Hello everyone, I was asked to compile a list of all my suggestions so here it is. Be wary, that this is not a 1:1 do-it-this-way thing but more a general idea guide that I put up for discussion. However I feel too lazy to finish this entirely (especially the details of the infantry classes) but this is already quite something to discuss about and be inspired by. Research Make research in a C&C Generals style where every type of structure has its own research path. Barracks: general Infantry/class improvements Armory: infantry class/weapons/armor/ability improvements (better weapons, faster building) Vehicle Factory: vehicle weapon and engine improvements Repair Pad: vehicle armor improvements Radar: other/somethingSo you will need all kinds of buildings to research different areas. Maybe some late game research need several buildings as prerequisite for certain technologies. What research should NOT do: give one team the ability to improve their stuff so much that it’s by the numbers alone impossible for the enemy team to win. E.g.: where tanks get so powerful that they can easily steamroll everything. A good example for that where Nukes before they got nerfed. An armor that would require 12 stickies to destroy a tank just makes it impossible for the underdog team to win. Other scenario: one team has strong infantry resistance/armor and weapon damage while the other has not: result will be that the noob who just joined, rapeguns an empires veteran 4 out of 5 encounters due to superior firepower/damage reduction alone. Research should give OPTIONS, not superiority. Options + Skill = Superiority Tanks / Vehicles A concept I was thinking of was the way tank setups could be improved. For now the limiting factors are: chassis, weight, weapon slots, armor/weapons capacity, money. This is pretty simple but somewhat limiting. A new concept. Tanks don’t have a certain max weight as much as the heavier they get (in respect to the chassis) the slower they move. Example A: Medium tank with light/little armor and limited weaponry (cheap; easily destroyed) would turn out to be a hit-and-run type of tank or a scout. Go in fast, attack, retreat/repair and repeat. A swarm of these could disintegrate enemy positions if done right. Example B: Heavy tank with lots of armor and weapons. A leviathan kinda tank that moves very slowly (15 km/h top speed) but can take a lot of beating and deals lots of damage. A true siege tank that might cost 4000 resources. Because it’s slow it can easily be targeted and continues attacks will eventually destroy it. Lots of money lost. Out of necessity there should be certain limits implemented like speed (5km/h – 120 km/h) or amount of armor (max 30 inch) so things don’t get totally out of hand (and noobs don’t put on 60 layers or plain armor and then move at a speed of 0.1km/h). With this concept you don’t have a tank that is superior by default but depending on the situation it might be very powerful or total shit. Armor Types The way armor is implemented right now is definitely the right strategy but I find the concept to be somewhat weakly developed. Every armor type should have very unique properties. Example: regen armor that has low health but a VERY fast regeneration rate. While in battle you would have to move constantly and if you get stuck for a second you are an easy target but if you have skill you can stay alive during a battle for quite some time (I have seen a disabled type of armor that was called “Shields” in the scripts. Pretty much this). Another armor might have lots and lots of health but is very heavy (slow tank) with decent resistances but need 5x as long to be repaired. You might win the battle but have to retreat for quite a while afterwards. Composite armor: Instead of having an armor that has a little bit of everything why not make every layer of armor customizable? Three layers of something very strong and durable and two layers of regen on top (to absorb the occasional hit)? Again: OPTIONS. Twin Engine Somewhat similar to the new concept of composite armor would be if heavies could have two engines of different types. Three-phase for speed and bio diesel for overheating. This way you could maintain a certain speed but at the same time have the benefit of being still able to move while overheated. Technically the two engines would be combined in a way that they produced the median of their abilities. E.g.: three-phase has a max. speed of 60 while bio diesel has one of 40 so the new max. speed would be 50. Same with other variables like heat dispersion and acceleration. But if the three-phase engine stalls due to heat the bio diesel has to do the entire load meaning 40/2 = 20 km/h max. speed. Still better than being dead in the water. Options. Vehicle Add-Ons It would be super cool if you could attach different things/upgrade/objects to tanks. For example: an engineer who attaches his turret to a tank (probably only at a predefined position/slot). A few years back etho ran his server in cheat mode for a few hours so we could “weld” buildings together or attach them to vehicles. I remember building a turret wall and attaching ~50 ML-Turrets to a jeep. Or welding a repair pat to the back of a heavy tank just so that I got the repair/reload benefit while still be able to move. That was super fun. But as a concrete suggestion I was thinking more about the way you could upgrade Overload tanks in C&C Generals (Bunker, Propaganda Tower, Gatling Turret). A new item (probably needs to be researched) could be some kind of “mine plow” that is attached to the front of a tank and lets mines explode a little bit earlier and by that reducing the damage taken by the armor/hull. That plow would have its own health that gets reduced by every mine and eventually is gone entirely and needs to be repaired. Salvage Instead of getting resources for recycling an enemy vehicles you could instead get vehicle parts from that wreckage. Let’s say a NF engineer scraps an enemy heavy tank and gets a nuke launcher and 10 armor plates from it. That player then can build a heavy with those parts without paying for it. This would even work with technologies that haven’t been research for NF yet. That way you can effectively scrap enemy tanks. A different approach would be if you could use generic scrap from recycling vehicles to restore a wreckage (doesn’t matter which side it belongs to) to full health so you can use it again. So a BE engineer scraps a few vehicles and then when a grenadier kills the NF heavy that NF engineer just repairs it and drives it to victory all the while NF hasn’t even research a single technology yet. This would also combine well with the ability to hijack a (functioning) enemy vehicle. You can only be sure what side a tank is on after it started to shoot at you. Quads In Unreal Tournament 3 there are so called hoverboards. Instead of having to run around long distances you can deploy your hoverboard at any time and ride quickly over the map. However if you take any damage you will immediately fall flat on your face. My idea for Empires is that you could use Quad like vehicles to do the same. I don’t know if you could just buy them for 10 res at the vf or if an engineer can drop/build them like structures. Quads should have the same speed as jeeps however they give no protection form any incoming fire, they don’t have armor and their hull is very weak. A single missile/rpg/mine will take them out (maybe even a sticky stun). You also can’t use them to push other vehicles. If you run over an enemy infantrymen you will damage the enemy but at the same time will fall of your quad and take damage yourself. This way you can go places much faster without replacing jeeps. Infantry Classes and their Skills Every class has a sub-class that determines their respective role/strength. Examples from XCOM Enemy Unknown: example 1, example 2. Assault (formerly Rifleman) Sub Classes: Base Skill: none Weapons: Assault Rifle Carbine HMG Support (new) Sub Classes: Base Skill: Ammo Drop / Lesser Revive Ammo Drop is what engineers used to do. Lesser Revive is the ability to revive teammates with low (20%) health and low/no stamina. Weapons: Combat Shotgun SMG Carbine Grenadier Sub Classes: Base Skill: Armor Detect Weapons: Reconnaissance (formerly Scout) Sub Classes: Base Skill: Hide I have an altered version of hide in mind here. The general idea is, that the visibility is determined by several factors: Example where A is the Recon and B is any player on the enemy team. • The movement speed of A (faster = more visible) • the distance between A and B (greater distance = less visible) • the stance player A has (standing, crouching, etc.; lower to the ground = less visible) • possible skill by player B to spot enemies (enhanced senses; flat bonus to enemy hide reduction)So if A is far away and sprints over an open field he might not even be seen, and if he is immobile on the ground you could possibly stand right next to him and be oblivious of his presence unless you touch him in which case he becomes 100% visible. Weapons: Engineer Sub Classes: Base Skill: Construction/Maintenance Engineers have the ability to build/improve/repair things. Weapons: Shotgun Combat Shotgun SMG Medic (new) Sub Classes: Base Skill: Healing / Greater Revive / Steroids Healing is what engineers used to do. Greater Revive is reviving with full health/stamina and a short boost of some sort to help get up and away. Also some ability to boost players speed/accuracy for a short time. Weapons: Shotgun SMG Commander (new) Base Skill: Command The Commander class is a unique class that only a single player on each team can have. Instead of being the commander because you are in the command vehicle, you are the commander because of your class. The commander is the only one who can build things from team resources (just like now) and he can at any given time lock the cv/eject players from it. This is so that in case of emergency any player can move the cv but only the commander can use it for command related tasks. Also the commander can build/drop stuff/do research while being outside of the cv in infantry mode (not 100% sure how this works). If the cv is destroyed it does NOT mean the team has lost immediately but only if the cv is destroyed AND the commander is dead the team loses. I never liked the idea, that destroying the cv automatically ends the game. The purpose is not very clear to me. However the cv should still be a major target (kinda like the Dame in chess: you don’t need her but it’s good to have her). Maybe to increase the importance to the cv it should act like a refinery as where as long as you have the cv it generates resources. This would also solve the problem when all refs are destroyed and there is not enough money for a new one (noobs gonna noob). Weapons: Aiming In the Day of Defeat Beta 2.0 the aiming of weapons was just plainly awesome! The mechanic was as such: the weapons had all pinpoint accuracy/near pinpoint accuracy but they actual aiming was difficult. Without iron sight you had this crosshair thing that moved on the screen in an infinite-sign-shape and wherever it was aiming at the moment was where you were shooting. The speed at which it moved was depending on the speed the player moved. If stationary it did not move at all and centered in the middle of the screen. With iron sight you were always exactly shooting where you aimed. But there was a catch: when firing a round the screen would move upwards and a little to the sides. So when you were holding down the mouse button to empty the clip then at the end you would look straight into the sky. The player had to compensate by moving the mouse downwards. It took skill to actually aim and hit anything however when you were good at it you could kill a sniper with an SMG. It sounds difficult but it makes a lot of sense and it is actually a very unique and fun way to aim. Aiming with a sniper rifle should be similar: sniper rifles have pinpoint accuracy but when you look through the scope the screen moves a little bit in random ways. You can hold your breath (which consumes stamina) to steady your aim even more so that it almost doesn’t move anymore. Sniper rifles should not have any crosshair when un-scoped. Melee In the same version of DoD all weapons (even sniper rifles and pistols) hat a melee attack that was pretty powerful (instakill). Why not have the same in Empires? Maybe it would be overpowered compared with regular weapons fire since in DoD the regular weapons fire was more powerful than it is in Empires so you really needed luck or skill to get close enough to bash someone. Also disable auto-reload for weapons so when you have an empty clip you should still be able to melee someone instead of hurr let’s force-reload first and then melee. New Structures • Greater Wall o 2x height o players cannot stand on top• Ramp o vehicles can drive over it one way• Czech hedgehog o tanks will jack on them• Sandbags o can barely look over them while crouching o U-shaped (protection from the front and sides)• Bunker o like the bunkers in C&C Red Alert 2 or the Chinese bunkers in C&C Generals• Tower o not quite sure what they look like. maybe some 1.5-2m tall thing• Barbed wire• Door o really not sure about this one o maybe like a gate but for doorways• Gate o pretty much the ones from C&C Tiberian Sun• Supply Station o function as in Team Fortress Dispensers• Sensory Array o mixture of engineers radar and camera• Shield Emitter o Supreme Commander Shield Generators o engineers version [d=1.5m] o commander version [d=4-7m] o regenerates over time o engineer can use their tool to assist charging• Repair Station o field repair pad o less efficient but easy to build and cheaper• Siege Turret o some stationary rocket pod/mortar that only attacks structures o ML Turrets do not attack buildings any longer• Maintenance Station o has an AOF in which it builds/repairs structures at a low rate Structure Upgrades What about being able to upgrade every structure? All Structures Level 2: add some health Level 3: even more healthBarracks Level 2: ammo/health boxes Level 3: internal turret (on the ceiling) Repair Pad Level 2: double repair/reload speed Level 3: triple repair/reload speed and refitting a vehicle comes with half armorRefinery Level 2: 1.2x resource output Level 3: 1.5x resource output and self-defense turretRadar Level 2: increased detection range Level 3: unhide Recons in a lesser radiusShield Emitter Level 1: 4m diameter, low shield capacity Level 2: 5.5m diameter, medium capacity Level 3: 7m diameter, high capacity GUI Overhaul We all know very well that the GUI, as it is, is a temporary design made permanent. My concept of a new GUI would be close to how it works in Dead Space. Every information, or at least most of it should be within the game world itself. The Engineers Kit is already doing that partially (even though the ammo count is additionally displayed within the normal GUI). Weapons should have their ammo counter attached to the weapon itself. Other items like health/stamina should have some other in-world indicators. Things that may be unpractical should at least be substituted with some Holographic-HUD. Also the entire way the GUI is structured is horrible. Just. Plain. Horrible. When I want to select another engine I have to remove the engine item from its slot and drag n’ drop the new engine in its place which makes no sense and is always annoying when in a hectic battle situation. Same goes with selecting a squad, selecting class/skills, etc. It really needs to be done better. Global Ranking A global ranking system like in Dystopia would really improve the game. A vote lets people decide to balance teams based on their global ranking. It simply kills every player and then rearranges the teams. THIS is needed to counter stacked teams which ruin quite a many games. Give an option to server admins to even enforce this to make sure servers stay unstacked. The global stats also provide detailed statistics for every player and makes people compete with each other which can be nice. This system can be linked to achievements (e.g. achievement for dealing 20k damage with a specific weapon or killing 100 enemies with meele). Customized Horn I do not know in how much this is possible from a technical point of view but I think it would be incredibly cool if you could use your own horn sounds like you can have your own spray logo. If you put certain limitations (MP3; max. file size: 150kb; max. duration: 8s) in place, it should be possible to have every player have their own sounds. I imagine the commander running from the enemy and playing they see me rollin', they hatin', patrollin' and tryna catch me ridin' dirty. Lore I do not know much about the lore behind Empires except that BE is all about “muh genetics” and NF about “muh training”. I always had the perception that BE represents Nazi Germany and NF the CCCP. While the lore is, at least until now, not important to the game itself I think it could be kinda nice to improve on it. I had the idea of telling players little pieces of what it’s all about during the loading screen. For those who know/have played NecroVision this is pretty much what I am getting at. A (drawn) picture of a soldier who tells a little story about the war, about things that have happened to him or how live was before the war etc. The story itself should be written on the screen as well as being narrated (I would offer my services in this regard, however, I do not own a very good microphone at this time).
Quads sounds pretty neat, though for some reason all I can think of is some motor driven skateboard and doing sick tricks off of everything. Sounds fun, though it would still be nice without the sick tricks. I like that infantry progression, though I would like it a bit more if there was a third slot for small general purpose skills like we have now(health regen, speed upgrade, small bonuses). Honestly I would really like a classless system like firearms, but that can harder to do with how empires can work.
you also make the mistake to think you can have hardcounters with teamwide research. dont get me wrong, i totally dig the idea of hard counters, it would make the game a lot more enjoyable and strategic, but youd have to have all counters available at all times, not only one - this would turn (and already does, see your nuke example, but also the plasma and bioml discussion in that other therad) the game into dice rolling rather then strategy. the issue with a weapon which is suppoed to have single strenght and weaknesses is that you also need other weapons. but you can only get a piece at a time and if you happen to get the wrong piece well you fucked. the sole reason why this works in RTS is because there is no team that has to cope with your fuckups - you are the only one to blame if you researched the wrong AI units. but if a comm has to make a random choice for 31 others and rolled a critical miss, well then he fucked up the game for the other 31 players. btw i think this is the major problem of empries. the only thing a comm can do is screw his team, his contributions to a victory are minor in comparison to what those on the field archieve (except boomtanking but its a shite mechanic to begin with) edit: i also only are talking about the comm mechanics, its no requirement to be in the commchair to lead a team. the difference in plopping down buildings 50ms earlier is neglectable (id even argue even 2s make no difference), same for reseach. we cant argue considering comms that take eternities for everything, i assume somewhat equally responsive players.
This. The new design doc has a few similar ideas (I won't spoil them), but it definitely doesn't overhaul the Empires gameplay. More extend it.
I like a lot of the vehicle suggestions, not so keen on infantry though. Quads are meh, we have jeeps already. Building upgrades would be really nice to have, I'm not too sure about spreading out research - perhaps it's too spread out. Salvaging equipment sounds really nice too, except for this pseudo-hijacking. Aiming like that would be kewl. Totally, totally kewl. GUI is WIP, Im on the hype train for that regardless of what it is. I think Empires is too hectic for very strong melee, so I don't really agree on that. We have the VIPER ranking thing, but it could sure use some tweaking to suit Empires more. It doesn't give enough credit to people who main Engineer. Like, there's P-MAN I guess and then there's a large hole until the next engineer main. We have Megel's lore, that's decent. I totally dig writing more lore though, I wrote a good few map briefings so I feel like I'm somewhat experienced already. BlakkCooper should post on the forums more often.
In Cold Trap we were just going to keep those, since we were using the UDK I'm not sure if maps need to be bigger to properly accommodate them or not - I'm the last person who wants to run anywhere, but... Maybe I just think people should run 10% faster naturally though. If you wanted to have a commander and keep the CV, we could maybe have it that the commander couldn't respawn once the CV was destroyed? They could probably have regen/be healed, but not revived...so if they died, it was over. To prevent them from just hiding, maybe once the CV is destroyed you could have a marker over them, so if they're within a certain distance they're marked on the hud/map. The Northern Faction has genetically modified soldiers and Brenodi Empire has turned to nanotechnology. We have a lot of stories, actually, I thought some snippets used to be on the loading screens :confused:
Holy ****. Please post this in separate threads next time. (Even if it means filling up the entire front page) Reading...
Slippery slope issue. I don't see what this would improve the game besides overcomplicating it, for both commanders and players. IMO there is enough variety already in terms of research strategies. Both in terms of when to place the radar (rush the radar, go for a VF, or go for extra barracks) and what research paths to take. (Though I believe we could add more variety in regards to the latter) ...except that is already the case. We (some of us scripters) even want to change standard so it is balanced by its low cost (and perhaps weight). Plasma has heat to target, ranged has speed and dps, HE has AoE, etc. There are no longer the hard counters that we used to have in earlier versions. Instead, they've been replaced by 'soft' situational counters. Discussed earlier, and I'm not opposed to it. One particular variant discussed was where the speed/horsepower loss only occurs after a certain treshold, after which it exponentially decreases. We already have that in the works. Including shields, more variants of certain armours that are unlocked with the same research, etc. No code support for that atm. Something similar was discussed for weapons and armour. On the one hand, I like the idea. On the other, I like the current system as well (where you unlock a unique item each time). Mostly because it ensures every engine/weapon/armour has a unique play style as opposed to having one 'jack-of-all-trades' type of outfit. Do you really want jeeps running around with lvl 3 mgs welded to their backs? I wouldn't mind some variety though (perhaps separating the turret from the chassis, to allow some extra variety) This is my favourite suggestion so far. It would be interesting if the salvaged equipment weapons could indeed be used on new tanks. Or if tanks could be hijacked or repaired for re-use. Unfortunately, this doesn't have a lot of support, though I'd be in favour of it. I'd much rather fix the jeep hitboxes and hit detection... Uh... This doesn't appeal to me at all. The idea we want to go with is that every class can do everything (take down vehicles, buildings, infantry, etc.), but each have their unique playstyles. We don't really want hard-counters for infantry classes. Melee cancels reload. Also, we have support for this and are experimenting with boosting melee for certain weapons. Though mostly we are trying to find a fix for the poor melee hit detection. Except for the turrets, this really is a mapper issue. Ramps, towers, etc. would break certain maps. Slippery slope. Though I'd be interested in interesting 'sidegrades'. Working on it (and progressing nicely). Besides a redone GUI with everything easily accessible to players, we also intend to make it customizable. Server issue. Also, how would you measure teamwork? Or killspawning to save a base? Or sacrificing yourself as to distract the enemy so another squad can take a certain area? Hmm, I'll look into it. Actually reverse (according to lore). BE are about nanotechnology and integrating themselves with machines, while NF are about bioengineering. (With NF also being into the whole 'master race' thing) As for the rest: We want to add more lore into the game and redo some of the maps to reflect this.
They fit very well. You guys are just all like "hurr lets keep 'pires exactly the way it is but also we should improve it somehow durr".
I have came to the conclusion that for the most part the "DEVS" have no idea what they are doing. Granted some have some skills but the ones with skill lack the time. Other change small things, copy / past and call them selves coders. Until Empires gets new developers this mod is dead. We have 4 types of people 1. people with skill but no time and have access. 2. people with time but no skill and have access. 3. people with skill and time but do not have access. 4. People who just want to play Empires and come up with ideas that could help Empires. But get flamed for ideas because rather then say real reasons things are not getting done people pretend that the dev team is this magical unapproachable thing that can not possibly be broken / the biggest problem with the current state of Empires.
