Jump to content

[Suggestion] Automated broadcast to allies when friendly repair drone is dropped


Gerfaut

Recommended Posts

I'm not sure whether to post this here or in the Suggestions forum.

 

I played GSF for a few hours last night, and most games had one or two players on each side flying bombers. However, over the entire course of the evening, I was able to find a friendly repair drone only once, even though I looked for them every time my ship was low on health, which was several times per game (I was mostly flying a Pike or a Flashfire).

 

Ironically, it is a lot easier to find an enemy repair drone (just keep hitting tab) than a friendly one. I shot down way more enemy repair drones than I benefitted from friendly ones. In fact, finding a friendly drone on a cluttered Deathmatch map (where the action can be anywhere and can shift locations really fast and unpredictably) is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, without even knowing if there is actually any needle present in that haystack at all.

 

My suggestion would be that every time a bomber drops a repair drone, the following message would appear on the screen of all the players on his team (not enemy players): "Playername just dropped a repair drone," or something similar. Also, friendly repair drones should appear on the map and mini-map as a blinking green dot (again, only for allied players; it is already easy enough for enemies to find and destroy them). Currently, it seems that friendly drones are not visible on the map at all. Showing the location of friendly mines and offensive drones would probably clutter the map too much but it would be really useful to show the location of repair drones.

 

In the current implementation of repair drones, it seems that most of the team is completely unaware of their presence, even if they are looking for one, and the only people who can get any consistent benefit from them are pre-mades using voice chat (nothing wrong about that, I mostly fly in premades myself, though usually without voice chat). Having a broadcast visible to all friendly players when a friendly drone is dropped, and a blinking icon on the map, would help level the playing field between pugs and voice-chat premades. It would also encourage players to play a support role in their bombers. Currently, there is not much incentive to do so when pugging, since any repair drone is much more likely to be detected and destroyed by the enemy long before any ally is even aware it's there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That would be a useful change.

 

Meanwhile you can try to workaround it by typing to ops chat on which grid of the map you are dropping the drone like "repair drone at a2". Sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn't but I guess it is better than nothing.

Edited by Davionix
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...