plain armour is so bad, its better to just not buy a vehicle with it... unless ofc its the only armour you have but even then vehicles are going to suck monkeyballs and probably cost more then they are worth. same goes for anything plain, but especially armour... I suggest either removing any plain armour and weapons, or buffing/altering it to give it an economic use and making it another armour to be researched, for example by subtracting from the average price of the vehicle i know the empiresmod code does not allow for negative prices (i tried, it crashed) so i suggest reducing all chassis prices with a set amount cost, and increasing all items base cost (so with respect to armour, not the plate cost but the cost to just slam it on the vehicle, i dont know if this is still how it works but it used to but was just unused) with that same set amount of cost (with the exclusion of plain stuff of course) effectively making the vehicle you make super cheap... then I suggest to give at game start 1 of several random packages of starter materials to each team, including 1 engine, 1 armour, a couple weapons and starting resources (these packages could be balanced by the community, heck even map specific packages could be compiled with for example on emp_money composite always being excluded from any packages) Why?: to make every game different, the sole reason i dont play that often at all is because i know by map what armour engine and weapons are researched... and even if rebalanced often there will always be "winning" combinations... im trying to shake things up each map, allowing for different strategies depending on different "cases" that might present themselves for example on emp_money, lets assume having composite well before the other team does is instant win (its powerful yes but it isn't instawin, but lets keep that thought in our minds as to simplify the variables of this thought experiment) also lets assume resources are plentyfull, but not extreme and the server is filled completely. Lets say team A spawned with our "new plain" armour being the cheapest of the cheap etc... and with a large increase in early game cash income (X1.5 ref income for the first 15 minutes) Team B spawned with a decent armour, a decent engine and good armour, but no resource advantage. These teams instantly adapt different play styles to accommodate their bonuses... Team A could choose to start researching the expensive composite armour but still field a reasonable amount of cheap and replaceable light tanks... they have the cash for it. or they could choose to just rush and spam early with their resource advantage and overwhelm the enemy. Maybe they want heavy tanks with full gear, but have to forego tanks early game to maximise the use of their resource bonus to save up resources for a heavy rush Team B could choose to play defensively with their arguably far better tanks, and research meds or heavy tanks, but runs the risk of running out of cash if they dont keep up with team A... They could also play even riskier, going for a full infantry defence to save up for heavy tanks or something like it. It allows strategy for normal matches that are not competitive to not suck super if the commander researches are maybe less then inspired and increases the chances of a "decent" game on average. and prevents "instant win" tactics for each map.
Ill be honest, im way too underslept to read this wall of text with understanding, but no, just no, not ever.
emp money might be a shitty map and not representable for the average game, but it lends itself quite well for study that excludes variables that cannot be taken into account... its one of the only stable fully mirrored maps for one, and i acknowledged its faults, but its a thought experiment to better explain what i mean.
this will probably break most maps. think of urbanchaos f.ex. without looking at the maps we have, I like the idea in general.
I like the idea of a free armor, engine, etc instead of muddling through with the default equipment. Unfortunately not all armors and engines are configured to be used on the starting vehicles. Some are better on heavies.
This is why i felt it was "possibly a horrible idea" but the fact of the matter remains that currently we have a problem that goes unchecked anyway, and we can fix the balance of the armours for other tanks...
Is that like before, or after Sparty took over scripting? Because I gotta say his earlier patch really shook things up all over. Also plain armour and standard engine...not entirely sure why people think they're so super crap as to be worthless, but even with the what...40hp or so they still provide a minimal amount of protection to allow a semi-skilled driver to do some damage. I don't think it's all that pricey at the moment either, at least not compared to old versions. Oh, btw, research is free.
Yeah, I've seen security and some other decent tank drivers do some damage with standard stuff. It isn't completely worthless. It's also only like an extra 40-60 res a tank to have plain armor. I do like the idea of starting packages though. The idea of a res perk or whatever seems interesting, kinda feels like it would be somewhat hard to balance though. At the very least it will force people to use different weapons/armors. Even if you know certain stuff works, other people will disagree and call you an idiot for researching it, even though they never use the stuff and don't know how great it can be.
Im going to admit that i havent played them enough to be familiar with them, but i doubt it matters its the concept of "we start with equal hands and some stuff will always be better in the research tree"
even if leet haxor empurrs nolifers can 360 rocketjump noscope commanders with them, to the casual player they are cannon fodder and it is used as that, but the resources of the vehicle itself is still lost...
Blizz, I'm not sure if I'm getting this or not, but you're basically saying tone down the more strategic part of the game - i.e. research, and add in a huge luck element to make things more exciting? Research's goal is actually to be balanced so that you can try a different research tree/ research combo in order to adapt to your circumstances. It has been that way in certain releases, so it's entirely possible to achieve, though I'll admit it isn't always this way. I'm not against a light luck element, but I think the method you're proposing is highly disruptive and will effect a whole swathe of mechanics across the board. I also think that your reasons for proposing this idea - i.e. that plain and standard are bad are highly flawed and lack an understanding of what even the newest players can achieve. I can use plain and standard vehicles just fine (against similar weapon levels) and I've seen a lot of rookies be effective with them with a little support and repairs. Vehicles can also be salvaged now, so if someone isn't insane and just driving into enemy territory, if they lose their vehicle we can recycle it for I think 33% or a bit more. There's a lot more resource trade between teams now. All of that being said, if your luck element took the form of a passive buff instead of a random research package, that might be more manageable. You could possibly apply vehicle skills like vehicle speed, vehicle cooling, vehicle armour, and vehicle damage, in a different variant across the whole team. Which might add your luck without removing the strategic element of play. I'm not really sure that messing with resources is a good thing, because it's highly dependent on the team you're fielding, and as everyone knows it's easy to get unbalanced teams. You might even get team switching because people want to play with more resources or better loadouts and whatnot.
(In response to original post) While this particular implementation of more varied games is not really feasible, I do like the abstract notion of more randomized / varied games. Stuff like base swapping and such.
Yeah, I actually like the idea of removing the current default armor & engine and providing a random armor & engine. In general, it would be nice to set certain research to randomly be assigned to a team. If you only give a team absorbant, regen or budget armor, then I think that would be perfectly fine. Likewise, if you just provided turbine, biodiesel or something else, that would be fine as well. The point is that all current or upcoming armors & engines may not be suitable at start, but a subset of them definitely would.
The idea includes that people make packages and the game picking 1 package to each team. different maps could hold different packages even, so the package combinations on emp money are different then duststorm
