Imagine, bringing in AI Guardsmen you can order to locations to distract enemy fire or suppress gunlines while you help the main team of players take down bigger threats. I know squad-like mechanics with friendly AI isn’t exactly what the series is known for and could be quite the technical hurdle to achieve just for one class but I think Darktide is in a unique situation where it could work well. The AI you get from not having a full strike team could be used as the Guardsmen AI and they could use the pathing and animations from the regular traitor guard to fit right in. Id think it would be best balance with each Guardsmen having a basic Lasgun with bayonet and only having 2 Guardsmen at the start of the mission and once they get downed they die for the rest of the level. The way to balance the Sergeant itself would be to limit the ranged weapons to Pistol types only like Bolt pistol, Laspistol, or a Plasma pistol while having an Autogun take away the melee slot.
Anyway I don’t think there’s a chance in hell any of this will be implemented but if it makes some ideas turn in the devs head I hope I helped! would love to see some friendly Guardsmen come in at the end of levels for support near the Valkyrie as we make our escape.
There is a surprising amount of code in the recent datamine that suggests something like this. There is a completely separate set of skills for unreleased classes that refers to ‘minions’, ‘minion type damage’, abilities relying on ‘minion deaths’… at least for the Gun Lugger class. It’s hard to decipher, with much of it quite possibly being unfinished and/or dummied out remnants of abandoned ideas.
I think the most technical feasible thing would be to implement drop squads that land on a potion and function as sentries. They time out and leave or just stay in place.
The possibilities with this scenario are endless and only limited by the choices the Devs make.
If balanced it would be amazing. Maybe the guardsman take the place of your active skill. I can ready see all sergeant runs roleplaying a platoon of guard fighting. Maybe 3 sergents and one ogryn rofl
Make the ai guards look like prisoners at first as well, problem solved. Could make there clothing automatically switch to something similar to what the sergent is wearing.
This is what I suspect will be more the case than full on guard soldiers. And while certainly exciting, I’d caution everyone against letting their hype run away with them. Hopefully we get a cool “pet” class but until I see some official word AND gameplay of it in action, I’ll remain somewhat skeptical.