The ScoutGÇÖs not gotten too much love in recent months. What started out as a bullet-strafing monster back in Chromosome has slowly been marginalized as other aspects of the game have been worked on and improved. IGÇÖm happy to say that soon the Scout class should be wholly rejuvenated (or at the very least, be in a much better place). The introduction of cloaking equipment and revamped bonuses should help the Scout find his rightful place in the battlefield hierarchy. To me, the Scout role has always been about creating a disruptive force on the battlefield. HeGÇÖs the guy that can cover enough ground quickly enough to get drop uplinks into the right places (that is, if everyone didnGÇÖt carry one, but more on that later), hack objectives back, disperse squad members (nothing makes people scatter faster than a KC-amped shotgunner) and generally make a nuisance of himself.

The Scout role will get very high PG/CPU bonuses to fitting cloak equipment, making it just about the only role that can feasibly fit a cloak field without having to sacrifice the rest of its fit. Individual race skill bonuses will create opportunities for cloaked scouts to scan further and longer than other dropsuits, to have less GÇ£shimmerGÇ¥ as they move, and have lower innate scan profiles so that they can be visually and electronically invisible. These should help create more useful assassins, intel gatherers, and saboteurs. And in time, the introduction of additional Scout specializations will be added to further push the boundaries of the little Light Suit That Could.

Use of equipment is obviously encouraged but abuse of any system to the point where itGÇÖs detrimental to gameplay is obviously a problem. So, yeah, itGÇÖs definitely an issue. WeGÇÖd like to approach the problem by first increasing the PG/CPU costs along with role-specific skills that reduce those costs to discourage mass fitting of drop uplinks and nanohives, and put them back into the hands of the specialists. Eventually, weGÇÖd want to introduce the ability for the enemy to hack a piece of equipment and take ownership of it (to encourage smarter placement of equipment instead of dumping dozens in plain sight) and have War Barge-fired EMP strikes that destroy all equipment over a very large area