Okay, first of all I’d like to point out that this wouldn’t apply to all currently existing objectives. Some “to explode” objectives, especially primary objectives would still remain as such.
Also, the aim of the alternative is to render the engineers less of a must have in order to achieve objectives.
Now to the idea at hand, it would simply be that all recon classes would get a fast hacking tool. Similar to the engineers repair/plant /defuse tool. And for certain secondary objective that can be blown up, there would be an alternative method of shutting them down: hacking. Obviously, recon classes would hack faster and debug faster too. Debug being the reverse process.
So in practice right now one can plant a bomb on a generator and repair it once it blows up. The hacking would offer an alternative for shutting the generator down, while to restart it repairs wouldn’t work and a debugging would have to be done, which recons excel at, but engineers are just as good as medics or assault mercs.
My initial thoughts on hacking is that instead of it being a setup - time passes - blow-up mechanic like the bomb, it would be a apply it, progress saved type of mechanic, but with a longer bar to fill than a defuse for instance. So you have to spend longer on an objective but your progress can be reduced by a debug from the defending team.
So on one hand you have a low setup mechanic (planting the bomb) with a medium waiting time after which you have an immediate effect, which can be countered by an additive repairing mechanic.
And on the other side you would have a medium additive hacking mechanic, with a possible additive counter (just like the forward spawn capture works in Terminal), and once the hacking is full, the object is disabled, or door is open (thinking of dome here) and to counter it you need an equally medium additive process to debug it with the possibility of having it countered by an equally additive hacking.
Of course, as long as the hacking hasn’t been completed you can still plant a bomb and explode the objective, while an exploded objective gets it’s hacking status reset to factory levels, i.e. to how they start a game beginning.
A hacked objective can still be blown up, but there is a tactical choice to consider depending on your opponent team’s composition.
Once hacking is implemented, we can think of other things that can be hacked to change gameplay. For instance lock mounted turrets, so they can only be used by your team as long as they don’t get hacked back to a neutral state. (right now the EV turret is already team locked, so one can consider it happening for other turrets. And other ideas might pop up.
This idea came from the realization that every merc except the recons have a newbie friendly way of getting points. Medics can heal even if they do poorly combat-wise, engineers have the objective and combat mercs have their definite advantages on one vs one. Recons need to be good players to do well, otherwise they’re hindering a team. By allowing them to do an objective based mechanic, they will have a way of helping the team, even if they are performing poorly on the spotting/combat scene.
What do you people think of this new mechanic?