Faction balance

Discussion in 'Game Play' started by Nickierv, Feb 8, 2012.

  1. Nickierv

    Nickierv Member

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    To avoid derailing countless threads, I figured I would make my own thread to derail.

    As it stands, NF uses missiles, BE uses cannons.
    While this sounds good from a flavor standpoint, lets admit it, its a balancing nightmare.
    Without changing the behavior of the weapons, Missiles are best at short range due to speed (uml/salvo), or against buildings (guided/no arc on uml). Homing has to lock, but once locked, you cant dodge it, and this is another problem
    Cannons are best at mid range (ER/rails)

    What are peoples feelings about keeping/changing this system.

    In all fairness to the current system, giving NF a 4slot cannon with 2 spaces and BE a 4slot missile with 2 spaces seems like the simplest and quickest fix.

    Part2:models
    The RPG, jeep, and barracks already have working or close to working community fixes/upgrades. What will it take to make these official?
     
  2. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    4 slots? you crazy foo...
     
  3. Reznov

    Reznov Member

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    NF Missile heavies aren't only known decent tank combat BUT their real nature is the UML accuracy. NF Missile heavies can very easily snipe any building from any range, even long distance.

    As for BE heavies they are the actual masters in combat. I mean of course, dual HE is very quickly overheat but if you know how to use it (do some serious damage and then retreat) then BE heavies will mostly have the advantage. Also BE heavies are more difficult to hit in specific areas since they are less tall than NF heavies (which is NF heavies weakness in combat, get close to a NF heavy and he won't be able to hit you).

    And yes, BE heavies are not the best at taking out buildings but they are very good against turret farms or buildings that are bunched up together.

    So basicly:

    NF Heavy: All-range fighter, Single-building destroyer
    BE Heavy: Mid/close-range fighter, Multi-building damage

    IMO the current system is really just depending on how good your team is.
    If you know how to drive any heavy tank and make yourself useful with its advantages then you have won the round for your team. Btw, you can't balance a game completely especially if we have teams like NF and BE.
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2012
  4. FN198

    FN198 Member

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    thank you reznov, you nearly wrote everything i thought that i would have to
     
  5. -Mayama-

    -Mayama- MANLY MAN BITCH

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    also every map with uneven terrian favours cannons
     
  6. bitchslap

    bitchslap Member

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    and every map with long open distances favors missiles
     
  7. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    It will take a machine gun on the back of a jeep to make them official.

    Oh and the CVs have to be able to drive on top of the new barracks. It's a safety concern, the ground gets cold.
     
  8. TheLiberalElitist

    TheLiberalElitist Member

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    In my experience missiles are easy to dodge. just move out of the way, and it will pass by you. cannon, is a little less predictable, although, uml and HE are nowhere near apple and apples when it comes to damage.

    Some more weapon variety would be nice.
     
  9. bitchslap

    bitchslap Member

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    Missiles could be uppped a bit for dmg imo due to their inability to move as fast as a cannon shell, but its pretty damn balanced when u look at the average hvy vs hvy tank battle....

    we really should focus more on armors, research, and the visuals ingame, then worry about any minor rebalance in factions.

    There are plenty of matches NF win and plenty where BE win, trust me we had versions many moons ago that were brutally favored, as in BE won whenever they got to heavies and NF's whole job was to defeat them/prevent that from happening or they 98% garunteed lost.

    The game is far from that now and maybe inf. weapons could use some 'balance tweaking' but again, its minor at this point.
     
  10. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    The RPG fix isn't really good enough, nor is the Jeep one, although Bitchslap is looking into that. The rax is being looked at as well I think, but my point being, none of the community "alternatives" are good enough, but we're getting new alternatives.

    But I agree with most of the sentiments in this thread regarding NF vs BE balance. I'd just like more variety personally, and I think using that we could achieve a better balance.
     
  11. bitchslap

    bitchslap Member

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    i need the jeep qc and smd's to work on it... :)

    i have plenty other keeping me busy, but jeep might be an easy fix...fire away.
     
  12. PreDominance

    PreDominance Member

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    More variety? Let me have my fuckin' 6-shooter again.
     
  13. Paradox

    Paradox I am a gigantic asshole who loses people's hard wo

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    Imo the game is fairly balanced but it seems to me that nf is easyerfor nubs and be has more advantages for vets. Like if youhad 2 teams filledwith noobsnf would win most of the time,but if youhad 2 teams filled with vets be wouldwin more, not by alot just more. (taken inconsideration the teams are balanced)
     
  14. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Which is interesting, given that most newbies tend to stick with BE until they're more experienced. I didn't play NF for months once I picked up empires, I didn't like their dirty fingernails.



    I thought you had these give a shout to some dev if you need them. But you don't afaik, Bumgravy did it all without them. All you need to do is open the vtf for the jeep, work out which bits are the rollbar (colour in bits of the texture with block colour and see where it ends up ingame to work out what is what), and then alpha that out. Having said that, Bumgravy's is fine imo, if you can find the old files. This: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=6131 was the thread.
     
  15. aaaaaa50

    aaaaaa50 Member

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    If missiles and cannons are balanced now, then why not make it a choice each team can make? Why force it to always be NF missiles vs. BE cannons? If it's a choice from what weapons are researched by each team then you get more variant tank battles each match.
     
  16. bitchslap

    bitchslap Member

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    Ya, may do that, but I'd prefer to recompile it with those parts removed, makes more sense in approach to me.
     
  17. MOOtant

    MOOtant Member

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    That's absolutely accidental. FalconX wanted to balance things out and his idea was to do missiles vs cannons (he did it with weight mostly). It happens that such "balancing" turns game into piece of shit where instead of tank combat you ram into enemy and fire all missiles you can. There's very little reward for aiming at enemy from afar and hitting when he's relatively far away.

    Simplest idea is to have dumb MLs do 0 damage to vehicles (with damage type) but you'd have to propagate the change and check all results of it. For instance it'd need visual indicator that dumb ML does nothing. I might not have the best idea when it comes to solving the problem but I'm 100% sure that problem tank combat boring and not requiring any skill.
     
  18. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    I still miss the era where you would equip a cannon and a missile launcher if you wanted to do max damage. It was kinda fun when you had either missile boats or railgun behemoths, then you faced off with an ace in your sleeve - an uml on a rail heavy or an ER CN with your missiles... or more often, some mg's to turn the tide.

    Don't really like the "one weapon use" tanks tbh.
     
  19. PreDominance

    PreDominance Member

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    Did you not see my posts? 6STD CANNON HEAVIES. COME ON BROOOO
     
  20. Nickierv

    Nickierv Member

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    # of plate per second.
    Code:
    Armor       UML : HE    UML/HE
    abs        0.87 : 0.29 : 3
    regen      1.08 : 0.45 : 2.4
    reflective 1.22 : 0.48 : 2.54
    reactive   0.83 : 0.31 : 2.67
    comp       0.89 : 0.38 : 2.34
    std        2.98 : 1.32 : 2.26
    CV         0.24 : 0.10 : 2.4
    Need I say more?

    As for HE being able to do serious damage, consider the following:
    Code:
    Std vs HE
    abs        0.16 : 0.29
    regen      0.47 : 0.45
    reflective 0.44 : 0.48
    reactive   0.25 : 0.31
    comp       0.42 : 0.38
    std        1.52 : 1.32
    CV         0.10 : 0.10
    Just a feeling, but HE needs a buff...

    Its not just how good your team is when your weapons do less than half the damage.
    BE might as well be useing blanks

    And this returns to the original idea of the 4 slot slots. BE still keep the dual rails, but NF has the option of going cannons and not be compleatley screwed. It works the same way for BE being able to get missiles. NF still gets missile boats, but BE can use missiles withount feeling useless.
     

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