Lets say the Scabs are getting more aggressive and reckless in their attempts to stop our efforts… so they use the old enemy type Radio Operator to call in artillery strikes ripping through the maps dense buildings in large delayed AoE markers growing from small to large circles until the operator special is killed.
Just a thought after playing some of the artillary maps and better use than a special calling in other specials… he could call in other things though i suppose gunners, elites, vangaurds, hordes even but not more specials
If it was restricted to certain area it could work (or even Expedition), but most mission are in areas that the artillery would not be able to be used in.
Dropping them as recurrent event enemy should be good enough, or turning them into a new type of secondary missions, kill 10 Radio operator and steal their communication apparel.
I’ve said it before, it’s a perfect unit for Expeditions as is, like you would not need to change anything. It fits mechanically and setting/lore-wise; literally plug and play.
FS just hates their own devs/work more than they hate us.
i think the fundamental issue with a summoner concept is that calling in more specials and elites is more of a buff to players at this point, like sweet free ammo/talent triggers. he’d have to summon demonhosts to actually be a priority target
if they ever balance the game it’ll be a nice addition
I like it. That would be something really new, unlike their lame attempts of slightly changing existing foes. Artillery strikes could also come in several varieties (you would see the AoE zone on the ground colored in different colors, depending on type of the strike), like High Explosives (regular shell, fair amount of damage and a lot of stagger / kickbacks), Air-Burst (50% larger radius of AoE, little stagger, but a lot of damage), Incendiary (similar to Scab Bomber’s grenades, but duration is longer, AoE is wider and the flame damages you 50% faster), Pox Gas (similar to Tox Bomber’s grenades).
Still probably only must be present when there is some opening in the roof for a shell to drop in, not when your team is in some tunnels.
The idea I had was to make a Scab Commander or Sergeant or whatever. He’s a normal scab elite that has a relatively low spawn rate, and never spawns more than one in a given pack of gunners or shotgunners, and uses the Radio Operator model.
The Commander is a mixed melee/ranged enemy, in the same vein as shotgunners, where he’ll shoot at you then when you get close he’ll pull out a melee weapon and try to whack you, but his AI tries to stay at range and avoid letting you get that close, kinda like gunners. He should be reasonably tanky, but not quite Mauler tier. Somewhere between Plasma Gunner and Mauler, I feel is about right.
And his gun works a little differently than regular gunners. It charges up and fires a big burst, in the same way plasma gunners do, but it also does very light health damage with a high toughness multiplier (e.g., something like 5-10 damage to health, but 30-50 to toughness). Any player that gets hit by it is then debuffed with one stack of the Packmaster melee debuff, to a max of one stack, and at the same time, it taunts every (scab?) enemy near the targeted player to attack them.
So it’s a low volume elite that sorta bridges the gap between Elites and Specials. It doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot on its own and is fairly easy to kill, but any player that gets caught out and can’t avoid the shot has to play like a god for something like 8 seconds or really hope their team is competent and nearby to help get the enemies under control before they get swamped.
