New Class Idea: The Aviator (haven't done this in a while)

I haven’t done this in a while. Well, anyways, I’ve been juggling this around in my head for a while. Months ago, I saw a guy release some fan art of an entirely new TF2 class, which can be seen here: http://pointpusher.blogspot.com/2008/06/tf2-fan-art.html

Admittedly it was really cool. Though not completely congruous with the TF2 style, it’s definitely closer than what most people can do. But it never had any gameplay ideas attached to it. Sure it was a great piece of eye candy, but the question of how the concept of flight would be tackled in a game like TF2 was never answered. For a while this class idea, and the concept of flight, in TF2 has fascinated me, but I’ve always been preoccupied with something else, whether it be my more original concepts or just work in general. Pretty much something has always taken priority. I think for the last few months, the general concept of the aviator has been sitting in my head for while, and I’m just now taking the time to actually write this out. So introduction aside, I present to you another stupid class idea. The aviator.

The Aviator:

Overview: >>

The aviator is like a specialized scout. Imagine a scout with the capture objectives removed and his midfield-harassing abilities overdeveloped. This is, in effect, the aviator. The aviator is an exemplary fighter in midfield. He lacks the permanence for a defensive stronghold, as well as the punching power for solid pushes, the aviator’s job is to bog down the enemies as they, say cross from base to base on 2Fort or climb the wretched slopes of gravel pit.

In this way, aviators are members of the support class. They aren’t very useful at dealing with objectives, but rather make things much easier for other teammates to do so. When in the sky they are the fastest and most maneuverable class in the game, allowing greatly confusing and disorienting enemies. While they may not get the kill with their medium to light weaponry, they can easily weaken the enemy significantly. Their main weakness comes from being on the ground, a limited fuel supply means that they are required to manage their flight routines and avoid falling out of the sky. While on the ground, their speed is greatly reduced, about that of a heavy’s, and their most powerful weapon is of little to no use to them, forcing them to rely on their machineguns. Fuel can be gained in the same manner of ammo and can be lost through flight as well as damage to the wings. Because of this, it is very difficult for an aviator to act as a powerful defensive force and even harder for him to act offensively. Capturing a point, pushing a cart, or stealing the intel all require an aviator to be grounded the entire time.

The Weapons:

Primary:	Machine Gun	75/150	5~10 dmg a bullet
Secondary:	Aerial Bomb	1/10	102~128
Melee:	Parachute Bag	>>	43~87 dmg per hit
Stats:	175 hp	77% run speed	Support

Detailed Description:

The most important aspect of the aviator is flight. Flight is simple. Flight is activated through a double jump. Upon jumping, you are then launched forward in the direction you were looking. Flight can be deactivated with a second jump, where you then cut the boosters and drop to the ground. While in the air, flight is controlled through the wasd keys. A character is only capable of moving in one constant speed, with the direction altered by the character’s pitch and yaw. These are all controlled by the usual movement keys, while the character can look and shoot freely from his winged fixture. Ideally, this is in a wide open space and while the aviator is maneuverable enough to fly in an indoor setting, it certainly takes much more skill. The less ceiling, the better.

But a character always needs fuel in order to fly, and if fuel runs out, it’s an enormous problem. The bulky flight apparatus and the weight of all his equipment (he has aerial bombs for pete sakes) really slows him down and his most powerful weapon becomes almost useless (more on that later). The aviator is relegated to his machinegun solely, and while it is a powerful weapon, it’s certainly no minigun. The good news is that there is a fairly large fuel reserve, enough for nearly a minute or two of flight. But here also lies the aviator’s greatest weakness and best counter, his wings are not invulnerable. His wings have a fairly large profile and any damage taken to them drains a piece of fuel. Bullets can quickly etch away at a fuel supply. Miniguns will simply tear through it in seconds, and god forbid the player gets hit by a rocket or any other explosive (though admittedly those are fairly easy to avoid, or should be). This puts the aviator into an interesting position, capable of being compromised by most classes with large bullet outputs, yet fairly adept at dealing with classes with single shot or projectile weapons, putting normally strong demo men and soldiers into their sites. Of course this doesn’t mean scouts and engineers have nothing to fear as the aviator can still cut them down fairly easily with his machinegun, even if it’s at the cost of half his fuel supply.

The aviator’s primary is a machinegun, large ammo capacities, lengthy reloads, and medium spreads. It’s not the most damaging weapon in the world, yet it makes up for this in rate of fire and sheer spammability. Like the minigun, aim is not an issue. The machinegun is the primary reason the aviator flies as if he were an actual plane rather than a guy in noclip, as it’d be much harder to fight effectively if where a person was aiming was where he was going. The machinegun is the aviator’s harassment weapon, capable of making quick hit and runs and chipping pieces from the enemy’s hp. Lighter classes may find the weapon a fearsome foe indeed, as a full on blast is nothing to sneeze at and the player may find himself in the red if not dead.

But in terms of stopping power, the aviator’s most devastating weapon is his bomb. The bomb is a simple device that is simply held up by the aviator himself. When need be, he simply lets go of it and it drops down to where it is needed. The bomb needs a certain amount of velocity to detonate, and this is mostly from dropping from a height (about 10 or so feet), though the velocity can be easily boosted by your own falling body. The detonation is similar in strength to that of a sticky, as well as area so it isn’t a party smasher and it takes so long too actually prepare a bomb that it’s often easier to pull out the machinegun and try to finish a person off, or fly away.

The fact that the bomb is essentially a physics object makes for interesting tactics, as it’s release and path will be affected by your own direction. Releasing the bomb while diving sends it off at high speeds from the get go, making it much harder to avoid and also fall truer to it’s target area. Meanwhile, releasing the bomb as the player flies upwards at 45 degrees can lob it over small obstacles. Yet what happens if the bomb falls too slow and doesn’t detonate. It become the TF2 equivalent of an exploding barrel. The bomb can be detonated any player should he or she damage it and the blast is wholly equivalent to what it would have been. Fallen bombs are basically considered neutral, and while an ally detonating your bombs will give you an assist or any kills he makes with it, an enemy can easily do the same thing to your allies. While not wholly efficient, this does allow for many unconventional uses of bombs, including traps, blockades, or simple distractions. The best and safest way of placing undetonated bombs is by dropping them while you are on the ground, but crafty drop, fly, shoot maneuvers can still be done if the person is so inclined as to zoom with the dirt in his face.

Eh, sup lilgame! It's been a while, hehe.

Well this certainly is an interesting class. While in all likelihood it would never actually be added due its extremely heavy dependency on types of maps, I think as a kind-of fun idea it's really neat. Maybe if you could figure out a way for this class to be used indoors effectively...

One thing you should change is its running speed on the ground... which ideally should be pretty fast although not full speed. 93% (demo speed) would work. Other than that maybe work in some sort of support ability to use on the ground to make up for the loss of bombs? I think the bombs are a really neat way of working in the "mortar" class you were throwing around a while back.

Speaking of which, I have a couple fleshed out class ideas I want to send you. I'll PM them sometime soon.

<3 FoX

Very interesting and innovative while being fairly balanced. Bravo!

Haha. Hey Fox. I was wondering where all your class ideas were. Would've thought you to be a bit more prolific than me.

I'd love to see your ideas, though to be honest I don't even know where the PM box is on these forums so unless someone could give me a crash course there, the best course of action is likely to just post a thread. Besides, that way everyone can get in on the discussion right?

As for my idea. Thanks man. Yeah this was more of a class idea designed on an "ideal" map and definitely it'd be hard to make the flying feel intuitive yet versatile. I don't have it concrete yet, as you can probably tell. All is say is it's maneuverable enough. I mean I can see a hyper maneuverable aviator looking awesome making a quick u-turn inside the tunnels of dustbowl or goldrush, but it'd require the turning to be extremely sensitive and would make flight really unwieldy in outdoor enviorments where a slight press may make the character turn a sudden 45 degrees when you just wanted a gradual course alteration. The only real situation to this would be steer-by-mouse, but then that really damages combat. So I'm pretty crossed on that.

I'm not sure about demo speed either because that's negligibly slower. I really want the guy to be really REALLY bad on the ground to counteract how epic he'll likely be in the air. The real thinking is the aviator is, assuming scout is light and heavy is super heavy, a heavy class with its 175 hp. Now what the the counters to other heavy classes (soldiers, demos, pyros) in terms of damage? Snipers, soldiers, demos, pyros, heavies, and at times scouts. These are all mildly effective at countering the heavy classes. The problem is these classes really either on close range, super damage hitters (pyro, heavy, sniper) or medium-long ranged, hard to aim shots (soldiers, demos, snipers). The Aviator is pretty effective at dodging these shots. Unless he is indoors, he can usually get far enough away so that he takes minimal to no damage from the easy-aiming, close range enemies, and maneuvarable enough to provide a huge challenge for precise targeters. Which is why I made classes capable of shooting him down. But even then, if he crashes, it doesn't help if he is still just as fast as you or just a little slower. Heavy speed, yeah it's a bit much, but demo speed, just a little too much in the opposite direction. Soldier speed seems more reasonable to me. The same arguement goes for why I didn't give him a decent ability in exchange for the bombs. Because I want him to be at a disadvantage. Hey at least the bombs can still be dropped and be used as traps, no?

And thanks for the kind words fatalmsg. I do these things pretty irregular and find most of my ideas all ready taken by skippy (HI SKIPPY!) so it means a lot to know that the few I do post bring some measure of enjoyment to someone.

YAY A MENTION!!!!

I like the idea. I think it does need to be soldier speed, rather than heavy speed, and the jumping mechanism may be wierd at first.I like that it's only really useful in open spaces, unlike most of the other classes (pyro, heavy, scout). It would be the only class like that, and would make running in the open much more deadly. Like the concept art aswell, first time I've seen it. Looks like it fits well into TF2. Too good. It's secretly a leak of a new class Valve will release in the next update.

Hello gents.  I am the author of the fan art you saw. 

Seriously, thanks for even taking the time to discuss it at all!!! 

When I envisioned this guy it was as a support class.  In fact, other than a Melee (in older designs he had a rotor blade on his backpack instead of jet packs, and I thought he might charge with the blades), there was no direct attack other a little pearl handle 22.  which was super weak.

My original idea to balance the speed of such a character was to make him almost like a spy-drone, BUT, he has a ray gun which can immobilize an enemy (but take no damage away), and a stealth countdown mode to get past sentries.  The scenario I envisioned was this guy flying and immobilizing an enemy, BUT to do so, he must remain in a prefect hover, thus making him easy to hit with sniper or any concentrated fire.

It seems like you gents have given it considerably more though!  When I made this, it was as a test for a video game company for employment (NOT VALVE).  How it happened was an art director asked me what games I liked , and I told him how much I admired the look of TF2.  He asked me to do this test, so I did. Sadly, I didn't get the job, but I have since found work at another game company and I love working where I do now. 

Anyway, thanks again for the kind words and even checking it out.

-Danny AKA pointpusher.

hmm.......looks very well done, but as already mentioned it would be useless on some maps I can see the Aerial Bomb being a engineer's worst nightmare if he could hover just above the sentries range of fire.

Also, when you lose fuel from being shot in air, what if a crit bullet could cause a leak? Say, all other hits do no visable damage yet knocks a little fuel out, yet being hit with a crit Sasha bullet makes a small leak that makes the fuel drop lower and lower and the only way to stop it is to grab an ammo box, an also you can see fuel leaking out of the jetpack so the enemy know you'll have to land soon. Also building off the fuel leak idea, possibly a well placed flare could ignite the leak causing the pack to explode killing the aviator?(not the leak is small so this would be a very difficult shot)

i dont know if this has been mentioned but heres my biggest worry:

Pretty much all outdoor maps would have to be redone to accommodate this person. Flying too high in the air on maps now would allow you to hit the sky box, see out side the game area (most canyon walls and such have no texture on the back and are completely flat). also, any objects placed in a skybox would have to be remodeled as most things as of now are flat. seeing them from above would cause you to notice this.

I really like the idea of having a person like this who could fly and that would really bring fresh scenarios to the game but the game was not designed for such a character and i believe valve would see it too costly to retool the game to make this work effectively

Yeah, I know, but what can be done about it. Right? I'm pretty much molding this class around an idealized version of the game because this class will never become an actual element in the game. I can do that. Considering the map limitations would've made this idea an absolute PAIN.

@Militia?: There are maps that'd make this class near useless, but most of those are custom maps. The worst officially released map might be turbine, but even then the center is open enough I think for some aviator work (though admittedly getting there would be a pain, and there is like no ammo on that map). As for the the aviator being just out of range of a sentry nest, it's not much different from a soldier or demo or any class being just out of range from a sentry next. Actually, the aviator likely has it worse because he can't hover.

I was just thinking crit bullets simply do extra damage to the fuel supply if any difference at all. Really, maybe crit bullets will make no difference just like they make no difference to sentry guns. Considering the fact crit bullets come in groups, the aviator will likely be more concerned about his health rather than his fuel.

@PointPusher: Well this was certainly a suprise. I hope I did you class some justice considering how great you original art was. Hope you're doing well at the job you ended up getting. Your idea is a hell of a lot further out of the box than mine was that's for sure. Really not even comparable. Even flight mechanics seem completely opposite one another, but your idea sounds really cool as well. Maybe only concern is he has no way of really defending himself, but then again he's got a super fast jetpack, no?

@Skippy: Stop coming up with ideas. Seesh. >: ( Stealing all the good ones and leaving me with nothing. Animal trainer is MINE you got that! I've all ready got a topic somewhere in the forums. MINE. GRrrrrr.

Quote:
NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!