A plan - Symmetrical vehicle combat -> Bringing back counters

I prefer the asymmetrical nature of the game, the issue is missiles are much harder to aim for new players and guided has to be aimed constantly with about 8 missiles in the air currently over a long time. Cannons have the distinct advantage of point and shoot easier for new players plus with their falloff they can be aimed over obstacles more easily.

 

A-z-k, just because engineers and squads are vital to the game doesn't mean something else can't be either. Empires is defined by, among others, the engineer/commander relationship, squads, infantry/vehicle combat, base building, asymmetry and its art direction. Any large fundamental change to these parts alters the game to a point where it becomes a game (somewhat) like Empires. These components together set the mood, form the story, of empires which is essentially the purpose of any game. Even hide and seek has a flimsy story, just as Indian and cowboy or other Childs games. Chess has a story as well. A game needs it and whether you like it or not asymmetry in game mechanics for both teams has an effect upon the story that is Empires. It is what highlights the conflict in the story and I feel like I'm repeating myself, but it gibes purpose to playing the game other than trying to be on top. It gives a sense of pride when your team wins even if you yourself suck at the game which is extremely important if we want to keep any new players. Almost as important as not being dickheads in game like JustGoFly was last night when he shouted and screamed at a dmgorst time player.

 

Ha. Well I dunno - I just dont see it as a huge issue for both teams to have a chocie of eeither. It doesn't hurt my impression of either faction and I think it will open up apportunities to do cool stuff with weapons. I just don't think it is That fundamental. You can still have asyymetry everywhewre else, but up there it does hurt the tech tree and thaty is bad for the gameplay.

 

I agree with you, and most of us do, that the current vehicle implementation of asymmetry is weak, but removing it altogether is nit the way to go. Keep the difference in style of each team, let them keep their identity, but balance them out. Give BE a unique vehicle that can stand up to the NF LT to replace the AFV. Give it roughly the same size, but accentuate each teams unique focus on armour/weapons/speed/weight. You can balance that out good enough.
The current problems are due to vehicles not balancing out each other at every stage of the game. Like NF heavy not being compensated enough for the second canon on BE heavy.

 

https://wiki.empiresmod.com/Factions

 

Honestly I think that if all of the weapons and armour and engines were at least somwhat balanced you would fix the games current major problems instantly.

Also Cannon's and some missles run out of ammo way too damn fast.

 

wow... You are totally misreading his post. He is not saying a totally unbalanced game ia not fun, but it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced to be fun either. Or did you bit have fun playing 1.05 version of this game that was totally wack in balance, or any of the other versions after that up till 1.08? Which was the first version I can remember that had some sort of good balance.
Striving for perfect balance is a waste of time and energy. You'll never hit it and it won't magically make the game fun either. Good enough balance with fun game mechanics will.

 

That was probably the final fundamental idea I came to rest with. I didn't manage to implement it fully and I let that shit with Fission engine go on way too fucking long. In retrospect I have no idea why it took me so long to commit a fix that I did 2 weeks after release, but then again putting patches out was a bigger deal back then.

With regard to how those scripts work, I took the decision that rather than attempting to find some "perfect" balance in which every tree was equally viable, I'd try changing things up so the weapons act different rather than just have slightly different statistics but function the same. Point being, my hope was that if I couldn't make it so every path was always viable, I could at least make it so different paths were viable on different maps based on the way you actually had to use the engines, weapons and armour in order to be effective. I.e. Fission required you to constantly move, Coolant required the opposite. No way you'd want Coolant on Duststorm, but no way you'd want Fission on Slaughtered. Likewise certain armours promoted sieging or hit/run tactics.

I'm not saying it was a success because it wasn't. And as I stated earlier in another thread; it doesn't matter how perfect you make it, it'll get stale after 3 months and you have to change things up again regardless. But certainly with proper code support and some serious theorycrafting, I felt like the concept could have been pushed much much further beyond what the current scripts allow.

 

I support asymmetric.

Except for NF CV, we should totally remake it.

 

The nf cv is fine its great to drive and to boomtank with

 

Thats what it looks like to me.

 

Also Spike, let me pour some cold water on you.

Events have absofuckinglutely no relationship with our population trend.

Hosting events =/= Keeping mods alive

Remember Summer League 2015? That was the absolute darkest time for Empires.

 

Events can actually bring back some old ass players and improve population. Remember the population on jekotian on Saturday ? the population was at 46 and even after the league games people stayed to play even after the league game. The pub rounds after league game were great i only stayed for 3 then i went to sleep even when i went to sleep the server was well populated. I really don't know why you have such a negative attitude toward's events security.

 

It's related to his reply.

And yes you got that right.
Events simply have nothing to do with our daily population.
You can say you hosted memorable games, but saying you are keeping the game alive is too much.

 

I only put up events to support the community and add interesting events everyone can take part in.

 

Alright, I have written up a list of ways you can fix empires currently rather than remove the essential things that MAKE it Empires.

1. Re-add counters with the asymmetry, think of a pentagram style tree. In the research tree, label what everything is good against and bad against. Add some way for teams to know what team has what, such as tinted armors or engineers deconning tanks gives them info on the tank design. This includes making engines more unique, making armors EXTREMELY unique and actually varying their weight/cost, and make weapons potent.

2. Make tanks potent again. Tanks are weak as hell. It takes a lot of shots to kill any other tank and even infantry, since they now have the ability to survive multiple ER cannons to the face and 2 rounds of HE. I don't ever remember this, tank weapons should be buffed and Mediums should become the MBT. A long time ago, I remember when teams did NOT get heavies because they were too expensive even though there were super strong. Coms used to research Mediums, then they would have to counter what the other team got meaning they would get another armor/more weapons to counter. Mediums are very similar to each other, so this would solve a lot of the issues you have by making Mediums mid-late game.

3. Make heavies what they are, OP and siege breakers/breakthrough tanks. Heavies have taken on the role recently of being the only tank on the field in late game, this can not be. Teams would NEVER attempt to research heavies and skip meds because if you did, it was a guaranteed loss. Now, this has become almost standard practice and it NEEDS to STOP to add any sort of fun/wild combat we all remember.

4. You want to draw in new people, then address the issues at hand which is this community. It is more toxic than leagues which is definitely saying something. Noobs dont like to be bitched at as they want help to learn the game but all vets, including myself, come off as toxic at times.

5. Debuff Infantry. I don't know when Rifleman became a tank hunting class, but that should be exclusive to Grenadier with Rifleman having the ability to take out early game tanks. Rifleman should pose little to no threat to Mediums/Heavies, that should be the grenadiers job.

6. Make Combined Arms Great Again. I remember when infantry would support tanks and it wasn't a spam fest. Those days are gone. There are multiple ways you can go about this however.

• You can decrease speed of tanks, make their weapons extremely potent to infantry and other tanks, and make turrets turn at the rate of not the speed of light. This allows infantry to sneak up on a tank as he cant flip around and shoot an enemy in .1 second. This requires infantry to support tanks so they don't get ganked by infantry.

• Make tanks particularly weak to some infantry gear such as grenadier so they can't lone wolf it like we see so often. Would require tanks to at least have the hatch manned to try and take out enemies (Also fix the hatch so it doesn't rotate with the spin of turret).
• Noobs don't know how to make vehicles and absolutely hate the tank combat the first couple times they try. By making it more combined arms you are allowing them to be deadly and useful to the team as long as they use a gun.
• Increase the cost of all tanks to decrease prevalence on the field. This means more infantry would be required on the field as people could afford less tanks. Edit: This is where Empires went bad. When cost to research was removed. Back then, Com's had to choose between research or more tanks which would decrease the number of tanks on the field. This has never been fixed since it happened.

7. Make it so noobs can see who is good at the game, this obviously means a ranking system. While some would argue "This wont work", it does give the ability for noobs and other vets to see when a team is stacked rather than one team claiming stacks and the other denying it. If 10 people on one team are rank 70 while the other team only has 2 rank 70 and all others are 1-30, this obviously is a stack. There can no longer be a denial of the stacks and therefore unstacking would be much easier.


These are just some ideas, there are more but some big ones I think that YOU are talking about. I do not mean to call for your resignation, but I think what has the community in uproar is the lead developer is taking a stance against everything Empires is.


Edit: Now that I think about it, Empires started its decline after the cost to research was removed. The cost is what made coms make risky decision, it made heavies rare on the battlefield, it made Mediums the most prevalent tank, and since it cost money and not just time everything seemed more OP and in some way balanced. You want an OP weapon? Costs a lot. OP Armor? Costs a lot to research and use. Ever since it's removal, that is when we started using almost exclusively heavy tanks...

 

Everybody makes mistakes and literally every single person in this thread has at one point or another suggested a fucking awful idea, so don't be harsh.

We should just put this one aside, think of other ways to improve Empires, and keep on trucking.

Personally I think that all Heavies should have 2 ML and 2 Cannon slots, but everything else is a bit much. People would agree on that right?

 

There's plenty of other ways around this.

 

Basically this. The Asymmetry that everyone loves so dearly is mostly an idea or an aesthetic. Most of it makes hardly any difference at all to how things play out.

• 4 people in a Jeep - cool, a small early advantage when you push that 1 single jeep out at the beginning of MValley.
• Turret seating in APCs - cool, tell me more about how it is only used to sticky stun the enemy commander when the game is over.
• Different sized hitboxes - Honestly, a tangible benefit to NF LTs but only because they also "handle" much better too.
  
• Different handling - Well it is just different levels of bad really.... NF LT & Al BE tanks are tolerable, NF meds & Heavies are annoying but still - they do the job and most of the time if you die it could be been avoided by being better skilled.

However then you get on to the only thing that actually does make a significant difference in the game:

• Assymetrical tank load-outs on Heavy Tanks:
  
  • Limits what can be done with 2 & 3 slot weapons because you have to consider how they will stack.
    
    • Even more so that stack usually means a heavy bursts down a med super easy or else is ineffective against heavies.
      
    • Which is why Meds got more armour, which is why meds vs meds is slow as hell.
  • Makes certain maps favour certain factions.
    
    • Open map? I'll prefer the utility of twice the homing missiles you have.
      
    • Choke point map? I very much prefer to have twice the amount of arcing cannons raining hell into tight spots please.

I don't need to see the same handling and hitboxes etc on the vehicles (though everyone loved the revamp of the "asymmetrical" NF barracks).
But both teams should be able to choose their chassis. That or Even more simply just restrict both heavies to 1x3slot CN & 1x3slot ML - so you'd only really go heavies to get big bad 3 slot weapons and you could go to town on those.

And I don't think balance is such a huge problem as people make it out to be either. Until you get up to heavies.
Because how on earth can you balance one weapon to be what you want it to be, for a weapon to be fun and functional and cool and exciting... When one team is getting twice as many of them.
Take homing ML - it has always flittered between being awful and OP. Because if you buff it enough to be good on a medium then on an NF Heavy it will wreck face.

Additionally the main problem is Heavies are just bigger badder mediums. More weight, more armor, a lot more fire power. They are no different, they are better.

 

Offtopic but 2nd seat apcs is a much better boon than you give it credit for

 

I would like it if teams got a heavy with 1x3slot CN & 1x3slot ML, then had a research choice to add an additional CN or ML slot.
But really anything that is even between the teams in terms of load out. So that research paths are equally viable on each side.

As far as the handling, hotboxes & models go - I'd definitely prefer the NF models were re-done but short of that leave them as is.
Maybe they could be made to look a bit nicer with a retexture in trhe same way the NF APC was a while back.

I guess it is essentially a free "UGL". If everyone is using it then sure, it is probably OP, especially when attacking refineries early game. But it doesn't get used that much in pub games and its not that useful when you are moving.

Its another thing that personally I'd remove, or give to NF as well.

We're not building a wall around BE. We told you already.

 

NF has this advantage early game, it's a pretty big one as well considering jeeps cost 35 res.

This one is useful for BE, I'd say makes up for not having a 4 seat jeep. Only time it is ever used is to grenade a refinery from or sticky the com but even then it is hard, but it is still there.

This provides a big feeling of asymmetry. This is why NF meds have 5 plates of armor compared to the BE med. This is why the NF heavy has 7 plates instead of the BE's 6. This is why the BE AFV has 3 plates instead of the Light Tanks 2. Mobility comes at the cost of less armor, but the other tanks are not nearly as mobile.

This is another BIG part. When a tank has less armor plates, it is more mobile to compensate for less armor. We can not remove this, each side has poorly handling tanks compared to the other in some regards and I think we NEED to respect this.

This is easily fixed by not making it symmetrical. When Cost to research was removed, heavy tanks became the main fighting tank rather than the Medium tank which would USUALLY end the game back in that era. On top of this, we have seen continual debuffing of tanks weapons to make them less potent, which is another reason that Medium combat is so dull.

This is currently an issue, again I would say, because of cost to research being removed. We NEVER saw as many heavies on the field as we did after this feature was removed. The only map that had tons of heavies was Money, and even then Arty/meds were favored over heavies. Heavies need to cost a LOT more to decrease their appearance on the battlefield, along with buffing all weapons so medium combat isn't slow. This also makes heavies EXTREMELY deadly but also COSTLY so there won't be many. And if we go about slowing them down a bit they will need cover from Medium tanks.

The Revamped NF barracks allowed it to be placed in places it couldn't before and while this did remove some asymmetry, the same argument for this barracks and tanks can not be made. A barracks is a static building, the tank combat is something that is fluid and appears in every game and makes up a majority of the gameplay along with infantry combat.

While this is a meh idea, I still would prefer Asymmetry and just decreasing the amount of heavies on the field, having it be a siege breaker tank or a tank used to ram through a defensive line of enemy tanks. This would solve a lot of problems because, again, the medium tank combat is fairly balanced. It just needs weapon buffs.

Agreed, we need to bring back medium combat to what it once was. Back when it cost 3000 to get heavies and a long time, people rarely got it. We need this back.

It should be balanced to be good on a medium, and wreck face on a heavy. Let's just decrease the amount of heavies on the field and make them truly feared like they once were.

Exactly, so lets not make end game combat have 50 of them on the field. The MBT should be mediums with a couple heavies to absorb the blows on a charge or to conduct a siege.

 

I think resources have generally gone up, but lets not kid ourselves that things were perfect before. People didn't roll that many mediums late game. before wages certainly people would queue in the VF waiting for a heavy tank much to the shegrin of the commander.

My feeling is that you can balance research strategies using the tech tree (and for sure more utility in each tree would be a good thing to help there). But you can't balance what people WANT to drive that way. So long as Heavy tanks straight outclass mediums then people will drive heavy tanks first and mediums when they can't afford to (at which point we go back to the slippery slope argument of why research was made free in the first place).

Make Heavy tanks slow, hard hitting, long cycle times, anti building/emplacement, etc. THen maybe you will see squads with 4 mediums supporting 1 heavy tank. Until that day you can mess with all the values you want for cost, research time - it just means you will field less tanks.