thoughts about the engineer

[poesel]

I think we all agree that the cutter is too slow, too thin armoured, too sedate, too complicated to maneuver and too prone to toppling.

Still it provides three functions: digging trenches, removing mines and taking over enemy stations.

The trench digging thing is rather cumbersome because of the lack of maneuverability and dangerous because of the thin armour.

Mine removal depends if anyone can see you. Anything bigger than 20mm will just kill you.

Taking over is hard because you often get shot after a long boring drive. Its ok that its hard but the way is frustrating.

I would propose to actually seperate the two functions:

The trench digger together with the mine removal in a tracked vehicle. The takeover function in a paladin.

The trench digger would be more heavily armoured (more Thor than Paladin), have a better acceleration and the added ability to drop mines and sensor jammers.

It would loose the 20mm for a 14mm rotary (to make up for the weight), loose the takeover electronics (again weight) and the ability to withstand EMP (because of no electronics (although I don't understand why electronics would actually help against EMP))

The takeover would be a 20mm Paladin with Hermes speed because of electronics. It would withstand EMP but could of course not dig or remove mines.

The trench digger could then actually go anywhere near the enemy and build some forward defenses. The ability to drop mines and jammers gives it a nice support role that people might actually like to play.

The takeover Paladin is fast enough to give the enemy a surprise and a properly concerted attack with smoke and EMP might win you the enemy base.

Amount of work: mine laying and jammer dropping would be a new feature, the rest is already in the game. A redesign of the cutter hull is something that I would like to do as soon as I really know how to make vehicles.

[aittam]

thumbs up here

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

A couple obvious problems here:

</font>

• It's hard enough trying to find folks to drive a Cutter as is.
  Do you really want to make it require twice as many people to get things done? No one will drive your NeoDozer, since you've just succeeded in making it even less effective, in an overall sense.</font>
• The NeoDozer doesn't do anything particularly well save the one job no one wants to do.
  Digging ditches is unglamorous work and annoyingly exacting, the 14mm rotary is disgustingly underpowered if the kind of elements you dig emplacements to protect your folk from come up on you before you're done, and a Mercury can drop mines and jammers far more securely because they're at range and only the drop pod stands to be destroyed if there's someone looking. The additional armour and the dozer blade mean it's going to be near impossible to justify a faster overall speed than the original Cutter. Oh, yes, and it can still take EMP stun (which is avoided not by having more electronics, but hardened electronics).</font>
• The NeoCap(ture) basically just adds more 20mm Paladins without much reason not to take them for non-capture roles.
  The fact Cutters can capture sites is almost the only real reason to take them, anymore. Putting that ability in a marginally slower Paladin isn't really a compelling action. Sure, its faster, which lets you get into a site faster, but then you're stuck dead-still with crappy armour for the very, very long time until the hacking is complete. Being EMP-resistant is a throwaway at that point; the element is more useful for being able to be in the radius of an EMP and still gun down the other side than its use as an Engineering vehicle.</font>

Overall, I just don't think it's a net useful change.

The Cutter badly needs a re-design from a chassis PoV; the trads are far, far too close together and the center of gravity too high to be a reasonable ENG element. For a vehicle that is intended to spend its time going into and coming out of holes at odd angles, its far too wobbly. If I were going to make a fast change on it's model, I'd probably put the blade on a similarly equipped Mercury chassis and call it done. The Merc is much more stable, slightly faster, and just looks better. The lower profile wouldn't hurt, either.

There is a legitimate case to be made for giving the Mercury CMD the ability to capture facilities as the Cutter does. If you really think there needs to be a fast-assault version of the Cutter for such things, that'd be a far better argument to make, as I see it. That would give the Merc a bit more reason to do more than park on a hill 6km away to call in arty, at least.

[Jack Carr]

I think enemy bases should require some type of infantry squad to be taken over. The introduction of some type of engineer infantry squad that could take over bases and remove mines would be interesting. Leave the Cutter to dig ditches/fortifications.

[theIRONGIANT]

I say leave the cutter the way it is. It may seem week and underpowered, until you take the middle AA tower, then it just became the most important piece in your whole attack stratagy.

I guess if there is one thing I would change it would be to make the digging blade very armored (equal to the front armor on the heavy tank), that way when you are trouble you have a bit of defense and it seems somewhat realistic.

[Nick06]

Good idea there, posel.

[ClaytoniousRex]

There's a pretty good case for ditching the Cutter in favor of a unified Mercury, giving the Mercury all of the features formerly possessed by the Cutter, especially in light of the other thread on this topic which describes improved digging done via charges rather than a blade.