Breakin Stuff
Goonfeet
Special Planetary Emergency Response Group
2628
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Posted - 2014.09.07 12:33:00 -
[1] - Quote
EWAR in DUST is a binary animal. Either you always detect the target without variation, or you never detect the target no matter your fitting. This is bad design space that allows scouts to slip in and deliver killshots trivially without variation so long as they don't do so from your front. They can become undetectable by any scanners on any suit. There is no hard counter to the current level at which scouts can slip through a detection net.
This is not a cloak rant. I don't care about the cloak, but as long as it exists, EWAR cannot be a binary equation. being unseen is a powerful tool. Being undetectable by scanning, passive or active, is a powerful tool. Combining them both on the same platform is a bad idea.
Bluntly this design principle makes no sense. EWAR should have a margin for error. Granted, the higher the dampening a scout has the lower the margin for error should be, they're supposed to be stealthy. But what is the point of having a scanner/radar system on any dropsuit if it always fails?
I can tell you the radar on a sentinel or commando is about as useful as a football bat unless you're lucky enough to have a lot of other players nearby with scanners. Most of the time it's not worth looking at, you won't see anyone till they commence the gunfire. It's not much better on assaults.
Even the sensor jamming specialist ships in EVE do not have a 100% jamming success no matter HOW many SP you get.
Bluntly there should always be at minimum a 5% chance that any dropsuit will blip on the radar for a second based on the difference between your sensor strength and their profile. This "oh I'm 0.1 under your scanner DP, so I'm always undetectable" is absolutely poor and unfun for anyone who is looking for a fight, not easy mode assassin kills.
proposed fix:
If your scan strength is 25db and their profile is 25db you have a 50% chance of detection on the radar only.
if your scan strength is 25 and their profile is 24 you have a 47.5% chance of detection or a net loss of 2.5% chance per full DB shift.
If you're a heavy with a 40db detection and a scout is down to 15 db you default to a 5% minimum chance of detection.
If you're a scout with 20db detection and a 40db heavy trundles nearby, you should have a max 95% chance to see him.
a assault with a detection of 30 should detect the 40db heavy 75% of the time. The heavy should detect the Assault 25% of the time in turn.
EWAR is one time where the Random Number Generator is your friend and absolutely should be used. This binary "always win / always fail" is a poor stopgap that allows players to utterly exploit mechanics that should otherwise be used to enhance the game, not make a murderfun easy mode.
Give me a reason to slot a precision enhancer on fatsuit, seriously. Or on an assault. Give us the option of building a detection platform that WORKS. Assaults can't kill scouts if they can't see them, Heavies can't point-defend when everyone can detect THEM (and see what direction they are facing on the radar dot) and they are functionally blind.
Ewar aspects by themselves are not broken, but when combined as a whole they can be utterly and brutally overpowering to a ridiculous degree. Right now the only counter to a scout is a scout (or dumb luck having the cloakie rnning in front of you or your crosshairs go red) and it has been well-established by the Devs, unless the policy has changed, that if the only real hard counter of one thing is the same thing, it is not working as intended.
Hard counter or soft counter, it doesn't matter what is implented. But "dumbass luck" is not a counter. Counting on an EWAR scout to screw up is not a counter.
TL;DR: Random Number Generator on EWAR PLZ. |