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[Valar13]

Scouting in general is in a pretty good place for a newly-launched gamemode. It's a lot of fast-paced, frenetic fun and since the wait times and matches are generally very short, it offers a nice counterpoint to Invasion. However, there are a few places where the mode shows a lack of finesse and could use some tweaking. Chiefly among these, and the focus of this post, is the dropship-inbound phase of a match. Currently, it's far too easy for a scout running a small (particularly ECM) 'Mech to simply hide and shut down somewhere that it is all but impossible to find them, then power up and sprint straight to the drop zone.

There are a couple of logical problems with this. For one, how exactly is a single Locust being picked up by a hovering dropship above a landing zone covered in hostile Griffins and Jenners? If we're talking actual BattleTech, that Griffin is just going to reach down, rip the Locust's leg off, and club it into scrap with its own limb. What happens in the interim between the dropship hovering, the win screen, and the scout supposedly escaping with the intel? How is the scout even being extracted?

Suggestions have been made elsewhere and I have a few of my own.

1 - For one, perhaps the dropship should physically land on the zone when a gathering scout is nearby and open one of the side bay doors, requiring at least one scout to actually make it inside of the dropship through a narrower passage than a simple wide open square on the map. This is more logical than magical hovering extraction as currently present. Granted, this alone allows for defenders to simply body block the entry - so make the dropships more aggressive to compensate. If you stand right in front of the door, be ready to get cored out quickly.

2 - A second option would be allowing the defenders to shorten the wait time by shooting at the dropship. Knock off one to five seconds per (amount of damage) done to the dropship, shaking up the timing of the "hide and haul ***" strategy that's pretty much become the go-to for gatherers.

3 - Alternate theories that could get the mode from "pretty good" to "excellent" are things such as tweaking the RNG to place more intel in risky areas that increase the likelihood of a scout getting caught in the open by the defenders (risk vs reward) and giving the dropship marker to both teams (or at least a hint to the defenders) - I'm assuming someone is providing command data to the defense team, and it'd be pretty hard for any satellites/Aerospace providing overwatch over the AO to miss a cloud of bright green smoke - this also allows for the possibility of functionality to create diversions, e.g. placing a couple of decoy drop zones (possibly paid for out of unit coffers, etc) to balance out the risk of having to physically get to the drop zone and face off against up to four enemies with, worst-case scenario, a single damaged 'Mech by potentially splitting up the defenders as they sweep each zone to make sure it's not an active LZ.

Edits: Formatting

Edited by Valar13, 07 May 2016 - 02:06 PM.