So basically, ive noticed a few things that seem to contribute to the slippery slope. Making the slope less slippery is going to have to address some of these things. Keep in mind these game mechanics aren't necessarily bad, and some amount of slipperiness is needed. Ideally, small advantages would not be decisive and could easily be turned around, but an advantage large enough to ensure victory results in instant steamrollering to finish games. - Replacing a tank costs X resources, repairing a tank costs nothing. In a strategic/resource sense, the outcome of a very close tank duel is not close at all. The winner drives off and repairs, in about a minute they are back with a full health tank. Obviously either side can retreat, but eventually there are going to be decisive fights. Big multi tank fights are more complicated, but in general the team that starts with a disadvantage is going to end up with a bigger one. - Grens fail vs infantry, tanks are OK vs everything. If one side has to make up for a lack of tanks with grenadiers, they loose a bunch of rifleman/engis. That team's infantry killing power is going to take a big hit, especially if those grens spend alot of time getting mowed down and respawning. Tanks can fight everything as needed, where they are needed. - Grens/turrets are indecisive. Once armor and engines show up tanks can take a few RPG's and quickly turn to hide damaged sides. When they retreat, grens are not going to be able to chase them and finish it. A careful tank driver isn't going to let infantry get close enough to sticky, trap, or kill them before they can escape (mostly). Turrets are way worse because they cost money and don't move. Sure grens are free, but repairing tanks is free too. A loosing team isn't going to make up for the winners res advantage unless they are consistently blowing up more tanks then they are loosing. - Infantry don't scale. Grens get, at best, a 50% RPG damage increase for some infantry only research. The difference between a paper light and an armored engined medium is WAY more then 50%, even factoring in cost. If infantry were a problem, .50 cal, Bio ML, and HE all pretty much hard counter them, with minimal cost to tank vs tank ability. - Tickets. Infantry cost tickets, and in infantry vs tank situations they die ALOT compared to how many tanks they kill (not counting fail tanks that rush and die in any circumstances). If a team makes up for a res disadvantage by burning through tickets faster they will loose unless they can turn it around, or start mass reviving. - Forward spawns. The attacking team often spawns as close to the front as the defenders because of a forward rax, APC spawn or revive engis, so suffer no real disadvantage. - Economy of scale. The winning team and loosing team both need a VF, Radar, and research regardless of how many tanks they build. If it costs 2 refineries worth of income to keep research going then a team with 3 refs gets HALF as many tanks as a team with 4 refs. If that imbalance results in 2v1 tank fights, the winners are going to keep WAY more tanks alive and end up with huge momentum.
This is a good break down of the systems. And a great place to start if were gonna slow down the losers decent. The easyest to fix are the tickets and gren vs tank (the second of whitch is already taken care of). and with a certain Dev's recent attention to the ticket issue I'm sure theres something coming to fix that. The other issues are ridiculusly difficult to adjust with out breaking the game play. Tho I think making the APC the only thing capable of holding MG's might give Infantry a chance against the other chasis.
it basically boils down to if a team has a tank killed in action, the enemy "theoretically" has from that point on at all times 1 tank extra against the other teams tanks, making the chance they kill anotherone very high this snowball effect is kinda serious...
agree gren is the only real class in empires that requires both some skill and brain usage in order to be 100% efficient 1) agree 2) also 3) might need some testing , but its an interesting concept
Grenadier does fail against GOOD infantry, bad infantry on the other hand is easily dealt with. Yes, relatively it does suck, but most of the time I can drop at least 2-4 before I go down. That's due to skill though, in a fight with two people with the same skill, any other class would take it. As for Grenadiers against vehicles, I agree. It takes too many lives to kill a single tank, and the only effective way of doing it is to get close and blow his armor apart at point-blank, and if he jumps out you may get ownneeddd.
A coule of ideas, probably not original: - Grenadier RPGs do some small amount of damage which bypasses armour. The explosion shock damages sensors, electronics, optics, or causes the armour to spall and spray fragments around inside the crew compartment. - A law of diminishing returns applies to refineries. The first one gets you a lot of res, further ones get less and the last one gets, for instance, 25% of what the first one gives. All refs would then give enough to be worth getting, but we could avoid the situation where one team has six refs while the other has three and gets just half the resources.
Maybe make chassis tied into "research" buildings like in most RTS, games? As for the repair pad thing... Maybe make engie repair a lot slower and the repair pad cost a little bit of res? (Maybe 1/3 to 1/4 of the whole tank cost for complete repair?)
Repair could be nerferd this would improve the overall balance, add a small rez cost for tank repairs and half repair speed overall. But be carefull to not over nerf, seriously if a player and his team is good and win a tank fight they should not be artificially power gimped. Also a buff to gren and turret is nice, but the main problem here lies with that their is a redicolus jump from standard armour to anything else, this makes any balance atemped imbalance against standard or everything else. Solution would be to have armour hp connected to chassi more and balance with the new weapon vs target scrips and have none standard be more flavour armour with empashies their specialited instead of just "lolz anything but standard". Standard should be viable as armour but not great, the other armour should have small hp buff but empashies their speciality more. This would also indirect buff artillery and grens long range mortar, since if you want to attack but the enemy have large anti-tank forces artillery will be the easiet way to clear em out, since if you have superior armour numbers you can keep them of you and keep distance.
Just to add some numbers: You need 9 hits with RPG to destroy 6 plates of reflective armor if you always hit in a bad angle. This means up to 36 hits (+2 shots for the hull) to kill a heavy tank.
Although I agree that this contributes to making the game what it is, I would be hesitant to see it changed too much. Repairing tanks is supposed to be vital. It's always been listed as one of the game's features -- tanks are supposed to be incredibly valuable, and your team is supposed to devote themselves to supporting them and keeping them alive. Obviously, there are issues at the moment, but the engineers who repair other people's tanks (which you do see in the game currently, at least on any map with chokepoints) are one of the few things that work the way they're supposed to. I would be against suggestions that reduce the benefit of playing a 'support engineer' and repairing other people's tanks (the res-cost for repairing idea strikes me as a bad suggestion, say, because it decreases the value of such support.) Repairs should have a huge impact on your team's success. It's always been intended to. Now, lone-wolf engineers who drive around repairing their own tank are another matter. But if you want to go after them, it should be with changes focused on them specifically. Having an engineer running around repairing your tanks is currently one of the few ways that infantry can make a big difference, and one of the major aspects of the game that encourages teamwork. It shouldn't be reduced in importance.
Maybe Require 2 engis to repair a tank CHASSIS so if your armor gets kill you cant use drive off and repair u need team work to repair (well atleast someone else) or you could do that for armor and chassis or just armor w/e works. This may piss people off but it requires more team work.
Eh. It's an idea, but how often do you see two engineers? And you'd have to get them to spontaneously cooperate, when having just one person trying to repair the tank (once its armor is done) accomplishes nothing. If it has to be addressed, I would rather see a more laser-targeted nerf against repairing your own tank, somehow. But it would have to be done carefully... for instance, an engineer riding as a passenger ought to be able to leap out and repair, since that's teamwork that we definitely want to encourage. The simplest solution might be "if you were the driver of this vehicle in the past 30 seconds (or so), your repair rate when repairing it is reduced." I think making it totally impossible to repair it would be a bad idea -- it would be frustrating and would feel weird. But reducing the rate sharply could be a bit more subtle and would discourage lone-wolf engineer tank-drivers. Still, it's a bit awkward. There's probably another way...
