation, and a few roles that would still be useful in an AO, but could realistically have received extended training with explosives. E.g. snipers / spotters / recon because of their expertise in infiltration and sabotage, or squad leaders / grenadiers because of their all-round required skill level.

 

 

Some of the radio towers used to be surrounded by minefields in 2.86, by the way, but even then, a UAV operator could level it alone with a Darter and a single GBU (still can), or with a decent heli-pilot, you could actually land/hover at and place down satchels at the base without having to walk through the minefield. I don't think there's any way you can avoid that.

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1 hour ago, Noah_Hero said:

Because of this I think for the EOD the most simple way to make him more enjoyable and increase his pickrate would be to restrict explosives to this special class (and the Repair Spec but later more on this).

I personally also think this is a good idea (assuming the engineer get's included as well).  But i wouldn't restrict their weapons.  
And i don't mind the minefield coming back.  

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Just now, Stanhope said:

I personally also think this is a good idea (assuming the engineer get's included as well).

Yes I thought of the Engineer as being included as Repair Spec.:)

 

2 minutes ago, Stanhope said:

And i don't mind the minefield coming back.  

But then how to balance the EOD and the Repair Spec?:(

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11 minutes ago, Noah_Hero said:

Yes I thought of the Engineer as being included as Repair Spec.:)

I believe the engineer is in the EOD squad, he's something in between a repair spec and expl spec i think.

 

12 minutes ago, Noah_Hero said:

But then how to balance the EOD and the Repair Spec?:(

A very good question to which i don't have an answer.

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2 minutes ago, Stanhope said:

 

15 minutes ago, Noah_Hero said:

But then how to balance the EOD and the Repair Spec?:(

 

A very good question to which i don't have an answer.

 

Lucky we don't need an answer then :)

"Balance" isn't an issue we need to worry about, especially between those two classes.

They both fulfill different and important roles which no other class is able to do, that is what matters.

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1 minute ago, Jason. said:

"Balance" isn't an issue we need to worry about, especially between those two classes.

They both fulfill different and important roles which no other class is able to do, that is what matters.

Maybe I missunderstood Stanhope but understood it in that way that he agreed with me but with the minefields. But this would cause a "balancing"-issue because than there would be the mentioned problem of two classes with explosives. And espacially if the Engineer/Repair-Spec is the other class then the EOD gets very much unnecessary:(

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Just now, Noah_Hero said:

Maybe I missunderstood Stanhope but understood it in that way that he agreed with me but with the minefields. But this would cause a "balancing"-issue because than there would be the mentioned problem of two classes with explosives. And espacially if the Engineer/Repair-Spec is the other class then the EOD gets very much unnecessary:(

Well, yes on the public servers EOD isn't really necessary.  It's not like we have ace running requiring people to somewhat know what they are doing.

And mines are also hardly ever used for non-trolling purposes. If this wasn't the case you could restrict repairspecs to simple explosive charges and grant EOD access to mines and all the explosives.

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Just now, Stanhope said:

Well, yes on the public servers EOD isn't really necessary.  It's not like we have ace running requiring people to somewhat know what they are doing.

Yeah and thats why I`d like to have that the EOD gets importent for at least the Radio Towers.

 

2 minutes ago, Stanhope said:

you could restrict repairspecs to simple explosive charges and grant EOD access to mines and all the explosives.

That would be a possibillity but then there still would be the problem that also Repair Specs could destroy all Radio Towers because 2 normal explosive charges (wich an Repair Spec/Engineer can use) are enough to get a Tower down. Because of this Repair Specs/Engineers are at the moment a lot better than EODs because they also can repair.

To overcome this balancing problem an alternative to the mines would be to use your (quoted) suggestion to restrict normal explosives to Repair Specs/Engineers/EODs and to let the EODs only use heavier explosives plus to set the Health of Radio Towers up to 300% because than 6 normal charges would be needed wich probably no one would like to carry but EODs could equip satchel Charges wich are (I think) dealing at least 3x more damage than a normal charge. On the other side this would also limit the the EOD a lot because one Satchel has the weight of 4 normal Charges but I think it would be a good way to balance without minefields:)

 

But what exactly is the problem with mines from your point of view?

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16 minutes ago, Noah_Hero said:

That would be a possibillity but then there still would be the problem that also Repair Specs could destroy all Radio Towers because 2 normal explosive charges (wich an Repair Spec/Engineer can use) are enough to get a Tower down. Because of this Repair Specs/Engineers are at the moment a lot better than EODs because they also can repair.

I personally see the engineer more as a part of EOD than as a repair spec.

 

17 minutes ago, Noah_Hero said:

 

To overcome this balancing problem an alternative to the mines would be to use your (quoted) suggestion to restrict normal explosives to Repair Specs/Engineers/EODs and to let the EODs only use heavier explosives plus to set the Health of Radio Towers up to 300% because than 6 normal charges would be needed wich probably no one would like to carry but EODs could equip satchel Charges wich are (I think) dealing at least 3x more damage than a normal charge. On the other side this would also limit the the EOD a lot because one Satchel has the weight of 4 normal Charges but I think it would be a good way to balance without minefields:)

+1 (maybe even with minefields)

 

17 minutes ago, Noah_Hero said:

But what exactly is the problem with mines from your point of view?

They hardly ever get used by player effectively.  I've maybe seen 2 people use them to disable a moving tigris and all the other times i've seen them get used is for trolling.  (e.g. putting them down on a road leading out from base, putting them down at fobs, ...)

I don't have a single problem with minefields in the AO.

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5 minutes ago, Stanhope said:

I don't have a single problem with minefields in the AO.

That´s what I ment. Just Minefields around Radio towers to make EODs more valuable in case of destroying these RTs

 

But actually the idea of giving towers more health sounds kind of better after Eagle-Eye pointed out:

2 hours ago, Eagle-Eye said:

Some of the radio towers used to be surrounded by minefields in 2.86, by the way, but even then, a UAV operator could level it alone with a Darter and a single GBU (still can), or with a decent heli-pilot, you could actually land/hover at and place down satchels at the base without having to walk through the minefield.

(btw. sry Eagle it appears that I overlooked your post earlier:unsure:) But I am not sure if it is possible because I think it isn`t working with the Editor:mellow:

 

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Your ideas have been noted and will be discussed amongst the Dev team. I'll get back to you with the results.

 

My own insight into this is that making roles specialist with their own certain jobs is a great idea, but we have to be careful how much we limit as it is a public server with all levels of skill and play style. If your looking for a more team oriented time, try logging into teamspeak and playing on our modded  server, AW Enhanced.

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6 hours ago, Lone said:

Your ideas have been noted and will be discussed amongst the Dev team. I'll get back to you with the results.

Great to see that you always try to improve I&A with feedback from the community! Keep up the great work! :)

 

6 hours ago, Lone said:

try logging into teamspeak and playing on our modded  server, AW Enhanced.

It´s been a while since I last was on there but I will definitly be there soon again:)

 

 

5 hours ago, Eagle-Eye said:

What isn't possible or working in the editor?

I think it is not possibleto set the Health of Radio Towers to more than 100% in the Editor but I could be wrong because I am not very used to it.:unsure: But could it be possible with code?

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1 hour ago, Noah_Hero said:

I think it is not possibleto set the Health of Radio Towers to more than 100% in the Editor but I could be wrong because I am not very used to it.:unsure: But could it be possible with code?

I'm pretty sure it can be coded. At least they've done something like that with the experimental tank side-mission.

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No change to RepairSpecs IMO,they r a contributing Rolle already.

EODs in the other side need their minefield back to be worthfull.

Limiting explosives only to EODs and DemolitionSpecs makes sense (difference between those two > only EOD can disarm).

 

OFC this takes time and patience to settle this on a Pub Server like EU1/2 but that wouldnt cause more Drama than we have now.

Pubs dont even geht the relation between RT and the enemy air shooting them of the sky (which they do way to less ATM)

 

Sorry,i would write more and with quotes but im in a parking lot with my mobile, so i m limited

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I used Repair specialist as vehicle crew in the past. I@A3 (and 3.1) is in my opinion more focused on infantry combat and this makes them a bit underused right now. But personally, I don't see that as a problem. If More FOBs are taken or side mission rewards roll some armour then those slots can be used by players that wish to operate armoured vehicles and give them more survivability. Limiting their choice of primary weapons would limit their use even more. I am happy about their current weapon limitations as they can function as a rifleman. I would rather welcome return of sling-able service containers and repair offroad. 

 

EOD squad had never seen much of use. Return of the minefields would be interesting as I was always amused by players running like headless chicken inside minefields and blowing their teammates (if I was not blown up myself).

 

My guess is that minefields were removed because so many players died in them. Even if you had mine detector, explosives and skill you often died because somebody killed you by setting off bounding mine. In the public server which in my eyes is designed as quick action cooperative FUN with low demands on the individual player experience in Arma, it is good they are gone.

 

What to do with EOD squad then? Limiting all placeable explosives to some roles seems like a good idea but it goes against the flexibility and mission flow. Let me explain this.

 

Now imagine that you crashed your bird and your main rotor is too close to an object. You need a vehicle to push it or demo to destroy it. You flipped your tank and you don't have a bobcat to flip it back. In these cases, you would need to pray that somebody capable took the slot and can land you helping kaboom so your asset can at least respawn, or hope that clearing script will eventually delete it.

 

To give and EOD more use you need to create a purpose for them to be used for their unique feature. In my opinion, that feature is not placing explosives bud disarming them.

 

Side missions where you need to disarm antiship mines in harbours or straits protected by an enemy patrol boats, or ambushing an ambush and clearing up IEDs after that, or defusing huge IED in the city which would detonate 10 minutes after players alerts enemy in the area (or more simple trigger that activates the bomb after players enter set radius around the objective). I will try to make these examples in EDEN and share them later.

 

@Noah_Hero The thing with increasing health is that GBU has more oomph than a satchel, so to reduce UAV effectivity by increasing RT HP (or limiting incoming damage by certain %) would force EOD to pack more satchels, which might, in turn, impact his combat effectivity (satchels are HEAVY). 

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4 hours ago, Cebi said:

Now imagine that you crashed your bird and your main rotor is too close to an object. You need a vehicle to push it or demo to destroy it. You flipped your tank and you don't have a bobcat to flip it back. In these cases, you would need to pray that somebody capable took the slot and can land you helping kaboom so your asset can at least respawn, or hope that clearing script will eventually delete it.

That´s the reason why I thought of also letting repair Specs using normal charges. So there would be enough people running around with charges but not like too many.

 

4 hours ago, Cebi said:

The thing with increasing health is that GBU has more oomph than a satchel, so to reduce UAV effectivity by increasing RT HP (or limiting incoming damage by certain %) would force EOD to pack more satchels, which might, in turn, impact his combat effectivity (satchels are HEAVY).

The idea with increasing the HP of RTs in combination with only letting EODs using satchels was more like ment to make RTs a completely unattractive target for everyone but EODs because everyone else would have to take 6 normal charges. Of course the Problem is that one satchel has the weight of 4 normal charges but you could probably reduce the weight of these to like the half. Then you probably also should limit the amount of satchels for EODs to like 2 to make it not completely unrealistic.

In addition with your Idea:

4 hours ago, Cebi said:

Side missions where you need to disarm antiship mines in harbours or straits protected by an enemy patrol boats, or ambushing an ambush and clearing up IEDs after that, or defusing huge IED in the city which would detonate 10 minutes after players alerts enemy in the area (or more simple trigger that activates the bomb after players enter set radius around the objective). I will try to make these examples in EDEN and share them later.

it would be a fair deal that also the drone could destroy RT´s because also the drone could aways get shot down by the enemy jet and if the drone actually gets the RT down you would not feel like completely useless because there would be the side mission you suggested.:)

 

4 hours ago, Cebi said:

My guess is that minefields were removed because so many players died in them. Even if you had mine detector, explosives and skill you often died because somebody killed you by setting off bounding mine.

I think so too but I think it was not like that extreme. I think I just got killed because of someone ranning into the mines like at every 3rd or 4rth minefield so it was not like impossible to get the RT down even with people near who never saw a minefield in Arma before.:lol:

 

 

5 hours ago, TheScar said:

OFC this takes time and patience to settle this on a Pub Server like EU1/2 but that wouldnt cause more Drama than we have now.

Pubs dont even geht the relation between RT and the enemy air shooting them of the sky (which they do way to less ATM)

 

Sorry,i would write more and with quotes but im in a parking lot with my mobile, so i m limited

I don´t think it would take time and patience because people who would really like to play like EODs would then just pick these slots and people who just picked explosives because they were able to wouldnt´t really care I think.

Then write when you are back home.;)

 

 

Another Idea I just had would be this:

As a medic you need your medpack an a frist aid kit to revive people => you could code like an interaction menu based on this "you need to have ..." system for the RTs. Like that it only gives you the option to destroy it when you have satchels with you wich are then automaticly removed from your inventory (like the first aid kits from medics) and placed at front of you with you having the trigger/fuze for them. In addition to the restricten of satchels only EODs would be able to destroy RTs. If this would be too harsh you could also add in that the RT still could get destroyed by tanks/drones/launchers.

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This is nothing that could be done on our side, but nonetheless I figure I'll throw these ideas out here to get some thoughts. So, regarding the engineer/EOD/demo slot:

 

  1. Should minefields (or if not minefields, then randomized IEDs to keep people and especially convoys on their toes) be implemented again, an EOD bot (ex. the one used in BF3/4) would be exceptionally useful. Only the engineer would be able to deploy this via a backpack, much like the Raven UAV we used to have. Upon deploying, it would drop a terminal (or the terminal could be picked up via the GPS slot in the arsenal) which would be used to control it. The bot would either be a sort of dummy meant to drive over the mine and blow it up, or it could have some actual function and allow remote disarmament via the ACE interaction/scroll wheel menu.
  2. EOD suit. So much yes. This would be available via the outfit tab in the arsenal and would provide full explosive coverage at the cost of maneuverability; the suit would weigh 36 kilos, making it reasonable to not bring a vest nor a backpack. Given only to the engineer, it would allow him to disarm a nearby mine or bomb with no risk of injury, even if he sets it off in front of him.

If the EOD suit were to be added I would highly suggest implementing risky encounters with civilians, such as the engineer having to put on the EOD suit and disarm a suicide belt. To make it a decent challenge, I would recommend there be a 1-5% chance on any dangerous civilian that the bomb will go off while being defused; this would ensure the suit is used rather than unprotected soldiers exploiting a 100% disarm rate like what currently happens with dirty bomb missions.

 

Just some general thoughts. What does everybody else think?

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@ShadowAce11 : Well all of that sounds basically amazing!:) I think this would be super cool on AWE but could actually also work on EU1/2 but with randomized IEDs/minefield just near RTs and those civillians as Side missions.:)

 

But I would suggest to set the chance of a bomb going off that you mentioned:

10 hours ago, ShadowAce11 said:

 I would recommend there be a 1-5% chance on any dangerous civilian that the bomb will go off while being defused

higher for everybody but EODs. Like for normal soldiers to 30% on EU1/2 and to 50%+ on AWE that they really will think twice if they want to do this or if they`ll better get an EOD. Also if the the EOD-Bot is added I would set for this one also a higher chance of bombs blowing up while defused because if not it would always be better to go with this one instead of with the EOD-Suit and the potential risk to get shot. Also it is kind of realistic that you are maybe not as good while defusing if you are not really standing in front of the bomb because you may not get the angle you need or because there is dirt on the camera of the Bot, etc.

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Hello everyone,

 

So as a conclusion regarding this whole discussion: Will there be any changes in the next I&A update? Will the minefield come back? Will there be any limitations or restrictions regarding the load out (minedetector, explosives, mines, etc.) for other roles or will the HP for RT be increased?

 

Greetings

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