Covop/Infiltrator brainstorming

(B0rsuk) #1

Here are my thoughts on W:ET and ET:QW Covert Op and Infiltrator classes. You are welcome to comment, we may come up with some interesting mod ideas.

Covert Op is supposedly about stealth, recon, sabotage and misdirection. How can he achieve that ?
Let’s have a look at his tools and abilities. What could be improved ?

Sabotage:
in W:ET covop can use satchel to blow up command post (insignificant, unless it gives additional spawn), or some objectives like depot defences or assault ramp. Depending on map, this is very useful or worthless ability. It’s good on Fuel Dump, Battery (I can’t remember if axis spawn on Command Post belongs to vanilla W:ET). Quite useful on Radar if you’re Axis.
Worthless on Rail Gun, Gold Rush, Oasis.
Verdict: situational and map-dependant

Recon:
In W:ET, scouting enemy positions is marignally useful, because

  1. On many maps the situation can change very quickly. It depends on map layout.
  2. No one except mortar soldier has time to look at the map. As for mortar, most maps aren’t open enough to bother and it ends up as a spawn spamming tool. But it’s still quite useful for mortar soldier.

Detecting mines: depends on how many engineers are there on the opposite team. It depends on map layout, but I think it’s the most valuable of W:ET covop abilities. Landmines can be pain in the ass if you don’t have a competentcovop on your team.
Verdict: Nice to have on pretty much all maps. It’s going to be even more useful in ET:QW with all the deployables, slow vehicles like Cyclops etc.

Stealth
I think that stealth doesn’t really work for Covop in W:ET. First of all, the more players there are, the harder it is to be stealthy, because all routes will be guarded anyway. Silencer is worthless in direct combat. It is occassionally useful if you’re on the edge of the frontline and enemy isn’t likely to notice you quickly. On mid-long distance, enemy won’t know you’re shooting him until he starts taking headshots. Reloading sound for sten is also annoyingly loud and lasts a while.
A big problem for covop is that your footsteps are just as audible as anyone else’s. Don’t expect to ever sneak upon semi-competent player. If he uses headphones, you’ll be very easy to locate by footsteps.
Disguise is a joke against experienced players. It may get you some advantage in reaction time, but I wouldn’t count on it.
I’ve never been impressed with backstabbing. I mean, anyone can do it well, and covop doesn’t do it any better. 1 stab kill doesn’t make a difference in practice, because regular knife is good enough against surprised enemies.
I’m very curious how does the disguise work in ET:QW. Reports from squirrels are quasi-contradicting. On one hand, Infiltrator supposedly literally gets a new body, so he should stay disguised even if he shoots in plain sight. On the other hand, I heard your cover is gone once someone sees you shooting. It might refer to GDF covop only, but it would still suck.
Will we ever see a disuise in a clan match ? Or anyone playing covert op for anything else than forced covop objectives ?
(This is my personal annoyance, by the way. Rather than make make covop valuable, they made him required in ET:QW. I think it goes against Enemy Territory design philosophy. I hope he gets some general improvements regardless of this)
Verdict: Stealth is unreliable at best.

A nice touch is (unconfirmed) faster running speed for covop/infiltrator in ET:QW. It will help being sneaky.

I don’t think Smoke Grenade really fits the purpose of Covert Op. It encourages teamwork in a way that your teammates could benefit from it, but I think it fits more to other classes. Agressor/Soldier would obviously have a use for this, because its a nice help in direct assault. It also fits to Field Op/Oppressor, because their task is fire support. But Covert Op ? Oh please. It’s like a big ‘I’m sneaking around!’ sign. Baad for stealth.

Now time for some weird ideas.

  • rather than faster reload as Light Weapons reward, covop could really benefit from silent reload instead. Would help avoiding detection.

  • For me, much more useful than a disguise would be silent footsteps. Give me silent footsteps ! This would work even (or especially!) against experienced players.

  • One of stealthiest, indirect yet very powerful weapons in W:ET are … handgrenades. They’re bad in direct combat but very useful for sneaking around and hitting unsuspecting enemies. A well-timed grenade kills your enemy in one shot, making actually much less noise and fuss than smgs. Once engaged in smg duel, someone attacked by a covop will start dodgin, shooting etc, creating even more noise. Grenades often go mostly unnoticed.
    Give covert op and infiltrator lots of handgrenades ! I know it could be used to spam, but think it’s worth the risk.

  • Idea for level4 covop reward: 5 seconds of total invisibility. Now this woul d make covert op quite scary.

(==Troy==) #2

For ET, try out No quarter mod :wink:

(Flesh) #3

Before I begin I should say that Cov ops is my favorite class (maybe thats why I botherd to read through all this ;)), so everything I say here is ment as constructive criticism.

I completely agree with your analysis Borsuk. Cov ops was added in ET and was not part of the original RTCW multiplayer. That is prolly why it seems to be a pretty useless class. Hes not much of a team player, he sux in close combat and all of his abilities are understated. SD ows us to make cov op a lot more useful in QW.

Firist of all theres sniping. You forgot to mention it was pretty much useless in ET. This is bad becouse sniping is very important and the cov op is the only class in the game that caries the sniper rifle.
I think that SD will take care of this. In the valley video we can see that sniper recoil has been fairly reduced, as for damage I think that 2 body shots (3 if limbs are hit) or 1 headshot should be enough for a kill, with no dmg loss over distance. Accuracy should be something like the accuracy of snipers in battlefield. It will reduce over distance but only to a certain point after which it will remain constant regardless of the distance.

Second most important function is the disguise ability which is absoultely crucial for the functioning of the cov ops class.
Generaly disguise should be a lot harder to penetrate. To improve this ability, instead of the invisibility idea, in QW disguise should be completely unbreakable when cov ops reaches lv 4. Then only a level 4 field op can see trough his disguise. Other classes could spot him only by noticing that hes carrying a weapon of the opposite team.
The silent reloads and silent footsteps (but only in diguise) should be a basic cov op ability, not something that you gain by leveling.

What SD must not do is make cov op needed only to complete objectives. Cov op must be useful all the time simply becouse the whole team needs his abilites. Just as you cant win without any medics (or field ops or engys or soldiers), you should not be able to win without any cov ops, regarless of the map objectives.

(Infiltrator) #4

I don’t agree with everything you (OP) said, although I do on some points.

Stealth classes were always my fav and it will be so in QW as well.

Sabotage - … is totally different then in Wolf. You don’t carry satchels, instead you can hack/disable deployables and objectives. Obviously both useful in any situation/map.

Recon - I’m not sure will you have it the Wolf way as we get the Recon deployables here as well. Depends on their scan range I guess.

Stealth - disguise is of course great for pub games but I really hope they enhance it. As you said, experienced players can see through it easily and since the game’s motto is that the entire team will be focused on one area at a time, it makes grabbing bodies out of enemies’ sight even harder. Flesh - I really doubt you will have enemy weapons when you disguise… Strogg don’t even have their right hands to hold the weapons - they are part of them, so it would be pretty weird AND obvious seeing a strogg with both hands holding a human rifle or an armless human with a strogg weapon in its place.

Smoke grenades are the perfect ones for the CovOps imo, I mean, you can use them to make cover for yourself, your allies and make diversions. CovOps also get the EMP nade that takes out vehicles out of commision for half a minute. Infiltrators get “scrambler” grenades that supposedly “stun” - I guess this is some kind of Strogg flashbang.

Also, CovOps get Cameras that they can spy with and remotely blow up, plus they stick on vehiacles too, I figure you should NOT lose your disguise if you try to drop these. The Infiltrator’s counterpart is the drone, think of it as the UT redeemer on a smaller scale, you take control of it, losing your character control but you get his vision for exploring and you can blow it up. Oh and another UT thing for the Infiltrator is the Translocator (drop a pod on the ground and teleport yourself to it at will), I see much uses for this baby.

(Flesh) #5

Since were brainstorming I have this idea for cov op sniper.

You should be able to load your sniper rifle with Armor Piercing rounds. I actualy got this (fairly original) idea from an xbox game, Conker live and reloaded, which had an excelnt multiplayer that imitated ET.
Before you read, bear in mind that this ablity should be only secondary to sniping and shoud not be powerful enough to stand on it own.

Here how it works. When you load AP rounds if you want to shoot you firist have to charge up your attack. It is fully effective only when you charge up to maximum. While cov op is doing this he cannot move. When you charge up a laser sight appears causing a laser beam to run from your weapon to the targeted location. This targeting laser beam would make cov op easy to spot and give vehicles a chance to fight back since they are to slow to dodge his attacks. This ability should only have a limited range so you cant shoot tanks from across the map.
Additionaly you may consider the ability to use thermal vision on sniper rifle. In combination with AP rounds thermal vision could be used to shoot the driver/passanger of the vehicles (this would have to be very difficult else it would be too strong).
It is very important that this “AP rounds” ablity is balanced with normal infantry sniping so that normal sniper would not be replaced. Also this ability should not replace soldiers rocket launchers either, it should only be an additonal support.

The purpose of this ability is that, unlike other covop ablities which are of little use for teamplay, it would give cov op a role that his team would rely on (regardless of map objective type). It should not result in haveing covop become an anti-vehicle class, it should only be used when theres many vehicles and not enough soldiers with rockets as a secondary use for normal sniper.
Naturaly it would take a lot of balancing with range, dmg, reload speed etc, but I honestly cant predict exactly how would this ability work in practice, thats why I think it was interesting to mention it.

Again this is only an idea, so dont flame it if you dont like it and feel free to give your own suggestions.

(Roxor) #6

I’m not sure if that would be a good idea, as if that was the case nobody would pick up rocket launchers unless their aim is terribly bad, because in this case you are the anti-infantry AND the anti tank, and I’m sure SD doesn’t want that in 1 class. Sure Soldiers/Aggressors with antitank have secondary weapons for infantry, but they are what they are - sub par versions not to be relayed upon too often. I was also getting the feeling from all of the interviews and previews that they are pretty much done with the content and are just balancing out what they have.

(Flesh) #7

As I said, the ability should be balanced so that it is only used when soldiers with rockets are not providing enough support. It should not be as strong as rocket launcher but only a secondary way to use the sniper, a support to rocket soldiers. Sniper itself is only partialy effective against infantry, soldier’s heavy mg should be far more effective. In the same way, AP rounds are only partialy effective against vehicles, soldier’s rocket launcher should be the primary weapon to use against tanks.

(B0rsuk) #8

No offense taken, especially that I like to play covops if I can afford not to play engineer. Which doesn’t happen very often. Covert op is supposedly one of more subtle classes and I try very hard to find a use for him.
One of my favourite trick is to put Satchel on top of stairs or ladders. Works like a charm even against experienced players !
Back to topic.

I completely agree with your analysis Borsuk. Cov ops was added in ET and was not part of the original RTCW multiplayer. That is prolly why it seems to be a pretty useless class.

A Flametrooper of Enemy Territory. You can argue that he does X better than class Y, like people used for Flametrooper, but the truth is he doesn’t have much purpose.

Hes not much of a team player, he sux in close combat and all of his abilities are understated. SD ows us to make cov op a lot more useful in QW.

I think he is not supposed to be much of a team player. I guess he was meant to be a lone wolf. He gets more ammo for Sten than other classes get for SMGs, although it may be compensation for its weaker damage.
The only ‘true’ team ability of covert op is the one to spot enemies and mark their positions on map.
I don’t have a problem with one class designed for lone wolfing. The problem is that lack of any other class is easily noticed, and your team generally suffers from it. MG42 soldiers are scary on defense. I don’t have to explain importance of medics, do I ? Just one Field Op can block passages and disorganize enemy defence. Engineer is dependent on map, but generally crucial to most objectives.
And Covert Op ? DId you ever wish there was a covert op on your team ? Actually I did: sniping IS very useful cover for allied engineer on Battery. Another one on Fuel Dump. And that’s it, I’m afraid. In many places where a sniper can be used Mg42 performs better. The problem with snipers is that it’s rarely beneficial to have more than 1 at a time, per team. Abundance of snipers doesn’t really help your team on offense. Few things are more frustraing than trying to get the tank across the bridge… only to find out you have 4 snipers on your team. Suddenly you realize there are just snipers, one Mg42 soldier, one mortar soldier, you and 1 medic… and you need to secure the build area on your own.
Covop works as a counter to Engineer, but he should be more useful on his own.

sniper recoil has been fairly reduced, as for damage I think that 2 body shots (3 if limbs are hit) or 1 headshot should be enough for a kill, with no dmg loss over distance.

  1. In W:ET, 2-3 bodyshots kill most people if you’re using Garand. The problem is that 80% of the server is playing medics, so you can have ridiculous amount of damage dealt and still get only few kills. Medics can sometimes take 300+ damage and not die. Basically no amount of hit and run or attrition tactics works on medics. All other classes you can gradually wear away and they need to fall back sooner or later.
  2. One of recent reviews mentioned that there is damage drop over distance even for sniper rifles now. I think it’s actually necessary, because you’ll often be able to see over entire map. If it wasn’t for damage drop, you could probably hide in a distant corner of the map and be invulnerable except to other snipers and aircraft perhaps.

Second most important function is the disguise ability which is absoultely crucial for the functioning of the cov ops class.

I don’t see disguise as such. I call disguise ‘D&D stealth’ , because it allows you to become ‘invisible’ while remaining in sight of enemies. That in itself is a stupid, artificial idea. Not that it’s the only stupid thing about D&D. This concept works in D&D, but IMO sucks in Enemy Territory. But I digress. I would prefer the kind of stealth abilities that help you avoid being seen at all. When I play covert op or any other class I play in a very sneaky way. I let enemies pass if it means I have a chance to sneak to objective. (Radar comes to mind). This is for my own good, beacause I’m not terribly good in face2face duels. I’m decent since I lowered my sensitivity to 1.6 , but I still don’t rely on brute forcing my enemies.

Other classes could spot him only by noticing that hes carrying a weapon of the opposite team.

Brilliant. I think covop should be able to carry ‘fake’ enemy weapons. Like a sten that looks and sounds like a thompson. Now that would be some real confusion. I occassionaly shoot teammates because I hear mp40 (the wrong weapon) coming from their direction and pre-aim.

What SD must not do is make cov op needed only to complete objectives.

Yes, it feels quite artificial. Soldiers are now the ones who plant explosive charges, but it sort of fits. I’m happy that engineers will become more map-independent now, with all these deployables. Very Q3F like :-).

Cov op must be useful all the time simply becouse the whole team needs his abilites. Just as you cant win without any medics (or field ops or engys or soldiers), you should not be able to win without any cov ops, regarless of the map objectives.

I think ‘can’t win’ is a bit too harsh. I thought you said you didn’t like forced covop objectives.
I think that - as I said above - covop should be very valuable to team, but not required.

IDEA: it would be quite cool if automatic turrets din’t target covert op at all. It worked like this in Q3F. Turrets used to ignore disguised Agents. Hmm, I bet it works the same in ET:QW now :-).
Another thing that could be added would be some sort of radar scrambler for vehicles. If a vehicles was piloted by a covert op, anti-vehicle turrets would take more time to lock on.

(B0rsuk) #9

Hacking is quite similar to planting charges with soldier, actually. I suppose it’s better in the sense that deployables are there (occupy slots etc) but actually don’t work. Just like discovered landmines, they create illusion of safety for your opponent.
But disabled deployables can probably be switched back on by an engineer. So it (probably) works both ways.

Recon - I’m not sure will you have it the Wolf way as we get the Recon deployables here as well. Depends on their scan range I guess.

We’ll see. Once we realize players actually start using the command mapt to check enemy positions, we’ll know that reporting enemy positions is useful. So far, I’ve never seen anyone do that in W:ET except for mortars. To be honest I don’t know if you can see someone using the map while you’re spectating him. It may be just HUD thing and impossible to notice of spectacors.

Stealth - disguise is of course great for pub games but I really hope they enhance it. As you said, experienced players can see through it easily and since the game’s motto is that the entire team will be focused on one area at a time, it makes grabbing bodies out of enemies’ sight even harder.

Disguised were very similar in Q3F. There was a custom of so-called spychecks in Q3F. Good players would fire a single shot when coming into sight of a teammate to prove they were not Agents in disguise. I’m not sure why spychecks aren’t popular in W:ET. Probably because disguises are less useful in this game. In Q3F most bases had about 3 entrances, so it wasn’t that hard to sneak.
Part of the problem is that teams are more focused in W:ET. Almost all Q3F maps were dual objectives. A cool mutation of CTF, flags couldn’t be returned by picking them up so teams had to defend outgoing flags until they time out. Anyway, each team had to split his members between both offense and defence, and I already stated base entrances were more plentiful. There wasn’t so much choke point camping.
And that’s the problem, I think. Once you get a disguise, it’s very very hard to get past a choke point to the enemy territory.

Flesh - I really doubt you will have enemy weapons when you disguise…

I beg to differ. Several interviews stated that Infiltrator actually posseses fallen GDF bodies. Sounds very stupid and very playable.

Smoke grenades are the perfect ones for the CovOps imo, I mean, you can use them to make cover for yourself,

And what’s so good about covering yourself ? A medic can cover himself and hog all medpacks to himself.

your allies

I thought that’s what medics and Field Ops are for. Medics cover engineers, Field Op clears the way. Either of them could have the smoke grenade.

and make diversions.

Ok, so there’s one thematic use :wink:

Oh and another UT thing for the Infiltrator is the Translocator (drop a pod on the ground and teleport yourself to it at will), I see much uses for this baby.

The thing about cameras is that action in Enemy Territory is quite fast. From time to time I die just because I’m attacked while using vsays, and I have them memorised so I don’t waste much time. If they indeed work similar to UT redeemer, they’ll be quite risky. And the strogg one will often give away your position.
Translocator sounds like a cool toy, but will there actually be good uses for it ? Depends on map layout, I guess. But I noticed that (in W:ET) to be useful for your team you don’t need to survive. Just plant the damn dynamite, satched depot gates or kill 3 people. Translocator sounds a lot like an escape tool.

Flesh: the main advantege of sniper over mg42 is mobility. Sniper can easily run away after 2-3 kills. On the other hand, mg42 soldier doesn’t need to run away, because he’s strong enough even if enemies are suspecting him. But more mobility is useful on attack, and when you need to run from artillery FAST.

(==Troy==) #10

Hacked deployable - can be used by opposing team until it is hacked again by your own covert, or destroyed?

(Flesh) #11

Once you hack a deployable I think it simply stops working, until an engy arrives and fixes it.

(Infiltrator) #12

I beg to differ. Several interviews stated that Infiltrator actually posseses fallen GDF bodies. Sounds very stupid and very playable.

I should have rephrased that but it looks clear when you read the next sentence. What I mean is the enemy won’t see the opposing team weapon when you disguise. More then likely.

And what’s so good about covering yourself ? A medic can cover himself and hog all medpacks to himself.

I thought that’s what medics and Field Ops are for. Medics cover engineers, Field Op clears the way. Either of them could have the smoke grenade.

When you are in a choke point, moving from cover to cover, or in tight tunnels on the inside I think that smoke nades will be invaluable. I know they sure as hell are in most other games where they are done properly (Americas Army).

The thing about cameras is that action in Enemy Territory is quite fast. From time to time I die just because I’m attacked while using vsays, and I have them memorised so I don’t waste much time. If they indeed work similar to UT redeemer, they’ll be quite risky. And the strogg one will often give away your position.
Translocator sounds like a cool toy, but will there actually be good uses for it ? Depends on map layout, I guess. But I noticed that (in W:ET) to be useful for your team you don’t need to survive. Just plant the damn dynamite, satched depot gates or kill 3 people. Translocator sounds a lot like an escape tool.

Yea, the drones will be risky but it depends on the speed. On the outside, you can get on a ledge or on top of a building with the Icarus where you are fairly safe and guide them from there.

On the inside you can find a hole or something and just hide there while launching it, or let your team know to guard you while you guide it.

As for the Translocator, I’ve been a huge fan of it since the original UT and believe me, escape is not the only use for it. Start hacking something but hide a translocator nearby. Enemy comes, you have to bail out, you run run and run and while the enemy is pursuing you just port back and finish the job or attack them from the back. And thats just one example…

(==Troy==) #13

It wasnt a statement, it was a suggestion.

(Flesh) #14

When you are in a choke point, moving from cover to cover, or in tight tunnels on the inside I think that smoke nades will be invaluable. I know they sure as hell are in most other games where they are done properly (Americas Army).

I agree that smoke grenades are a very useful ability. But I think what Borsuk was trying to say is that while smoke is generaly very useful, it is not particulary useful to the cov op as a class. Smoke grenades would be much more useful to engy and medics. They go in close combat and need cover while getting to objectives.
Cov op should not go in close combat. He should go around it by using his disguise. This is becouse cov op is not ment to fight up close, his (inferior) weapons and other ablities are not ment to be used in such a way. To get past choke points you need to use disguise, not smoke. If you try to get trough a choke point without disguise you only risk running into an enemy with an smg which is always stronger than the weapons that cov op uses. Also, smoke grenades only alert enemies to the fact that theres a disguised enemy around.

Thats why I think that diguise, next to sniping, is a key ability of the cov op class. Only after you get good disguise you can start useing your other abilities (recon and sabotage).

(B0rsuk) #15

About smoke: what Flesh said. I think it would even make sense for Field Op to have smoke grenade (Oppressor has force field last time I checked). I don’t say that smoke isn’t useful, but it doesn’t fit covop play style.

I think you got it wrong. You can’t rely on disguise to get you past choke point. In fact, you should avoid choke points while in disguise. Because members of the opposite team will concentrate in that place. Why is that guy running the wrong way ? A spy, kill him !
One option is to capture a uniform and wait in friendly territory for enemies to advance. Not very practical.

I think that both disguise and sniping, the way they work now, are highly overrated.

(Infiltrator) #16

Well the CovOp can participate in close combat with his second-choice weapon, I know it’s an Accurised Lacerator for Strogg and probably something in the same lines for GDF - a medium-close range fast firing rifle. If you gave it to medic or field op there’s one less reason to have a CovOp in your team. I say no, they are useful enough as it is, they don’t need the smoke nades which, btw, fit perfectly with the Covert/Deception theme CovOps are all about anyway.

(B0rsuk) #17

It says ‘accurised’ , but it doesn’t mean that, for example, it doesn’t overheat faster. In W:ET sten is significantly more accurate than Thomp40 and especially Fg42. But it does overheat.

One of early interviews mentioned that engineer’s version of assault rifle with grenade launcher is a bit less accurate because the weapon has worse balance. They obviously try to give each weapon pros and cons. Somehow I don’t believe Accurised Lacerator will be strictly better than regular Lacerator.

Today I’ve been kicked from a server for successfully planting a dynamite at bunker controls. As I thought about that, something occured to me.

I actually like the change that moved explosives from engy to soldier. It will make defense much harder. Previously, you would need an engineer, which apart from objectives doesn’t have any cool abilities. Rifle grenades - yes, but landmines aren’t very useful on ofense. That’s why so few people bother playing engy in W:ET . I expect Soldier class to be quite popular, and as a result explosive charges will be more popular :-).

I wonder how does Hyperblaster/GPMG work. Are they good all-around weapons, or have to be deployed to actually hit anything ? Do they make good frontal assault weapons ? Can Hyperblaster be deployed at all ?

(murka) #18

sten is more accurate but shoots slower, another thing to sacrifice for something better.

(Infiltrator) #19

Doesn’t really matter… my point was that both CovOps and Infiltrators will get weapons for close quarters combat and that justified CovOps having smoke grenades instead of other classes who already bring a lot on the table with their med/ammo packs.

(space) #20

Dosn’t the infiltrator have a railgun/high powered slow firing weapon?

OH PLEEEEEEEEEEEAAASE