Note before you read this: This is only a concept idea, all these suggestions down below might be too op, or what ever. Dont bitch fit about the details of the idea like absorbant armor might be too strong. But rather what tree would you not have and why. Or why having an infantry would be bad. The individual suggestions are pure hypothetical and dont take away from the bigger concept of an infantry tree. I've been thinking at the moment the only road to victory is tank domination. And maybe a ninja. Trump his speech about how we need to change up the game and takes risks made me think about the fundamentals of empires. But couldnt we add a whole other victory path. Infantry path. Our research tree is fully based on vehicles, except for turrets. Wouldn't it be interesting if we add another tree. The infantry tree. This tree would be focused on upgrading your infantry being RPG, armor what ever. It would be the path you choose if you want to push and win as infantry, it could also promote teamwork. Just brainstorming here. 1. Armor types. - Kevlar armor: Gives you extra resist for bullets. This includes rifle bullets, vehicle chainguns, vehicle mg's direct hits. - Absorbant: Gives you extra resist for explosive based weapons. - AB treated armor: Resist against bio? All these armors would start out low resist and you can upgrade it OR you research it once but the research takes long. Researching into advanced armors or what ever or just different themed trees. 2. Offensive upgrades - RPG upgrades-> reload faster, faster speed? More damage - Bullet lacing-> normal rifles do damage to tanks but very little, reduces damage to infantry. ( you have to select the rifle, you'd have something like BEAR BEHR BioRifle, AP rifle, or what ever, use your imagination ) - Increased accuracy for everyone on the team, HP regen for everyone on team ( these upgrades might be too op? Dunno ) 3. Defensive upgrades - Armories have a heal aura - Permanent HP upgrade for entire team - Engineers have more charge, or recharge faster - Grenadiers get even more resist against tanks - Buildings get resist against tanks so you can push up easyer with walls and armories without biuldings insta dying. Another idea would be to make comms choose at the start of the game which path they wanna choose, incase they wanna change paths midgame, they can but they have to research 5 minutes of transition, you wouldnt lose all your research though.
i think the major problem with infantry woven into the research system as is, is if its better than tanks, you wont see tanks anymore, if its worse you wont see your infantry research path being used. the chance for it being completely balanced out and either being a viable choice are marginal. also there already is some sort of infantry research, its skills. having said that, there are a few ways out. - make it connected to tank research. like if you research regenerative armor you also research small regenreation for infantry (which sadly also is a skill currently) - make a completely seperate infantry research system (lots of work unless a new gui system is half-way done) personally id favor the 2nd.
What would be optimal in my oppinion is that for teams with higher coordination you would go infantry based research. Or certain maps warrant infantry based trees better, chokepoint maps, high player count games. Balancing it out would indeed be very hard. But I do think getting more infantry research in general would be great, and what would be even more fun is 2 entirely different trees.
There's 2 options for adding infantry research... Either a whole new tree... Or weaving the infantry research into the existing trees... I'd love it if some skills were research tree dependent... Like the health regeneration, only if regeneration armour researched... Maybe unlocking new infantry weapons alongside vehicle ones... Think giving a gren the option for (a weaker) HEMG once it has been researched... Maybe bio grenades in bio weaponry... Hell, maybe emp grenades that will deactivate turrets and engineer devices, but under electrical engineering...
Yeah, infantry research could only work if it was a separate tree from vehicle stuff. At least if you wanted it to be significant. The other option is kinda like what you said, research a cannon bullet damage increase by 2% or something, this effects stacks with every cannon you get. So basically just a bunch of passive mini buffs to infantry. I still like the idea of simply having another win condition outside of destroy the radar. I outlined a ctf deal over here that I think would work well for empires.
Make all tank related research take longer, warranting at least some infantry research to be used in an attempt to delay the enemy and push them back. It is like the old UGL APC strategy. Not really viable once the enemy team starts pushing tanks, but for that small amount of time you can REALLY do some damage and set them back.
Rushing UGL was worth it even late game, in choke points severe ugl spam would kill heavies and on open maps an apc could just rush around destroying bases. It was a silly time. I don't think just increasing time will work to make infantry research worth it. Flasche outlined the problem with having infantry research in the same tree as vehicle stuff, if it's not good enough it's just delaying you from getting better tanks which actually end the game.
Ive always been pro adding another victory condition, especially a defensive one. Lets make empires great again by taking risks
We just need to radically spice up the empires game play. The stat system is fine but it doesnt affect gameplay. Lets take a big risk with gaeplay and change or add something big
what would that change? just because it takes longer to research tanks doesnt mean this time suddently became free. if you research other things inbetween you only fall back more. there really are the two options i pointed out before. either you make it come with tank research (which could also shift the viability of certain items, like you get a not so good tank item, but a decent infantry one) or you make a completely detached seperate infantry research tree. i have read countless discussions over the 10 years im on this forum now - thats essentially the only 2 ways it can take without causing major troubles. dont think like paradox was the first coming up with that. and as said before aswell, i - personally - would prefer the later. and i also think infantry research could be a good addition. i worry a bit about the overlap with the skill system though.
I agree with the basic concept and suggest Upgraded Mines in chemistry, that adds two new mines for gren to pick - one does twice the damage but isn't set off by infantry at all, the other has a 2 metre area within which you set them off and within which infantry dies, but don't deal damage to tanks, so they can clear them. I'd prefer to sprinkle them throughout the trees than to have an infantry tree, as it would clash with the existing theme of the trees being related technologies. I strongly disagree with giving "passive buffs" for researching other things - each research should either be a leaf node with a description of exactly what one thing you get, or a parent node that does nothing but give access to multiple nodes below it. That makes researching much more intuitive. When the UI is transformed to look more like Civ, we can give researches prerequisite researches, so that we don't have to have seperate parent nodes, but for the time being, the distinction makes things clearer, because now a parent node can describe which researches it gives access to.
then it will be like upgraded rpgs, they wont be researched because its better to spend time researching heavies. also having the item in chemistry requires you to research chemistry. if any of those researches are viable, why put an arbitrary emphasis on chemistry? dont you like electrical? whats the problem with physics? or is it just because it fits the research name? thats not very wise ...
My concept of having a different tree isnt to promote more research in general or more infantry research in general but to achieve a different way to victory that isnt tank focused. Adding mines or other research is good and all but that doesnt make infantry only vs tank based mixture viable. Its that that i am trying to achieve
