What if there were a merc that could defuse C4 across a great distance. Albeit at a much slower speed to keep things balanced. The Merc I am proposing(I havn’t come up with an adequate name) would be able to deploy a computer station and allow the merc to “hack” C4 or other secondary objectives, such as the track gate on Trainyard, or the barriers on Underground. The merc could also disable or activate environmental objects, such as elevators(disabling them), or could perhaps take remote control of stationary sentry turrets, move an EV without any mercs physically close to it( at a slower speed). The Merc’s deployable computer would have a limited range, so it could not access the entire map, and it would force the merc to find a safe hiding place.
When the merc finds a suitable location to set up the computer terminal, a top down view of the map is displayed with “hackable” objects highlighted in some way. Then the player would click on one of these objects to begin hacking, with a progress bar displayed just like when diffusing C4 or repairing an objective. One of these mercs on an opposing team could attempt to prevent the “hacking” of objects, initiating some sort of mini-game so that if one player is more skilled at the merc than the other they can prevent the less skilled player from hacking the objective. One of these mercs could “unhack” things that a merc on the other team had hacked, enabling a completely different, yet parallel dimension to the dynamic of Dirty Bomb battles.
In order to keep things fair, the merc could not diffuse C4 at the same speed of objective specialist or even as fast as normal mercs. Therefore, even if the merc began hacking the C4 right after it was planted they could not finish hacking the C4 before it detonated without some assistance from a teammate to give them a head start. Perhaps if there were multiple mercs of this kind on a team, they could focus their efforts on the C4, allowing them to “hack” faster.
Secondary objectives such as the barriers on Underground and the track gate on Trainyard can be vital in the success or failure of a team. The ability of this merc to “hack” and enable or disable these from afar, and battle for control could tip the tide of battle to one teams favor.
Turrets can also be a nasty surprise for the other team, instead of having to be Bushwhacker or man a stationary turret, this merc could hack a turret, gaining control without risking bodily harm, of course they could only control one turret at a time, and could not hack anything while controlling the turret. A few well placed shots could also disable the turret temporarily, so the merc would have to either hack something else or wait to control the turret again.
It would also be cool if the Merc could hack placeables such as Bushwhacker’s turret, Proxy’s Mines, Auras Medistation, neutralizing them just like bullets, except they don’t have to have a line of sight to do it.
I think that if the Dirty Bomb team did decide to incorporate this merc on one based off these ideas, it would me a unique addition to the gaming world, and set it apart from similar games. I would be honored if my ideas were taken into consideration.