More Com Tech Buffs

[atticus-rezzer]

“Chemical Weapons smock”
New armor type that does very little brute damage protection but makes you almost immune to acid damage, so you can build cades whilst being acided. Lock to Combat Technicians only.

Upgrade folding barricades.
Use the nailgun and metal to turn a “folding barricade” into a regular barricade, so you can quickly lay down a wall, then make it more permanent.

Rapid Deployment Construction pouch
A pouch like the construction pouch but it holds empty, and full sandbags, barbed wire, and folding barricades so front line combat technicians can setup barricades faster and make more use of folding barricades without sacrificing their backpack.

Construction Backpack
A backpack that costs points and is limited to 1 per com tech that is a backpack in carry capacity that instantly opens like a satchel and has welding fuel in it.

Combat Engineer Webbing
A points webbing that takes the “webbing” slot that can carry the breaching shotgun, and some spare breaching shotgun ammo.

Most of these don’t align with the maintainers’ vision for CM, as they’re kinda “inventory” creep. My point isn’t necessarily these specific things in this way, I think the combat technician is “too important” and too frustrating to play.

I think combat technicians are the most important role and no one wants to play it, or it’s too easy to mess up.

why do you not play combat technician?
In addition to having to build FOB, or being “stuck at comms” if your squad does comms and fixes the APC.

[ihatethisengine]

@atticus-rezzer

New armor type that does very little brute damage protection but makes you almost immune to acid damage, so you can build cades whilst being acided. Lock to Combat Technicians only.

Bio suit already exists. Ask research. Also you can find it on some maps. Space suit from hangar also provide a lot of bio protection.

@atticus-rezzer

Use the nailgun and metal to turn a “folding barricade” into a regular barricade, so you can quickly lay down a wall, then make it more permanent.

Why would you? Folding barricade is slightly better than regular one.

@atticus-rezzer

A pouch like the construction pouch but it holds empty, and full sandbags, barbed wire, and folding barricades so front line combat technicians can setup barricades faster and make more use of folding barricades without sacrificing their backpack.

Pretty sure IMP rack already allows you to carry a lot of folding cades. Not the filled sandbags though, but I think this is their entire deal that you cannot easily carry them while filled.

@atticus-rezzer

A backpack that costs points and is limited to 1 per com tech that is a backpack in carry capacity that instantly opens like a satchel and has welding fuel in it.

I always run satchel by the way, you don’t really need an entire backpack usually.

@atticus-rezzer

A points webbing that takes the “webbing” slot that can carry the breaching shotgun, and some spare breaching shotgun ammo.

eh this one is really just storage creep. It’s already extremely easy to carry an XM51 with you to the point people want to nerf it. Even some SGs carry the belt.

@atticus-rezzer

why do you not play combat technician?

As the matter of fact, I do.

[Swagile]

@ihatethisengine

As the matter of fact, I do.

I think his point is that CT is the one role that almost never gets filled nowadays.

I can play high pop, have full HM’s, and barely scratch together 6 CT’s. In fact, one round, I had only 2 CT’s yet THREE (3!!!) maintenance technicians, thats how unpopular the role is. People would rather fuck around shipside with engineering skills than contribute to the groundside fight as a combat engineer.

ComTech’s do not need buffs in the direction OP stated, they need either weaker barricades but significantly more resources than they currently start with (so FOB isn’t as powerful but frontline cades are much more manageable to create), or they need more things to do outside of reinforcing the front that also helps the front (power and comms are such things but they do not directly help the front, they indirectly support through being able to use your radio and not have it go out every 5-10 minutes).

Trijent Dam checkpoints were a good try at this but since xenos can destroy all the turrets before marines deploy, its pointless outside of survivor gameplay.

Id go back to contributing if I could fix this, but the problem is, my solutions are directly against the current maintainers wishes.

First, the cargo rework thats being put forth looks to be turning requisitions into an even more boring and shitty department, making CT’s get nerfed indirectly since their main source of supplies is requisitions unlike corpsmen, who can go an entire round without asking for a drop if they do things properly.

Second, the proposed FOB rework that will nerf barricades without giving them more resources in general.

And thirdly, things like Trijent Dam checkpoints being destroyable before marines even deploy, and things like the nerfs to Engineers being able to repair multiple generators at a time and the fact that a single xeno can destroy rows of generators on top of this all shows a clear contempt of Engineering mains.

This is not new, however; engineering as a whole has been getting nerfed since 2017-ish, back when they started making normal wall deconstruction even longer than r-wall deconstruction, removal of effective electrical grille defenses, nerfing tables, the list goes on. This has been a long time coming and is the reason why CT is such a dead class even with 150 + players on in comparison to much more fun roles like Fireteam Leader, Corpsmen, SL, etc.

[ihatethisengine]

@Swagile

I think his point is that CT is the one role that almost never gets filled nowadays.

I can play high pop, have full HM’s, and barely scratch together 6 CT’s. In fact, one round, I had only 2 CT’s yet THREE (3!!!) maintenance technicians, thats how unpopular the role is. People would rather fuck around shipside with engineering skills than contribute to the groundside fight as a combat engineer.

In my opinion it’s mostly because CT is extremely unrewarding. While arguably a lot less stressful than HM, unlike HM (who can measure his usefulness in the amount of people revived/healed), CT is really difficult to actually utilize.

Like you can build a FOB that will never be used because marines roll xenos over or get rolled over so hard there is no FOB siege. You can build a cool pillbox but again front may move too fast, or marines decide to use another flank. You can try to use your comrade sentry… until it gets focused and you get an all-consuming emptiness in your heart. Etc, etc.

A lot of my CT rolls were admittedly a waste. It’s like that “I decided to prank some guy” meme. You put so much time and effort and then nothing comes out of it. FOB is the most unrewarding experience here. Don’t get me wrong, when it works, it works. You feel great when you carried the round with your extremely robust FOB. But most of the rounds it just doesn’t go as planned. You waste two hours of your life and then you hear the marine major music. To the point you actually lowkey want marines to lose so your FOB gets challenged. So in the end, most of my gameplay is just basically chasing that feeling that I feel when my fortifications work. Really sad if you think of it.

Anyway, to discuss the possible ways to address some of the issues… Let’s forget about FOB for a moment, not really sure what can be done about FOB, let’s just think about building pillboxes. The issue here is once you’ve built a pillbox and ran out of metal, there is nothing much else left to do for you as a CT. Maybe if you at least could deconstruct the cades faster, so you would be able to move the pillbox somewhere else… I think that would make frontline CT gameplay a lot more dynamic.

I think there should be a way to fix a broken sentry, or at least make it a lot harder to permanently destroy the sentry. Because yeah, it really sucks to lose a sentry so easily. Sometimes you just wanna cryo after that.

Nothing else comes to mind really. It really made my experience with the role better when they added XM51, because now I could at least measure my usefulness in the amount of destroyed walls… You don’t need to roll CT for that though. Anyway, more tools and stuff to do to actually impact the round in a bit less passive way is what I would really want for the role.

[Revencort]

In the perfect world ComTechs would have access to the cool stuff technician gadgets that we see in every FPS game such as Battlefield. As we have it, Specialist’s weaponry and Synthetic gadgets essentialy gatekeep that as a form of powercrept roles that beholds much of the strength marines could have split between the whole force, such as a better version of the standard flamer only accessible to ComTechs etc and also more restricted building equipment, the nailgun was a good step forward, but jackhammers and other stuff would be superb, but we got the policy of giving 5 people out of 100 fun tokens for a round instead of diluting their gadgets as weaker versions across the board like good game design dictates.

[atticus-rezzer]

Yeah I have a lot of gripes with cm only with 900~ human hours and a lot of them are with com tech. Others are byond level things that cannot be resolved.

Com tech is the least fun role, I was about to try and go platinum with it to write a guide on what I learned but wow do I never want to play it again. I think I have 140~150 com tech hours at the moment.

I can just get a breaching shotgun as a rifleman, or grab a wrench as a fire team leader as every map but lv, Shiva, and trijent has way too much metal to say “I can’t build barricades because I don’t have metal.” And two of those are log off maps for me.

I closed my vendor overhaul because of some merge conflicts I didn’t want to resolve but if someone wants to make vendors easier or just add the acid poncho thingy maybe that might help but I think combat technicians need a lot, but also can’t be given too much so I’m not sure what to even say.
Nail gun was cool and I appreciate it but it’s not enough. (But wow am I glad it’s there.)

I personally take the fuel backpack because I take too much stuff and a lot of the time it feels like I’m the only one repairing barricades so I need the fuel.
Building just sucks.
Someone even got physical with my character for building Frontline barricades because he thought that he knew more about momentum than I knew about not losing ground.

I want to play com tech but every part about playing com tech tells me to not. Then when I don’t either I ask where the cades are because the com techs aren’t here or they’re fighting and refuse to cade or the cades are terrible 9 tile long lines with one door.
How do we fix this?
Sure yeah have marine able to mess up, I agree. But damn…
Maybe I feel like I need a bunch of things and maybe I think everything takes too long to do.

How do we make com tech not suck to play as?
I’d like to test merge a major power shift giving them a lot better stuff but I know that’ll never happen. I feel like just trying some radical absurd imbalance may help figure out what to do but xenos will definitely not have fun.

As for fob, there are enigmas out there that like it. I would suggest some kind of construction robot but I don’t believe that’s happening even if someone codes it.

[N.H.C]

@atticus-rezzer

“Chemical Weapons smock”
New armor type that does very little brute damage protection but makes you almost immune to acid damage, so you can build cades whilst being acided. Lock to Combat Technicians only.

Fun i made that armor once. And i can tell you from the TM, aint worth it chief. Its bad.

You migth saw it briefly.

I migth repurpose that sprite for a WY riot armor base.

[atticus-rezzer]

I find myself as com tech often too easily taking too much acid damage.

Maybe a reversible armor set for “engineering in toxic environments” it switches damage protection to no brute and all acid

Hard to say whether or not it’s good as that’s one of the only ways xenos can deter building/repairing cades but at least the trapper destroys cades very fast especially fast when not acid proof.

[WestRover]

@atticus-rezzer

Rapid Deployment Construction pouch
A pouch like the construction pouch but it holds empty, and full sandbags, barbed wire, and folding barricades so front line combat technicians can setup barricades faster and make more use of folding barricades without sacrificing their backpack.

I’d argue a variant of the IMP pack but for this sort of thing, would be interesting to see

[DukeofCagliostro]

My brain will always and forever associate CT with Cargo Technician. Great ideas being thrown around here.

[Catzonwheelz]

frankly i don’t think any of this will help getting more players… at least long term. short term yes but not long.

the issue really is that the roll of comtech is just all kinds of boring after so long, there is lot of busy work that is needed when doing comtech. This wouldn’t be so bad if were not the fact that your uber fob or front line medic line ether melts in to seconds or the xenos just fold.

AND if it doesn’t get busted you are stuck cling to life by a string of burn meds as you fix the line time and time again… only for a trapper to say fuck you and your line.

what i am saying is that only some kinds of players can put up with pain that is playing comtech.

still i do like this idea

@atticus-rezzer

Upgrade folding barricades.
Use the nailgun and metal to turn a “folding barricade” into a regular barricade, so you can quickly lay down a wall, then make it more permanent.

EDIT: i just read ihatethisengine post, more or less he put out my point better then me.

[N.H.C]

No no, im telling you. That doesnt work out. I tried even just low brute protection in excahnge for the bio protection.
Brute protection is dummy important, you cant lower it too much.

[Wp-Ninja]

I’ve got around 300 hours combined in comm tech and maintenance tech in the last year. I stopped playing it as much because of how difficult it is to even do repairs. Every single xeno just about can hit you while you’re behind cades. I think having specialized engineer armor that reduces acid damage over brute would be neat.

As per SOP you can’t even deploy with the biosuits and why would research ever handoff the 3 sets of biosuits they have? Additionally, they’re not suppose to.

I think folding cades being able to have barbed wire would be super awesome. They’re great cades for filler and can be repaired which is already awesome. Folding cades are already pretty strong because they’re heavily resistant to acids, can’t be melted normally and can be setup pretty quickly without training and taken down just as quickly. The fact they aren’t as easy to carry without imp racks I think makes it more balanced. THey’re meant to be either used as a quick deployable cover or to be used at FOB as a means of closing holes or adding temporary cade lines.

Construction pouch already can carry sandbags, wires, metal and plasteel as well as a few other things. There’s zero reason to add a rapid dev construction pouch except to make it easier to carry a large amount of folding cades.

There’s already a large welding bag.

I think the xm51 is already easy to carry. It doesn’t need a buff considering how strong it is currently.

Being a combat tech is an unpopular role because you’re delegated to staying away from the frontlines or from fighting pretty often to do other important tasks. You’re forced to have to repair cades instead of fighting. (Who doesn’t prefer shooting xenos over welding a cade?) There’s not really a way around that without making commtechs too versatile or powerful compared to other roles such as FTL (Who are a half step away from comm techs already)

[Gentlefood]

Electric grilles were removed because of how the powernet in CM worked once electric grilles were powered they were permanently powered. It didnt matter if the APC was destroyed, the map gens shut down, or the SMES being out of charge. They were a permanent hazard and it was ruled too difficult to change at the time.

[kooarbiter]

I feel like that is a very fixable problem

also, acid dissolving the grills from range

[Gentlefood]

They were removed a very, very long time ago where the balance looked nothing like it does today. Beyond that staff has expressed wanting to move away from cades and the like iirc, i doubt theyd want to add back one of the precursors to them, especially given how strong they were.

[Listless]

I don’t remember this being the case and I used E-grills a lot, they only stopped working when we moved power net over to what it currently is, and before that you had to generators running and a wire linking from said generator to the grill it’s self, If the gen’s broke down the Grills stopped shocking.

also while they were good they had clear weakness’s, Stun time/damage scaled off the power in the network, and a single acid spit or bullet broke them.

[Gentlefood]

I was literally the staff member that tested e-grilles, reported the bug, and was a proponent for e-grilles remaining until I realized how thoroughly broken they were. I assure you, they were permanently powered.

You could build wooden barricades on top of them and still retain the shock effect when they went to slash the wood, which also protected them from spit and you could shoot through them without damaging them.

Edit:
Hell, you could literally cut the powernet wire leading to the grilles and so long as the wired connection remained underneath the grille they remained powered.

Oh and as a note the wooden barricades were the oldstyle full tile ones, not the modern directional ones.

[MONDONGO]

@ihatethisengine

I think there should be a way to fix a broken sentry, or at least make it a lot harder to permanently destroy the sentry. Because yeah, it really sucks to lose a sentry so easily. Sometimes you just wanna cry after that.

I got an idea: Whenever a sentry gets destroyed it leaves as a non-meltable item on the floor, let’s call it “Damaged sentry” for the time being. If a comtech uses steel, a wrench and then a welder it can repair most of it, whoever it also has to use a screwdriver and a crowbar to rip out the “damaged sentry circuit”, if you click on an armylathe after a short windup of 2 seconds it consumes plenty of mats in the lathe and you get a “sentry circuit”, which you can re-insert into your still broken sentry in order to actually fix it.
It is a painfully long and annoying process, but it serves to disuade comtechs into not doing stupid shit with sentries, it disables the sentry for a long time so xenos will be able to seize the opportunities to push after breaking a sentry and it also makes it possible for comtechs to not lose their fun after their sentry got messed up.