Armor Detection Detecting Armor

I actually thought this up a little while ago but forgot about it until now. I had been playing many games where I would use a certain weapon (most often the railgun) and would try to shoot things and it would do practically nothing. I could not tell whether this was because the enemy was using a particular armor type (absorbant in the case of railgun) or whether I was just sucking. Unless you get someone on the other team to tell you, there is NO way to find this information out.

My suggestion is to let armor detection actually detect what type of armor a tank is using aswell as the hull/plates. I was thinking of a little bar at the bottom that takes 3-5 seconds to fill and you have to keep your crosshairs on the enemy tank for those 10-15 seconds. That way your secret isn't given away immediately, and some gren that stands up, shoots a rocket at you, and then crouches behind cover can't tell what you're using unless he exposes himself for a few seconds.

EDIT: Changed the suggested time to 10-15 seconds due to sandbag's point.

Pros:
1) Adds more depth to the strategy involving choosing what armor and weapons to research. If your enemy is using regen, you can get a gren to find that out and say: "They are using regen armor. Comm, can you research Bio MG for us?".

2) No more guessing whether or not you should take that railgun or those MLs because they 'might' have absorbant or reactive armor. You would be able to go out and find out that "Oh, they are using reactive, I shouldn't put that salvo ML on my tank and take an extra cannon instead."

Cons:
1) No real cons unless you want to be able to OMGWTFPWN a team using BE heavies and railguns by using absorbant and let them just keep wondering why they can't kill anything.

 

BEFORE, I thought that this idea would be cool but maybe overpowered. However, ever since the new explosion sprites have been added, you can kind of deduce what the enemy tank weapons are, and thus what armor you should use, and i see no reason why seeing what type of armor they use would be an issue after all this info is known anyway.

Bottom line, either conceal EVERYTHING or make all information deducible one way or another, and since we're already going down the deduction route, might as well take things a step further.

I see SERIOUS benefits in terms of game-play as this knowledge would as an entire new level of depth to the commander's role. Instead of just guessing and going with what works best on average every time (biodeisal/coolant+HE) he might actually try counters, combos, all sorts of shit.

 

I think this'll be much easier to add to the HUD once unique armor graphics are implemented. That way you could just slap one of the appropriate logos in the centre of the tank.

Definitely agree though.

 

Aye. I feel that not knowing the tank armour adds a good dimension, rather than having standoff wars. I was just getting used to telling what weapons were being used by the explosion colours...it's not that difficult after all.

Having said that however, 3-5s is a pretty long time under fire, and you're only identifying one tank with one set of research out of a usual two, or three later game. It's more like a feature rather than a necessity, especially with the new explosions, but it might make for more interesting gameplay :confused:

 

finally a reason to research a different armour or engine too... this idea is great.

I'd go with something longer than 3 - 5 seconds... perhaps 10 - 15 seconds. or perhaps it's something that can only be done at close range. the point is that it's very powerful to have such information, and I think it would be better if instead of getting such information during combat if it was a skill that was more designed for grenadiers that spot a target and have time to track it.

after all, your team only needs the information once to gain a great advantage over the enemy team- so why make it too easy? there's always going to be those situations where you find the tank sat still for a bit.

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at the risk of making it too complicated, which i undoubtedly am, i wish that you could only detect the armour type if there was a person in the vehicle in the last 5 seconds, otherwise it'll be really easy just to kill a pilot and find out... too easy even. and it'll encorage people to NOT shoot a vehicle if the driver gets out in the hope of discovering armour type, which is something that shouldn't be done as it detracts from the overall fun of the game

 

I don't like this idea at all. For example think of clan wars. People just use armor detection and based on that data they will counter the armor on next matches.

This idea sucks. This removes all the advantages between different armors. This makes it too easy to kill vehicles.

 

The new explosion and sound effects only make it easier to choose what armor type you wish to use, not what weapons you should use. You can tell that the enemey is using railguns, so you put absorbant on your tank, but if you decide to use railguns, how will YOU tell whether or not to use them because you can't tell what armor the enemy is using.

The explosions and sound effects only help you to figure out what armor you should use, having this would help with finding out waht weapons to use aswell.

This is true, but in normal combat situations, a tank doesn't stay still for very long and grenadiers with armor detection aren't everywhere. Unless someone specifically goes out and wants to figure out what armor the enemy is using, most grenadiers take ammo upgrade as their first skill, so it would be most likely that this would occur in the mid-game when most of them have their second or third skill slot unlocked. But I do see how it could be too easy to get this information, maybe 10 seconds would be better.

I could see a gren in base killing a jeep driver, changing his skills in the rax, and quickly finding out the enemy's armor. That is a good idea; It shouldn't be able to detect anything about the tank unless the tank in 'On' with someone inside it.

How does this ruin it? If a team always researches the same armor every game, that is their fault. But alas, to counter that armor means you must research the proper weapons, and in doing so, a team can feign using one armor, and as soon as the other team researches those weapons, pull out the counter-armor to that and massacre them.

 

Destroyer has some good points. I still think this is a good idea.

It encourages players to relay information to their commander ("they're using regen!") thus allowing him/her to react based on that information. Remember that it still takes time to research the counters, by which time the enemy could have researched something new.

 

Yes, there definitely needs to be a tell to see what the enemy is using. I hoped it would be a different chassis texture or model depending on the armor, but this could be an easy fix.

Grenadiers can already tell how much armor the tank has. The only thing though, it seems like something the scout would be able to tell, with him being the spy/sabotage/spotter and all.

 

I was thinking the same thing about possibly giving it to the scout, but the problem is, is this actually a skill that people would want to use? It isn't terribly useful as a stand-alone skill. It would only get used once is a great while to figure out what the enemy has, and then it would be discarded for something more important skill at the nearest barracks/armory, but could add to another skill already in place.

 

Make sabotaged radars let the other team look at their research tree.

 

this sounds better then the fuzzy view..

very good idea

 

That is a very good point, and I agree. It supplement armor detection nicely.

 

awesome

and what abount on the inside of the radar, on one of the screens, displays what research is currently being researched, with a research bar underneath. useful for both the home and enemy team.

 

My ultimate dream for the buildings is to have LCD screens inside that provided real-time information about the building such as health/reserarch status/resources/radar map just for show. But unless I learn how to somehow do all that, I doubt it would ever get added.

 

They've been doing that in Gmod for awhile now, it should be able to transfer.

 

Why do they have Empires building code in Gmod?

CURSE YOU GENERAL L33T!

 

Gmod allows you to play most mods in Gmod, so i wouldn't be surprised if there are people that love the "Empires minimod for Gmod".

 

Solokiller, the problem is that you have to code it specifically for gmod. You can't just take another mod and make it work with gmod unless you want to rewrite quite a bit of code. Might I mention that it all has to be transferred into LUA, which has a slightly different syntax than C++, which means lots of recoding. Plus, gmod is restricted in the things it actually allows LUA to do, so many great aspects of Empires gameplay might not work. It's like trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole wih spikes pointing out and a bunsen burner underneath.

It would be easier to completely write your own code from scratch and use the Empires models and resources.

 

Much the same way we can't just transfer code from Gmod into Empires.