Do we have a good reference for the current state of the research in Empires? I feel like it's been changing often enough to where I don't have the luxury to learn it in a game, but I can't find a reference anywhere to figure out what does what.
Do you mean what's good against what? Or what's a good order to research things? Or just where everything is? For a general of what's decent against what I made a post in that other thread here that kinda out lines things. It's just my opinions mixed with some facts though, worth as much as a fart in a hurricane. https://forums.empiresmod.com/index...mpiresmod-com-are-outdated.20800/#post-539913 For everything else listen to people who play the game too much.
As of 2.11.0, research/vehicle UI descriptions have been updated, they tell you what's good/bad against what. (Yeah I know no one reads them) Although the current research tree structure doesn't allow you to "preview" the info before you enter the branch.
HM, yeah not looking for an interpretation as much as the actual statistics. I want to be able to calculate simple things like "How many plates can be taken out by a full rotation of this weapon against this plate type." (Would be useful for figuring out armor type of an enemy team) "What's the infantry damage of a certain cannon against a player given a certain radius of impact" "How many shots does it take to take down a barracks from full health to dead using HE MG" "How many sticky grenades from a scout does it take to kill a NF APC assuming full plates and all stickies from one side?" "Given this common research path, is there a faster path to a different research that can counter it?" (Example: Rushing Gren RPG upgrade a sound idea against standard research?) Yeah, the exact problem is that people in Empires have all been playing so long at this point no one's opinion can actually be trusted in game. Not to name drop, but we have a lot of very vocal individuals in this community who often leverage the volume of their voice more than the validity of their opinions. Rather cut through that and deal with hard facts instead of a bunch of maybes. That being said, your post is better information than most of the screaming I hear in game about "Physics is shit, go Bio." Thank you. Ah, so the descriptions are up to date? Sweet. Thanks for the heads up. Although that is exactly the problem I'm having; Reading during a match is not ideal.
the hardest facts are the scripts, just saying. except ofc for what is hardcoded, which isnt this much afaik.
Ah, yeah you are only going to get that from reading all the stats on weapons from the scripts themselves and keeping a mental list that updates whenever the game updates. My 2 cents on a couple of those things you mentioned: Rushing upgraded rpgs is worth it if you have really competent grens, or people just willing to gren instead of tank and you aren't being overloaded with res. So on maps like crossroads or canyon it could be a good idea. There isn't much in the way of counter research in my opinion, more what's effective for the map and who's on the team. Really the only counter is abs against bio, but if you think about it reactive has almost the same effective hp against bio as abs and compo and regen regenerate, so it's still not that bad. Supposedly 4 stuns to kill an apc, assuming a generic 80 hp per plate. Really depends on which armor and how fast you get them off on it. HE MG doesn't do anything past a certain distance to buildings, but thanks to all mgs losing basically a point of damage the instant it's fired due to travel time and truncating values it takes 200 shots now to kill a rax or whatever if you are next to it(it's only doing 1 damage a bullet). 3slot version takes 100 shots I think, or about 40 seconds of continuous firing. Turrets and armories take more damage, so it's probably worth shooting them with hemg. The cannon one is tricky to be honest, but really only he cannon, plasma, std cannon, and bio cannon have a big enough splash radius to effectively hit infantry. Rails and ranged have a rather small radius, and you kinda need to basically hit them or right next to them to do anything.
Absorbant has 134 EHP against bio damage and reactive has 120 EHP against it, but this is before we consider the weight difference (12 vs 18). On top of that, when using the grenadier armor skill, a single volley of two heavy ER shots strips away almost exactly one plate of absorbant. That makes absorbant really good againdt the current meta weapons for BE heavies (ranged + bio MG). And then the heavy has a grenadier or two ML turrets in tow and you die to those while the heavy is tickling you, so there goes theory. As for cannons, 3-4 direct std cannon hits, 3-4 HE cannon or plasma cannon hits, 3 bio cannon hits, and some indeterminate number for precision cannons, double that for grenadiers with their resist, factor in passive healing from the ever-present engineer SL. But that's just what field experience told me, so the scripts might have a different opinion
Nah that's about right, I mean 2 direct hits with he cannon does kill anyone not a gren though. How much damage cannons do hasn't really changed at all though in the past 5ish years or something though, except for that one time someone was messing with infantry resists a lot. Also yeah I know about the weight and the extra 10ish hp or whatever, but just looking at the direct results it's not too terribly off. Considering on lights and apcs with no weapons it's not hard to max out on reactive armor, even heavies can get like 5 plates a side if you just use 2 weapons.
AFVs get 11 heavy plates assuming no MG, LTs get a full complement of 8 assuming no MG, APCs get 10 assuming no weapons. The problem starts with mediums already. 12-13 heavy plates on a BE medium assuming two weapons, 16-17 on an NF medium assuming two weapons. Durability is going to be better than with a full load of weaker armors, but the drop in damage output is much more severe than the gain from extra health. At least for me. I imagine that more patient and defensive players, who like to keep their distance and focus on landing a single weapon's hits, do better with these kinds of armor.
If you have armor detection, you can work that out. If it regens fast => regen. If it regens slowly => compo. If you see a fully-armored tank that's also armed to the teeth => absorbant. If you see a tank with less armor plates than usual => Reactive or Capacitive. ---- If you have anti-vehicle MG, Capacitive has 160 effective HP and Reactive has 120 effective HP. ---- If not, Capacitve can take more missile damage than cannon (written in description). If it does not regen, and the armor layout looks like compo => Deflective (you can double check by firing at it from different angle.) Above things don't even require serious script knowledge, weight/health are completely visible to everyone, the rest is just a little brain-storming. I have to say I like the current armor detection. It does not bold-face telling you exactly which armor enemy is using, you have to work that out.
That is way too much work to figure out what armor the enemy has when playing on the field. You say counters would be impossible to tell, well jesus that is a lot more work than figuring out if something is weak to something else.
Okay let me shorten it. In terms of weight 18: Capacitive & Reactive 15: Deflective & Compo & Regen <-- Use "regen speed" as the second filter. 12: Absorbant Except for Capactive and Reactive, I have to say everything else are instinct-level, it's not difficult at all. You can tell easily from the armor layout.
It's very simple to tell once you understand how to: Kit out a tank Use armor detection Fire at enemies in varying circumstances To add on to that, you can often tell which armor the enemy went for by way of their weapons, since next to nobody gets armors and weapons from separate trees (unless we're talking composite of course).
