Empires mod - lets post some comments to get the word out...

I am suddenly reminded of complete's community trailer that didn't go anywhere because I don't think anyone submitted a clip. Which also reminds me of how few screen shots tama got to showcase commanding. Effort is hard.

 

Thanks for the links; I'll look into "demo smooth" when I can, and possibly get set up for lossless video recording and processing afterwards, rather than just direct streaming; how's my quality?

 

you play in 4 : 3 ?

 

Huh, you had std cannon icon glitched under your ugl, that's a new one. 17 mins in on that streets vid.

Quality wise it's not bad, that's what empires looks like, but the fps felt pretty rough. Though I felt it more going full screen, so maybe it's just my comp not handling it well for some reason. What do you usually play at? Also is that 1280x1024 res? The menus feel like they took up a ton of space. Looks fine for streaming though.

If you did intend to make vids for pr or whatever I would definitely record demos then playback later, not only to have a better frame rate but just so you can force the res to some 16:9 aspect ratio, 4 : 3 kinda looks off to most people nowadays I think.

4: 3 is pretty cool flasche, I played like that for like the last 10 years til I kinda replaced everything with a laptop.

 

the main issue with demos is how the menus behave (they dont close) and comm view doesnt work either -> its a lot more fiddling around then in other source engine games/way less convenient than it sounds in the beginning.

 

I remember hearing that the menus empires uses runs off of custom code, I guess demos don't know what to do about them.

Still for a trailer, there's a alot of shots you wouldn't want to use the hud or anything, so you could play the demo back without one and the menus wouldn't be an issue rihgt? You'd need one for commanding of course, and probably a few snippets of what empires should look like from a player's perspective(vf menu, engy building things for a second, squads maybe), but I would think that for a more cinematic look to draw attention you'd do away with it so people only see the action happening right in front of them.

 

honestly i dont think its the - admitably suboptimal - controlls preventing people from commanding much, its more like that the task itself is more of a chore than a rewarding position to take.

 

What flasche said. The idea of commanding to most would sound like a position of power, you tell people to do things and things happen, but unless you are one of like 4 commanders that is not at all how commanding goes. To enjoy commanding if you don't have that years of not only experience but enough respect from a majority of player to listen to you the really fun part of commanding is simply all the little tedious things that make commanding. Placing buildings, keeping troops updated on what's happening, trying to predict and correctly play against the enemy comm/enemy team(you can do a lot on this one without cooperation from your team), running people over and balancing the use of the cv as bait and not getting caught/dying(yes this is bad practice, but a lot of games are really hopeless unless you do this), simply keeping research going and base building everything yourself. Basically making everything work nicely from the background, a position you will never receive praise for but if not done right will have everyone rage at you.

I can say I've been enjoying commanding a bit more recently but that's because I kinda exhausted the fun of infantry and vehicle combat. People like me aren't minded as much in the cv because we have enough experience in regular empires not to do really really dumb things that make everyone angry. I is good ref dropper. New players don't actually have that incentive, to them the idea of commanding sounds like it could be fun but that's not how commanding works so when they opt in they find it's a horrible experience and quit forever. Or don't quit immediately, but don't stick around when they see how little direct impact they can make on the field. It's simply not as rewarding as driving as tank around doing things, commanding doesn't have that immediate gratification factor.

Really, the only thing I really really would like is a super basic 10-15 tutorial on just how to do the most basic of things as comm, and have it so you can't opt in unless you take that tutorial. I'm almost tempted to say they can't enter the cv either to help prevent griefs, but I feel that's gonna cause tons of problems for vets who know the game already but can't be arsed to play the tutorial. I never minded new players in the cv, but I really really do hate it when they don't even know how to move the camera around and the first thing they drop is a bunch of turrets or a repair pad in main.

 

i dont think its that. for me the majority of tasks are just boring, repetitive, require barely any skill, and have little to no direct impact on the game.
sure, in the grand scheme comm does a lot, but it in the long run thats too abstract to draw from - at least for a majority, or so it seems (to me)

 

Sounds great JGF, I hope you recorded that game.

I think the issue with commanding is that, far too often, you're the only one able to do a bunch of low-level stuff. That's why I've suggested the personal commandview, which would allow any team member to suggest a building, and therefore do all the placement of e.g. a battery of turrets.

Giving targets is really terrible at the moment; I've been yelled at too often for not giving targets. It takes absolutely zero skill and it's tedious. Possible solutions:
-No more commander attack targets
-Squad leaders can give targets as well
-You always automatically have a target set to the nearest enemy

Those are all suboptimal, though, so I'd gladly hear your alternatives.

 

Squad leads can already give targets? Or you mean they can kinda pop into comm view and do a wide sweep like the commander does. Sounds bad to be honest. I don't know why people always want targets either, it's like no one places cameras or uses their brain, they can only be in so many places. The only time that targets feel really needed is in base where they have 100 places to hide.

Which to me sounds like it would be better if it was a defensive measure and you can only give targets in range of the cv. Don't know about range though, like half the distance of the radar? Enough to cover a base at least.

Honestly, squad leads can give targets to help coordinate their squad, and we have cameras everywhere anyway. This is one of those things that people really shouldn't be bothering the comm for.

As an aside, that personal comm view was suggested a couple of times but I'm to lazy to find them. Sounds neat, but I feel that would work better if you redesigned empires without the commander and gave everything to the players. Placing buildings is really half the fun for commander, taking that away kinda kills the commander's fun potential. I know I really wouldn't want to bother with it if players can do that themselves.

Extra aside, am I the only one who isn't bothered by this so called low level stuff? It all adds the commanding experience I say, all things put together gives commander something to actually do and is something of a challenge to do it all effectively.

 

No they can't, I'm busy doing useful things, like not losing the cv to a base rush or ninja(again...).

 

I think the idea of being able to expand the viewing abilities of the commander through research and/or an extra building.

In the meantime, I think it would be a good idea to change this: The commander no longer sees enemies in a large radius around troops; instead, he can only see (and therefore target) enemies around the comm vehicle, and enemies already spotted by troops. However, the latter already show up to infantry as orange marks, so there is no need to ever sweep around, except in his own area.

Of course, a commander could boomtank and use that for targetting, but I don't see it ever being practical, since the area around the CV wouldn't be bigger than the area currently around any friendly unit, so you'd have to be really in the middle of the fight to use it, and nobody is going to take that great a risk in games where the outcome really matters.

This lowers the expectations placed on commanders a little bit, and also pushes the responsibility to spot enemies into the hands of the soldier. I'm not sure about vehicles though; perhaps these should still be automatically visible when near any friendly, because otherwise enemy jeeps rushing into main have to be explicitly "spotted" by troops. Do we want that? Targets on tanks aren't really demanded the same way as for infantry; usually you give more specific orders when it comes to tanks, but it's not an issue of whether you can see them or not.

Also, engineer camera's and radars should also show the commander enemies (as they currently do), but these likewise give infantry an orange mark automatically, so that shouldn't force the commander to give targets.