: These guys are going to behave a little bit like jetpack brutes from Halo 3.
: Basically, they're going to embody their Knight chess piece role by being
: able to move funny around the battlefield. But they're not going to
: teleport to do this, because that's obnoxious and inelegant. These guys
: are going to perform low, long, slow leaps.

: Actually, aside from the ability to perform these floaty leaps, these guys
: aren't going to have much in the way of special abilities. They're not
: even going to spawn watchers. They still have guns, though. However, these
: guns will consist of multiple types of projectile weapons to encourage
: player movement.

: These guys will have shields, and these shields will respond much like Reach
: shields, in that they will flare more and more visibly until they pop. The
: head will be slightly larger than in Halo 4, and will stand out better
: through less hectic use of colour.

I disagree on the no-teleporting aspect, since I think that was a legitimate strategy that forced you to sometimes engage a larger group of enemies you were hoping to avoid taking on at once. Them having full shields after teleporting, though, is total bullshit. Cut that out, and also give some better indicators as to where they went (a flash of light as they exit or something along those lines).

: Crawler

: Dogs with guns? No. Just dogs. These guys are still going to be very mobile
: like in Halo 4, but they're going to act like Flood infection forms from
: Halo 1. They will attack the player by performing a (potentially fairly
: long) leap with a melee at the top, such that the leap will overshoot if
: the player dodges it. The melee will do mild damage.

: Crawlers will be more numerous than in most Halo 4 encounters, but have lower
: health and larger, more consistant head hitboxes that don't jiggle so
: much.

: One potential way to balance these guys with difficulty is to speed them up
: slightly on higher difficulties.

: Crawlers will have their movement properties balanced in such a way that
: careful maneuvering should permit dodging them with quite good
: consistancy.

Ehh, I think the Infection form AI is rather boring and nondescript. This will kill any chances of making Crawlers have personality. I also think they should keep their guns, although having a strictly melee no-gun base class to fill their ranks on lower difficulties would be a good idea. I see these guys more like Skirmishers then anything else, and I think that's a good thing. Also, cut those ridiculous jumping animations (this goes for Grunts as well).

: Watcher

: These guys will have much lower health, and won't feature a very strong
: running-away behaviour. However, they will be very agile and will make
: themselves hard to hit, and may sometimes do things like maneuver
: themselves behind allies.

: Watchers will not feature a wide variety of skills. They will be able to
: ressurect knights, however. They will also have a projectile weapon which
: will only be effective against moving targets at very close range on
: account of slow projectile speed, but it will do meaningful amounts of
: damage.

I agree that Watchers should be less involved in combat, kind of sitting at the peripheries of the fight and only attacking if all the other Prometheans are gone or if you attack one first. However, nerfing them too much would detract from the experience.

I almost think that their should be another class of Watchers that sit high above the battlefield, calling Prometheans to your location until you take them out with a long-range gun (not past the range of a BR or Carbine or even Pistol, but definitely out of reach of any automatic weapon). Perhaps not calling them to you so much as calling you out and preventing you from sneaking up on anything until they are dealt with. They wouldn't attack, but they also wouldn't go away until they were destroyed.

: Alright, chess theme time. One defining feature of these Prometheans is that
: they'll sometimes "set themselves up" in a tactical layout and
: wait for you to make your move. When they do this, they'll cast a sort of
: black aura around themselves (this aura will disappear when the fight is
: initiated); they're confident and they want you to know that they're okay
: with you (white) making the first move (obviously white isn't necessarily
: an advantage in real chess, but hey, something for the game to play
: with!). As they wait for you to make your move, the knights will stand
: stoically and mega-intimidatingly, the crawlers will do things like arch
: themselves and just generally seem like very angry cats or dogs, and the
: watchers will buzz around and cut small figures through the air. The fight
: initiates when you fire a weapon more or less in their direction, or when
: you get too close.

:

: They won't always start fights like this, though. Sometimes when you enter an
: area, the Prom guys may already be aggressive. Their *may* be white
: flashes involved here at the beginning of fights to signify that they're
: already doing their thing.

I actually love this idea. It reminds me of the Chieftain "boss" fight on The Ark. :) Not all encounters should be like this, but I think it could work in tandem with the Meta-Watcher idea I had above. Whenever one of those has spotted you, every encounter you come across will either have this configuration or will be an immediate attack/ambush.