And plasma mg is even more gay? Chahk: you're completely wrong. Changing the cost will just make game longer because you can't take the farms out or people would switch to nuke tanks. (BTW in early versions nuke tanks were used to take farms down situation changed when someone followed suggestion of your kind and made it cost 3k res to research) How I see arty in cooperation on the battlefield? Tanks are cover and anti tank. Arty is anti arty + anti turret. Infantry of course anti infantry and sometimes can be a cover for single vehicles. Arty should hurt buildings and infantry a lot but not vehicles when hit indirectly. APC is made to cover infantry from arty. In current (not BSID's server's) situation I see only one problem. Artillery especially double small arty is great weapon against tanks. That makes it (especially on open maps) impossible to kill with anything other than other arty.
Arty should do almost no damage to tanks unless its a direct hit. We really have to look at gameplay otherwise, rather than real life. What makes the game fun? Right now arty spam is not fun. How do we stop arty spam? Make it ineffective or more expensive (I would like to see it be deployed before it can be used but thats a programming issue), even with a smaller blast radious, 4 artys are still gona spam like mad so I think a higher price would be a good idea. You will simply need to protect your arty to take out the turret farms rather than charge in guns blazing, arty shouldnt do taht in the first place. Being more expensive will limit arty and keep it in the rear where it belongs.
I agree that the Arty is one of the very few viable counters to a lvl 3 Turret farm. But that doesn't mean Arty's cost shouldn't be balanced against its power. All it means is that higher level turrets are also disproportionately cheap. 250 and 500 resources for lvl 2 and 3 turrets respectively will curb even the biggest farmers (well, maybe not on emp_money, but everywhere else.) I see another problem. HE shells (and Mediums too to some extent) are used to blindly fire off in the general direction of enemy infantry to score kills. You don't even have to aim the damn thing: just point, click and count the rank points.
also: Hiking the cost means commanders are less likely to let noobs have them, and noobs are less likely to get them. In the right hands a current arty is deadly, but to any new player.... I think they'd be in for a dissapointment. I was considering: how about, for the current explosive radius of an HE, all arty shells do a little bit of damage, so you still have to aim to get out of the way, even if it's only say, 10 - 15%...
You're constantly mentioning the skill/aim required to use arty. It's not about need of cover or skill. It's the thing that I can kill level 3 turret with new settings in 30-60 seconds if I have luck. I won't even take whole farm out. Only real problem that I see is not how easy it is to get kills but how easy it is to kills tanks. Chahk: I don't see any need for changes. Just make arty not kill armored vehicles. General note: You're just whining about artillery. It's supposed to kill infantry without any higher skill. (now it's completely impossible). You can't kill turret farms. If you make price higher I'll leave this shit and buy nuke tanks. Instead of checking if someone gets 50 kills by HE arty play on your own against turret farming commander with new settings. That should be enough to "heal" you from stupid (untested) ideas.
Mootant, we are talking about changes to gameplay in general and to Artillery specifically. If you cannot participate in a discussion without resorting to name-calling, please leave this thread to adults.
tbh i have no clue what you are on about m00tant what is explosion radius gonna change about arty vs lev3 turrets? the turrets didnt get any better, so if you are able to take them out before you will now aswell.
I believe what he is trying to say is that the small blast radius is making it harder for him to hit the turrets. Due to the recoil, kickback on vehical, and distance required to hit a lvl3 ML without getting hit back, the smaller blast radius is causing difficulty in managing to hit them dead on. (Note that is HIS opinion and NOT mine) My opinion is that the power of the arty should be kept. (Yes I know its god-awfully powerful against anything.) I believe the price should be set much higher. (As several others here have suggested.) That power should come at a high price. I do however also believe that reducing the balst radius on all but the HE shells would prove bennificial. I think the arty's purpose should be "primarily" base bombardment. Although it should also be a good anti tank and inf. weapon when well defended. I hate seeing them used as a front line weapon on the battlefield. The new changes are at least a step in the right direction. PS: In anticipation of the Scout Rifle becomming a good med. machine gun... God Bless You... :D
I'm a little confused. Why do so many of you think artillery shouldn't damage tanks? Classic solid projectile or High explosive projectile artillery of the type used in ww2 would support this idea, but these days artillery comes in more flavors than you can imagine. There are shells designed for anti-armor as well as ground penetrating, etc, etc. The problem is the "artillery cannon" has to do all these things unless new research is introduced or new options in the vehicle build. Personally, I think the stuff should be easier to aim, forced to deploy spades to level/brace and be less resistant to tanks and infantry firing at it. I'd also love to see rocket artillery. If you haven't ever seen it, google rocket artillery videos and look at that launch sequence. Even imagining being on the receiving end of that is scary. Hmm... well, I wandered afield, but my point remains the same. For supposedly advanced technological civilizations, these guys' arty and tank cannons just suck. The same argument about tank cannons is true as well. They're too simplified to please everybody. Even with railguns, HE, plasma available I tend to use straight cannon in pairs on a med with a rocket or two for added punch. Feel free to shoot my ideas down as I'm still quite the newbie here, but be kindly about it EZ_Frag
I guess M00tant is complaining about using artillery for people that don't know how to. Not trying to troll, but that's what it honestly sounds like to me. I think making the artillery tank more expensive alltogether, making it more ineffective versus tanks, that would do alot better. Though the infantry slaying is the real problem here. If you make tanks harder to kill that will only make 40 kills then instead of 50, since they're skilllessly lobbing away at infantry mainly. Currently the artillery tank takes zero skill, every dumb idiot can use it and often does. Some know how to use it, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that, like the Scout rifle, it's the easy way to free kills.
dizzyone/chahk: it's not personal: just try to kill lvl 3 ml turret with HE arty and measure how long does it take. My impression could be slightly off because turrets were guarded by some grenadiers when I tried to destroy them. Anyway it's not about discussion: if you won't check it we have nothing to talk about. (even if you think that you're theorethically right you're not) UPDATE: you could also change the radius slightly after my game. Because you can make arty group that will pwn everything. Few 2xsmall arties + some HE + long range and you won the game. And most powerful shells (that pwn tanks) don't require you to deploy or even slow down. Katana9000: Yes, I'm talking about that.
Just a quick note on the BSID Battlefield and Research and Development servers. The "Battlefield" server will remain true the intent of the Empires developers with no modifications. The R&D server now functions in two modes: "Classified" and "Public Welcome" which are reflected in the server's name change. "Classified" is when us at BSID at screwing around alpha testing new stuff, thus far weaponary and "Public Welcome" is when we remove the password to the server and invite public player to then beta test our efforts. NB: While on the R&D public players should NOT expect normal uninterupted game play i.e. you may see frequent use of "noclipping" and player's healths being changed (and the occassionaly ma_firebomb!) We at BSID greatly appreciate public player contributions which we can then pass on to the devs for them to veto and possible include in a future release. Cheers
it takes 2 to 3 shells to correct your aim and kill a lev3 turret. and if the turrets are placed near each other you would still take them all out at once.
Dizzy, This is Goose. I never have to correct my aim. The only reason it appears that my arty has changed direction or elevation is because the planet fears me. And the shifting of my arty is caused by the shaking of the planets fear.
In my case: (I'm not blind nor have a bad aim with arty) it took 1-2 shells to shoot at more or less turret position. After few more turret was down. There were other turrets near it + engineers repairing it + grenadiers constantly firing at me. I only killed one turret. Problem: if I'm firing at lvl 3 with cover of grenadiers I need to be very far away not to be killed. Heat bar and distance are biggest factors. As already said I just ended with spamming NF light tanks because they were far more cost effective in taking this farm + infantry out. I don't have the scripts nor I can test it with your changes (you changed something after that game).
Hmm, that's a good point Moo. Like I mentioned, I'd like to see target specific ammo for arty and tanks. Teamwork could be mandatory by having a gunner who can switch between loadouts and give a targeting bonus or something as a gameplay suggestion, but that's beside the point. Until the arty is differentiated, people are going to complain. If it's overpowered they yell about it, if it's underpowered, they yell about it Just from personal experience, my worst nightmare in arty is having a decent player in a light tank show up. Even if I'm loaded out with 2 small ac's for armor destruction, if they're good and have anything but plain armor, they can get inside my minimum range FAST and crush me with 2 or 3 shots. If I see them cruising in from far enuff away I tend to turn tail and run for the nearest tank or turret farm. Also, I had similiar problems using arty when it was mega-nerf'd a couple days ago. I'd have to spend 4-5 HE shells to take out 1 lev3 turret, then run away and repair. By the time I got back, the turret farmers had 2 more up. Yesterday I played with some of the arty and found I could easily take out turrets again, had some trouble hitting infantry, but could manage if they didn't use cover effectively, and got owned by light tanks if they didn't run straight into my kill zone. Btw, the number of tankers that do drive straight into arty killzones is amazing. I've been guilty of it too, trying to beat the reload time, but I saw some guy pound the same exact spot with like 20 shells and kill 4 mediums and 2 apcs the other day. IMO, this is a result of the players thinking in terms of instant gratification. Instead of pulling back and looking for a way to flank the arty, they all just rushed straight to their deaths. On a completely offtopic note, that irc log you have for a sig is terrifying, lol. EZ_Frag
What exactly is the programming problem with making arty deploy? Wouldn't it be possible to have your secondary weapon on the arty be a "deploy" that has a fairly long recharge, and will change your engine's speed to 0 (or possibly replace with an identical heat dissipating engine, but with no power)? I don't know exactly how you guys have it coded, so a brief explanation would be appreciated.
I would imagin it would be easy but we only have Krenzo and he has to do it. PM him if you think its important.
