Suggestion thread guidelines - Read this first!

This is designed to help new players who are making a suggestion for empires. Before making a suggestion, make sure you have used the search function to find similar existing suggestions and have read the following guidelines.

DO NOT LIST PROS AND CONS, explain your suggestion as well as you can but let others judge its consequences and worth.

First things to think about:

1. Will it benefit game-play in empires?
2. Does it fit into the empires universe?
3. How feasible is it to introduce to the game?
4. Is the usefulness of the suggestion relative to the effort that will go into making it.

Is it a good idea?
Use these points to help you decide whether your suggestion really is a good idea:

• What will this idea encourage, for good or ill.
• Is it helping teamwork or hindering it?
• Is the game more tactical/fun for its inclusion?
• Are you adding this because you are bored by something (your inclusion may well negatively affect the first three points)
• Is it something that you just find hard to use in game (If so, ask an experienced player, practice with it, or just focus on another aspect of the game. For example, I fail with the scout rifle, so I rarely use it.)
• Does it help balance the game does/ does it unbalance it?
• Does it promote teamwork rather than individual skill?

In your thread you should include an explanation and reasoning of how your suggestion would change the game with the above points in mind.


Further Things to Consider:

• Aircrafts are not being implemented
• Horns have totally already been implemented
• New vehicle models are being implemented
• Many ideas have been already reported in organize stuff topic.
• Check the Under Consideration and Rejected subforums to be sure someone else hasn't already had the same idea.
• If they are not, check below to see if they are part of the 'Rejected' List
• Following on from the above topic, remember to post (using the correct format) your suggestion, once it has been fully discussed by the community.
• You need to use the forum search before creating a new topic to ensure that Your idea was not yet proposed/implemented
• The best practice is to write one idea per topic
• The best posts are well structured, with correct spelling and grammar.

Done to Death:
The following things have been suggested in the past, and are considered “Done to Death” by the community, try to phase out discussions about these topics:

VEHICLES

Motorcycles
This has been a big on recently, and has been shot down quite a few times.

"More" Vehicles
By this, “More” has no suggestions, just saying there should be a selection of vehicles. Try to come up with a specific idea rather than forcing others to satisfy your suggestion

Anything to do with Changing the heat for tank combat
The Heat Bar is there to balance tank combat, some weapons do little damage, but have a low heat output, and some engines, have heat related capabilities. Remember, if anything, it is there for a reason.


Missile Tanks
Missile tanks have been shot down many times, maybe, if you could create one, texture it, ect, and send it in, it might get added. This goes for most “Add this” sort of thing, remember, the Dev team is short of art members

Engineering Vehicles
The engineer class is more than effective enough at building, engineering vehicles would be pointless

Minelayers/Mines for current vehicles
Grenadiers can already drop landmines, minelayers would be redundant

Ownership of Vehicles
This would just cause problems with griefing, and wouldn’t add anything to game play

Mechs
The devs have specifically mentioned that Mechs will not be implemented.
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INFANTRY

Parachutes
It has already been decided that players will be transported in "Crates"

Any new classes
For the moment, there will be no new classes

Super Units / Weapons
This has been suggested a few times, it simply is an unbalanced idea

Sniper Rifles (or anything to do with making the scout rifle into a sniper)
Empires doesn't want snipers, due to the large distance of maps, which would make sniping pitifully overpowered. The current ranged rifle is being removed

Jetpacks
These would not fit into the empires universe

Antitank rifles
There is an RPG, a Mortar, Sticky Bombs, Mines and other tanks, more anti tank weapons are not needed at the present moment in time

Flamethrowers
This would be hard to code, and fairly pointless due to the long distances of usual encounters


[/COLOR]Exoskeleton suits
Falls under mechs and will not be implemented.

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BUILDINGS

Sniper Towers
This would be a map specific thing due to balancing reasons

Bunkers
Same as the above

Mounted weapon emplacements
Same as the above

Power/Energy/Plasma/Meat? Shields
These would only encourage turtling

Different types of walls
The current walls are very versatile and can be used in a variety of ways, other kinds of walls would simply be redundant

Power Stations
This would just add complications to the empires already complicated learning curve

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Miscellaneous

Things that give players a significant advantage over other players, and disrupts teamwork.

Bots
These would probably lead to problems on an already strained system, as well as the hours of coding it would ensue

Mustard Gas/Chemical Gas of any kind
Any form of gas grenade could be used for spawn killing, and spamming a weapon that has the effect of smoke grenades as well as does damage is not something to be encouraged.

Repair Drones/Any form of automatic repair or building
Repairing and building is the engineers job

Lazerz
Lasers have no place in the Empires universe

A third faction
A third faction would be too much work to model and code

Things that you have seen in another game
We don't want to be seen as "Copy Cats", as well, it is best to come up with new, different and imaginative ideas

Anything to make Empires "More Realistic"
Remember, that empires has never been about realism, “Fun” takes priority
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"Ok I've read all of it, what else should I know?"

There is nothing worse than badly written, one line suggestions, your suggestions might be the greatest in the world, but in the end none of the devs can read your mind. Explain your suggestion properly and explain how your suggestion will change the game, keeping all aspects of the game in mind.

Heres a few things that can improve the quality of your suggestion thread:

• Use current ingame examples and how your suggestion would have affected these situations.
• Always explain why you think this is an improvement, saying it's cool or you saw it in another game is not sufficient.
• Which elements of the game your suggestion might affect and how you suggest on working it out, what else would need to be changed to get this to work?

Don't ever expect anyone to work out your suggestion. Lets say you wanted to suggest a new vehicle weapon:
What are the weapon characteristics? Damage? Cycle time? Ammo? Speed? Is it balanced with other weaponry?
Does it need to be researched? If so, what is its placement in the current research tree? What is the time and cost of the research? Is it balanced with the existing research? Is there another weapon that fulfills the same role as this?

If you have any skills, use these to improve your suggestion, work out all the details yourself, it will make it easier for any dev to approve and implement such a suggestion.

 

I have made this a sticky, if you think the list is missing something, or want to improve it, please continue the discussion here: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=4914