Dealing with childish Sappers

[Fingolfin]

I really enjoy playing as a sapper, it can be quite rewarding building emplacements that are actually used by your faction to shoot from. However about half of sappers on the servers are just children who want to play builders and don't seem to care about the best use of their resources, and there is no mechanic to discourage stupid building projects well behind the battle line. I have a couple of suggestions:

Make palisades unavailable on most maps
Nearly every match the only thing a sapper builds is a palisade, he either builds them to close or too far from the enemy. Palisades take forever to build, are easily destroyed and use too many resources. But Sappers acting like Sisyphus don't care, they just keep building them because they like the idea of making something big. Also it is worth pointing out how unrealistic it is to build palisades with a fire-step on a battlefield, it just never happened because it is quite an elaborate job of carpentry.

Therefore I would recommend to restrict the availability of palisades to siege maps only. In sieges if a wall collapses it makes some sense to plug the breach with a palisade, but on a battlefield it is just too silly. This would encourage sappers to be more creative in their constructions, building more sandbags and gabions which are cheaper and do the job just as well. It would also discourage the more childish players of choosing that class because the main item of their play is mostly unavailable.

Allow Carpenters to demolish with their Axe
There are some matches where all the sappers just go crazy and there is nothing to stop them. If a carpenter could demolish their builds it would be a check on their craziness. But carpenters would get negative xp for every hit of damage, like on private servers where team killing is enabled. This would then discourage carpenters from trolling sappers in turn.

These are my reccomendations, something needs to be done to rework sappers. Currently the class just seems to attract too many children who aren't that good at the combat side so want to mess around building things at the rear.

[Autumn]

If carpenters are punished for demolishing things with an axe they aren't going to do it. Just giving them the ability to deconstruct something with a sledgehammer would be enough (not with their axe, that would lead to a ton of friendly fire).

Honestly, I think palisades are fine, but carpenters having the ability to demolish things is a pretty good idea.

[Fingolfin]

Originally posted by Toast:

If carpenters are punished for demolishing things with an axe they aren't going to do it. Just giving them the ability to deconstruct something with a sledgehammer would be enough (not with their axe, that would lead to a ton of friendly fire).

Honestly, I think palisades are fine, but carpenters having the ability to demolish things is a pretty good idea.

Thanks for commenting Toast, you have a good point on carpenters' -xp.

But on my larger point; palisades still seem to be the only thing most sappers ever build, and as a fortification it is just silly and unrealistic on most battlefield maps. Keep them for siege maps, but there are already some maps where palisades are unavailable and this needs to be extended further. Palisades just don't encourage the right sapper mentality.

[Autumn]

Originally posted by Fingolfin:

Originally posted by Toast:

If carpenters are punished for demolishing things with an axe they aren't going to do it. Just giving them the ability to deconstruct something with a sledgehammer would be enough (not with their axe, that would lead to a ton of friendly fire).

Honestly, I think palisades are fine, but carpenters having the ability to demolish things is a pretty good idea.

Thanks for commenting Toast, you have a good point on carpenters' -xp.

But on my larger point; palisades still seem to be the only thing most sappers ever build, and as a fortification it is just silly and unrealistic on most battlefield maps. Keep them for siege maps, but there are already some maps where palisades are unavailable and this needs to be extended further. Palisades just don't encourage the right sapper mentality.

Honestly, they seem to do the opposite in my experience. Without palisades, there's not really much reason for a sapper to do their job. A waist-high stone wall is always better than a sandbag, and your average battlefield tends to have plenty of those. Walls as big as palisades are pretty rare, though, so sappers do much more good by building them. Add the fire-step, and they're uniquely good cover.
Even then, gabions and sandbags still aren't a rare sight. Sandbags are the best cover for cannons, and gabions are great for filling in gaps and small spaces that a full palisade can't cover.

[Vinegaroon]

Originally posted by Fingolfin:

I really enjoy playing as a sapper, it can be quite rewarding building emplacements that are actually used by your faction to shoot from. However about half of sappers on the servers are just children who want to play builders and don't seem to care about the best use of their resources, and there is no mechanic to discourage stupid building projects well behind the battle line. I have a couple of suggestions:

Make palisades unavailable on most maps
Nearly every match the only thing a sapper builds is a palisade, he either builds them to close or too far from the enemy. Palisades take forever to build, are easily destroyed and use too many resources. But Sappers acting like Sisyphus don't care, they just keep building them because they like the idea of making something big. Also it is worth pointing out how unrealistic it is to build palisades with a fire-step on a battlefield, it just never happened because it is quite an elaborate job of carpentry.

Therefore I would recommend to restrict the availability of palisades to siege maps only. In sieges if a wall collapses it makes some sense to plug the breach with a palisade, but on a battlefield it is just too silly. This would encourage sappers to be more creative in their constructions, building more sandbags and gabions which are cheaper and do the job just as well. It would also discourage the more childish players of choosing that class because the main item of their play is mostly unavailable.

Allow Carpenters to demolish with their Axe
There are some matches where all the sappers just go crazy and there is nothing to stop them. If a carpenter could demolish their builds it would be a check on their craziness. But carpenters would get negative xp for every hit of damage, like on private servers where team killing is enabled. This would then discourage carpenters from trolling sappers in turn.

These are my recommendations, something needs to be done to rework sappers. Currently the class just seems to attract too many children who aren't that good at the combat side so want to mess around building things at the rear.

I've played with good sappers and bad sappers, honestly they can carry the game sometimes. I hate to say it but there is no easy fix. Pubs in this game are unorganized chaos and that makes the game in a way.

Still I think giving the sappers their own pool of resources could help a little. Just enough to build a wall or too, in addition to the team pool of resources. I don't think the team should be punished for players who want to build chairs for the enemies in spawn and have a chat, but I don't think denying them that is beneficial either. The issue I see with that is if every player get resources then it might become problematic.

[MiSFiT77]

Yep it can be annoying. Some Sappers actually play the map and spend the first few minutes hurriedly building earthworks because they provide the quickest low resource cover for the team. Maybe not the best, but the best when something quick is needed. Then the same guys find there are no resources left for Cav defences because some dim wit has built a fort with 3 rows of chairs in the spawn. So yeh maybe each sapper should get a personal supply of timber for the big stuff, to stop Johnny moron wasting it all. You probably can't stop him wasting his own tho.

[Fingolfin]

Originally posted by MiSFiT77:

Yep it can be annoying. Some Sappers actually play the map and spend the first few minutes hurriedly building earthworks because they provide the quickest low resource cover for the team. Maybe not the best, but the best when something quick is needed. Then the same guys find there are no resources left for Cav defences because some dim wit has built a fort with 3 rows of chairs in the spawn. So yeh maybe each sapper should get a personal supply of timber for the big stuff, to stop Johnny moron wasting it all. You probably can't stop him wasting his own tho.

Thanks for replying MisFiT77. The problem with sappers' own personal supply limit for some items is that it can start to get complicated quite quickly. You end up opening more debate as to what should be included in the personal supply, should chevaux de frise be included in this or swivel guns for example. It would be difficult to see it gain widespread acceptance.

Just limiting palisades to sieges only would reduce childish sapper constructions quite quickly and easily. Palisades are already unavailable on some maps.

[Autumn]

Originally posted by MiSFiT77:

Yep it can be annoying. Some Sappers actually play the map and spend the first few minutes hurriedly building earthworks because they provide the quickest low resource cover for the team. Maybe not the best, but the best when something quick is needed. Then the same guys find there are no resources left for Cav defences because some dim wit has built a fort with 3 rows of chairs in the spawn. So yeh maybe each sapper should get a personal supply of timber for the big stuff, to stop Johnny moron wasting it all. You probably can't stop him wasting his own tho.

The chairs don't actually hurt anyone. They're completely free. I agree with the personal resources supply, though. If the team has three sappers, just give each a third of what they'd normally get total to use themselves.

[Autumn]

Originally posted by Fingolfin:

Originally posted by MiSFiT77:

Yep it can be annoying. Some Sappers actually play the map and spend the first few minutes hurriedly building earthworks because they provide the quickest low resource cover for the team. Maybe not the best, but the best when something quick is needed. Then the same guys find there are no resources left for Cav defences because some dim wit has built a fort with 3 rows of chairs in the spawn. So yeh maybe each sapper should get a personal supply of timber for the big stuff, to stop Johnny moron wasting it all. You probably can't stop him wasting his own tho.

Thanks for replying MisFiT77. The problem with sappers' own personal supply limit for some items is that it can start to get complicated quite quickly. You end up opening more debate as to what should be included in the personal supply, should chevaux de frise be included in this or swivel guns for example. It would be difficult to see it gain widespread acceptance.

Just limiting palisades to sieges only would reduce childish sapper constructions quite quickly and easily. Palisades are already unavailable on some maps.

Palisades aren't allowed on maps like Canyon that are too small for them to actually be useful. On other maps, they're pretty important for establishing a good frontline and protecting your allies from cannons, which slaughter anything smaller. Gabions are way too small and resource-intensive to be useful as the bulk of a defense, and sandbags are too weak to be useful as a long-term defense for anything on the front line.

Right now, there's a good balance of defenses. Sandbags are good for short-term defense and defending cannons/swivel guns, palisades are good for long-term defense, and then gabions are good for filling in gaps left by the larger defenses. Getting rid of palisades would throw that out of balance, and make sappers way weaker as a class.