So, I know these ideas are unlikely to ever be implemented, but I thought I'd put them down just for fun. Maybe if I ever win the lottery or take up coding again I can do them myself, but since neither of those are very likely, I may as well just talk about them. These are gameplay changes mostly addressing what I feel are imbalances in the class structure. Everyone knows we have these problems, so it's not really a big deal pointing at them. There are also a few other random things. Rifleman - Claymore/Satchel Charge. 2 Max Ammo & Placeable Limit - Regenerated by a Health Sacrifice ability - something like 50HP should be sufficient (depending on regen upgrade's speed). - Has Large Vehicular Damage, very low damage vs infantry - Very Small Effective Area, Visible Profile (deterrent factor) - Defusable of course - Possibly even deconnable Or - Dig-in type ability generates an explosive bullet function. Explosive bullets deal damage to vehicles, no extra damage versus infantry. - Should be low damage, though number of bullets makes up for it. - Should probably drain a lot of stamina on shot, which would need to recovered for more firing. Scout - Ability granted to sabotage vehicles. - Sabotage is a slow DoT effect - Lessen ability to sabotage vehicle factory (e.g. building damage only) --- General - Bio effect replaced by water drowning effect ala half life. That is, if your health is drained by the effect, it recovers over time. - Bio would do 90% damage with this effect. - No stamina penalty --- That's it I think. If I have anything more random to add, I'll add it later.
What is Sticky Grenades? Although I keep forgetting bio drains stamina, that is pretty beat. Maybe that bio thing would be neat, it would mean bio couldn't pull double duty as a anti-infantry weapon. Make's mgs more worthwhile. Instead of sabbing vehicles, which is kinda dumb when they have sticky stuns, I would rather have melee upgrade damage vehicles. Just a low amount though, because punching out tanks is too ridiculous even for empires.
too obvious you need to have some actual viable shit first and then this stuff, not the other way around. except just about none of it is actually viable 2/10
Well, if we could make sticky grenades placeable it would be about the same. The problem with stickies is they basically encourage a suicide rush unless you're in close quarters, and other than that riflemen can't do anything to vehicles. I think it's a serious problem when whole classes have a marginalised ability to deal damage to something that takes over most of the game, and so did other people which is why stickies were put in in the first place. I just think it would be better if you could renew the ammo, and also not have to run up to a vehicle and risk death so obviously. Sacrificing health is actually quite similar, except you'd be able to deal with the vehicle differently, and be able to set up a trap or area denial instead. I felt that sabotaging vehicles was a good idea since again, it's renewable and the intrinsic ability of that class. But to be honest, maybe melee damage or a decon ability for all classes is a better idea. I mean if you get that close to an enemy tank, you ought to be able to at least decon it. Actually I like that idea a lot. Heh. It's almost like you don't understand I've been around for 7 years now. All my ideas were carefully constructed to fit into what was both possible to code and what didn't need any new assets. I'm done with that now.
Scout - Ability granted to sabotage vehicles. - Sabotage is a slow DoT effect - Lessen ability to sabotage vehicle factory (e.g. building damage only) No just fucking no why not just remove sabotage all together then all the commanders will be happy
We've gone over that before, Spike. Removing sabotage is akin to removing the class, and no one's ready to do that yet. If you remove sabotage from the scout, they basically become useless camping snipers. At least sabotage does *something* if used correctly. Besides, what would you replace it with?
Just remove the class and give the stun nades to the Riflemen. You'd notice the missing scout like once every few dozen matches.
Ive seen the exact same argument made for why the sr needs to stay in place. After so many years or actually seeing scouts play, Im seiously getting behind the idea of just getting rid of the class. Both sab and sr are annoying solo abilities.
When I said "no one's ready to do that yet" I was referring to the dev teams. All of them that we've had in the last few years. To be honest, the scout isn't very useful in the current game, but the idea of a scout was important. I always thought of scouts as being the risk element in the team, and they also used to be used as siege-breakers, since they could navigate around enemy teams and destroy an ancillary base or at least succeed in drawing attention away from the front, allowing the defenders to break out their base. By the way, does anyone else think that walking speed in Empires is just low and is just there so we could have a sprint function and speed upgrade? I mean, can you really justify having "stamina management" as a basic gameplay function? Why not just integrate a 10% speed boost as standard? Isn't it also kind of funny that the class with 2x stamina regeneration by default is the class that doesn't want to run anywhere since it can't do anything once it gets there? I mean, why do scouts even have that stamina upgrade? They're hardly ever running to a front line to secure it, or heck running anywhere to get there first so they can actually DO SOMETHING. Because they can't do anything. Scouts specialise in going somewhere that's already been built up, then crawling around to sabotage and lay down fire. There is no reason to give them that stamina upgrade, really. But it does highlight what the class was meant to be. Perhaps if we actually give it the tools to do something on the front line, then we'd be fulfilling its intended purpose.
Vehicle sabotage ideas: Sabotage should only work if no one is in the vehicle. Driver sees explosion under vehicle engine hood. Scouts can detect sabotaged vehicle and un-sabotage Sabotaged vehicles take either take 70hp hull damage when a person starts it up (instant death for jeeps please) or it has -30% cooling till repaired.
I actually like it when people decide to posts their ideas on the game, even knowing that they most likely won't get implemented. Some people have good ideas that just need to be tweaked a bit to be good, other ideas might not be good but form a good place to start thinking from. The vast majority of ideas are going to be bad, but I feel the chance that a good one might might appear is worth it. Obviously though, this only applies to people actually thinking things through somewhat, like Ikalx did. Shotgun is still in the works, but remember that the next patch is almost going to be entirely about making the game launch properly, along with any other things that were added between last June and December. Depending on how things go, it may or may not be in the next one. And even if it doesn't look like much is happening as far as releases go, discussions regarding development still happen. The discussions we have in spec chat are more fruitful than most people would realize, and we've a good number of ideas floating around for dealing with the scout, infantry balance, sudden death, research, resource distribution and other areas. We're more or less in a feature lock because all the time we have is going towards debugging, but we still talk about what we can do once we've met our current goal of getting Empires to launch properly.
There is a few things wrong with this post. Scout doesn't get a recover stamina at twice the speed, unless you are talking about the squad lead ability. Also while you may complain about how slow walking is when you compare it the large distance one might travel, it serves a good purpose in close encounters. It honestly feels just as fast as running around with an assault rifle in counterstrike. It also makes people actually have to chose if they want to survive a bit longer, do more damage or just get going places if they choose speed upgrade over something else.( I know running faster helps you survive but you know what I mean) I also say scouts are definitely useful in current gameplay, it is just you need large pops and some who knows how to play the class. Both of which are in short supply currently. You also made a post regarding stickys and how you wanted a indirect way of dealing with tanks for rifleman. Mines are the whole point, and grens get to lay 8 of them. Yes rifleman don't get them, but they shouldn't either. Rifleman are just a great counter for infantry, and they really shouldn't be having so many options for dealing with tanks. I mean engineers don't get to do much, and scouts are on the same foot as rifleman. I think you have to understand too, I feel like stickys are meant to more of a deterrent so tanks don't just rush right in front of a base or a fortified position. I mean there is usually still infantry for them to shoot, let the grens handle the tank. You can decon tanks as an engy by the way. Unless you where talking about all classes deconing them.
This is the exact code for the ApplyStamina function that increases the player's stamina and decreases it while sprinting: Code: //recharge and discharge sprint if (m_flSprintAmount < 100 && !m_bSprint && m_flSprintPenalty == 0) { int recharge = 5; switch ( m_iEmpClass ) { case CLASS_SCOUT: recharge += 2; break; case CLASS_RIFLEMAN: recharge += 0; break; case CLASS_GRENADIER: recharge += 1; break; case CLASS_ENGINEER: recharge += 1; break; }; if ( HasEmpiresSkill( CEmpClasses::GetSingleton().SK_Gen_StaminaInc() ) ) recharge += 2; #ifdef GAME_DLL // source of prediction errors, good for now if (m_flSprintSquadBonus > gpGlobals->curtime) recharge += 2; #endif m_flSprintAmount += gpGlobals->frametime * recharge; if (m_flSprintAmount > 100) m_flSprintAmount = 100; } else if (m_flSprintAmount >= 0 && m_bSprint && m_flSprintPenalty == 0) { int discharge = 20; switch ( m_iEmpClass ) { case CLASS_SCOUT: discharge -= 2; break; case CLASS_RIFLEMAN: discharge -= 0; break; case CLASS_GRENADIER: discharge -= 1; break; case CLASS_ENGINEER: discharge -= 1; break; }; if ( HasEmpiresSkill( CEmpClasses::GetSingleton().SK_Gen_StaminaInc() ) ) discharge -= 5; #ifdef GAME_DLL if (m_flLeaderSprintSquadBonus > gpGlobals->curtime) { //squad leader's sprint power negates all stamina drain discharge = 0; } #endif m_flSprintAmount -= gpGlobals->frametime * discharge; SetStamina( m_flSprintAmount ); } else if ( m_flSprintPenalty > 0 ) { m_flSprintPenalty -= gpGlobals->frametime; if (m_flSprintPenalty < 0) m_flSprintPenalty = 0; } For those of you that can't read code, the base amount of stamina regeneration is 5 per second. Then the scout gains an extra 2, gren and engineer get an extra 1 and rifleman gets no bonus. If the player has stamina upgrade, they get an extra +2, and if there is a scout squad leader, then the whole squad gets an extra +2 on top of all that. If you're sprinting, you lose 20 per second, 18 as a scout and 19 as a gren/engineer, with a further reduction of 5 if you have stamina increase. If I remember correctly, and this is what most likely Ikalx is talking about, it's stated somewhere that either Stamina upgrade or being a Scout doubles stamina regeneration speed. Either way though, this is the exact way the game handles stamina regeneration and sprinting. This doesn't include other ways of losing stamina, such as firing the HMG or jumping.
Oh I see. Yeah the stamina upgrade says it recharges twice as fast. I have to say that is a very weird way of doing I think. It also means none of the classes actually get a 2x speed boost. Honestly with the way it works I doubt many people really notice a difference, I tried testing this earlier on cylcopean. For all the classes without stamina upgrade you can just about sprint from the south end of nf rax to the north side of the ref in nf's base. That half second amounted to almost nothing. Stamina upgrade makes you run about 2 meters for most, scout goes like 4. That's what it feels like to me anyway. The regen itself is kinda nice, but speed upgrade will always be more useful. On that note speed upgrade doesn't affect how fast you run when sprinting. I am slightly disappointed by that, but I kind figured that out awhile ago now. Can I ask that the description be changed to say it is only a 33% increase and makes you run just a tad longer? It isn't exactly true but it is close as it going to get with those values.
