Poor Bloody Infantry

[(TLL) Heretic]

This is a suggestion for something that I think would be great in a future build.  I'm posting it so folks can comment.

We need Infantry!   We need large amounts of Infantry, divided into squads of Rifles, Flamers, LRMs, SRMs, as well as manning static guns like towed Large Lasers and Gauss Rifles, and just generally filling up our bases and bringing them to life IMO.  They complete the food chain and create that full immersion feel, but who wants to be Infantry with tanks and 'mechs around, who? no-one thats who (see below), lets face it theirs is the worst deal in Battletech.  Even in anti-'mech squads Infantry only ever pose a minor threat to most 'mechs, dying fast to even the light 'mechs and tanks. So why not make them AI? after all Crysis AI is already pretty good for all things grunt.

My suggestion is that specific buildings on a map can be set to act as spawn points for a set number of infantry squads, they'll respawn with their static guns every minute or so, and remain deployed in set positions around their set spawn points.  These Infantry spawn points could be controlled with flags within buildings etc. Battle Armour can switch an enemy flag to a friendly flag and therefore change which side the next spawned infantry squad is fighting for.

So my suggestion I believe would create more immersion and give people in Battlearmour a different and constant sub-mission whereby they're changing the position of the frontline and making a little money for the Infantry kills and the flag capturing, I would hope that there would be enough cash in flag capturing to allow the player to upgrade to a light tank without having to focus solely on taking on things a lot bigger than themselves.

The Infantry squads wouldn't be the first thing on the 'mech pilots mind, but a very real front line that moved dynamically would just be awesome, and while flag capturing your going to bump into hostile BA doing the same thing (at the moment, other than at the player spawn points it looks pretty rare that BA vs Elemental will happen frequently). 

I honestly think this would improve gameplay. What do people think?

Edit: Should really read "who? no-one thats who (excpet icewyrm). There's always one

[Guillotine]

I am officially in love with this idea. But wouldn't that require waypointing and heck-knows-what-else for the AI to be able to move and use the different guns?

[icewyrm]

I've always wanted to be able to play as normal infantry in a mech game.  I think it'd be fun for a squad of squishy soldiers to leg an enemy mech from the cover of a building, or to snipe an elemental from a rooftop.  Or heck, lay a minefield, scout the enemy with some binocs (passing that info on to your team) and luring in some mechs or elementals for an ambush.

It'd be nifty to have AI controlled infantry though, for sure!  At the very least it'd give me something to shoot at when everyone else is driving a tank or flying an aerospace fighter :-)

[(TLL) Heretic]

I am officially in love with this idea. But wouldn't that require waypointing and heck-knows-what-else for the AI to be able to move and use the different guns?

I don't know much about AI coding, or any other type of coding, but perhaps map design could solve a lot of those problems (if they are problems), Squads could spawn in set positions depending on their role (so no moving around for them) and the type of squad could be random.

From the players point of view a enemy towed-Guass, for example, would appear at AI spawn-time within a set position with soldiers carrying rifles all around it (in set positions), you destroy 70% of them and you can capture the flag, capture the flag and the squads survivors disappear to be replaced with a friendly squad, could be another towed-gauss, or SRM squad, or Heavy MGun squad etc etc, the casualties taken by the squad are replaced at AI spawn time if no enemy unit is within say 200m of their flag, if over half the squad (or the towed weapon) was killed, the squad is replaced by a new random squad at AI spawn time. So the front is always unpredicatable and changing, you could fight your way through a Rifle Squad and a Flamer Squad, to capture the rifle squads flag, only to exit the building to find that the damaged flamer squad has been replaced with a towed gun or SRM squad.

[Guillotine]

Sounds interesting, to be sure. Would definitely love slaughtering my way through an SRM squad, only to find a bunch of guys waving at me while sighting in their manpack PPC at me!

[Flyingdebris]

its a cool idea no doubt, the issue is  here is that of how much bandwidth would be eaten up by having them run around in any decent numbers.

[PanzerBoxb]

Interesting idea and would give at least a token resistance to any Elemental/Longinus that attempts to take a location.

[Cur]

I do not know about the feasability of having a bunch of AI infantry running around but . . . I would think a future "class" of player could be an unarmored commando (e.g. DEST).  Give them a rifle that could take down an elemental with enough shots, a Katana, and a sticky satchel charge.  They would be hard to detect with a Mech's sensors and have the ability to capture buildings, damage mechs, and kill elementals.  Also, if they are stealthy they might be useful just as scouts.

[Flyingdebris]

lol, you can simply reskin the nanosuit, get rid of all modes but cloak and armor, up the default running speeds, make cloak weak enough to be more a camo effect, never decloak when attacking, and have its duration last for as long as the player wants it active.

tada DEST commando.

[TimoBlastem]

The AI infantry sounds incredibly fun, I have to admit.

[=KoS=Zeus]

The real issue here is how much of an impact all that AI had on the server and computer performance. Already the game is limited to 16 vs 16, I highly doubt that that cap could be artificially inflated with AI infantry grunts and not have a drastic decline in performance, otherwise we'd have 64 vs 64 games.

That being said, if it could be done, I am a huge advocate for it for all the reasons you listed.  Until the games can support more players, there is just no incentive to play as an unarmored infantry guy unless that is just your thing. Literally everything out there is going to turn you into a bag of chum with one or two shots. It's akin to playing as a normal zombie in Left 4 Dead. Sounds logical on the surface, but in practice it leads to more time looking at a respawn timer and getting oriented than actually fighting and running around.

[Flyingdebris]

1 or 2 shots? that being generous.

i can't think of a single battletech vehicle mounted weapon that would take 2 shots to kill an unaugmented infantryman. They pretty much all turn you to paste, shreds, ash, or mist in one shot.

[(TLL) Heretic]

i can't think of a single battletech vehicle mounted weapon that would take 2 shots to kill an unaugmented infantryman. They pretty much all turn you to paste, shreds, ash, or mist in one shot.

You forgot "greasy spot on 'mechs foot"

Don't know if AI Infantry need much more code than turrets, they spawn, run to their preset locations (set up by the map designer), set up and then act like turrets firing on hostiles in range no need to have anything more complex than a duck and cover animation to add, but as I say I'm no programmer..

[TheANIMAL]

The AI infantry sounds incredibly fun, I have to admit.

It would be fun in mechs, but it would be annoying for elelmentals. Two doezen infantry, even AI infantry, would make life very difficult for an elemental.


Also dont forget the bandwidth issues, 1 single AI would effectivly be taking up the same bandwidth as a player, suddenly your 32 player map has the same information buzzing around as a 64 player map.

Maybe in the future when ultra speed interenet is more commonplace.

[PanzerBoxb]

Perhaps, but how often would an Elemental be completely alone?