Driver = too much work?

I'd like to think the driver in Empires have too much responsibilities. They control the vehicle, they man the turrets, the cannons. The driver is definitely busy all the time when the going get tough.

Why do the driver need to do all these things? They should just need to drive and that's pretty much it. It's just messed up when a driver have to try and escape on the vehicle while trying to shoot down the people chasing behind him, just too busy to notice that he's driving down the lake or bump into an enemy tank ahead.

for me, I would like to see improvement to the vehicles to encourage more team work. Right now any person can just build a tank from the VF and run off on their own little mission. Wouldn't it be better if he had another guy with him in the vehicle to man the machine gun while you, the driver, do the driving and turning? It's just chaotic when a driver have to drive and shoot at the same time, if there's a person there doing the shooting for the driver, maybe it would be a lot more effective.

If anyone of you play Halo, ya would know a person driving a jeep is a lot more vulnerable than a person driving the jeep with a gunner behind. I would like to see Empires with vehicles that let infantry control some of the weapon available on that vehicle, not just leave them all to the driver.

Pros:
-allows more team work in the game
-provide something for the infantry to do while getting a free ride on the vehicle
-give the driver of the vehicle an easier time

Im pretty sure there's a few more but meh

Cons:
-might be annoying when the infantry and driver doesn't cooperate with each other (an example would be that the driver doesn't stop or slow down to let the infantry take a shot at a wandering enemy infantry).
-works to add this feature
-interfere with game play...somehow.
-people will disagree with this since they are good driver who can handle things on their own and try to argue that being a lone wolf tank driver been been a useful tactic for them.



What do you guys think. ><

 

I think in the future something similar like this is being implemented -- NF tanks are getting side sponsons(sp) and will require a second player to man those.

From personal experience, however, having to have a second player man the turrets is a pretty bad idea. I've played BF2 and various mods for it and it's always been very difficult to find someone who will work with you and will know what to do. Usually the gunners are so fixated on killing something that they're not looking around like the driver to see where threats are coming from -- leading to getting hosed.

I enjoy driving tanks by myself. I'm usually trying to achieve my own objectives -- killing enemy refineries or something on the far side of the map -- and it's just hard to get people to come with you to do those things since everyone has, in their head, their own idea of what needs to be done.

Sure, having to have two players to a vehicle will make the game require much more team work (after all, it'll force people to communicate more), but it'll also take away from the flexibility and speed that so many of us enjoy about empires.

Anyway, such a modification seems like it would be fairly trivial to accomplish in code, but ... I just hope people don't listen to you :D

 

Well, for me, i have always enjoy having a vehicle that let people come along and give you some fire support.

It's not going to make the driver be useless, it's just going to make the vehicle be more effective. Imagine having you driving and manning the cannon while a guy in the back picking off infantries left and right, it's call team work.

 

i can imagine nubz that overheats ur vehicle by shooting cg's when they ar not supposed to :/ . Anyways if it would work like shooting from be apc when a driver is moving mouse with light speed ,then no.

 

Well personally I don't have much trouble doing tank fighting while on the run. One of my favorite memories is fleeing from an AFV on emp_isle all the while my turret is turned backwards and I'm landing shot after shot after shot into that sucker till I killed it .

 

The last time i did that, i drove into the ocean and blew up.

WTB>driving lessons.

 

lol Z1OOOOM if you dont want to deal with nubz dont play on the training server.


but anyway i think this is a great idea empires works well when squads of people work together me and my friends get in vent and make our own squad all the time and we usally end up doing well so this would really help with cooperative tank work and give some more immersion for the driver and the gunner. and it lets me focus on mah leet wall avoiding manuvers and not haveing to move the camera to hell and back to shoot and see where im going

 

lol, that's where the minimap comes in handy.

 

I think it would be better to allow the tank creator to give weapon control to a 'gunner'. If you can find a buddy whose willing to work with you, then let him control the weapons. Otherwise, you can just go solo.

 

Problem is, there's only one turret, and all the weapons are on the turret.

 

I think there might be a thread about this.

But pretty much it fucks with the guy driving and stuff too much. Imagine trying to aim a cannon not knowing when the driver is going to stop speed up slow down exetera. Mounted machine guns in 2nd slots would be ok. But other than that....

 

Krenzo said somewhere secondary seat weapons are being added. The example given was the NF heavy [a pair of side mounted cannons]. That was a while ago, and I don't know whether that idea is being kept.

If you mod the scripts you can give the second seat in an APC a gunslot, but I'm unsure whether it works.

[You can also allow all the players in an NF APC to shoot with their handheld weapons, it's awesome]

 

Secondary seat weapons are excellent. I wouldn't mind.

But then what thrill would you have just driving a tank when you don't get your pew pew guns? I say leave it as it is, teamwork IS used in tanks whatever you say, especially when good players make their own little squads

Having one guy driving and another mounting the turrets drastically reduces the amount of tanks on the field, and don't forget noobs won't be the ones jumping in your tanks to man the guns.

Oh and yeah, NF needs to be less weak in some ways, e.g. CV, giant buildings, no 2nd APC slots, weaker RPG, etc. etc.

 

Make it optionable

 

I really don't see how driving could be "too complicated". The only thing you have to watch our for is guys with stickies popping up 2 meters behind you. If buying a tank only means you get to drive it and nothing else, there's no way i'll be hopping into a tank. Even if i'd be the guy shooting while someone else drives, i would never do it cause i wouldn't know when the driver would accelerate or do stuff i need to know and "feel" in order to get the shell or missile in that one path that leads to hitting the enemy.

The only situation in which i ever could've used a driver was when my own team had put walls like everywhere and i had to try to get through that maze of walls i couldn't even blow up or deconstruct cause they were ours. This one problem is nothing in comparison to how frustrating a driver+gunner would be.

 

Driving is not complicated, but try driving while shooting the guys chasing behind you and having a 2nd set of eyes to see the front of where you are driving. Imagine driving backward and doing this.

Being a driver doesn't have to mean you only get to drive any nothing else. You arm a single cannon that somehow send bullets, rockets, missiles going yet you can only aim it at a single direction. What's good is that if you're the driver and you're the only one who can pretty much use the weapon on the vehicle when there's more than one targets aiming at you and threatening your survival on the battle field? Not to mention if you have to escape, you will need to somehow dodge rocks, walls, turrets, other enemy vehicles, buildings while fending off the enemy with a single cross hair, and that cross hair won't be corresponding to the direction of where the vehicles is going either.

It's not a driver and gunner idea, it's a "driver who is a gunner with another passenger who is also a gunner by his side helping him out" idea.

 

I'm afraid the guy who helps out would be missing a lot more because of the moving vehicle, with overheating as result (which results in higher damage and slower speeds). Though i'm not sure about this.

But i do think it would be very hard to help the driver. Depending on the speed and direction a vehicles drives, the shells will follow a different path. If the tankdriver is trying to get away, driving fast, shifting gears and turning to avoid obstacles, you'll have a hard time hitting the guys chasing you.

When an area is big and flat the driver can simple drive straight forward, and you'll be able to hit the enemy without a problem. But that's exactly the situation in which you can easily drive and shoot at the same time, cause it's a big flat area.

I guess the problem i have with it depends on the question wether or not a driver who knows what he's doing and which moves he will make, will be able to shoot better than someone who has no clue about the movement of the vehicle, but can focus on shooting and shooting alone.

I do know i never shoot out of the apc when it moves. Not with any gun. I problably only made 5 kills from within an apc, and all 5 of them were myself because i hit my own rpg. A cannon might work out differently because of the accuracy, but i'm not that optimistic about it. I wouldn't mind testing this, but it is a lot of coding work (i assume) for something i think will not work out very well.

Also i noticed being in vehicles often comes with lag. Would the same amount of vehicles, but with more people driving in them, further increase this or would this have no effect?

 

It's moving and shooting, you do exactly the same thing on the ground, what is difficult about it?

Would you have one player control the legs and one player control the gun for each infantryman?

 

Driving and shooting is a learned skill, as well as checking the minimap every now and then. The main problem I see with having a driver and gunner is the communication between the two. Empires really doesn't have a way for the two to quickly inform each other of what they are going to do.

This leads to all the problems with having this system in place.

 

The weapons have to be aimed differently but that's simply learning a weapon, no different from learning how to use any other weapon properly, the movement also works slightly differently but ultimately it's still moving and shooting and no more difficult to do than it is as an infantryman.