A plan - Symmetrical vehicle combat -> Bringing back counters

Research cost + research time = really long time till Heavies are able to be used which means they turn into end game rather than mid game tanks.

Think about it, some times you waited 10 minutes to get 3k res while pushing tanks, even more than that. You rarely had enough money on hand once you researched mediums to go straight to heavies so it took MUCH longer to get heavies than it did currently.

 

Counters also have to re-added for this to work as well, although for your suggestion research times maybe should be 2.5X rather than just 2X

But counters need to be re-added because coms would get 1 armor, 1 engine, one group of weapons. After this, they would move on to get mediums and then a new armor/new engine/new weapons to counter the enemy which took EVEN MORE time. Then, as they researched heavies, usually inbetween advanced chassis and heavy chassis, they would sometimes even get another armor/engine to counter again. This is what made the game take so long before heavies were rolled out which is the main asymmetrical portion of the game. At this point, the asymmetry should take over and allowing the teams tank designs to use their powerful weapons to destroy tanks.

 

Well, back when games cost money games were over quicker but I would argue were a LOT more fun. You wouldn't have the stupid little holdout you have now which can drag the game on 20 minutes. Weapons were a lot more deadly it seemed so infantry surrounded by meds didn't put up much of a fight. EVERYTHING cost Res, which is what made games drag on. Coms had to make the decision of, "DO I want another tank on the field, or do I want a second armor?" which promoted decision based gameplay. On top of this, each armor didn't cost 15 res either, I think compo was 30 per plate but was countered by rails and rails only so again, cost/performance came into play even during research.

When a team starts to lose, it required them to work together more. The argument that noob teams against a stack team do anything remotely good is rather stupid as even now stacked teams almost always win and noob teams can't catch a break. This is also why I recommend a player score/level that carries over from game to game so we can CLEARLY SEE who is a vet and who is not rather than argue over "ITS NOT STACKED YOU HAVE XXXX" "THEY ARE A NOOB!". Even then a auto balance could be added to prevent stacks before, lets say, 20 minutes of the game has passed.

 

So just revert everything to 2.?? Sounds like jumping on a 5 year merry go round - except not reverting half the reasons some things were intoroduced.

Ditch the heavy tank asymmetry and everything else gets better because you can then do whatever you want to research without putting any team at a disadvantage.
You can do all the other wierd and wonderful stuff as well if you want but the main, fundamental difference, that is why we end up having long proteracted discussions about minutiae will be gone.

Both teams should have the same valid research paths - then you can truely have proper counters.

You can make more or less any changes you like and you don't break the game, therefore frequent and possibly drastic changes are more accepotable. The research meta will evolve in-game itself and there will be less question marks.

Just because people love asymmetry doesn't mean it plays well.
There are still plenty of defining characteristics between the factions to make them unique and identifiable.

 

Ohh and also - pardon my ignorance, but if lightning can do all that crazy stuff, and doc already had a 2 barrel model of the NF heavy...
What stops us throwing this together and trying it. Like is that kind of "rapid prototyping" not useful.

Honestly I think it would play fine, I don't think it is that big of a change to the mechanics and ultimately the only way to find out is to put ~25 hours testing into something.

 

This is probably the first time you made sense in this thread, IMO. As for the reverting everything to 2.12/2.2 whatever, I'm not sure that is a good idea, however it can't hurt to boot it up again, set a server up, and play it with a full server in order to have a good look at all the changes that were made since then and if they actually had the desired effect.

You'd be surprised how much fun it is.. Besides the only viable Empires server at the moment has a surrender vote.

I think you can actually keep that asymmetry in and still get what you want if you made the second barrel researchable for NF and the extra ML slots researchable for BE. It might actually add another dimension. (and I'm sure someone suggested this already)

I've always wondered why this wasn't already the case. With this NF and BE are almost equal. I think you need to take a look at the grenade slots as well and open up more variants there.

 

You mean it is the first time we share an opinion. None of my points lack reasoning or explaination, even if you think I am wrong.
You think Asymmetry is what makes empires, empires. I think it has been holding it back since day 1. We just disagree.

But thanks I guess.

To be honest I think most people are very coloured by their thousands of hours of play time. People are rather committed to certain things. I would be interested to see what the opinions of people with about 25-50 hours of play time are. I think that the current "dataset" isn't actually that useful. Basically we are all a bit shit.

 

It's not really jumping on a 5 year merry goround when the devs have been making it steadily worse each year.

Keep the heavy tank asymmetry as both promote different play styles for each team. This is vital to keep games fresh and unique, but readd the counters that there used to be to balance out the asymmetry. The only time these arguments started to arise about asymmetry causing the problem has been because of the removal of research costs. I directly attribute it to this because with research costs meds will be the mbt and heavies will be literally end game. We never had much heavy vs heavy combat and we should go back to that.

 

Correlation not equalling causation - many many things have been changed in the interim. People have always either reasoned that one side is OP when a particular weapon was too powerful, or that there is basically one defacto research path per side and if you get something else you are basically greifing.

We definitely did have plenty. People would sit and wait in the VF for their heavies whilst everyone else yelled at them to go and be productive. Research costs are only going to make 1 difference - how long it takes to get heavies and probably not much difference at that. A little more economy management for the commander but that's it.

Play styles for each team only exist because each team has always had particular weapon mechanics which favour them. i.e - BE=Cannon, NF=Missile. Allowing either faction equal access to the same tech style doesn't take anything out of the game. It actuall give more possibilities and combinations. It just means each round the commander chooses instead of it being forced by your faction. You will still be able to roll a shotgun heavy and wreck turret farms, or pick the best spots to nuke from, or have a super fast heavily armoured medium harrassing the back line - you'll just have more options to do all of that on either side.

If you want Fresh & Unique then you want More weapons, More choices, More variety, More hard counters. Which is most easily achieved by giving everyone access to the same arsenal and letting the commanders chess game it out.


Admittedly the problem is compounded now becuase not every branch of the tech tree has a cannon or a missile. Not every tree is AS viable for one faction as it is for the other.

Until that is fixed adding back research costs only serves to encourage people to rush 1 tree (though really it makes no difference at all, there is so much resources available). It was often that way anyway in the past. Rush 1 tree, get heavies, counterpick an armour or weapon then on to seige breakers. And thats not a bad thing either really - but the whole utopian Medium tanks all game, a hand full of heavies, all regulated by ingame economy never happened. The ingame economy is very detacted from what players actually do

And not to mention everything about resources have changed since, I'm not really against research costs but it DOESN'T change what gets researched & never did, it only slows down choices;

• We have carcasses being recycled for Hundreds of res in 5 seconds
• We have diminishing returns on refinery points to prevent "slippery slopes" though I'll be damned if I understand how anything scales
• We have like 10K+ res worth of wages in some rounds
  
• Then as well we have free research again to mitigate the "slippery slope" (minor in comparison to the others)

In all honesty there is SO much resources available adding costs will do nothing. Even if there were less resources it wouldn't have the effect you want. It certainly won't end up withj more varied research & it is unlikely to result in more mediums fielded instead of the 100% Better heavy tanks.

People won't buy mediums knowing they will be instagibbed by a heavy. They will wait to afford a heavy, like they always did.

 

Adding research costs reduces the available resources to the team. Especially if it is high amounts that would reduce the team res slowing the ability to get heavy tanks via research and into the field.

Think of it like this, I have 2000 Res and I need to spend 1000 res for heavy tanks. A medium tank costs 500 res and the enemy has just rolled out 4 mediums, to counter this I need to fire back by rolling enough mediums to stop them from destroying us as Mediums now actually deal a lot of damage. To do this, I tell 3 people to roll 3 tanks and a 4th if need be to at least push them back. Now I have 500 res, I am 500 short. Lets say I may 5 per second and we kill 2 of their tanks and they kill 2 of ours but continue to push with more, even endangering some of our refineries. Now more tanks for us have to be rolled out to defend our income preventing us from getting heavies for a while.

 

If you see, I addressed that as well in my post saying we killed 2 of theirs. But I see your point I didn't add that you can recycle, but an easy fix is up the cost of research a bit to prevent this.

 

I agree it is less hurting, but the time consuming research doesn't solve the issue of a lot of tanks on the field.

By having research cost money and either toning down the resource income or increase research price. Free research promotes rushing strategies as there is no cost/risk ratio like there is when you had to buy it. This is why we see heavies now as the MBT and we see coms frequently go for heavies, even skipping mediums. Weapons should be balanced around the medium, not the heavy and this would solve it.

 

I don't know what you are remembering Trump but for a very long time people when research cost money people didnt even bother researching meds on any choke point map. Waste of research time and money. You rushed heavies because in the interim you saved money for a rush of heavies and you can hold out against mediums with walls, engineers, and a handful of earl game armor vehicles.

Basically bringing back research costs will do nothing except possibly delay the research. Its fine. I liked it, made commanding more interesting.
But it has nothing to do with asymmetrical heavy tank loudouts (love it, hate it or anything in between) actually limiting the combinations of armor/wep/engine you'll see getting picked and used because some branches of the tech tree are bias for one faction or another - and maybe thats fine... but it isn't Great.

Don't you want to Make Empires Great Again?
Don't you believe in a strong free market economy where two warring super powers are free to negotiate for the Best technology available.​

Ohhh I get it. You are scared that if NF get your Brenodi Cannon advantage the Trump will be Stumped on a regular basis.

Anyway. Basically our recollection are very different. But it doesn't matter. Because so much has changed anyway that it wouldn't be the same - history sets no precedence.
Still research cost can have the following outcomes:

• People skip mediums as they used to, precisely because research cost meant buying mediums might cost more in the long run.
• Nothing. Nothing happens. People pay to research stuff, wait a little if they need to - maybe lock the VF more often.
• You make it so expensive nobody ever researches them except on Money and the like.

Either way I don't see that research cost has anything to do with the merits of moving to a more flexible and symmetrical heavy chassis CHOICE for one and all.

I've not addressed you example directly - because lets face it for any given scenario there are many opinions in how to counter it. All I can say is that it used to be a case that you either bet on mediums and capitalising on an existing push OR you rushed heavies in the hope you'd hold out long enough to use them. In any case Mediums were used & researched Less than they are currently at almost any time. Heavies are prefferred now because, as always they are better in every way - thats the problem you want to address (but still, it's a different topic than asymmetry)

 

Oh AZK I wish you had remained neutral and not gotten into arguments.

From what I remember, the best moments was when you had mediums to push with. Your argument for "didnt even bother researching meds" falls flat because what happens now? People on OPEN maps, not even choke point maps, skip mediums to go for heavies because mediums are pointless. Mediums at least when research cost money were well worth the investment. On top of this, it wasn't actually viable to do that unless it was a high res map and there are few of those now.

It will delay research, that is the point. Pair this with counters and more tank damage and mediums are viable and heavies are godly. This is how it should be. Heavies are meant to END the game and should be reserved for END game while mediums should comprise mid-late game. Cost was a very very big factor in these games and the armors themselves were costly to even prevent more tanks than usual from rolling out. We need to revive this.

As I have stated NUMEROUS times, from which you apparently disregard or fail to read, I have stated there should be bio ml and bio cannon. If there is a cannon, there should be a similar ML. If there is a ML, there should be a similar cannon to allow counters to happen and be efficient. This will increase variety, because I remember when the com would get medium tank he would usually get a second armor/engine/weapon to counter whatever they got and to ensure the teams mediums would continue to be good. This promotes variety and it promotes better gameplay.

Also, I love your little orange text. I could care LESS if BE loses or wins, the game needs to be fun for everyone. So nice of you to sit there and lecture me on wanting my team to win only, I only like BE because I think their models look better and I like the neat trim look they have rather than the sloppy look NF has.


People don't skip mediums, especially if the cost of heavies is set very high because not ONLY does it take time to get heavies, it also takes funds which is even more than it is currently. If a team gets mediums, it is much easier to roll them over if there are counters and tank weps are buffed.

From what I remember, people did lock the VF, but they also had to balance locking the VF and rolling out more tanks and researching more than they do now such as more armors/weapons/engines to try and keep their tanks the best. If counters are reintroduced, a heavy tank that is countered by a medium wont do much good against it (obviously it'd still be good) but it'd be MUCH more expensive for the team losing countered heavies.

You don't make it that expensive, you have to figure out a perfect amount but heavies should be regarded as END GAME as they once were.

Your right, this doesn't have anything to do with making them symmetrical, because if you had read the post it said "Feedback" on the idea and I gave some feedback (Which has been well received by many others including the devs!). Obviously if you had read this, you wouldn't bring up this point.

There are many options that can occur, I agree! However, research that actually cost money and counters were a time when heavies were more potent and mediums were much more deadly.

 

Damn son, I was kidding.