I was reading some topics on new class ideas, and noticed a
post saying that all the TF2 classes are based off of some sort of military
archetype, and this got me thinking as to whether there was something missing,
or at least just not present. And then I hit upon it.
The artillery.
Admittedly, the demoman is fairly similar to artillery,
packing the explosive potential as well as the ability to lob his or her
charges a fair distance using a charge, and because of this, this class idea
may be fundamentally flawed, but I’ll give it a go anyways.
The Artilleryman is basically a support class, which serves
a fairly similar role to the sniper, long range damage from behind the front
lines. It differs from the sniper, however, because he is meant more for weakening
a large number of players in a single shot, rather than taking out key targets,
and thus hurting a team’s ability to operate. The artilleryman operates by
firing canisters of bomblets into an area, which explodes, disperses, and
explodes again on contact with anything. The bomblets get fairly concentrated
in the center, and a single strike is easily capable of putting most classes in
the read or killing it, but the damage quickly tapers off at the end. What
distinguishes this from a other explosive devices is that the area of effect is
fairly large.
But that is an incredibly general description of the role
the Artilleryman plays. To get into real specifics, we need to start with the
stats.
Artilleryman:
150 hp
100% speed
Main weapon: Mortar launcher 1/36
Secondary weapon: Shotgun 6/24
Melee: Something (Is it really that important?)
Starting with the main weapon is the Mortar launcher. The
mortar launcher deals a huge amount of damage over a wide area. Sadly, it can
only hold one canister at a time and thus it is not easily spammed as reloading
is essentially a b*tch. The actual ordinance itself is at first like a
rocket-grenade hybrid. It explodes on contact like a rocket, but arcs like a
grenade. The damage it deals is relatively minor, a direct hit about half that
of a direct rocket.
Upon detonation however, it releases a dozen or so bomblets
that are spread out over a fairly large circle. Each bomblet explodes on
contact as well, and a direct hit causes even less damage than the original
canister. However, the sheer number means the damage is total far surpasses the
usual explosives.
Damage per individual is depending on situation, but would
generally be a little less than a rocket, so the class is more of a support
class. The widespread damage weakens an entire attacking force should it be
clumped together, and also because everyone sustains an instant amount of large
damage, accompanying medics will find it extremely difficult and time consuming
to get everyone back up to full health.
However, the nature of the bomblets mean that a canister
hitting the center of a large group would mean absolute doom, as the resulting
bomblets would all explode upon contact with the surrounding enemies, and thus
all of the damage would be concentrated within a particularly small area.
So the firing the weapon should take particular skill. The
arc of the weapon would help greatly with this, as well as the slow rate of
fire. But an even better way of making it take some skill to use the
artilleryman correctly is to model it off of actual artillerymen, namely the
need to fire indirectly.
Too aid in this is the mortar’s alt-fire s