Make the specific armors weaker against everything else OTHER than their point-defence. EG: AC armor is 20% resist against cannons, but takes 20% more from stickes, and 10% more from missiles, etc.
I'm on the fence for this one, while it would make rushes of the same kind very vulnerable, I think it would deter from the usefulness of armor in general. Armors would be squishy soft counters :p
Which is whatwe all love...etc. Anyways, it's promote the use of having cannons, missiles, and an MG on your tank. Now just "LOL I HAZ 2RALEZ UR DED."
Why not make it so you have to choose what upgrade to have in addition to have comp armor (i.e. bring 2 slot armor back with 1 for armor, one for upgrade). And having penalties for choosing anti-missle (making them weaker against mines) would be cool.
@Blizzerd I think that post is worth keeping...make sure you can bring it up later sometime, i'm sure it'll become relevant. You mean like having an armour attachment sorta thing? I mean, I know what you mean, but having the upgrade in a package like "anti-sticky device", "anti-mine device", "Heavy combat upgrade" (anti-cannon), "Skirmish upgrade" (anti-missile) etc...would that make some kind of sense? And then you could have that be a bulk weight and cost, like...40 weight and 80 cost. I still don't know about this though...can we still do this and preserve the differences in armours? It won't make one redundant, will it?
Or...you could just not choose anything and have no buffs or weaknesses. Mebby further one armor's strength with the 2nd slot upgrade.. Reactive gets a further 25% damage reduction from cannons, but now takes 20% more damage from everything else. (Mines, missiles, stickies) Comp gets a 20% damage reduction from mines, but takes 10% more from everything else. Reflective takes 20% damage reduction from missiles, but 15% more from everything else. Regen takes 20% damage reduction from Machine gunes,(Not bio..) but 10% more from everything else. Abs takes a 10% damage increase from everything, but the speed modifier is lowered.
Again, those create HARD counters: "Oh they have tier 2 reactive, LOL just rocketspam them". This limits the playing style of the other team to a certain weapon (or the other way around: rules one out completely) if they want to do any serious damage to the enemy.
Yeah I mean add weight and cost to it too, but it's not an across the board (for all armors) upgrade, just a second tier upgrade for that armor you researched, but doesn't necessarilly have to be used.
It doesn't rule it out completely. 20% isn't all that much. HE does 75 damage, I think. 20% of that is 15. So now it only does 60. You get a 20% weakness towards rockets. UML does 60, now it'll do 72. Not much difference.
The way I see it, If you separate damage types, it should go like this: First, you have cannons and MLs. You subdivide those into Bio, HE, Kinetic, and Fast. That leaves you with 8 damage types to deal with. 2 armors get resistance to ML's, 2 armors get resistance to Cannons. Reflective gets ML's, Reactive gets ML's. Bio and Absorbant get Cannons. Bio is weak to HE, Absorbant is weak to bio. Reactive is weak to blunt force, reflective is weak to speed. All armors have resistance to their native damage type. Now give each armor -5% for it's resist and +5% for it's bonus. That turns into something like this: Reflective: Angle Modifier + Bio Missiles +5% Kinetic Missiles +10% Speed Missiles 0% Explosive Missiles +5% Bio Cannon 0% Kinetic Cannon +5% Speed Cannon -5% Explosive Cannon. 0% Reactive: Damage Modifier + Bio Missiles +5% Kinetic Missiles +0% Speed Missiles +10% Explosive Missiles +5% Bio Cannon 0% Kinetic Cannon -5% Speed Cannon +5% Explosive Cannon. 0% Regenerative: Regenerates + Bio Missiles +5% Kinetic Missiles 0% Speed Missiles 0% Explosive Missiles -5% Bio Cannon +10% Kinetic Cannon +5% Speed Cannon +5% Explosive Cannon. 0% Absorbant Speed modifier + Bio Missiles -5% Kinetic Missiles 0% Speed Missiles 0% Explosive Missiles +5% Bio Cannon 0% Kinetic Cannon +5% Speed Cannon +5% Explosive Cannon. +10% Composite: Same damage resistance as reactive, but smaller, maybe 5% Bio Missiles +2.5% Kinetic Missiles +2.5% Speed Missiles +2.5% Explosive Missiles +2.5% Bio Cannon +2.5% Kinetic Cannon +2.5% Speed Cannon +2.5% Explosive Cannon. +2.5% I think a subtle advantage is going to be better than an outright advantage.
I don't think this is really a negative for Empires as it currently stands. There are so few ways a losing team can really comeback that making it easier for the winning team to win is better IMO. I'd rather have a losing match end earlier so we could get a new map and (hopefully) a balanced match.
Why do you need a million different armor variants if they're all available? If they're all available people will just pick the one for whatever weapon the enemy is using most, so why not just buff the armor intrinsically and be done with it instead of cluttering the armor panel with a dozens of nearly identical armors? Just because you have this resist system doesn't mean it needs to be used like this. I really get the feeling you're trying to force a use out of it. The best use for the resist system is balance tweaks, if one gun is too powerful against one armor, you don't have to rebalance the whole armor and game to fix it, you can just tweak that armor's resist towards that gun. It's not a particularly glamorous or inspired use but it is a very useful one. It means no more silly balance bugs like DU being lethal to armors with high resist values because it ignores them all. If you want to put some variety in the game put some more abilities in, I suggested ages ago giving armors special abilities that activate when you hit a button, you could do that if you wanted, or give weapons similar abilities. Ranged cannon for example could fire a sniper shot which overheats the tank but is instant hit and does considerable damage. Reflective armor could be made so that if you hit a button it makes all shots bounce off you for a short time, exploding nearby but not doing direct damage. That sort of thing varies the tank combat a lot, has lots of potential for aesthetic improvement, and doesn't involve making a million bloody useless variants of things which are hardly different from each other. When my PC crashes I smash it into little bits with a hammer rather than rebooting it.
That's wishful thinking on steroids tbh :p I'd rather read through all the suggestions to allow a losing team to come back if they do their best and streamline them so they're not an obscure option that only vets know about but a real possibility that everyone can attempt.
I'd agree that is the better option. But having a shorter match time is a good way to mitigate intractable balance problems (such as skill stacking).
making the closed maps more open (add infantry pathways) generally fixes a large portion of the problem (xroads)
So I just got my tester thing today and I've been thinking about armor alot and discussing it with people alot. And I've independently come up with the same idea Metal Smith mentioned earlier. Instead of adding some static resistances to counter things why not improve upon the gimmicks of the armors to make combat more dynamic and research more flexible. So starting with the most obvious example and the one that Metal Smith mentioned--After researching Regenerative Armor you would be able to research further to upgrade its regenerative capabilities. This adds more of a fun and dynamic in-combat element and bypasses team based weaponry or armor favoring balance issues. Brainstorming with a few others I've compiled a 'gimmick' or 'niche' for each armor type and a proposed example tree. Regenerative Armor - upgradable regeneration Absorbant Armor - upgradable heat-absorbtion capabilities (heat to damage modifier) Reflective Armor - upgradable reflectivity (angle modifier) Composite Armor - think of composite as a strong expensive all around armor without a real gimmick, quite how it is now. Reactive Armor - percentage chance to vaporize projectiles on contact causing little or no damage. So say it starts at 10% and is upgradable to 15% and 20% or whatever feels right with balance testing. Imagine how awesome it would be to be fighting a tank and both be flashing red and your reactive just happens to go off and save you and you end up killing your opponent. I would jump out of my chair in excitement. Now, just having armors to research and then linear upgrades seems a little boring and over-simplified to me especially with armors all being available in one armor tree. So this is the proposed example tree I've devised. I stole some of drags idea of making upgrades within the armor that pose you with a decision to make, but instead of a decision that could render your armor obsolete against a weapon category, a decision that would further specialize your armor to what the commander or the team thinks will be most useful against the arsenal your opponent has researched. The idea is that you can only research two improvements for any given armor. So if you research regenerative, you can get either advanced durability or regeneration, or upgraded of both, but never more than two. Also you see items i've not mentioned yet, these were just ideas that i thought would be reasonable to balance and not far fetched. So here they are Upgraded/advanced materials - reduces the weight of the armor in this manner: armor | weight | upgraded | advanced reactive 20 17 15 composite 15 12 10 absorbant 15 12 10 Upgraded/advanced durability - increases hit points or damage resistance of the armor. this is not intended to allow regenerative or reflective to compete with composite in raw per plate damage stopping ability. but rather to alleviate situations where your team is complaining that your regenerative armor isnt cutting it against their weapons at the moment so instead of thinking oh shit i need a new armor, having the option of upgrading what you have to a respectable level. and all of the other things in the tree are the "gimmicks" or "niches" that i've discussed in the post. tell me why you think its awesome/horrible i tried to devise it in a way that isn't unbalancing and creates more fun for the team and commander as well as a dynamic type of strategy
