Engineer buildings provide three services to the team - area denial (sentry), supply (dispenser), transport (teleport). Any new buildings need to fit into those roles and for balance an engineer needs to swap out an item of the same type.
The problem is coming up with suitable items within the roles.
Supply is actually easy. If you divide the dispenser's roles in half you can have a medi-dispenser with some boon alongside an ammo dispenser with some boon. Perhaps allow a dedicated medi-dispenser to heal faster and buff people up to 125% max health (compared to the medic's 150%) The ammo-dispenser could serve metal up faster or perhaps overstock allies weapon caches to some degree.
Teleporters are hard to replace primarily because tele's take up to item slots so you need at least 3 replacement items for variety. One obvious one I see a lot is a boost pad which throws allies who jump off of it into the air like a pipe bomb jump (higher the level, higher the jump). That's worth roughly half a teleporter, but beyond that I'm stumped. Maybe a hyper move device that grants a character a boost in speed for a short while (depending on level of the device). It doesn't have to be much to have it's impact felt. Beyond that I've no ideas.
Sentries. Well, there's a lot of room to play with the sentries, but balancing them won't be fun especially once teams of engies start using them together and, if they are smart, mixing different sentry types to cover the shortfalls of the new types.
I'm interested in seeing what valve comes up with.
The problem is coming up with suitable items within the roles.
Supply is actually easy. If you divide the dispenser's roles in half you can have a medi-dispenser with some boon alongside an ammo dispenser with some boon. Perhaps allow a dedicated medi-dispenser to heal faster and buff people up to 125% max health (compared to the medic's 150%) The ammo-dispenser could serve metal up faster or perhaps overstock allies weapon caches to some degree.
Teleporters are hard to replace primarily because tele's take up to item slots so you need at least 3 replacement items for variety. One obvious one I see a lot is a boost pad which throws allies who jump off of it into the air like a pipe bomb jump (higher the level, higher the jump). That's worth roughly half a teleporter, but beyond that I'm stumped. Maybe a hyper move device that grants a character a boost in speed for a short while (depending on level of the device). It doesn't have to be much to have it's impact felt. Beyond that I've no ideas.
Sentries. Well, there's a lot of room to play with the sentries, but balancing them won't be fun especially once teams of engies start using them together and, if they are smart, mixing different sentry types to cover the shortfalls of the new types.
I'm interested in seeing what valve comes up with.
