Hi Tommy and thanks for the response!
Ill start by addressing your post.
Pathfinders are on the chopping block for removal. The rationale being that they serve no real purpose (besides gimmick bunker busting with satchel charges) and are unnecessarily padding the roster.
Agreed there pretty much. Pathfinders right now are just an extremely good spotting unit but otherwise feel very out of place in the Airborne roster. Its been that way for a long time so I wanted to write something up for formally since I always wanted Pathfinders to have a good role in the mod. I think they have a lot of potential as a new unit.
aking them relevant would require more than minor touch ups (like we did with Mech Inf) and probably a full on redesign of the types you are proposing, and therefore outside the scope of a monthly patch.
Sure. Personally I think they need a full redesign if they are going to have a place in OMG.
As to your suggestions, a lot of these are already being planned for implementation, albeit not attached to Pathfinders. Stealth deployments for example have been suggested as a replacement for Prepared LZ - not going to be in place for the next patch but is tabled for feasibility testing.
Yeah I know. Stealth deployments is currently slated as a T3 in the old Airborne doctrine and something I pitched to Gamery Andy waaaay back in the day. Anyways my point is that I am fully up for rearranging the and restructuring the Airborne doctrine to make it better. Personally I wish doctrines were a bit less strong, especially T2s, but if the dev team winds are blowing the opposite direction then it only makes sense to changes Airborne instead of Axis doctrines. Airborne doctrine could use some changes even if power creep is reigned in.
Again with beacons buffing recently dropped troops, this has been offered up as a potential doctrinal unlock which provides blanket combat buffs to Airborne drops for a limited period of time. Making it only work on a radius around a beacon is conceptually a nice idea, but may be tricky to implement.
Yeah I had originally wanted to add an ability in for Airborne deployment buffs in the higher tiers but I thought it would apply quite well to the beacons if we cannot get the deployment time modifier to work.
Our general thinking is that conceptually it sounds cool to have these abilities tied to Pathfinders in a way that makes them relevant, but in the interest of feasibility and user-friendliness, it might be simpler to have them as uncomplicated doctrinal unlocks rather than attached to a unit which, outside of those abilities, would probably still be struggling to find a niche.
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I think what you brought up here is very important so I have put in in bold and hope we can discuss it more below. I think this is the crux of the issue. Perhaps I should have made LZ beacons a separate post but too late now so we may as well discuss it here.To me the whole point of Pathfinders is based of their historical purpose; to allow bigger Airborne deployments to land accurately and safely.Now I think it would make Airborne more interesting as a doctrine to make the LZ beacons a core part of the Airborne doctrine, as in something you get from the start just like Wehr defense gets different kinds of bunkers or Armor gets Mechanized Infantry.
You could make Pathfinders some kind of super infantry squad without the beacons capable of clearing an LZ by themselves but if they were that strong I doubt players would use them the same way and they would be a nightmare to balance.
You could use regular Airborne to deploy beacons but think making a separate unit that has its own limitations on upgrades and abilities makes more sense instead of giving every Airborne squad the ability to be a pathfinder. Pathfinders did have their own special training historically.
In the end I just feel it would make Airborne gameplay, both from the AB players perspective and from an enemys counter-play perspective much more interesting to have a Pathfinder unit in the game equation. Having to worry about advanced AB drops or AB LZ strongpoints gives the Axis players interesting choices. Giving AB players the option of deploying AB around the map or in a more consolidated area gives them an interesting choice.
I would admit that AB already have that choice now but theres not much weight to it. Deploying around the map in areas that arent firmly in your control is almost always a bad idea. Pathfinders would enable the player to set up a defensive position behind enemy lines to conduct more daring AB operations.
If you think the same thing would still occur perhaps it would be a good idea to enable the drop buffs only in enemy territory?Those are my main thoughts for now. I think that AB could still be made interesting without Pathfinders as a unit but I feel that they would lend AB doctrine a new and unique core mechanic along with a fun unit that has its own unique strengths and weaknesses and historical flavor.