I was going to put this into the gameplay thread, but for the most part this sounds like a suggestion and no one really seems to care where empire discussions happen anyway. Edit: Oh crap, I thought I copied this into a suggestions thread. Oh well. Out of curiosity, what do you guys think if the win condition of empires was changed? Currently the main way is to simply kill the command vehicle, with the secondary win condition killing the entire enemy team and any spawn points. I've been thinking how empires would play out if you took out killing the commander. It wouldn't work to simply keep the secondary win condition, rounds would take forever, even if you made it so you couldn't build another commander. So you'd have to add on some other condition. Simply getting rid of every spawn point, without regard to who's left alive?(Simple destruction) Capturing all but 1 of the refineries? (Map control) Researching some sort of win condition, either in some cool super weapon or a simple building that causes a win?(Combination of map control and putting a time limit of sorts.) A team wins when enemy tickets hit 0?(Destruction with a more concrete time limit.) Adding in some extra resource that teams fight over.(Like map control but you can be sneaky about it possibly.) Destroying 3-5 enemy command vehicles?(Pretty much like giving a life system.) All of the above?(Lots of options, also really complicated.) One thing is I would think if the command vehicle is no longer a win condition it should allow the team to build another cv if it gets destroyed. If you couldn't build another one all it would really do is extend the game in a pretty bad way. People would still be motivated to kill the cv if they can, it's expensive or has that win condition I mentioned and it delays a team in building, plus they lose someone with an eye over the field giving out attack orders. For some of those ideas, other things would have to be changed too. For instance the ticket idea requires some way for tickets to scale to player count, otherwise some maps would never end while others end in like 10 minutes depending on player count. Gets rid of sudden death too, which is a good or a bad thing depending on who you talk to. Refineries is a bit tricky too I feel, larger maps I think it would work nicely either as a replacement or an additional win condition. Small maps I'm not so sure. People might not like being able to hold out for 15 minutes with 1 refinery in their base full of turrets and walls. Note when I say capture I mean building a ref at those points. The extra resource is most likely something that would have to be map dependent. I can't think of some way to really incorporate that into every map without messing with it. Though I do suppose you could tie into the ref idea and refs get this win condition resource along with regular resources. Or even make it so radars say generate some item every 5-15 minutes. A team needs 10 to win and can steal them from the enemy team. Would change the game quite a bit now that I think about it. Would make it so people have to wager on if they should let the enemy team stock up on this item and steal it or try to get rid of radars whenever they can. I know the obvious con is that this wouldn't seem like empires to anyone currently playing. I have to say though, for the most part when people play they don't seem to care about destroying the commander, they seem to care more about destroying bases. Probably because it can be harder and certainly more satisfying to do.
Why the fuck is "Game Play" two separate words? This looks terrible! ... Win conditions? Oh yeah, right. Most of those sound okayish, but I'm not really sold on removing killing the comm. I think it's a bit too easy to ninja it, but I don't know.
I think it should be a combination, with any 2 win conditions fulfilled, you will win: Destroying all enemy spawns [1] Killing all enemy infantry [1] Capturing all the refs except the last (though possibly with last destroyed) [1] Having Reinforcement Tickets when enemy has Zero (at least 10) [1] [?]Significant number of dead enemies at once (~10-15) [1] [?]Destroying CV [1 or potentially 2] So if you destroyed every enemy spawn and controlled all the refs except 1, the enemy team would lose. Or if you captured all the refs and the enemy had no tickets left, you'd win. Etc...
Vote me for lead dev and I will make CVs respawn in vehicle factories. As long as there is a VF there is hope!
Well honestly, I was musing over this because like I mentioned most people don't care about the cv. Getting rid of a rax, fighting a tank, building a ref are all 10 times more important to players then simply killing the cv. I think part of the reason I never noticed this before is because the people who are all about killing the cv haven't been playing much til recently I feel. That and the last few times I was playing I was commanding and no one cared if I got stuck/got their cv stuck. Or I was simply able to just drive past people and they really wouldn't try very hard to stop me. So I was thinking it might work towards better games if the thing people didn't care about wasn't the object of the game. Things people do care about is map control though, so capturing all the refs does seem like a good idea. Ikalx is probably right though, it might be better if the last ref you don't have had to be cleared before you win. I know Empty and a few others mentioned that having map control seemed like a bad idea, this would potentially help that.
so if the cv isnt important as win condititon anymore we could scrap it, right? then comms could be like ordinary players just that they can do all the rts stuff aswell ... ... love it. so many new things to do as comm, like for example actually having fun fighting off enemies instead of babysitting the research timer. (i know this wasnt the intention sadly)
I dunno about the not caring, Lazybum. I figured with a low population people don't want to really chase the CV because it's just so much work doing it solo, that and...you really get less of a fun game that way. Maybe it becomes more of a thing with more people, because it can become a challenge - when there are players all over the map, getting through them to the CV can be quite fun. I do think we'd have a better game with more win conditions though. Less on the CV and more on the rest. And if we wanted, we could just keep the CV as a win condition while we phased in the other conditions to see how it'd work out. Honestly I think it wouldn't change too much until people started adopting those ideas. I mean if you had to clear the last ref, then people would protect it from harm just as diligently as the CV, and spawns and tickets are always kind of tried to be protected. Tickets usually go out of your hands though, since someone will always spawn the last one.
We should be able to have a drawing or composing minigame where players can complete to create a work of art that is voted on by the spectators to see which is best. Those great works of art then generate tourism for either BE or NF until one culture reigns supreme resulting in a cultural victory.
Absolutely. Use the tank cannons and sidearms to create a percussive symphony, drop walls to to spell "fagott", I love it!
Although I'm not sure all of these suggestions are serious, I disagree with every one. "Destroy the enemy Command Vehicle" is beautifully simple, and also creates an interesting trade-off - which some commanders play more with than others - of how much to use your only vehicle at the beginning of the game.
I was pretty serious about mine. A bunch of fools decided to make the thread look like a joke, but it's not. As long as you have the cv as basically the only way to win, you're going to have problems with certain types of things happening. But hey, it's not like anyone ever complains about sneak attacks on the CV or rushes ending maps too quickly. And let's face it, "destroy all spawns and kill all infantry" is a win condition that comes when a CV is either being chased or in the process of being destroyed. It's kind of pointless for command maps.
I wouldn't mind seeing more map based win conditions. That is, capturing areas that actually change the map in a way that is favorable to the one owning it besides resource/ticket/spawn. One example could be a map where one team is trying to out another teams base and the objective is to deactivate a series of Anti Air towers. If all the Anti-Air fall then the map is pretty much over when the enemy air ships nuke the shit out of the enemy base.
Ikalx is right since the limited number of win conditions strictly inhibits the way games play out and, to be honest, the current endgame is the norm and it's not too fun
