new role: scientist

[Coldcurse]

why the name scientist?
because scientists gather information and do funky stuff with wicked devices.

what does this new role include?

1. being able to hear enemy voice chat with an item called the listener
ITEM: The Listener
an item that you can aim at the enemy ship from a far distance and tap in to their voice chat, and enemy chat from the ship that you are aiming on.
but the quality of the enemy voice chat would become worse if there is a sandstorm or a cloud in the line of aiming, also if there is a structure the tapping into enemy chat would be cut off and you have to relocate the enemy ship to aim on it again.
if you are tapped into enemy ship communication then only the scientist can hear the enemy crew speaking/typing, the scientist can pass the information he gathered by talking to his captain.
if the enemy is using voice chat or normal chat the scientist will see a normal voice chat bar on the left on his HUD but the name of the person would be "Enemy", the name of the enemy crew members or shipname will not be shown because this can be too much of a advantage to your ship.

2. having a mini-radar by using the item "Whale singer"
ITEM: Whale Singer
first of all i dont know why i choose the name Whale Singer, i think it had to do something with sonar.
This item wont give you the full position of the enemy ship, it does only give you the direction of a enemy ship that is in the range of 7 blocks.
the whale singer is based on the aliens movement indicator item.
but the whale singer doesnt pinpoint the enemy, it only shows the direction of the enemy.
the enemy can still hide behind enviroment to avoid detection of the whale singer, this makes it fair for the enemy to still get that effect of surprise.
the whale singer works as a sonar and send a ping when you left click, the ping will return in a different volume.
as you can guess, if the ping is a loud ping then you are facing the direction of the enemy ship, if the ping is a soft ping then your not searching good enough or the enemy is smart enough to hide behind enviroment, if you hear no ping then your deaf or not left clicking because you always hear a returning ping.
clouds and sandstorm will disturb the ping and make the returning ping a little bite softer, so if there is a enemy beind or in a cloud/sandstorm then the returning ping wont be as loud as you useually get when getting a returning ping from a ship that is in the open field.

3.see the health of enemy engines and guns with the item: advanced spyglass.
ITEM: Advanced Spyglass
just a normal spyglass but with a extra feature only a scientist can get, seeing enemy ship engine/gun health.

4. scientists are not engineers.
5. disturb the communication between captains with the item: the scrambler.
ITEM: The Scrambler
the scrambler is a item that you aim on the enemy ship to disturb/scramble their voice chat/team chat with other captains, the voice chat/team chat will still reach the enemy captain but will contain a large amount of scrambling sounds and drop-outs (not hearing a thing).
if you aim the scrambler on the enemy ship for longer then 3 seconds, the enemy ship's communication with the other captains will be cut off.
the range of this device will be 2 blocks.

6.they can send false voice chat with the item: Shouting Crow.
ITEM: Shouting Crow
why the name?
because i hate the loud sound of crows when i try to sleep.

the item Shouting Crow has the possibllity to tap in the enemy voice chat, but this time you can speak to the enemy ship and giving them false information.
to make this item work i have the following idea, the shouting crow will cut off a crew member off the enemy ship from the voice chat and when you speak it will appear that the cut off crewmember is speaking.

example:
skrimskraw is being a gunner on a ship and you use a shouting crow on the ship were skrimskraw is on.
the shouting crow will randomly cut someone off the voice chat, it will never cut off the captain from the voice chat.
so skrimskraw is now cut off from the voice chat, then you start to talk.
for the enemy ship it will look like skrimskraw is talking.
then you tell their captain the false information to get him into the open and vulnurable.

the shouting crow only sends, it does not recieve so you dont know if it worked.
but it will be damn annoying for the enemy.

[Coldcurse]

maybe its better to combine the scrambler with the shouting crow

[Squash]

That... Is actually pretty interesting.

[Urz]

There are several issues I find with this.

First is that the game is designed around a three class system. You only have three non-pilot slots on a ship, and someone who can't effectively repair or have the offensive bonus of multiple ammo types would have to have some incredibly beneficial gear to offset: a nightmare to balance. The mechanics you've described are not significant enough nor do they contribute positively to the game experience.

Voice chat is inherently a "private" conversation. There are things you would say to your buddies on the ship that you don't necessarily want going out to everyone in the match. "Scrambling" voice communication also seems like an incredibly annoying mechanic which does not really have much benefit outside of just that.

The most obvious issue, though, is that if voice tapping and disruption became game mechanics, people would just use third-party voip solutions to completely avoid it.

[Coldcurse]

i dont think you have voip third party software when you are with a strange crew, and tapping the voice chat/ crew chat can be usefull

i dont think this can be fit in as a class but the items can make some difference, the whale singer can be handy to locate the enemy.

[N-Sunderland]

I've pointed this out with other role ideas in the past, and I'll have to point it out again. It just wouldn't be worth losing an engineer or a gunner in order to mess around with voice chat.

[Coldcurse]

maybe its useless to make another class, but i think some of the items can be usefull.

just to be saying everything i wrote was based on one single idea, gathering information about the enemy and decieving them.

every item still needs to be tweaked out and made fair and not overpowered.

i already got someone that says that the items are not balanced and will change the gameplay.
i have no intention to make any of this items overpowered and gamechanging.

such as the whale singer, this radar item is not a pinpointing device, it only lets you know what direction the enemy is.
dont think that you can pinpoint the enemy with it, its going to have a large radius to still make it possible for the enemy to launch surprise attacks.
also as i wrote before the device can be inaccurate when involving clouds, sandstorms, mist, rain.
the device wont respond on enemy behind structures.

[Meneldour]

i dont think you have voip third party software when you are with a strange crew, and tapping the voice chat/ crew chat can be usefull

The thing is that you cannot ever decide balance issues based on pubbies' gameplay. No matter what anybody thinks, it's the "pros" that play the game properly.

[Phoebe]

Just adding a quick "My cents" on the concept of adding a new role to Guns of Icarus Online quickly before I have to head out:

Without going too indepth on your suggestion;- I will leave this up to other people - here's some food for thought.

One thing you have to be really careful about when adding different classes or roles to a game that essentially is all about a somewhat realistic gameflow on a dieselpunk vessel is completely altering how the game is played.

You don't want a game like this to "feel" like Team Fortress II where some classes are just considered either redundant or simply too silly.   You also do not want the game to have too many classes and roles because it should essentially try to motivate people into working well together and coming up with different tactics for their ships loadout and how they pilot it;- rather than what class combination you use.

Once you start brainstorming for different classes while you already essentially have the three base most important features for air to air combat on a serious semi-realistic level you must think about what kind of impact it has on current game structure to implement a fourth;- and in most cases you'll find a lot more cons than pros;- where the pro usually just says, "Well, it would be fun"

[Coldcurse]

i will make a new post for ideas for new items, adding new classes is indeed riddiculus.
but i think that alot of people have good idea for items that can be used in-game.

[HamsterIV]

I don't think the game needs a new class as much as at needs more non helm pilot items. Some of your ideas would be suited for this roll. Having three crewmen with spyglass doesn't really lend itself well to crew interdependence through specialization. It is always nice to be the first one to get mark on an enemy ship, but being able to detect through clouds at the cost of spotting would be a nice secondary ability for one crewman to take.

Interfering with the other team's communication doesn't sound like it will add much to the game. It would probably just annoy our spouses as we try and scream over the racket, or switch to text communication.

[-Muse- Cullen]

I do like the radar, because it has synergy with the spyglass- both cover the weaknesses that the other one has. I think that the voice chat scramble stuff should be avoided, though, because, in tournament play, it could be completely ignored via skype, teamspeak or something of the like. Seeing the enemy's HP would be cool, too, but having an item dedicated to that would be a little silly, so I'd think it would need to attach to something else.

While the class itself will probably not be put into the game, I could definitely see one or two of these items being included. Anything that has to do with ships, flying or spotting, goes into the Helm tools, so it would be placed here, and would offer a good variation to current jobs on the ship.

[Shinkurex]

So maybe instead of considering this as a "New role" post, but a "New tools" post... If you don't mind Coldcurse... Personally, I like the Whale Singer... I don't know how it would fit within the current cannon of the GOI world (maybe an old world tech just uncovered or something).... this tool could have a "jammer" counterpart or something... My only concern, is that it could render tactics in Canyon Ambush completely ineffective

[Lord Dick Tim]

Could be it only works temporarily, at each time the signal 'pings' the enemy vessel, and even then only work with a LOS that a weapon could have.  So aim it into a cloud, as long as they are there, it'll register like a ray would on a weapon, and give a hit marker showing where the enemy ship is temporarily.

And.. whales.

[Shinkurex]

interesting.... Might be that it would also let the enemy know that they are being pinged as well...