Empires 2.6.3 released

Discussion in 'News' started by Candles, Mar 14, 2015.

  1. Candles

    Candles CAPTAIN CANDLES, DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN.

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    First, I'd like to apologize in advanced because it's like three in the morning and I've been hacking at these scripts for six or so hours now, so I won't post a complete changelog until I wake up in the morning. Also, because of the major changes, I fully expect and take responsibility for anything missed/broken/overpoweredasfuck.

    I will, however, give a quick rundown of what's happened.

    Infantry:

    Pistols, NFAR/BEHR, Mortar, RPG, SMG1/2 all got reverted to how they were before.

    Machine Pistol and SMG3 were slightly nerfed to stay on the safe side, because I want to see how everything else fits together before bringing them on par with everything else.

    BEAR was left the same, though I reverted the changes to localized body damage. NFHR was given that 3-shot thing; I remember a lot of people liked it when it was 3-shots. Damage has been lowered and spread increased on it.

    HMGs have be overhauled (again). Due to people constantly telling me how important they are for a support weapon, I increased the ROF, spread, recoil and lowered the damage. The net effect is a weapon that for like 8 seconds can provide ridiculous covering fire. The spread and recoil *should* be high enough for it to not be OP, along with the falloff, but it might be a bit too strong.

    Scout rifle is gone, again.

    Grenades were untouched. Most of them had timer shortages, but they seemed fine to me anyway.

    Shotguns were mostly untouched, but I did the same thing as I did with BEAR and reverted body damage changes; it's going to be a decent bit weaker now.

    Most infantry-infantry resists got thrown out; scout has a 20% resist against bullets and rifleman 30%. Scout also has a 20% against grenades and 10% against mines. Every class has a 90% resist to seismics again.

    Weapon descriptions are going to be a bit off.

    Vehicle weapons:

    Plasma got a heat nerf, so it dishes out half the heat as before. Rails got a damage nerf, clip size nerf, heat nerf, speed nerf. They're all small; it's how it was back in 2.51.

    Dual small arty is back. Yay. So is medium arty, but who uses medium arty anyway?

    UML and BioML got reverted, which ends up being a small buff to both. Nukes were also reverted, so they're slower with less heat and more spread. Salvo was reverted, ends up being a nerf. Homing got buffed by being reverted, same with guided.

    Grenade launchers got reverted and nerfed.

    Every weapon that was added has been removed.

    Vehicle chassis:

    Pitches were reverted; NF heavies still have 2x3-slot MLs. They also have 275 chassis health while BE heavies have 225. Cost, base weight and plate counts have been reverted.

    Vehicle armor:

    Not a lot changed, actually. Plain got a health nerf with a weight and cost buff from being reverted. Composite was made a smidge more expensive. Regen is cheaper and lighter. I left Budget and Capacitive in; Capacitive got a slight buff from -0.05 to -0.04 decay rate.

    Vehicle engines:

    Compact engine was removed.

    Speeds were adjusted to be closer together. For researched engines, heavies range start at 30, mediums/APCS at 40, LT/AFVs at 50. Standard engine is 5 slower than the lower end of the range and so is reverse speed. AC is +0, Bio is +3, Gas is +5, Fission is +7 and 3-phase is +10. So, for example, a 3-phase Heavy would move at 40 with a reverse speed of 25, while an AC LT would move at 50 with a reverse of 45.

    Buildings:

    Turrets lowered from 75 to 50 resources; missile turn rate lowered to 1000 > 1400 > 1800 from 1800 across all levels.

    That just about sums it up. Feel free to complain to me when I wake up in the morning about how the game is broken after I get my beauty sleep. Shit's going to be rocky; I was originally just going to revert, then decided to put some changes in, then decided to put out an update at the end of the week (I was going to wait like two weeks), so things are somewhat rushed and done by the seat of my pants.
     
  2. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    Welp, it was fun while it lasted. At least the scout rifles are gone again.
     
  3. vipervicki

    vipervicki Member

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    First I want to thank Imsparticus for the time and effort he put in previously.

    But thank you Candles, its a good way to start the day.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2015
  4. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    my poor glycencity wasnt added
     
  5. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I'm sure it's been said, but homing salvo is a bit much. A nf heavy can one shot apcs/afvs.
     
  6. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    i do believe that was because he had vehicle damage upgrade
     
  7. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    That's 400 damage yo, 50 damage a missile 4 missiles a shot and nf has 2 of them. My little afv with abs doesn't have enough health to tank that. It would need reactive to barely survive.
     
  8. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    oh yeah. forgot about the 2 triple ml slots
     
  9. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    It's worth noting that that weapon has only one real purpose. It's good against vehicles that's about it. It's poor against buildings and infantry, so that allows it to be a little wonky while not being entirely unbalanced.

    A good counter example is he cannon. There have been times when it was usable against pretty much everything. It has respectable dps for vehicles and hefty splash for infantry. If it wasn't gimped by a building resist, then it would be good against buildings as well. Being gimped against buildings brings it back into the realm of sanity.

    So homing salvo really has only one job and it's "allowed" to do that one job quite well. Granted, I don't believe that a "salvo"weapon makes a whole hell of a lot of sense with a 4s effective cycle, but another issue.
     
  10. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    We ever get any thoughts on a spread/inaccurate salvo instead? That's one type of weapon we don't really have.
     
  11. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    wait the 2x tripple slots on nf heavies didn't get reverted? we already had a version with dual homing salvo (right after an uml nerf), limiting it to one was the sole reason why it became a 3slot weapon.
     
  12. Candles

    Candles CAPTAIN CANDLES, DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN.

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    I keep telling people this. NF Heavies had 1x3-slot and 1x2-slot for the longest time because dual-homing salvo is strong as all fuck. A lot of people think it was because of dual-nuke heavies, but nope. Dual-homing salvo.
     
  13. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    if you dont have to push up, homing salvo & bioml is the shit - so much reliable damage :|ove:
     
  14. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Buildings don't have any extra resist to missiles, only grens rpgs. Meaning it's gonna do a similar damage to any cannon, which in homing's case brings close to ranged cannon. It has great accuracy too, homing is one of the better things to take out turrets, just point and shoot. So I'm not seeing this bad against buildings thing, at most it has a case of running out of ammo with salvo homing so people didn't spam it at everything. Which is an easy remedy. Admittedly the building thing is solved with a longer reload time, but it's still pretty iffy to be able to one shot vehicles, not even nukes can do that.

    I won't argue against infantry, but I will say it weighs 70 which means it's super easy to pop on an mg or he cannon.

    I do agree about that it would be ok against 1 certain thing, except you can have 2 of this one thing. This is a problem we constantly have with a lot of things. It isn't rails that breaks things, it's having 2 of them, it wasn't he cannon that broke things it was having 2 of them, it wasn't triple ml that broke things it was having 2 of them. Do you see what I'm getting at? It wasn't bad before this patch because weight was increased a bit, so it was hard to be have an allrounder tank, it had a reload time twice as long, and had a big spread so you couldn't snipe buildings with it. So it was a good auxiliary weapon that was indeed good at one thing, hurting tanks.

    We have that, it's called salvo ml. Fires 4 dumbfire missiles. Or are you suggesting we try to make homing more inaccurate so it can't be used against buildings?
     
  15. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    No, I have no idea, basically. I haven't used a vehicle in something like 6 months now, even though I've played a lot more during that time. The only time I say something relevant to vehicles is when we're talking about long standing issues, or solutions to feedback from people who actually drive.

    It's so bad, I think last time I actually opted to buy a jeep for the first time in forever. Simply because I didn't want to do the cost efficient thing and buy a tank to go from A to B...because lights are pointless (it was slaughtered) and we had enough traffic jams of people being repaired every few seconds in the S-bend and no one going anywhere.

    From that game I basically realised that I don't want to be in a tank any more. It's just not something fun. Especially if it's a heavy...which I never liked. I don't need a gargantuan vehicle to have fun, in fact it's always been more fun taking out beasts rather than looking down on smaller vehicles.

    Now I think about it, I probably really dislike heavies. They're fat, unwieldy and mostly just used to dick on others. No sport to them. And if they get into a fight they either die quickly and unexpectedly, or they last forever as you retreat them and get them repaired. Basically, they're boring in the extreme.

    No idea why I'm saying that now, in this thread, but it's probably the truth. Maybe.
     
  16. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    I may have misspoke. I guess 2.63 does have an unusually accurate homing salvo. Combined with the scary low reload time, it has enough accurate long term DPS to be effective against buildings.

    One thing that would make the one-shoting functionality fairer is more heat. Right now we're looking at 4 heat per missile. That's only 32 heat for 8 missiles. Coolant engine gets rid of that in less than three seconds.

    When NF heavies were given a second 3-slot ML in 2.52.7, it was predicated on 2x salvo homing giving you nearly 100 heat. So you had to be at like 0 heat before you fired or you would only get a partial salvo (and no insta-gib). That felt like a good way to control things.
     
  17. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    Dual-homing can literally melt your tank. It's because the time between each missile is very short, it's almost guaranteed that all of your missiles will hit the same side.

    "A lot of people think it was because of dual-nuke heavies".
    You mean a lot of newbs? :| I can't imagine just how crispy your tank will be, if you got dual-nuke.
     
  18. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    Welcome to the GI, soldier.
     
  19. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I want to point out that homing has been that accurate for a really long time, the only time it's been inaccurate was that patch you did. The reload time isn't even a problem, simply because you couldn't melt a tank so easily if you only had one. With a really limited ammo supply and inability to deal with infantry homing is actually decently balanced, but it just wasn't intended to have 2 of them.

    I don't think more heat is an answer, not when it comes to homing. Instant death you can do very little about is a really shitty feeling. This is incredibly worse when it comes to vehicles because then it just makes it nearly impossible to get past anything if it instantly blows you up, which makes it impossible for comebacks. Which is something no one wants and it can be pretty hard as is. If it was something like the nuke and it was a direct hit, that's better simply because of how hard it would be to pull it off, but not something like no skill homing.

    Longer lock on time is a better solution to homing's problem. That or revert nf heavy back to a 3 and 2 slot ml setup.

    I'm working towards an idea of how to fix the no fun heavy problem ikalx, but I'm being dumb and also rehauling research at the same time which is a really dumb idea.
     
  20. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    I like heavies, I really do. I just don't like driving them or seeing them cluster or bunch up. Or the NF barn.

    Also, lack of jumping makes me sad. Even more than feeling 10% slower than I should be by default. Let's face it, everyone uses sprint because they feel slow, rather than wanting to sprint to a particular place. That's why sprint tap is such an integral thing to Empires.
     

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