Ahahaha. No. Going backwars while shooting to accelerate yourself to the LTs velocity, thats a waste of ammo and will overheat your ass. In my opinion, if you get 2 equally skilled drivers, pop one in an LT and one in an AFV, with all STD gear. The LT will win, every time, all tanks can hit all other tanks, except for AFV/APC vs LT, and the angle won't fix it, the AFV is a massive target, and always is a massive target, turning it fixes nothing, and researching a spawn point for AFV, no! We have APCs! APCs ar efor spawning, AFVs are for hasty transport and very brief weight of numbers combat, [more AFVs than opponents] Sometimes I wonder if you people have actually fought LTs with AFVs... Grenadiers do better vs LTs than AFVs! Also, ramming LTs with a 3phase AFV... Are you MAD!? The only vehicles that can flip other vehicles easily are jeeps, I've never seen an AFV used in ram combat... Except as a victim. You ask any half decent driver, they will all tell you that LTs can beat heavies [I've seen it happen], and AFVs can't do shit lategame, I've won games using nothing but LTs and nuke tanks for stunning the heavies, and the nuk etanks were only used in the final push... P.S. I'd love to meet a competent AFV driver. You know, there are none.. Because AFVs suck so bad. Only a noob gets an AFV over an APC.
It's not exactly a viable tactic, you have to watch where you're driving, and you'll hit something eventually. And the LT WILL catch up to you, and he's shooting too... And it has nothing to do with amphibious AFVs. dizzyone, you still here?
Its one of many AFV tactics that works great for me, I guess I am just more aware of my surroundings then you cause I never backup into anything and can usually turn around and get behind the lt for the kill.. The only thing that makes the LT hard to kill is shooting thru it's wheels. Fix that and it's and even matchup, but making the AFV amphibious wouldn't fix anything and lead to a lot of potential bugs and exploits. And if it did help it would only be on a few maps. Also I have seen ALOT of LT's get flipped by tanks with out 3phase.. That's something I wouldn't call a viable tactic but it happens often on maps like duststorm and mvalley..
I think the LT is definitely better than the AFV, but I don't think that creates imbalance. I believe someone already hit on this point, but argued in the opposite direction. Each faction has it's strengths and weaknesses, so just saying the AFV sucks isn't enough to say there is imbalance. I think giving the AFV bouyancy is a great idea, but I think it would be a bit like only giving one team aircrafts. If Empires expanded to include nautical transports in general, then the amphibious AFV would be a bitchin' idea, because NF COULD go to the water, but they would have to build the marina or whatever first, etc. I would agree with dizzyone that right now it wouldn't do much in the way of balance, and would make map design a bit akward. If there is infact an imbalance I would suggest just giving the AFV a slightly higher weight capacity, or giving it a two slot for MGs. I think both would make sense. I mean if the AFV is a converted APC, and the APC has 3 MG slots... Also, I find the extra armour slots mean very little since the restricting factor on the vehicles is most often the wieght, not the armour slots. Maybe that's just the way I build-um though. I would suggest a slight wieght change now, and then if the game ever goes aquatic, definitely make the AFV a duck. Side Note: I find the angle restrictions on the tanks is a bit annouying as well, but I also find it adds to the tactics of the game. Remeber one mans lose is another mans gain. If tanks can shoot anywhere, then it will remove one annouyance and replace it with another.
Well after aircraft are implemented, such water mobility will hardly be an imbalance, and quite an effective early game all terrain tactic [giving BE a more expansive feel early game]
Just out of curiosity, when you asked for good rebuttals, what was the point? Here's a list of cons/pros/alts, as I browsed through the thread: Pros: -Brenodi have an additional counter against LTs. -Aid to swimming infantry. -Amphibious strikes. -Factions are more distinctive. Cons: -Doesn't fix AFV/LT combat balance. -Tanks loitering at the bottom of lakes. -Current maps don't support amphibious vehicles unless they float. -Maps that support amphibious vehicles are more difficult (if not impossible within practical limits) to balance between teams. Alternatives: -Maps should use lava instead of water. -AFVs could be made more effective, to balance with LT. -Make LT amphibious as well, or other vehicle pairs, with balance considerations.
2 slot MG on AFV = BAD! AFV's should not be able to stock upgraded weaponry if the LT can't, it would create a big imbalance. Simply by going the Physics route, BE would have good armour, good engine, and anti-tank MG's on both their APC and AFV.\ Edit: dont forget that the AFV also can carry more armour. Small DUMG on AFV = BAD!
At the moment LTs have speed and combat power over AFVs, AFVs have carrying capacty over LTs. Rather than giving AFVs a speed boost, give them a mobility boost by allowing them to cross water, that way they have an advantage the LT doesn't.
Giving AFVs amphibious abilities will break the game, it requires maps to be redesigned because one team can get across water, where normally, water would prevent anybody from easily reaching the other side.
The ability to transport four guys and a rather crappy light tank is not game breaking. The guys can get there anyway and the tank wouldn't stand a chance against a couple of ML turrets. I don't see why it would any more break the game than having the LTs be slightly faster than the AFVs. If it let the BE deploy heavy tanks en masse into the enemy base then I'd agree, but it doesn't, it just allows infantry to move around faster and to have some basic firepower when they get there. As the LTs already outclass the AFVs in combat, even if the BE managed to use this to get a bunch of AFVs behind enemy lines, the NF should then be able to smash them with their light tanks (which they should also by then have) or even just grenadiers. It is theoretically possible for it to create a major imbalance in the game, but not on any of the current maps, as none of them use water as a major impassable obstacle, cyclopean has paths through the lake, and mvalley has bridges over the rivers, and they are in canyons which would take equally as long to get out of as the bridges would to cross. The only way you could make it imbalanced is by quite pointedly designing the map in the BE's favour by putting in lots of totally impassable rivers between them and the NF and I still don't think it would make that much of a difference given the crappiness of the AFV. The last time you brought this up with the APCs it made more sense because APCs are much more powerful than AFVs in the long run, but an AFV can't carry a spawn or an effective weapon, so it's not a problem.
Consider the custom maps though. Some maps would be unplayable in terms of balance until the map was fixed. Take maps like emp_frost, or emp_sinking, or any other map where water is in large masses. On frost, BE could just rush AFV's through the water, circumventing the lethally slippery ice bridge. A few other maps use something like this in terms of water bodies. Think of emp_sinking, which is an island and uses rising water. BE would have an insurmountable advantage.
Then they will simply have to redesign them, or simply put trigger_hurts in water they don't want to be crossed, which would resolve the issue, although it would be a poor design choice unless they made it obvious that the water would damage the vehicles, in this frost map you could simply say that the water is cold so it stalls the vehicles out, which you could also do with a trigger I think, assuming that empires vehicles share the engineoff input.
I use those maps as examples of unique mechanics involving water, not examples of the only usage of water in a manner similar to that.
And my solutions resolve all possible issues with the BE having an amphibious AFV. The specific map is irrelevant.
Hang on, you're arguing that it's not fun to die from driving into water, and therefore it's stupid to make it like that where needed? Even though we already have that?
If you allow AFVs to drive in water, allowing them to die in water is just stupid. The can't assume you can drive in water without testing, and to drive in water you need to remember each map where and where you can not drive. Not fun.
If i get your point correctly, you want to make them amphibious, but you want level designers that don't want them to cross water to add trigger_hurt brushes to kill the vehicles as the move around in the water. How do you know that everybody, except you, won't just add trigger_hurt brushes to all their water anyway because they don't like the feature? It really isn't good adding a feature to one vehicle, and then force level designers to work around it every time they have water in their maps.
I expect level designers to use the feature, just as they would use the prone feature, or the hide feature, or the sabotage feature, or the refinery feature, or the flag feature. People don't have to use it everywhere, but I see no reason why they should not use it somewhere. Which is why, as I said, it's a bad design feature unless you come up with a plausible explanation for it. The green water in HL2 is poisonous, empires mappers should come up with a similar visual theme, if anything else you can just stick a sign up near the water saying 'DANGER: CONTAMIATED AREA' so they know that the water is in some way unsuitable for vehicle passage, couple that with a visual theme, such as some sort of spillage in the water or rocks in it, or just anything like that, and you can keep vehicles out.
