Original post: I suggest adding building upgrades into the tech tree, perhaps having a few variants for each building, each requiring a different research (i.e rax with a mg turret or two on it someplace, requiring some research in electrical, or a rax with a built-in armory, or additional hp). This could require that the structure has been standing for 10+ minutes each tier, to prevent people from making a fully upgraded rax next to the enemy base, making it harder for them to kill it. Other than that, you could add research to reduce damage taken by indirect artillery shells, since its really annoying seeing that artillery spam aimlessly and then taking out your whole base in 3-4 sec (coolant + 2x small arty at close range, move right/left and aim up/down, and theres a 99% chance that 2 or 3 structures will be down depending on how close together they are, and if your teammates are attacking). Updates: forgot to follow guidelines D= Pros: Eaiser to defend established positions More building utility Cons: Makes commanding more complex can't think of that many cons, so someone help me here =p List of ideas so far: Seperate research tree Buildings need re-building to be upgraded Buildings need to be placed for a certain amount of time before they're eligible for upgrades
1 - That would take a ton of time creating and especially balancing it, while there's still plenty left to balance as it is. 2 - Research is almost exclusively done to get better vehicles so this would go the way of upgraded RPG and level 3 turrets, that is only researched for fun or rare circumstances. 3 - I've never really found the current buildings to be lacking anything and you can get turret upgraded buildings by building turrets near them. Also arty is about to be hit with nerf-hammer.
1. I don't know, im just throwing some ideas at the board :D 2. That aspect of research is boring 3. buildings are paper: 5 engi nades + 110 or so repair gun pew pew will blow one up, 8 mines will blow one (two or three [buildings] if placed right), and it remains like this throughout the entire match, ~28 guided ml (not upgraded) will kill one. I feel that established positions should be harder to take, instead of having one engineer run in and boom, you lost that base. What this would do, would be to basically give defenders more advantage in long-established areas, and not give them impossible to kill positions next to the enemy base unless they don't do anything about it the whole match.
I believe the ability to get harder to kill buildings would be an interesting single upgrade. That said, I believe that it should likely be no more than a single upgrade, perhaps in either mechanical engineering or bio. Maybe a second upgrade that enabled buildings to have built-in turrets on top, making them effectively high health turrets aswell. Overfocus on this will simply lead to clutter. The one thing I can respect about the current empires tech tree is that it does not have clutter.
You are completely correct that it's almost silly how quickly an undefended base can go down to engineers, but that's really more a matter of the game's philosophy. It's either a base building game where tanks fight for base defense, or its a vehicle building game, where the base is just around to spawn the drivers and vehicles. Currently empires is a vehicle based game. Losing 5 tanks hurts a hell of a lot more than losing a vf or rax and a bunch or turrets. So what you're looking for is less fps and more rts elements. (Though lately even rts games have been more and more focused on building gameplay around units, like DoW2 and WiC.)
It does have a lot of useles things though: plasma mg, plasma cannons, improved detonators (what does this do anyway), nukes, biomg, bio missiles. sample tree with building stuffs: Structural engineering (base) * (name TBA): Reduces the damage done to structures from indirect explosions by 20% ** 40% * Improved Barracks: Increases the barracks' hp by 50%, and allows construction of a bunker ontop of the barracks. In order to upgrade a barracks with this upgrade, it needs to have been on the battlefield for more than 10 minutes. ** (name TBA): Incorporates an armory into the barracks, and increases its hp by an additional 33%. Only one secondary upgrade can be active on any one barracks at a time. In order to upgrade a barracks with this upgrade, it needs to have been on the battlefield for more than 15 minutes. ** (name TBA), requires level 2 turrets: Allows construction of two machine gun turrets on the barracks. In order to upgrade a barracks with this upgrade, it needs to have been on the battlefield for more than 20 minutes. ** (name TBA), requires regenerative armor: Allows the barracks to repair itself, and increases hp by 15%. In order to upgrade a barracks with this upgrade, it needs to have been on the battlefield for more than 20 minutes. And of course some stuff for the other buildings, i.e sam sites on the radar, once aircraft is implimented, bunker for the armory, walls/shield for the repair pad, extra res/armor for the refs.
Researching any of those would be griefing a team as a commander. That level of research dedicated to a lack of offensive power would prove hazardous very quickly. I can appreciate what you are trying to do, but that is far too much focus on the idea.
I still don't get why you need this. If you fear ninjas, you build turrets and a second or third rax. That's like 300% HP without griefing your teams research. Incorporate armoury into rax?! you can already clip the entrances together, what more do you want!? Also replacing bunker with battle bunker has been suggested many times. Most people thinks it's pretty kool but no one has actually made and skinned a model. Shame really.
They can be passive and/or a seperate research tree; when you're done researchign what you need offensively you usually research turrets (defensive) unless the enemy team has artilery. It is a valid point that researching that would probably cause your team to fail; therefore this might work with upgrades becoming available once you meet certain research criteria, i.e mech and regen for regen-ish rax.
I like this idea but, doing so would indeed seem like griefing your own team. Instead of getting better tanks you get a barracks with mg's on it, or better health, or regen armor? They sound good but, wasting time on the research instead of getting better tanks can loose the match for your team. I wouldn't mind it if they came automatically with research as someone may have suggested before. Such as getting regen armor automatically allows the barracks to heal itself once its been there for a set time and isn't taking damage currently. Turrets on the barracks... that seems rather over powered if they are lvl2's, I wouldn't mind lvl 1's tho. Sure lvl1's have crappy range but, its gana be part of the barracks and therefore not destructible unless barracks is dead right? They are meant to keep the enemy at range. How the hell is NF gana get a turret on there barracks? Its so damn tall a turret on top won't shoot crap. Put a ledge over the door for the turret? Another thing... how do the buildings get the upgrades? All of a sudden a built turret shows up over the barracks? Does the empires engine auto swap out the model for a new one? What happens if the model is swapped while someone is still in it? It seems like a bit of coding is needed to allow for the new research beyond adding them to the tree. Buildings that auto-heal for example need to be coded with a timer for enabling attributes when on the field long enough or for regenerating and more attributes need to be added to buildings. All this uses more resources from the server.
I would say that level 1s that are stand-alone, but on the barrax and not counting towards the turret limit (and requiring an engineer to build them), with a respawn time of 2 minutes or so wouldn't be that overpowered. Another idea would be to give upgrade poinds (or whatever you'd like to call them) based on how many minutes of research you've gone through, then you can't grief your team by researching the upgrades, and you'd get some of them for "free". The upgrade could be an extention, first upgrading the barrack's hp, then allowing construction of the turrets/stairs/ramps leading up to them. You could downscale the NF barracks, and each upgrade would add another story to it, or expand upon the previous floor.
Advert you're right, it should be a different research ( for buildings only) like there should be a different research for infantry that can be conducted at the same time. Your other idea is also good, if you research regen armor, you should automatically be able to upgrade buildings with regen armor. I have an idea for how buildings actually upgrade. The commander can select a building and upgrade it, but it would turn nonfunctional and have low health as if it was just placed. Engineers then have to quickly build it or else it would easily be killed by the enemy. Models wouldn't be too difficult, they should all look the same, except perhaps upgraded buildings will be a different color. Just stick a turret on the barracks
Roll those upgrades into research that already exists so it wont be fail. I would say 'economy' researches like Advanced Personel and lvl 3 turrets. The upgrades could take X amount of time each to install regardless of how old the rax is. Or we could just say, double the barracks health and make it cost 500 res. Paying only 200 for a people factory that never runs out of people is such a bargain I drop them everywhere if there is room, but they are also pretty easy to destroy if one gets caught without a repair engy for a few seconds.
What if you could constantly upgrade building HP? And the cost would increase each upgrade? Like 125 HP per upgrade. 150 res > 300 res > 600 res > 1200 res For 2250 you would have an awesome barracks with 700 HP :D
I was thinking of what satanchild & hamster said, that you'd select the building then upgrade it and pay some res for the upgrade. I was also thinking of: standard -> hp upgrade -> utility upgrade + some more hp for the rax and vf, standard -> utility -> moar hp for the radar, armory and repair pad (since a radar with an hp upgrade is pretty pointless since it'll be away from conflict zones)
Aids?! god, I HATE that, not because its useless, its soo damn annoying to get on your tank if your not an engy.
Actually being able to just upgrade a rax would be alot better then what I suggested. Could lead to stalemates though, barracks duels can go on a long time as it is.
WERTBARG stamp of approval. I like this idea, because Empires is the only "RTS" where you can construct a full scale base in under 15 seconds with only 3 builders, this helps establish ground and gives buildings some much needed resilience.
