I have alot of idea's mostly for the fact that I'd love to see Empires to expand to double the amount of items available ingame from vehicles to buildings to research. Another thing I'd love to see is more customization of each item to allow even further replayabillity due to the fact that anything could be customized. Wall / Barricade / Defensive type items One of the things I've been thinking about is having the abillity to either build raised catwalks (against the walls for base defense) or intergrate catwalks into the current walls. Another thing I was thinking of was instead of using walls as tank barricades why not make it as its own 'thing'. I dont know what they're called but I've seen them in the WW2 flicks, their the huge anti tank barricades. Anyway, make it so that engineers can place a few of them and that the commander can place them as well. I was also thinking of being able to lay down spools of razor wire as a cheap but effective way at stopping infranty on the battlefield. Have it so that short runs of it can be placed by engineers, medium and long runs placed by the commander and if possible an attachment to a vehicle that allows it to carry spools of razor wire. Pill boxes just like in Red Alert. A way for troops to have some kind of bunker to shoot out of for defensive positions on the front lines. Allow the upgrade to different levels of pillboxes for both camouflage and armor. Possibly allow pill boxes to have a health and ammo upgrade to allow resupply. Possibly allow another kind of pillbox that has two machine gun turrets inside For the turrets you should have it so that they both run on ammo and are customizable. Customization could be larger ammo boxes, being able to choose the caliber of the bullets, extra rotating barrels ( as in be able to upgrade to 6 possibly?). Theres also the thing of smoke grenades and other variables of that nature that a turret can still shoot through, I think that another upgrade path would be different 'addons' for the turret such as thermal imaging or movement detection, etc to be able to see through the smoke. This way the low level turrets can be 'blinded' by the smoke and for the higher tier turrets possibly introduce a grenade that emits thermal heat to distract the turret. For the walls you should also have gates or doors or both just like in Tiberian sun with the lowering gate. This would allow the ability to build a full 4 walled base with a gate. ( On a side note I know that introducing hacking into the game has been put down before but in instances like this there could be a way to hack the gate to allow entry) I know someone was discussing day / night and things along the lines of that so if that does get put in why not have the ability to build light towers or addons to your walls or buildings for light units? Have the ability for this aswell to upgrade its output power for light. General structures Power plant: Why not introduce an 'electric' system where certain buildings require power, such as radar and refineries or if the day / night cycle idea was implimented then lights as well. This could introduce a strategic part of gameplay where taking out the other teams generator station would effectively hinder their defensive and offensive capabillities. For this structure upgrades could include additional power output modules, the ability to choose which structures recieve power first before others incase of an overload. Refinery upgrades should be designed to allow further enhancement of the refineries to allow even more output. Vehicles Goliath tank: An excessively large tank that is extremely expensive but has an extreme weight capacity, a ton of weapons slots ( 6 missile slots, 6 chain gun slots, 8 cannon slots, a grenade slot and allow for two engines). Anti infranty vehicle: Medium sized APC like vehicle that has 4 or 6 machine gun slots thats designed for use against infranty only. SCUD missile launcher: Self explanatory Could allow research of bigger, better misisles with possibly nerve gas canisters? Minefield laying vehicle / mine field clearing vehicle: Have a vehicle that can set anti personell mines and a vehicle that can clear those mines, allow upgrades to further enhance either mine capacity, mine damage abillity and mine removal speed. Small ATV like vehicle: Extremely cheap, no armor, very fast, no weapons This could be used for just getting base to base very fast but would have the disadvantage of no protection from bullets Research tree Although I dont have any 'specific' ideas for the research tree I do think that it should be doubled in size in regards with MUCH more of the following: Armor types Engine types ( allow cooling modules to be attached to any engine?) Weapons ( guns, missiles, cannons, artillery and grenade launchers) Higher level turret upgrades Bullet upgrades ( different caliber and type of bullet?) This is just a small list of the idea's I have but in general all I'd like to see is just more stuff added to the game to allow more dynamics, tactics and strategies resulting from those new items.
Firstoff, good post I like the idea of a catwalk system, to allow more intuitive base defense designs, but right now walls are only kind of useful in the beginning of the game. Later in the game, artilery and powerful heavy tank rules out getting near a wall, because you will just get shelled into oblivion :eek: About the tank-stopper idea (I think that's what they're callled) it doesn't seem very feasable. Why would you spend money or use up an engy option on a tank stopper 2x2 big, when you could just wall an area for around the same price/option that's 1x16, effectively stopping both infantry and vehicles. I think the pillbox idea is cool, with the ammo/health upgrades available, but I do not think they should have turrets in them. Or, if need be, they must be piloted by humans. This would only be available after many upgrades, to prevent pillbox-to-pillbox fighting. The upgrades like thermal vision or motion detection sound good, since the computer turrets auto-target, the human-piloted turrets need a little boost to be effective as a defensive option. The gate/wall option is close to the catwalk option; artillery and heavy tanks (or even a Goliath tank ?) would just smash the gate down. I don't think it would be used much, so it would be a waste of resources/time. I researched the night/day option and occording to diffrent topics/forums the Source engine does not support a dynamic lighted skybox option, and the only alternative is a resource-hog. Anyone care to re-write Source? :p Goliath tank: Seems good, should be very slow, and isn't neccesarily powerful but has more weopon slots and can have infantry inside? Up to 2? Also did you get the idea for this from Battletanks for the N64? That's what a Golitah tank was, big and slow. That game is one of my favorite games of all time! (class based tank battles with like 20 weopons and specials!!) If they make the mg turret a little more free-aiming on most vehicles, there won't really be a need to implement an anti-infantry vehicle (unless it was a flame tank!?) A SCUD missle launcher would hopefully have close to the same attack power as an artillery tank, but fires close to vertically. The aiming system would be awkard; maybe have to have a second person target a site? That would be pretty cool....hmm.... If the mine vehicle could clear mines, lay mines, and put down 1 turret, that would be really cool.. like an engy/grenader vehicle! THE DEMO VEHICLE!!! ATV == buggy? Basically what you described :/ And finally, I would also like to see more branching research, with things not classified like "Biology" and "Physics", for easier rememberence of how to get things like the gas-turbine engine (I KNOW, but think if you had never seen the tree before, but someone said to get it, where would you think to look first?! Engines?) 2 long posts. Ouch.
Tank traps are cheap as hell (they are two steel I-beams welded together) Interesting suggests, how about an Mine laying arty shell? would be neat -Sheepe
And? I am not going to read through all the pages of suggestions to make sure what I am talking about hasnt been suggested before. Get me a wetlist of all the suggestions and I'l look at that before I post but until then dont start the war of 'omg i suggested that first noob!' which I see all over other HL2 mod sites. In the end all I'd like to see is alot more structures, vehicles, weapons, technological advancements and customization ability in this game.
most of your suggestions were repeats of stuff already in game basically, adding a bit TOO much complexity for 25-40 minute games. I like the pill box idea. the uber heavy tank, atv, super apc are the same as heavy tank/jeep/apc just bigger. seems to be a waste. there are many upgrades for weapon types... to bad most comms never actually get them.
