Just saying, you use numbers to back up your point, you better make sure people know what the numbers mean.
I've skipped HEMG most of the time but I've done reactive twice in games I would consider of interest, didn't ultimately do my team any favors but they weren't dying by the dozen. Both games (bridges and slaughtered) got pushed back pretty far in early game, in slaughtered once we had meds (NF) we were able to push back to normal S bend position slowly, and got a different armor for UML/HEMG heavies that secured a win. On bridges played BE, got reactive/3 phase and got pushed into our main until we got rail heavy tanks with a different armor/engine. Bridges game was of interest because the enemy team went full bio, so reactive performed poorly there which I believe is the expected result.
No, I use "how the game works" to back up my point. Numbers are just supportive. Empires is like 10 years old, if you guys suddenly want to know the meaning of individual numbers, I feel that's good because now you guys actually care.
Overall I would agree this is a move in the right direction. Definitely much better than only one research path. But I would like to see a buff to all armor just a little. What is happening is vets are returning from the fight very frequently to repair, but nubs are losing tanks at an alarming rate. Or maybe tank weapons are just too powerful. Buildings are getting destroyed very fast, and tanks are easily killed if shot from multiple tanks - like in the slot on slaughtered. It's very tough for a team to fight in that slot of NF has the advantage in both tight slot fighting and in open range fighting with either guided or homing. Also can we get slightly faster steering on NF vehicles? BE is fine, NF is longer so turns very sluggishly. But maybe that is part of the balance - stronger, but slower to turn. So changing this might make NF even more deadly stronger. What might be interesting is to make BE tanks slightly faster, so they can get away from guided/homing. This is controversial - so only an idea that needs some discussion. Can we increase the torque on gas engine a little? It is very sluggish from a stand still. I've read all the number reports on how much better reactive is than compo, but from the survival rate, I still feel compo is a better armor. Maybe it has to do with the angle multiplier or that a gren with armor upgrade improves compo more than reactive. I'd like to do some tests on Tank Training with someone on this.
You would be amazed at how little people want to touch handling, even if it's a minor thing. It's so easy to go from "just a tad more and it will be ok" to "doing doughnuts forever", or more frequently it just feels like it handles worse. Someone keep poking me about this, I keep saying I want to fix handling for things, like the jeeps, for awhile now. It's just such a pain in the ass. Reactive is a bit better then it used to be on heavies simply because you can put on 2 more plates then before, 240 hp is a lot. I don't think it's quite the best answer to everything though, compo has regen going for it which I think is what makes it really stand out for anyone not engy or simply constantly chasing like in light tanks. It's just more of a case reactive isn't just an early game armor anymore so it being good has been made much more apparent. I can't quite comment on abs or regen yet though, both have gotten a bit of a stigma and it's hard shake the idea it might not be terrible to anyone commanding. I did find it funny though when spart got capactive on slaughtered while saying it was op as shit and then our team proceeded to keep losing tanks do to getting stuck in overheat. A big part of that was going for rails which is easy to hit your self up on, especially with 3phase as an engine. Another part was simply people don't keep an eye on their heat anymore because you can't overheat yourself and people don't get plasma stuff. Still though, I think what might help capactive is if there was a function that if you go in overheat instead of slowly cooling down from there you immediately lose 20% or something heat, after all cap active doesn't actually give much heat but because any damage source turns into heat once you get stuck in over heat you really can't get out of it. Would probably also help heat to target stuff in general from becoming op, because that's really easy to do.
Here's my plans with the armors, all minor changes because I feel that we are almost there. 1: Nerf Compo's strength by 1%. 2: Deflective armor HP 72->75 Angle Modifier 0.95->0.85. So Deflective will be easier to use. 3: Regen hp 70->72, keep in mind that regen rate is plate/sec, so this would also improve its regen power. 4: Capacitive damage to heat 0.06->0.05 This might disappoint you, but currently I am not gonna touch vehicle handling, as it is very tricky and it's something that I can tell you : I have no idea what can I do to improve that (or, to not fuck it up even more) It's kinda why I am nerfing compo slightly, compo is just easy as hell to use.
on that game lazybum was talking about we (the other team) had composite but we realized it sucked so we got reactive instead and started doing better and people seem to be getting hemg alot too, which i saw coming. its strong enough and you can outfit your armor completely on a med, and put alot on an apc too
Seem to be? People have been getting hemg for a long time now, I constantly get yelled at if I don't get it. Honestly, I'm not huge on the power hemg brings, I feel like something changed in a not good way when it became so powerful. There's something to be said when it brings 50% of the damage for a bunch of people. I wrote it off for the longest time because I thought it was doing the damage of std ml, nice as a hit scan but not mandatory is what I thought. Now I know it's almost greifing my team to not get such an easy to use weapon.
"Neutral Turn Factor" "2" Maybe bump this up a little would solve this issue, simple to fix. Ok, so I took it on myself to see if the nf heavy can be fixed, and I have the solution. involves 2 things, one is the nf_heavy individual script, the other is the engines. "Neutral Turn Factor" "4.5", makes it turn comparable to other tanks while sitting still. The engines need higher RPM settings to add to steerability, and a higher speed in both forward/reverse. Below are the settings I tested, without any spinouts what so ever. I did the Gas Turbine as a test, but the others shouldn't be that hard to alter also to mimic this. It's just we see the Gas Turbine researched more that any other, so it's the one we drive mostly now. Code: "Mechanical Eng 1" { "Name" "Gas Turbine" "Description" "This engine excels in raw horsepower, gaining more as the vehicle becomes more damaged. It is much lighter and cheaper than other engines." "Icon" "vehicles/gui/engine/gas_med" "Size" "2" "Type" "7" "Cost" "20" "Weight" "20" "Research" "Gas Turbine Engine" "Max Weight" "5000" "Max Speed" "45" "Max Reverse Speed" "35" "Shift Up RPM" "2600" "Shift Down RPM" "1700" "Horsepower" "2000" "Horsepower Weight Penalty" "0.0" "Horsepower Health Modifier" "-0.25" "Horsepower Armor Modifier" "-0.75" "Heat Output At Max" "3" "Heat Output At Idle" "1" "Stall On Armor Damage" "100" "Stall On Health Damage" "60" "Stall On Heat" "0.9" "Heat Capacity" "100.0" "Heat Stall Penalty" "0.0" "Heat Dissipation" "9" } Hope this helps fix the whale.
Neutral turn factor doesn't do anything while moving though, which is what I think justgofly meant. Unless he meant turn in spot, in which case I think the turn rate is fine but you cannot be moving back or forward while you turn which is something I think some people forget or don't realize.
I did mean while moving, but one issue on Neutral Turn. But ability to turn while sitting still could solve the getting out of trouble issue. At least makes choke point fighting funner, instead of bobbing into all the friendly tanks and hearing complaints of people getting jostled. Also can both COM vehicle have the ability to turn while still? It might help getting out of sticky situations. One more issue. I was playing Commander Grad yesterday, pushed as NF Heavy with guided. BE had mostly shit weapons, but it just seemed wrong to quickly kill five heavies in rapid succession. They were obviously trying a base rush. When I went back to main the com was panicking because we have three heavies floating around main base bombing everything and those three were quickly killed within 30 seconds. It just seems wrong to have such weak armor. Tank battles are now about who can get away fastest. Gas engine sucks on initial startup from dead stop, so if armor stays so weak we should at least have some engines to get us moving faster. This draws attention to NF handling. Even though I think NF Heavy is now superior to BE heavy, and maybe the turn rate is the negative that may be needed to fix that, there still seems to be an unfun factor involved in the balance. And a WAY Fun factor - try NF Light tanks with Bio Engine/Bio Armor. I trolled the crap out of a team last night by driving through there turret farm, main base, and although I had a PEW PEW HEMG AFV on my ass the whole time pounding on my rear, it couldn't kill me. I finally drove all the way home to have the main base turrets kill him.
Not-too-strong tanks and powerful weapons are what we want. BE on the other hand has dual rail that can deal 100 DPS. Plus, cannons don't have to reload during a single skirmish. If you are driving a dual guided and you meet a dual rail, it's either you burst him down or he burst you down. Also, if I buff advanced coolant further(1~2 more heat dissipation), I am thinking Capacitive will be a pretty badass option against dual guided. Because Guided ML is very slow, it deals very little extra damage to Capacitive(around 15%), Capacitive would have much higher effective HP than Reactive against Guided.
I used to think capactive getting heat was something easily accountable for. It's not hard to pay attention and not get stuck in over heat. I was proven wrong, it is easy. Taking heat from any damage is no good, that's the conclusion I've come to. Not unless there's some way to instantly drop 10-20 heat once overheat wears off(maybe engine still cools but you can't fire or move for those 3, 5 seconds, whatever it is?). After all receiving heat shouldn't be about the over heat state, it should be about reducing offensive capabilities due to less fire output. At the moment it's too risky, even people who should know better can get stuck in overheat because people have been conditioned for like the last year to not pay attention to their heat bar. New people never could watch it, but now even more experienced players are failing at it because you simply don't have to anymore. Really the way heat works and the overheat state works need a rework because heat in general causes unfun situations, that's all it does. Until it does I'm not certain it's worth playing with any heat to target or receive heat from damage values. It just causes way too much frustration.
"Imagine in any tense skirmish you receive 10~20 extra heat, that's definitely something." Sounds familiar? But I don't think our overheat system is that bad. At least you had a good fight with the enemy, I don't think that's much frustration. Not to mention your enemy overheats too. Heat system is one of the things that make Empires special and it's not horribly bad.
You know std ml, and even hemg, is enough to keep someone in overheat state with capactive. I thought that extra heat was whatever because I'm so used to sitting in the middle of the heat bar. I didn't consider how easy it is to get stuck in overheat. Things you couldn't know when 1v1 someone. how does the enemy overheat? They heat up yes but we can't make them sitting ducks that can't do anything.
When are riflemen going to be able to out run a tank ? When are riflemen getting invisibility? How about tank buster weapon for riflemen ? Fucking hell - this is getting ridiculous what you have done to make riflemen the biggest threat in the game - now they can toss those stickies further than ever - and you exploit the fuck out of it.
Stickies were changed? Since when? I didn't think the throw distance was something in the scripts either.
You're right, no changes made to them. Sticky throw distance is a tricky one, they throw like normal grenades but have a lot more gravity force applied to them.
