But the map would need to be designed so this could not be abused, that could be hard for some. You also say you can kill the AFVs, well the difference here is simple. You can't shut off prone, hide, sabotage. You can switch out the refinery's with flags or vice versa, but making the AFV balanced by the ability to float can't be balanced that way. The ability would not be useful enough and the feature would be useless for balance.
I don't understand what you mean. If you put the feature in you can't turn it off either, and for the same reason mappers don't make minute prone fire ports or pitch dark crawlspaces everywhere, they shouldn't make vast expanses of AFV passable water to keep AFVs out of areas they shouldn't be in, which I can't actually think of many areas where that would be so, as an AFV is not a powerful tool and is probably more of a liability in infantry only areas. The main benefit I can see for it is clearing MG turrets or allowing infantry to assault more easily over a body of water by affording them protection and cover fire. I can only see a few specific situations where it could really pose a problem for the NF, and therefore only a few specific situations where you would really want to block it in the map, most of the time it is just something your AFV can do but which does not make it an epic destroyer of worlds, it's just something that'll be handy on maps which feature a moderate amount of water, and occasionally very useful, and always fairly cool, but otherwise it's not something I'd get my knickers in a twist over. I'd have to put a lot of effort into constructing a scenario in a map where amphibious AFVs give the BE the game every time.
I don't know what the hell I just wrote. What I meant is this. You say you can make certain tactics useless. This is true, such as prone fire ports and the such. However, both teams have the exact same stats. Prone, hide, and the like are the same for both teams. NF Light tanks have speed, while AFV would have water powers. If a mapper disables the AFVs water power, or doesn't include water... the NF light is still fast. The balance for that map would favor the NF light. Any balancing should come automatically with buying the tank. Less weight to work with, lower the cannons min viewing distance. Allowing the AFV allows this automatically. Adding water is not needed to make AFVs.
I'm not suggesting that mappers invalidate the ability entirely, what I am saying is that the trigger_hurt can be used to ensure that it is not overpowered in some situations. Most of the time, the mapper should be aiming towards using the ability, just as he should with hide and prone etc, but some situations would demand that the ability be nonfunctional, like how on escort the BE have turrets outside their base and a gate, or how some areas are impassable to tanks, or how some areas have little/no cover to give the defenders an advantage. The map should be designed to incorporate the AFV amphibious ability, the NF light speed is simply easier to incorporate because it requires no real work, although I would like some work to be done to make speed more of a benefit to tanks, as at the moment it isn't really that much of a gain. Mapping is an integral part of a source game, the maps define a large amount of the gameplay. I don't see why they shouldn't be part of the balance too. NS certainly requires mappers to balance it by controlling vents, weldables, resources, and hive locations.
It depends on what you force among the mappers. Forcing mappers to add water to make the AFV balanced is too much to ask for. If the AFVs are unbalanced without water, then the AFVs are unbalanced overall. Therefor, adding the ability to swim is unnecessary.
I would agree that I don't see AFVs as being particularly unbalanced, they are slightly worse off than LTs, but not so that it causes major problems in gameplay, what I would say though is that there is room to improve them to make the game more fun without requiring you to rebalance the LT, and I think amphibiousness is a good method of doing that. It wouldn't hurt the AFV to have a bit more going for it and it would be fun in and of itself. I see this as a minor tweak in terms of balance, like a slight armor or speed boost, it's more of a gameplay thing than a balance thing. If I gave the impression that I thought the AFV required this to make the game playable then I apologise as that was not my intent.
AFV's have 4 seats, including a turret seat if I'm not mistaken. They have an extra layer of armor. They are huge and not as fun to drive to make up for the obvious bonuses that they have. get 4 grens into an afv and have 2 of them jump out and shoot an LT with rockets, while firing the cannon, ML, and the 2nd seat gunner shooting. Just because the vehicle isn't used properly, doesn't mean it sucks. "I can't use this effectively in a pub, it's worthless and needs changing" isn't a good enough reason for a suggestion.
So? A lot of things differ in balance on map to map, rifleman are a brilliant example, they fail on most classic maps!
Im one of those poor people with a shitty grafic card, that means maps like cyclopean with lots of water will be unplayable for me. There are many others with old cards so plz dont force us to buy a new one just because we need maps for one idea
Need I remind you that the majority of matches played in any game are public matches? What you are suggesting there is 'This does't work for the majority of players, it's fine, don't fix it.' You can make water that doesn't lag you know, although it looks like shit so I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, I suggest you edit your textures to remove reflection and refraction if it causes you that much of a problem, or see if you can force it with some cvars which you should be able to.
They're available to both teams. (And they're damn good, too.) If you want an equivalent to Amphibious AFVs, find an example of asymmetrical balance in Empires that works. Something like, oh, dual railgun tanks.
Lol, it's funny when you quote someone, and the make some comment that doesn't fit the situation or the quote. I am saying there are plenty of ways that this is perfectly even. Having a tank that can carry with it a death squad of grens, along with 3 layers of armor on all sides to help it breach enemy lines is a blessing. if they each get 2 mines down before dying, they can all use 9 mine to blow them up, effectively doing what a single person's 9 mine would do. anyhow, theres not much point arguing how you misquoted/misinterpreted anything i said. There are way to many ways to make obvious general disadvantages to great advantages in this game. APC's with 3 GL slots spamming enemy buildings for example, you can destroy a base within 30 seconds. the splash allows for destroying up to 3 buildings at once depending on armory and vf placement.
You are not taking into account ease of use. If one team requires more coordination or skill to match the other team due to inferior equipment then that is an imbalance. If you gave one team a gun that was overall worse than the equivalent gun of the other team and said they should compensate for it by getting closer to the enemy, you'd say that was an imbalance.
I was being ironic. I can't think of any examples of asymmetrical balance in Empires that are actually balanced. Well, there ARE the imbalances that are too insignificant for the imbalance to matter, like the smg and rifle accuracies. Maybe the armories are balanced too... Assuming your commander places 'em right.
Since when are 4 grenadiers a 'death squad'... 3 armor levels is piss all, go park your AFV next to a level three and see how wel it fares, and good luck managing to get 2 mines off EVERY GUY. Seriously, if a comm lets 1 gren in to ninja, i'd forgive that, if he lets 4 in he deserves to die. And an AFV is not something you can miss running into your base, considering it shows up on radar clearly! The AFV would not move nearly as fast on water as ground, so you can't rush in without at least one turret spotting you, AFVs deal with turrets terribly anyway, and I'd love to see you gather up 4 guys in an AFV, this is empires, not synergymod, there's no teamwork!
There's no teamwork. Lets base the entire mod around that fact. Fuck team work. Make empires a loner game, introduce jet packs and AT rifles so that scouts can kill everything and anything on their own. How can you say that a lack of teamwork makes something not balanced? If you use it right, it is perfectly balanced, or even unbalanced in the opposite way that you are looking at it. If anything, NF LT's should be MORE powerful, to make up for the difficulty of using the mediums and heavies compared to the BE.
Because teamwork does not come naturally to people, teamwork comes because it's forced. If one team does not require teamwork but the other one does, which one has the advantage? A light tank can be used individually, why should an AFV require more coordination just to break even?
I don't see any point in this at all, this entire thread... AVF's are matched up evenly against lights; unless the AVF gets rammed... Amphibious tanks: I wonder how in the world you are going to code that, unless it is some hacky implementation, in the end the result will not justify the time spent on this gimmicky feature... All current maps are designed around the fact that water is a barrier to tanks, so unless you yourself want to recompile every single map to preserve their balance, I don't see the point... In short the whole amphibious thing is not worth the end result; efforts would be well served doing something else, something more usefull
