OpenRA

There was a discussion yesterday about the current engineer's behaviour, as the buildings production gets reset if an engy starts capturing the Con Yard.

Although this can be an interesting tactical trick, IMO it doesn't really make sense "in real life", and can be difficult to counter, especially for soviets (with Flame Turret, the engy can avoid the first fireballs)

Many behaviours can be imagined :
- Resetting - No need to change !

- Holding building production : maybe the most realistic behaviour. The buildings and defences would be on hold, as if the engy was blocking the construction process with his tools. Also, the buildings can't be deployed, even if they were ready. Somehow similar to the spy behaviour.

- Preventing building deployment : the buildings would still get prepared and pre-built during capture, but unable to be dropped on the field. The defender would be unable to drop defences, and would need mobile units to prevent capture.

- Only capturing, but faster : if all blocking behaviours were to be removed, then the capturing process would be very difficult. Increasing the capture speed would balance that, and transform the tactical value of the engineer from production resetting to actual capture.

- Only capturing, same speed as now : totally removing the resetting behaviour. Capturing would be hard to micro, and be done among a whole strategy / army composition / ... Typically, it would be to capture an isolated MCV from another faction, surrounding it with an army, and probably several engineers capturing the same MCV. Hard to accomplish, but very rewarding if you obtain double faction.

What behaviour would you prefer ?

I say keep as is.

From what I've seen it's a viable tactic that players have come to rely on.
Because, hey! if I can't be annoying by capturing a building, I might as well be annoying and cancel the production of that which is about to kill me, right?

Engineers are barely used as it is, why weaken them? I am not sure that just "capture" can be useful, because it's either too slow or too fast, very hard to find a middle ground.

In other words, let's leave engineers as they are.

This officially considered a bug (#8122) that was accidentally introduced when fixing a different bug (#6766) where construction yards could end up in a state where they couldn't be undeployed or sold. I repeat again, this is not an intentional feature, as the code is demonstrably wrong.

Unfortunately there are many people who prefer the gameplay of this bug over the original behaviour, and this usually ends up with arguments whenever fixing it is discussed in our development chat. Consequently nothing happens towards fixing it.

It should be changed no doubt. It’s a really lame annoying stupid luck heavy tactic which makes the game a lot less enjoyable. You might cancel nothing or an almost ready $2000 mcv and it depends mostly on luck. It adds nothing but annoyance to the game.

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?

lucassss wrote: ↑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?

demo trucks dont usually come out within the first few minutes of the game

true, but aircraft is harder to kill in comparison to engineer, so I assumed it "balances out"

lucassss wrote: ↑true, but aircraft is harder to kill in comparison to engineer, so I assumed it "balances out"

the real meme is sometimes a player may have only a pillbox as defense this early and when an engineer taps the MCV you lose that pillbox

the cherry on top is if the player has their barracks and/or war factory in the right spot, you could potentially just keep tapping all the buildings and leave the opponent stuck until they sold one of the buildings

however it does keep some interest in the early game of matches since not a lot can be going on

Sleipnir wrote: ↑This officially considered a bug (#8122) that was accidentally introduced when fixing a different bug (#6766) where construction yards could end up in a state where they couldn't be undeployed or sold. I repeat again, this is not an intentional feature, as the code is demonstrably wrong.

Unfortunately there are many people who prefer the gameplay of this bug over the original behaviour, and this usually ends up with arguments whenever fixing it is discussed in our development chat. Consequently nothing happens towards fixing it.

Unfortunately the "fixing" of the different bug wasn't even proper, and 6766 is still reproducible as #8146.

I have been caught out many a time with this. As previously said having a pill box ready and not deployed isn't a counter. I rather like the feature although I have just found out in this post its a bug. I say keep it as is just deploy the pill box and have a few troops around the base. I think the feature is a happy accident

I would prefer the original RA engie behaviour, The engies damaged the buildings and in red zone they captured.
But i'm also fine as it is now some years ago the engies instantly captured the building that was a bit annoying sometimes hehe
The reset of the building is fair for me, if someone rushes with a ranger and engie early the engie often just fails and so he not totally failed.(you can just sell a building and shoot the engie with the units you gain)
I know this is really resentful it happens to me too sometimes but ... nvm lol

JuiceBox wrote: ↑I have been caught out many a time with this. As previously said having a pill box ready and not deployed isn't a counter. I rather like the feature although I have just found out in this post its a bug. I say keep it as is just deploy the pill box and have a few troops around the base. I think the feature is a happy accident

As soon as you see an engineer get out the ranger deploy the defensive structure and aim for the engineer. If you do it quick it's dead before the ranger's door is shut.

I don't see the problem. It's not like it can't be countered quite easily. And engi's attack ability is already limited by external capture (and slow) so give them something...

The fact that it happened by accident doesn't make it a bad thing!

Yea it his no chance if you are In your base and have a pillbox prepared. I usually get jumped when my attention is Divided somewhere else. most of the time while am harassing my opponent with an APC or something. Now days I drop a camo pillbox as soon as I can spare the cash on my construction yard and have another on standby incase they attack anything else seems to have reduced the early shenanigans