Melee tank?

[quicklite]

NB: This thread is NOT a 'OMFG DEVS ADD M3LE£ T4NK NAO!!!11!' thread, nor is a thread trying to get people to say that. I am not expecting this to be implemented, or at least due to this thread, anyway. This thread's purpose is just to discuss if a melee tank would be practical for this sort of game, and if so, how it would work.

So, while on the IRC, I was talking with another guy (I think it was Tarbomb, my memory is terrible) about the game, and we ended up talking about what a melee tank in grid12 would be like. And that got me thinking: would a tank completely built on melee and close range attacks work? And how would it work?

Firstly, it would be relatively hard to do. I mean, I've only seen one melee tank in video games (or real life, for that matter) ever, and it would in a much more detailed 3D indie game, in which designing such a thing would be significantly easier (as in design, not programming. Please don't call me out on this one ). And secondly, it would be seriously hard to make it not OP. I mean, from what I've seen in the game (and correct me if I'm wrong), nothing beats you by speed. Not any major threats, anyway. In fact, everything moves pretty slowly, so therefore would be theoretically pretty easy to ram. Therefore, if not done right, a melee tank could kinda just be a game-breaking steamroller that wipes out hoards of enemies that should've taken minutes to kill in a few seconds. So how would you re-balance this? If you made it really slow, then it would be wiped out before it would even reach the enemy, and if you countered this with lots of health, then it would only really serve as a bullet sponge. If given low DPS, then people would just use a higher DPS, higher range class. And aside from the obvious, what would a melee tank do? If I'm correct, all of the other ships have abilities, so therefore this one should in theory have one. Would it be a shotgun for additional CQC damage? Would it be a AoE around the tank to wipe out a large group of targets, effectively turning the tank into a walking bomb? Would it be a burst of speed so that it could get in killing range easier? And how would the tank's auto-cannons work? Would there be any?

What do you guys think? ^^

[amitp]

Hm, a tank that slowly accelerated, and rammed things? Sounds like fun! If it kills the thing, it could keep going, but if it doesn't, it could stop and lose all its momentum. Or maybe it pushes back enemies.

[hisacred]

Maybe like some type of bulldozer?

[tarbomb]

The issue with melee tanks, at least right now, is that in most circumstances range doesn't really grant you much of a battlefield advantage like it does in RotMG since almost everything is instant-hit (and in fact often is a disadvantage, since it's easier to circle an enemy faster than its turret can rotate when you're close). The idea behind "melee" is to a) get in close b) tank damage and c) return heavy damage.

If you want to avoid making it OP while keeping it distinctively melee-like, you have to emphasize these factors while nerfing it in other things. Amit's speed-based ramming idea is one way to do that; another way is to force you to be still for a while before you start doing damage (imagine that your spikes won't deploy until you hold still for a second or two, and would retract when you started moving again). That would force you to soak up a good bit of damage (and would be potentially suicidal when attacking a watchtower) in the course of doing damage. Or, you could simply make the tank bog-slow with medium HP, with some sort of trickster-like decoy ability to avoid getting hit (in which case the time of the decoy would be the main limiting factor).

[quicklite]

A slowly accelerating tank would be pretty interesting! Especially if the tank didn't have a very good turning radius, and if you combined it with the push enemies thing and with serious damage. That way, you can cut through a group of guys/seriously damage or destroy a turret/wall thing, but then you'd be left in a vulnerable position, and could get killed off easily if you haven't figured out what you do from there. Could be cool. Although I like the idea of a seriously powerful close range attack, possibly AoE, that requires a few seconds of charging up first. That way, instead of just bouncing off a structure you are trying to destroy, making yourself look like a fool, you could combo a ram with that attack to rack up serious DPS against said wall. Though after that, ur options are pretty limited, and it feels like there should be something else other than ram-spike-retreat-ram-spike-retreat. Perhaps a speed boost, or even a shotgun blast that propels the tank backwards? That would be a pretty unique ability to use for retreating ^^.

[rob]

It might be interesting to combine an offensive power with the blink ability. For example, blink forward and set off an explosion at the destination point (this was what the RotMG Strike Amulet did), or blink forward doing damage to anyone between the origin and destination points.

[linkshot]

I am definitely up for a port-to-explosion, swift strike, and ramming capabilities.

[quicklite]

Mar 12, 2013 9:37:18 GMT -5 rob said:

or blink forward doing damage to anyone between the origin and destination points.

I understood and agreed with everything in your post but this. I mean, it's not that I don't like the idea, but I don't understand what you mean. So, would this be a tank that has a damaging speed burst forward, or is this a tank that just teleports, and then damages everything in a straight line from where it was to where it is?

[hisacred]

He means, teleporting from point A to point B, and anything from where it was to where it is gets damaged.

[hypevosa]

OH MY GOD THAT SOUNDS LIKE FUN LET ME PLAY IT.

can we call it a rhino? please can we call it a rhino?

Ability 1: Rebuff - knocks all enemies within 2 squares 5 squares back.
Ability 2: Overclock - Instant top speed
Ability 3: Overload - hits do double damage
Ability 4: Wide load - becomes 2 squares wide instead of 1

[quicklite]

Hrm. It could be interesting to do a mix of Rob, hypevosa, and Linkshot's idea.

In my opinion, the spike's damage should not only push back tanks that they don't destroy, but the damage should be modified by how fast the Rhino is going. Basically, if you are going at top speed and hit something, you'll do much more damage than if you hit something at a crawl. I think that this tank should have 2 weak shotgun turrets. And I mean pretty darn weak shotgun turrets. That will allow it to do something against what it can't hit at close range, but not much. It should have either have a lot of health but very little shields, or vice versa.

I agree with Rhino as a name, but here's the abilities I would choose.

Ability 1: Hyperdrive - This is rob's 'blink' attack, but with a twist. Like in rob's idea, the tank teleports from point A to point B, and everything in a straight line from those 2 points becomes slightly damaged. However, after having teleported, the tank retains its current momentum and direction of momentum from where it was and what it was doing when it first teleported. So basically, if you were moving at top speed west and then used this ability to teleport north, you would come out of the teleport going at top speed to the west. This will allow people to be tactical with the teleport, using it less as an attack itself, but as a perfect positioning for an attack.

Ability 2: Spike Overcharge: After using this ability, the next attack not only does triple damage, but also splash damage via an explosion on impact. The explosion size, like the damage of the attack, scales with the speed of impact. This has a long cooldown, but in large offensives it will make for a seriously potent first strike, especially if going at top speed.

Ability 3: Engine Discharge: The engine lets off a powerful, shotgun like discharge of energy and the ship shoots forward. This damages anything behind it and lets it catch up to prey. This CANNOT be used with Ability 2. When Ability 2 is being used, this one is disabled, and vice versa, because frankly, comboing those two abilities would be pretty OP.

Ability 4: MSB (Magnetized Shrapnel Blast): This releases five projectiles that do relatively little damage. These will home in on any target close to the ship, rendering these useless at long range. However, on impact, each of these shards bounces off its target, and either hits another target or comes back to hit the original target again. Each projectile can do this 4 times before breaking. If there are no enemies to attack, the projectiles just float around for 7 seconds, and then break. This also has a long cooldown. This will allow the tank to weaken large groups of enemies without just outright destroying them as despite their homing and multi-attack capabilites, they don't actually do that much damage per impact. This would allow allies to easily clear up whatever this tank has missed.

How was that? Anything OP?

[randomg]

What about inflicting damage on self?

Combining with the 'slow acceleration' idea, you could have a tank with a heavy shield in front, and it could take damage based on how fast it was going. It would do a proportional amount of damage to whatever it hit.

For shields, the most obvious is 'stacked in front', but what if you did something like Wildfire? Say, a decent shield for 220 degrees, and two 70 degree heavy shields that can take a few heavy hits. This would allow you the opportunity to take hits on the front left OR front right, so you could theoretically do 2 'hard' hits before cycling out to recharge.

As for triggers, you could have one trigger that boosted speed(for more damage), and a trigger that combined all the shields and focused them dead ahead. You could also have a trigger that allowed the tank to plow through minions, maybe only inflicting 1/4 or 1/2 damage along the way, or inflicting a small speed penalty for hitting them. This would allow the tank to take a good run at the main enemy, similar to how a knight runs through trash to hit a cube.

I love the blink attack, that would make a great fourth "super move".

Honestly I'd love to see all of the ideas in this post. Multiple melee tanks, maybe?

[hypevosa]

I've realized something... wouldn't this be just like the trail blazer but it does damage on impacting things? Why not just allow the trail blazer to ram things and do damage?

[tarbomb]

Trailblazer's a pure scout and I think it should remain that way. Splitting up triggers between scouting focused and damage focused would sufficiently deprive it of power in both scouting and damage that it would be much less useful for either role.

[hypevosa]

Why do we need a pure scout? It's not like this ramming tank would ever be able to kill anything more than small facilities, so it essentially is suited to the same exact purpose with a gentle offensive option. Just, instead of hiding and being useless for 90% of the game since it can't fight (even other specialized tanks serve some use all the time), we could make it a tank that people can choose as a primary.

The speed boost ability already serves both tanks, so we have that unified trigger. Stealth would be great for both tanks since the ramming tank will likely need it to get out of sticky situations.

The shield start-up is largely unnecessary due to the cloak, we could even just tie them into the same thing like other tanks and have the stealth and shield start up occur with the same trigger. And the teleport forward is also barely useful for a trailblazer, so doing away with that would be no massive loss.

I think they could easily be the same tank to save time and space, without any real losses at all.