Heil the cutter

[aittam]

Here I found some hammer slammer models and I noticed that infantry do have a medic, now being a BF1942 freak, I started to think about a medic that is useless but a medic for vehicles is an engineer.

Not being to keen to add another vehicle that would be quite ingnored in this role only I thought that the cutter, being already an engineer vehicle could provide also mech assistance in the same way it works to capture buildings.

The alternative could be a specialized infantry team but this wouldn't be able to resupply ammo.

With a limited number of DS and reinforcement zones incoming the protection of the formers by digging defenses nearby and the necessity to avoid too many drops in hot zones a forward repair armament area would be very usefull.

Ok these're my two cents now fire:

[yurch]

Err... what would it do? Is a little guy going to get out of the back and fix the antimatter engine with a wrench, or change the 5ft rim tires?

What we do in this game when we're too damaged to operate is extract. If there's AA in the way, that means we can't do so. It also means a cutter would either need to be nearby already, or drive in from outside the AA cover, which is going to take quite a while in that thing.

We're playing timed gamemodes, and frankly we need every player we can get on the field and fighting. Waiting for a cutter to service a damaged vehicle (or even tow) long enough that it can be moved to an extractable area hurts the team far more than whatever equipment loss you prevent. It takes 2 players out of the game that could otherwise be busy maliciously murdering Montard* in fresh vehicles.

I can somewhat see the Viper having capability of retrieving and extracting vehicles, since it's so much faster, but if you could extract via air you wouldn't need the Viper anyway, exposing it to air defenses. Both the Cutter and the Viper are often more rare than whatever vehicle they would be assisting.

Abandoned vehicles (suicide) can be theoretically dealt with or retrieved after the scenario ends... provided you win.

[aittam]

yep that was one of the cons I was thinking about

[ClaytoniousRex]

Now, Aittam, there's no need to depict yourself as a bullseye.

Yurch covered the main issues with field repair. To make it believable, it can't be some kind of instantaneous "powerup" kind of thing. And if it's not instant, then it doesn't hold a candle to extraction.

However, the urge has always been there. A more direct support role for units like engineers would be a good thing. If you can think of some interesting ways to get past these hurdles it would be great to hear them.

[yurch]

The Cutter is a difficult vehicle to negotiate due to it's poor armorings, armanent, and overall movement. Some of which I'm guessing are intentional, but giving one of the slower crafts in the game a limited ammo 20mm and a shovel for armour is just cruel.

It is never driven in, and is almost always dropped to a location.

By direct support, what do you mean? It could certainly put up positions faster and be a bit more survivable in the meantime if it had some more horsepower, which is awfully weak for a construction craft. I wouldn't want to assault a base with one, but a mortar could be put on a varient, if only to give the defending cutters something to do...

I wouldn't mind seeing the shovel on the occasional tank, too.

[ClaytoniousRex]

By direct support, what do you mean?

I mean useful roles that it could fulfill, besides direct combat, that players would be willing to undertake. You're right that its existing roles could be made less painful just by fixing some of the vehicle's quirks and this might already be enough.

[aittam]

Well there are a couple of flaws in my idea, extraction on top of all followed close by the fact that at least one player would be out of the game for longer than schuttle/extraction procedures

Power up wouldn't be immediate, just take its time like during a capture op

Still the cutter or another vehicle could bring extra ammo, I'd like to develop the concept of forward resupply in heavly saturated aa enviroments

[ClaytoniousRex]

Now that sounds interesting. It would be pretty easy to give it an umbilical like the Galaxy's and also give it some more cargo room to justify this huge load of extra rounds that it's carrying. We would need to limit the amount of resupply available from it.

People have also asked in the past that it be able to drop deployables or at least mines. This still sounds interesting, too.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Mine-laying sounds like a no-brainer addition to the Cutter's usefullness, since it can already plow mines. Resupply might give one a reason to actually be running around on a battlefield (cut your own turret-down position, then go umbilical for resupply to the nearby mortars; a fire mission magnet fo shizzle).

If you give it the ability to fire or resupply, but not both at the same time, you can make the umbilical a turret-fired engagement. Then you can make "resupply rounds" just another ammo-type selected by +/-. Likewise, tossing deployables and mines, just another anno type lobbed by the Cutter's turret. Then, you can still use the 'b' key to deploy the blade and not need to create another binding.

[yllamana]

I think the biggest problem with the Cutter is role confusion. It's built as an entrenching vehicle but needs to fill an odd forward assault electronic warfare role as well.

I think it should really be two vehicles, the digger and another vehicle, less ungainly (the Mercury springs to mind as a vehicle adapted more for this purpose) and designed to capture structures.

Maybe the Mercury itself should be able to capture structures. It doesn't seem far out at all - I'd sort of expect it more from the Mercury than the Cutter. Maybe give it the EMP shield too to encourage people to use it.

When designing an effective support "class" in a game, I always think of Return to Castle Wolfenstein's medic class. It's immensely popular. I think the big reason for that is it has teeth. It has the basic weapon for the side (MP40/Thompson) and that weapon is very deadly in the hands of a skilled player. Combine that with health regeneration and the ability to drop health packs that the medic can pick up themselves and you have a very nasty class to fight against.

I think that's key. To avoid horribly gimping the support classes (in this case, vehicles) for fear that they'll become too powerful.

In Drop Team, you rarely see Cutters because although buildings are very powerful, the Cutter itself sucks. I'm the sort of player who does try the crazy support vehicles like the Cutter and Mercury, but it's so horribly slow and vulnerable that I don't use it much. Mostly the slow - usually you have to drop it a zillion miles from the objective, then drive it in and watch as it gets killed. The alternative, using jammers or the Hermes, is much more expensive in coordination terms and much more difficult to pull off.

I do think the 20mm is a fine weapon for it to have. It's very strong at close range and I've killed a fair few Thors with it before on Ice Fields. It's just too boring driving it across the entire map when it's so vulnerable. It also suffers a lot from severe role confusion.

I think turn it into two vehicles, go through the planned remodeling of the Cutter and make its engine stronger.

But then the Cutter would be more a specialised digging vehicle, and another would be in the electronic warfare assault role.

I don't know. I've confused myself with too many different ideas. I'll have to think more about it later.

The Cutter does need a cool mine-clearing animation.

I guess the problem I have with the Cutter getting cool support tools is I don't see it as a support vehicle but as a badly-designed bulldozer.

[aittam]

deploy mines with artillery should be more a medium mortar role if it's possible to implement such kind of ammo, otherwise may be mines should come down very fast in drop pods (still i would like the option to be able to decide in between a large short strip or a long narrow one) but this probably should be mora a post 1.1.3 discussion

the option to have in on a cutter is still very attracting, may be to close some obvious attack direction before dig an artillery base for himself plus a mortar

[Gen. Lee Annoying]

forgive me if i'm wrong but is the basis for all liveship production not nanotech? and as such should it not be possible to give a much smaller version of the setup the ability to reconstruck simple structures like armour..... I wouldn't go as far as give it the ability to rebuild complex mechanical structures like motors computers or weapons but something simple like and consistant like armour shouldn't be a huge issue.

Just my 2 cents and as long as long as it is limited to small scope I don't see it being unrealistic or obstrusive.

By definition the cutter should be up with the attacking units already as it is a caturing unit I on more than one occasion have catured all ion towers on a map and dwelled in the city to wreak haval on all who return to defend..... ;OP

Therefore I reject your reality and substitute my own........ lmfao... feel free to do the same.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

The problem with rebuilding the irridium armour on the elements in DT is really just carting all the mass of iridium to do so around with you, which you'd have to do. Otherwise, you could move around the material left, but not anything ablated away. (Ultimately, that probably means repairing AP damage, which is largely pushed-aside holes rather than HEAT or ion damage, which actually tends to melt / ablate material.)

Repairing more complicated structures in the field is probably outside the LiveShip tech curve. While Clay doesn't say so in his history, my guess would be that LiveShips have vat-nano; nanotech that's minimally functional outside specialized environments and not free-range blue goo. Thus, outside the closed factory-ship, there ain't much they can do about complicated repair.

I don't see any reason you couldn't have mine-deployment via both drop pod and Cutter; the latter is for when you want no sign of anything going amiss, generally along the line of attack.

Digging in the Cutter is awkward, to me. I realize that, like much else, its supposed to be a skill, but its a hard one to build. Maybe, in a perverse way, we need "pre-programmed entrenchments." Here a tank revetment, there a berm, here an AA pit. If nothing else, it'd free the pilot up to watch for attackers / think about the next thing to do.

[dan/california]

I strongly second the idea of the cutter having a menu of digging options that do not require the current amount of player input. The vehicle is just too hard to drive. If you feel that that is just to abstract go the other way and give us a real set of blade controls so that I can get the depth I want with the berm on the side I want and , and..... But this is not supposed to be a dozer training sim.

Maybe it could have special explosive charges that would it could just drop and detonate. Boom, one instant atgm fighting position.

[mcoyote]

...

Maybe it could have special explosive charges that would it could just drop and detonate. Boom, one instant atgm fighting position.

As an aside, in one encounter I had last night somebody dropped a heavy mortar carrier very close to me (I wasn't looking at the time, my bad) and he started dropping mortars on my Thor right away, before I realized he was there.

Three times (it took a while, I was AFK helping with my daughter's teething) the mortars went off over my head and dug (and later, deepened) a hole under/around my Thor, but my status lights remained green and the Thor remained functional until I crawled out and got popped by somebody else's AP.

That right there was funny. Given that the Thor is pretty tough, it may be realistic to displace all that dirt while holding the armor together, but it was still fun to watch.

[adzling]

yeah it would be super nice to have preprogrammed entrenchements that you could either execute yourself or order the bot in control of the cutter to dig.

that single improvment would in and of itself make it an immensely more valuable vehicle.

add to the some limited ammo reloading capability, slightly faster engine, more STABLE design and it would be a very useful addition to a defending force (or for holding that rear-area map-edge reinforcement zone).

1.1.4 clay?

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Actually, a "light mortar" that's geared to more displace dirt than to penetrate armour would be useful for the Cutter. If it also detonated mines in an area, it would be a way better platform.

Give me shortish range and light mortar damage that displaces dirt like a heavy, the blade for digging trenches, and a bit more rev (and maybe, just for kicks, two variants: one that carries extra ammo for vehicles and one that can carry a squad of squishies and rearm them), and I think we'd have a stone winner.

[CrimsonDestiny]

Originally posted by Alexander SquidLord Williams:

Actually, a "light mortar" that's geared to more displace dirt than to penetrate armour would be useful for the Cutter. If it also detonated mines in an area, it would be a way better platform.

Give me shortish range and light mortar damage that displaces dirt like a heavy, the blade for digging trenches, and a bit more rev (and maybe, just for kicks, two variants: one that carries extra ammo for vehicles and one that can carry a squad of squishies and rearm them), and I think we'd have a stone winner.

I'd go as far to say to get rid of the whole "roll-over-and-mines-suddenly-disappear" thing that is current and do what Squidy said.

[cool breeze]

Yeah! My thought on mortars has been there should be some delay fuse mortars. maybe just one or a couple per mortar (plus light mortar on some thors and cutters). the delay fuse would be great for digging holes of course, but also: kicks up much more dirt and dust for blocking LOS. Also, it would allow mortars to take out Thors without truly direct hits but still with very hard aim. you could flip them, maybe even with the light mortar ( I hope) of course make the range for that believable as in pretty short. Maybe it would even do extra damage to buildings. But even more important to me is Yurches suggestion of a lower trajectory shortish range shell, especially for light mortar. If you make delay lower traj mortar, make it less effective than regular. i dont think there is much reason for it though. If the delay fuse mortar is the anti mine mortar (makes sense to me) then it would be cool, but likely unfun and hard, if it didnt detonate the mines but send them very scattered. I probably would stop liking it as soon as I blew up randomly. oh, I know what would be cool. If it sent mines flying far, but they explode on landing. I don't think this would ever get old.

And the cuter should def have more horse power even if it doesnt have much more top speed. I would LOVE if you could select which digging to auto do. Place am like in an rts,choose rotation, and it auto drives and digs. and you can do it for bots!

and there shoulod be a "defend this dug possition" order for bots where they smartishly move around in but not out of dug area

[ August 16, 2006, 11:54 AM: Message edited by: cool breeze ]