from what i hear... the next version of empires is going to have less expensive and more vulnerable vehicles than in the present version. it's my opinion that a playerbase's resistance to cooperation is directly proportionate to the pacing of the game. i think this change would make the pacing too fast and hurt strategy and coordination.
I believe the change was originally going to be a flat 50% cut in armor health, but I remember Trickster mentioning something about only cutting Absorbent's health and leaving the other armors alone, along with taking out the Speed to Damage modifier. My prediction is that this will make Composite the strongest armor, Regenerative will gain some uses, Absorbent will only be used if a side is doing a Chemistry rush, Reactive will become slightly less useful and Reflective will stay pretty much the same as it is now. From there, I can see BE doing more Physics rushes because Absorbent wouldn't matter as much, and Bio rushes in general would become more common. This would also cause a proportionate reduction in Chemistry rushes, and no one would ever do an Electric rush ever again. As a side note, does anyone have any recent hard numbers of the statistics on weapons and armor? I'm pretty certain the ones on the wiki are out of date and I'm wanting to do some number crunching.
Empty is being very positive towards te communityagain. You know the only time I hear empty being optimistic or slightly positive is when he talks about his particles , mad, or his kangarou fetish... Doesnt really help us, this community being pessimistic. Dont ban me For this, dont be a mootant.
I agree, I think we should just get the values from 2.24d back and we can all be happy. Empires is now going to get too ridiculous, like diminishing returns in a game with shit res income, free research (the fuck?), and now all the tanks are default paper regardless of armor. Don't listen to empty, FN, he's just mad that you are actually thinking about the future of Empires while everyone else is treating the game itself like a dispensable bumper car.
All armors hp got reduced, and speed to damage mod got removed on all armors except absorbant. With the StoD mod gone, 80% of an armors usefulness is its gimmick: Reflective: angle mod, needs a vet team to be able to pull off Regen: grows back, but your still dead due to lack of hp to start with. Comp: "high" hp/low weight. and you can only build 3 tanks due to the cost Reactive: no idea Absorbant: keeps its gimmick (global dmg reduction), is light, is cheap, remains broken as hell. If nothing else, the changes will open a few new options for BE: Bio rush: with less armor hp, the bio effect becomes more annoying, "lulz, i give ur team aidz nd thy all die". Cant kill buildings. DU rush: tanks die faster, still cant kill buildings. NF holds until uml meds, skips on engines and continues to own BE for another version with UML that can kill everything but infantry. I have been keeping the vehicle armor and weapon pages up to date with the release version values. If you want, I have a spreadsheet for hypothetical balance testing you can use. The values should be correct. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3910011/Empires/emp weps.ods reverting back to 2.24d tank values will not work, as they have the same problem that the current values have: see my sig. Many months back, I proposed a new balance system that would allow for: "BE medium tank with reflective armor takes 20% less damage from homing salvo missiles". The idea was shot down until people actuality sat down and tried to balance the current system and failed. Change 1 value with the current system, at least 7 weapon/armor interactions change. The speed mod on armor makes no sense except on absorbent, and with the speed mod limited to one armor, it becomes a viable balancing factor. The paper armor effect comes from not having the rest of the balancing factors in place yet.
Yeah, I misread Trickster's post. I though he was saying that they were dropping StoD for everything and cutting Absorbent's health. Having reread his post, I realize that I am a dumbass and Absorbent is still really broken. Nonetheless, by removing StoD on all other armor, Regenerative and Composite will become stronger, because they both have positive modifiers. Reactive will become weaker because it has a negative modifier. And Reflective will become ever so slightly weaker, because it currently has a modifier of -0.001. Though, what I find interesting is that Plain will actually have the second most to gain, because it has the highest modifier of +0.008, EDIT: I took your spreadsheet and reran the numbers with everything but Absorbent having zero StoD. And just as you said, Absorbent is still broken because all the other armors were balanced against each other somewhat, but still not balanced against Absorbent. Anyway, thanks for the numbers, I'll put them to good use.
It will make tank combat exciting rather than the current one where two tanks can shoot at each other and nothing will happen.
In all cases, people like to see the results of their actions. In this example case, pumping munitions into spotless vehicles is unsurprisingly boring. So how do we demonstrate that attacking vehicles is actually causing damage? Short of a ton of technical changes (remodeling everything to include active model-based damage), vehicle death is best way to show that shooting your missile actually did something. I'm not sure if halving armor isn't too much, but it will definitely be a change in the right direction.
how about decreasing mobility and strengthening weapons instead like almost every other game involving an infantry/armor balance model?
because that seems to be no option for whatever reason, whenever someone suggested anything like slower turning or reduced top speeds it was "do not want, end of discussion" i think it should be both. less health and slower -> anything that forces tanks to have infantry in their back is only welcome.
Assault Jeeps will be even more effective :D Reznov and I are going to take full advantage of this...
if it makes you usefull for once that can only be good. maybe those jeeptards finally serve some purpose then. i still doubt it ...
Pretty much this. I fall asleep every time I fight another tank, and tanks don't give a shit about infantry unless it's tight quarters and there's stickies about.
like in emp_shadows? i know what you're talking about and i'm with you on it but as long as tanks are inexpensive there's little reason not to be mechanized. personally i think tank weapons should do much more damage but have reduced turret speeds so that while tanks can annihilate infantry if they stay still, tanks will be less effective against a bait and switch or a two sided infantry attack. => encouraging tactics/teamwork/coordination! ^___^
why ignore the whole of what makes empires great? polishing tank combat only makes our game that much better.
Make empires the little brother of bf3 that makes the shittiest pcs be able to play it. Bam you got yourself a game and possily a lawsuit
Current tank combat is molasses slow. You want to add slower turret rotation to the mix. I think glaciers will become the dominant armored threat in empires if that's the case.
i want turrets to be less agile, yes. i also want their weapons to do much more damage than they do now. it is the lack of powerful weapons that makes tank combat slow, not bad aim.
