Again, and I'll repeat it as much as necessary.

This balancing would not remove the ability to make tunnels.
It would equalize the effort it takes to make tunnels, with the effort it takes to make fortifications, while encouraging teamwork.

tbh, I couldn't care about teamwork in tunnels. Whilst I may sound like a selfish bastard, I actually find independent tunnel making easier. And when I play we may take different jobs: Sniper, Shotgun guy, Distraction, Intel taker and Tunnel Digger.

No

1. The spade shits all over enemy structures.
2. No one uses teamwork.
3. The pickaxe is not underpowered. While it does destroy blocks slower than the spade, it can destroy the bottom level faster.
4. If you don't like it, you can go play on the ground level maps like pinpoint. Some people like tunneling, like blues. What are tunnel rats without the tunnels?
5. You can't argue realism in a game where players can hold 24 tons of concrete, shooting a rifle once and then dropping the magazine causes players to magically gain 9 bullets, your hundred foot tall golden phallic idol can be supported on 1 block, three bullets can destroy 2 cubic feet of concrete, and saying /god makes you invulnerable.

Hahahahaha oh wow, is this guy for real

Everybody will just switch to the pickaxe and make 2-block-high tunnels (2 blocks high = barely any difference between pick and shovel in terms of dig speed).

Also, being able to create tunnels etc IS a core gameplay mechanic.

Again, and again, and again, since people still seem to be interpreting this incorrectly.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
> Balancing the Spade does not eliminate tunneling. <
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Furthermore, I never argued that this should primarily for making it more realistic. What I DID argue for was that should be done to place more emphasis on cooperating among team members.

"And more importantly, they took -teams- of men to create, and operate effectively" -tons0phun

And let me say it, one more time:
.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
> Balancing the Spade does not eliminate tunneling. <
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Haha I'm sorry tons0phun but you seem to be the only one that thinks the spade is a problem. Removing it would solve nothing. No one is going to ask a teammate to help them make a tunnel and everyone would still use the pickax to do exactly what the spade does only slightly slower and barely noisier. And yes in real life you would need a team of men to make a tunnel even half as quickly as you can in A.O.S. , but since this is a game that is not a relative argument.

It is significantly slower, and significantly noisier.

And I am hardly the only person who thinks the spade needs balancing. Several others on the first page of this thread have mentioned that they too think the Spade should be nerfed.

And again, the claim is not in favor of realism, but of teamwork. People do not work together when there is no incentive to do so, and there is no incentive because digging with a Spade, alone, is effective enough.

And therein lies the problem.

People do not work together when there is no incentive to do so

And when a game strongarms people into co-operating with other players who also don't like being forced to co-operate, then everyone stops playing the game completely.

^thats true.
I was playing a game (can't remember what It was, it was some tactical shooter thing)
And I said "hey guys, we should work together to kill the enemy instead of just charging as assasins" People then said Fuck off, and they went there seperate ways.

Teamwork should only be incorparated in intel taking, building and attacking.
Balancing the spade would just be a waste of time.

*added to the useless ideas list, along with reload animations and rifles that can't destroy blocks.

This is not strong-arming anybody into anything.

You can still build tunnels by yourself.
But, being required to use the pickaxe would make it noticeable, and provide any defenders a fair condition to be able to respond to it.

I also like how arguments started out as "There's no need to change the spade, it is almost identical to the pickaxe."

To, "If you make me work with other people, I will never play this game again."

I don't think the AoS community will be at a loss if you follow-through.

You might as well turn the spade into the pickaxe if you were to balance it in that way! I mean there would be no point of use in it if you did that.

And tunneling adds a whole new level to this game that many players know and love. I mean, look at Hallway. If you took away the spade powers, then the map would be useless. And look at heavily guarded intels. If 95% of your team is fighting and you're the only one left to go for their intel, you can't just grab people from fights and get them to noisily dig with you, ONLY to be uncovered.

Spades are loud enough; I've caught over 100 diggers by now with my ears. It still takes a LONG time to dig to a place and it takes LOTS of effort and determination to make a tunnel so useful. I think you've never tunneled, but you got buttmad because some guy made a long tunnel all the way to your intel and got away with it.

I'm honest to say I was surprised you weren't trolling, tons0phun. Why don't you try digging a tunnel with the spade from one side of the map to the other, that'll change your mind about the spade being overpowered.

Why not just have a stamina, and you can't dig anymore for a while when you've ran out of it? I'm not talking any ugly blue bar there, but as there is the GRUNGHH sound in death, there could be pant when you're running out of it, and very HARD PANTH when you did.
After 20 seconds it would be full and you could start digging again.

If this was implemented, I guess that when a guy is near intel he rather runs for it than digs there.

I also like how arguments started out as "There's no need to change the spade, it is almost identical to the pickaxe."

To, "If you make me work with other people, I will never play this game again."

So you want the whole community to co-ordinate its response? Well I'm sorry if people looked at it from different angles and brought up multiple problems instead of sticking to just one point the whole time. I'm sure that would have been easier for you, but there ya go. That's forums for you.

But, being required to use the pickaxe would make it noticeable, and provide any defenders a fair condition to be able to respond to it.

I don't know what you've been spending all your time in AoS doing, but ever since the first games I was in I could detect enemy tunnelers in a crowded friendly base. You want to know the big secret on how it works? The spade has a much slower dig rate, and you can hear that just as far away as the pickaxe. Base builders tend to use the pickaxe to gather blocks, so a tunneler using a spade stands out like a sore thumb. The spade works fine, and if you know what you're doing you can counter it just as well. Just use your ears.

Don't blame the game just because you haven't developed your tactics properly.

yeah on maps like hallway or the original gen map one of my traits is hearing and locating enemy diggers, If you want to make both my and others people jobs easier then go ahead, you only just have to deal with angry people who find tunneling to the intel impossible because of you.

Haven't we already had this thread? Also, frosty, you're bullshitting. You can hear players from like 100 blocks away and there's no direction to the sound.

Ok, what about this Idea. What if there was bed rock, that could be shaped randomly under the map. It is only able to be destroyed by grenades. That way, tunneling would be much harder, and more realistic. When digging a tunnel in real life, You cant just shovel through bed rock.

I don't remember anything like this... sort of.

@nalyd8991, I like that idea, even if it is copying minecraft. But we have something like that already, you can't dig below water level.

@SLAYER
>You can hear players from like 100 blocks away and there's no direction to the sound.

>no direction to the sound.

Uhm - what? AoS clearly has directional audio. Even my cheaper-than-dirt headset lets me pinpoint a dude behind a ridge, and throw a grenade on him, just by listening to the footsteps. Figuring out just how far he is takes some getting used to, though. But yeah, you can hear another player who's within your render area - that means up to the fog.

My $0.02 on the topic follows.

The idea of reserving the spade for the top soil is good. The amount of blocks you can destroy with the spade is in no way balanced with the amount of blocks you can place in the same amount of time. And I'm not even talking about collapsing structures.

If the pickaxe, however, was the only way to dig a deep-strike tunnel, there would be less diggers around. That's not necessarily a good thing. I, too, enjoy hunting down the enemy tunnel rats and digging some tunnels myself as well. This would remove some parts of the current game, yes. It will not remove tunneling itself - just the lessen the amount of players who dig those tunnels.

Digging a tunnel with a pickaxe takes more time, like you said. It's not much more, but it's enough to deter some people. I'll go head-on against half the opposing team rather than dig a sneaky tunnel in such a situation.

Someone in the thread made the point about getting around this by just digging tunnels 2 blocks high to save time. This is a rather bad idea as your moving speed is slowed to a crawl in a tunnel like that. It's imperative for a tunnel to be a speedy access route.

All in all, I dont think the gains outweigh the costs to the gameplay elements. A large part of the community seems to hold the power of the spade in a high value, therefore we can assume it's quite a critical element, even if the game is still in beta.

I wish I could click a like button next to your comment. ^

You make some good points mikuli.

And, thanks for arguing it in a rational manner, too.

That is one thing I admittedly like about the game's voxel engine when it comes to hunting tunnel-rats, in that you can look straight-down and see if one is directly below you.

I suppose I just wish there was a more effective way to "poison" these rats, like some voxel-powered flame thrower, or mustard gas. :]

I think tunnels and forts take about an equal time to make, if you build them right. Forts that take advantage of terrain by digging under are always harder to recognize and attack. Really tunneling should be faster, but once a system of tunnels is up, the balance is way towards the team that controls them. Tunnels should degrade or randomly collapse over time.

Maybe grenades could have a random chance to disrupt things underground. Tunnels should have more risks.

The dynamic of single players tunneling across the map occurs because there is no easy way to fill in the tunnel. If opponents could undo tunnels as easily as freestanding structures are griefed, we wouldn't have as many tunnels.

Introducing some new form of explosives could change this: instead of behaving like other methods of block removal it would change the physics of collapsing, and cave in areas. However, this would also allow another form of griefing by "melting" structures. Maybe a faster building method would be better for this, or a way to flood tunnels with water.

I don't think there's any solution in taking away the existing tools, though.

For crying out loud- it is easy to undo tunnels. Sure it takes a bit more thinking than just 'dig the supports to collapse a structure' but there are many ways a player can perform counter-tunneling. You can bar the way, wall it up and divert it, put a false end at crossroads, extend a real dead end when the actual tunnel takes a turn, dig deep pits going downwards (or upwards for defenders to lob grenades in), create underground bunkers and sniper holes for ambushes, create a hidey hole beside the tunnel and wait for footsteps... the list goes on, and on, and on.

Cave ins have had a lot of discussion here, by the way.

I agree with this. Right now spades have a serious ability in absolutely destroying entire swathes of terrain, and doing this would significantly cut back on huge chunks of terrain being destroyed.

If people want to tunnel, make em work at it. It shouldn't be so easy considering just how powerful a tactic it is.

I agree with this. Right now spades have a serious ability in absolutely destroying entire swathes of terrain, and doing this would significantly cut back on huge chunks of terrain being destroyed.

If people want to tunnel, make em work at it. It shouldn't be so easy considering just how powerful a tactic it is.

Tottaly agree there...

Here's how you balance both the pickaxe and spade.

They both have a number of endurance before they break.

Let's say 50 blocks for Pickaxe, and 150 for Spade.

Once they break, you must go back to your HQ and refill just like what you do with grenades when they run out.

or maybe a drill?

Minecraft like breaklimit?

Errr.......I'll say a maybe. depends the map

nonononononononononono. Please don't make the spade and pickaxe have endurance - it's enough of a pain in the ass in Minecraft when you have to keep on running back to a craft table and rebuild your stupid items, it's going to be even more annoying when you have to run past an army of greenies so you can tunnel again.

Other than that I think that this suggestion has good intentions, but there's really no point in limiting the power of the spade when a good blue soldier can pretty much pickaxe his way through everything. And come on, when have you ever seen any teamwork in Ace of Spades besides "Block those bullets with your body while I run with the intel!"