Engineer's behaviour - Resetting production

[FRenzy]

Same as SoScared, +1 for the last ideas !

[IronScion]

To clarify: if a player has more than one of a production facility, does the engineer tap do nothing?

[FRenzy]

No, at least not currently.

[r34ch]

If the engineer could get more active roles during the game I'd fully support the fix. E.g. free, slow structure repair and detecting mines.

+1

[SoScared]

Submitted ticket at: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/11749

Could we get more opinions on this (forum)?

[FRenzy]

Maybe an additional idea :

It would be interesting if the engy could have a blocking behaviour on individual facilities.

This could allow effective base capture scenarios, when an army ovewhelms an enemy base and get rids of all enemy units / defences : the enemy will be unable to deploy defences around the Conyard, or get units out from the facilities being captured.

Thus, a squad of 3-4 engineers escorted by army could be able to freeze a base locally, and capturing it efficently.

[Frame_Limiter]

The way it is currently doesn't make any sense, unless we give the engineer a wizard hat. Seriously though, having the production queue frozen but not cancelled would be far more fair and realistic, and I'm surprised it isn't winning the poll.

As it is right now, there's little reason not to try to suicide an engineer for a chance to disrupt production if you've built one anyways. Canceling a structure and or vehicle that's almost finished can set your opponent back a whole 30 seconds or more, which is huge. Also there has been a number of times where despite the defensive structure going up, my engineer still successfully tapped the con yard/war factory. It depends on which random direction the engineer jumps out of the jeep/apc. You can time the exit between fireballs & pillbox shots, and if the engi jumps out towards the structure, the tap is almost instantaneous.

--
My vote is for either: #2, #3, or #5. -- I voted #2 as I think it has the best chance of being supported by the community and hopefully implemented.

[Sleipnir]

#2 has the worst chance of being supported by the developers, because it requires fiddly new logic to be added to the production code that is only used in this rare edge case.

[Materianer]

I think the engie should detect the mines as you said, would be funny feature maybe, but he should not be able to walk over the mines that would look strange.
Also not fair if i laid some mines around my nuke to prevent chonoattacks and an engie could just walk over it and capture it and my units catch the mines when trying to shoot him ...

[SoScared]

I think the engie should detect the mines as you said, would be funny feature maybe, but he should not be able to walk over the mines that would look strange.
Also not fair if i laid some mines around my nuke to prevent chonoattacks and an engie could just walk over it and capture it and my units catch the mines when trying to shoot him ...

I was thinking of having 'walk over/on mines' as a prerequisite for removing it. That would look better than having the engie remove from 1 cell distance.

How often do we really see engineer capping anything, being stopped by mines honestly. Just shoot at the mines, they ofter trigger a chain reaction. Engies also just holds the countdown for superpowers anyway.

[anjew]

rare edge case.

It may be rare because only one unit does it however just about every map in the pool has oil to some degree so this rare edge case is actually used in most of the games that end up being broadcasted.

[raymundo]

I vote that this bug must be fixed! Those that are saying it is a viable strategy simply enjoy abusing a game mechanic. Halting production would be fine, resetting the timers seems ridiculous. Since it has been mentioned that "halting" would be very involved to implement, please fix it so that building continues like it used to.

I also like the idea of engis acting as a sort of minesweeper, very cool!

[hotze]

Christian - Can't the exact same thing can be said about swooping in with aircraft to check if an Ukranian player just produced a Demo truck and blow it up in his base?

It's not comparable at all. An Ukranian player take risks when he build demo trucks, it's his own choice whether he wants to take these risks (build demo trucks). It is however not your own choice whether someone tries to reset your production queue with an engineer (exploit a broken bug to gain an unfair advantage).

It is, however, your own choice not to defend against it.
It is completely comparable.

[Murto the Ray]

Engi cheese is exploiting broken game mechanics

I wouldn't say they are broken, more like they are unintended. Several games ended up reaping an extra level of depth from these mechanics such as StarCraft brood war.

Vs allies you only need a wire/sandbag fence which comes to $100. If they decide to go for a light tank as well as a ranger then they are really only going to break even - most of the time - if they manage to reset your build queue due to how much their light tank will put them back.

Vs soviets you could do the same, the added time of having to crush the wire fence gives you more time to react and get over to the conyard, they are also fast enough to build that you could replace the fences before the engineer can be deployed and gets to your conyard.

I don't really mind whether this is kept in the game or not. It can be annoying and it can end a game quite quickly. But certain tells - such as derricks being on the map - can give you a head start in knowing if they are going to go for an engi reset or not. I think its fairly preventable and not game breaking.

[zinc]

If the engineer could get more active roles during the game I'd fully support the fix. E.g. free, slow structure repair and detecting mines.

I will suggest that you could use them to upgrade an oil derrick (if at full health). So the engi enters it and you get more cash each time as a result.