I kinda disagree with that statement. Back when APC spawns were restricted I actually saw MORE teamwork being used to get a successful APC rush off, instead of one guy driving past the enemy team and winning the game, instead the team had to actually pile in and take a risk with the APC. If they got in, they could do some serious damage, but if they got taken out you lost 8 guys. It was a calculated risk that had pros and cons. Upgraded RPG is a utility, you don't need to get it but utilities will probably be cheap and fairly short to research. They're mainly for a losing team to pick up to get back in the game. Plus mobility is easy. Raxes cost 200, that's very very very cheap imo, you can slam a barracks down anywhere and even if you lose it it's no big deal.
Could be fun. I'm somewhat inclined to agree with flasche that upgraded rpgs aren't the best of ideas. You are making tanks weaker though, so if you kept rpg damage the same and rpg was a buff on top of that, it would seem like that tree had a specific focus on infantry, or at least grens which might be alright. If you want to just tier combat having it as an extra when meds or heavy tanks get researched would be better, but I don't think that is what you are aiming for. Apc spawns tend to be a crucial part of the game, but I haven't had the chance to play when it was a research option so I'm interested in how it plays out. Some of it needs code support though, like damage modifier being subtractive, I think it was said reflective is capped at 50% so that would need a code change, starting buildings with 4times health(though that is a cool idea). I think that's it though, so that wouldn't be terribly hard to do. Oh, I'm still of the opinion that heavy tanks can't just be slow, not unless they have a max speed of like 20. They need to have a slow acceleration. That's my opinion though, so no one has to listen to it.
I think APC spawns have kinda made us lazy. We take them for granted. Without APC spawns: -You need to work with teammates to take vehicles to the frontlines -Or you can take jeeps (basically free) to reach the frontline -Your commander needs to place barracks and you need to keep them up -Barracks are more important and centralise the fight -The game cannot be decided by a single player holding W and getting lucky -Supply lines (raxes) and using vehicles intelligently keeps your team mobile and spread out. With APC spawns -APCs reach the front line and everyone spawns in them -Raxes are still important, but not critical I think one promotes more teamplay than the other, I never really had a huge issue with a lack of APC spawns (though I'll admit, once one team has spawns and the other doesn't it is a big swing. Plus there's no way to tell if an APC is spawnable or not.) If anyone has input for an alternative utility in bio I'm welcome to it, APC spawns is probably the most powerful utility in any tree so far. And yes, RPG upgrade will essentially be a straight up buff. it'll somewhat help out against lategame tanks but lategame tanks will be frail enough that even unupgraded RPG fire will be capable of destroying them (with the caveat being mk2 and mk3 weapons are usually quite lethal against infantry, you can kill them but they can also kill you)
Aight so as I see it shits tight. What needs adressing is with the new research time doubling if you want this shit to work with tons of research ( I like tons of research and tons of different weapons ) you need to differentiate researches and balance that as you know. What I suggest is make weapons really low research time chassis really high engines and armors average. BUT. Add tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3 research. If you want to rsearch anything in tier 1 you need to research tier 1 first which takes a while. In tier 1will be the worst weapons armors and chassis. Tier 2 will contain medium tanks weapons and chasis and tier 3 ditto but for heavies. Also if you research tier 1 you can only get 3 tier 1 thingies, if you want more you research tier 1 again if that makes sense?
I'm not to sure about what to give bio. I'd think something infantry related would be good, like everyone having a small health regen or increased resistances to everything by 10% or something. It's tricky, the more wide spread it is the smaller the effect has to be. Something super neat would be if buildings auto repaired some amount of health, 1 hp a sec is too fast considering their health, but 1 or 2 hp every 5 seconds might be ok. If that one doesn't work... being able to recycle buildings for full or 90% of their cost? Biodegradable building materials, or Organic recyclers? That's about the only ideas I can give on that. Again, if you don't want to have something early game you can always put apc respawns on whatever chassis tier if you want to segregate the gameplay. It's something everyone gets at some point, so it's less mandatory because you don't waste time to get it on the way to something else, right?
I saw lots of teamwork when a team hadn't researched apc spawns, because people had to get into the vehicle first. But in the version before that people would actually spawn in an apc to win the game quite often, so it was about the same. It's just that you had to get in first to do it, rather than spawn there when you died or if it got there. And the thing is, after a few games like that, people just research apc spawning first because it was basically necessary to play the game. One thing that might be wildly offtopic but might be a good idea, is if we could get enemy mainbase radars to stop APC spawning in an area (say regular base size). So you couldn't spawn in there when the apc was close, you'd actually need to be outside the base to do it. Let's face it, the more fun games have been when the APC was crazily driving around spawning people, rather than when the vehicle just unloads next to your barracks. I had edited my post a bit. I'm kind of on the shelf about rpg's, because they can be interesting, but they can also get out of hand. If it's just one level of awesome at say a 30-50% bonus or something, it would probably be more cool than annoying. No. You should know why this is a no. You can't slam down a barracks that only one class can build (or will try to build), and call that mobility. Mobility is the ability to go where you want, and in the case of APC's, not having to take an area in order to create that space. What most happened often with no APC spawns is if you lost a base, you lost it. Maybe you might have forgotten, as I did, but I remember seeing a lot of games just end because the team gave up. They had no time or res to gain back that ground, so they just gave up. As always, your acid test for this is cyclopean. For mobility, it's cyc because the bases are easy to pin you down in, and each area is basically a corner. A fairly sturdy area that's defensible. If you're in the SW and you lose NW, without APC spawns, you can't take it back. And at that point the enemy will just assault you nonstop until you run out of res and effort to resist them. Because a lot of empires maps are like that. They have some dog-eared bit of map design that completely screws you over if you lose what's considered your staging area. The area you go for first. Most of the classic maps don't have half-way points where you recover from, they have half-way points that slowly bleed you to death before you die, and only with supreme effort, teamwork or skill will you recover that. Rebuttal: - You can't create a play for your teammates without them all buying into it first --> Most of the time people don't listen to you anyway, so organising a play takes time and effort that will usually lose you the game. - You have to take a vehicle to effectively get to the front line. - Your commander needs to place a barracks and it's your fault if you're not repairing it for the entire game. Because of course other people don't have to come back to help because you're the Base Benson for ever. - When you lose your barracks you usually lose the game. - The team cannot be helped by a single player slipping through in a big ass, weak vehicle that should be stopped by any competent team - the fact that you don't see them stopped so often applies BOTH WAYS. You can't just say you're spoilt and then say it's the vehicle's fault for getting through a team that doesn't care. - Supply lines don't apply in a game with maps that stretch your players thin and where one vehicle is the goal to win. Edit: Did anyone ever think about reducing the APC carry capacity? Or having a 10s spawn time on it - not suicide time, but spawn time.
I'd rather not have it in the generic chassis tree since I want it under bio's hit and run mobility style gameplay. Either it's in bio (or maybe one of the trees with a fast engine) or it's on by default. Building recycling is cute, but recycling is basically never used except when you fuck up so it's not super helpful, regen on buildings is interesting but pretty minor (though it makes turrets a lot better) I think infantry regen is pretty underpowered at the best of times so I think even a whole team gaining regen for free would probably not tip the scales at all. Perhaps APCs resupplying and repairing other vehicles could be the bio utility? I think it'd fit better under mechanical but it's interesting and useful. I'd like to encourage vehicle variety on teams, even with full research e.g. 1 APC for support abilities and spawning 1 heavy for smashing shit 2-3 meds for general combat and staying mobile rather than the current 5 heavies because we're winning or 5 meds because we can't afford heavies EDIT: alright I'm convinced, I'll look into an alternative for bio. I would like to point out that you complain about mobility, but we have 30 res jeeps and vehicles aren't exactly hard to come by. I want to make APCs a bit more frail anyway so hopefully that will fix the retarded situations I keep seeing where an APC drives straight past 5 tanks and survives the damage with armor to spare and can outspeed the tanks anyway so they can't catch it. If a team lets an APC through, sure, that's their fuck up, but when it's impossible to catch the APC as infantry or tanks then that's another problem entirely. Hit and run is one thing, but a spawn point that can move potentially anywhere and you can't stop short of being lucky or coordinating 2-3 tanks is just retarded.
Alright, look, I don't want to hack at you until you fall down. Slow down APC's, or get it to the point where an APC has to compromise between a good amount of armour or a good speed. Heavy engines is one way to do this - where if you put an engine on an APC it takes enough weight to bring your total plates down by 1 per side. That way you instantly reduce the number of shots the vehicle can take by 1, but the difference in speed is great. That way you can have a defensive mobile spawn apc, or you can have an attack-strategy apc that SHOULD get killed quickly if anyone cares. Also, you up the time it takes to spawn in an APC if you want to encourage teamwork. People won't randomly choose then, they'll take more time to decide and think out the strategy. It's not "go go gogogo!" it's "all right, let's do this!" If you really want to be smart about it, you'll ask Candles to code something funky so that the fast apcs will have longer spawn times and the slower apcs will have regular spawn times. Regarding Jeeps... I think they're dumb to be honest. 90% of the time people use jeeps just to cause chaos and confuse the enemy. Nothing else. And for almost all the time that Empires has been around APC's and Jeeps have overlapped that way. Jeeps are like a low-level APC, and that's effectively what makes them such a waste of space. They don't have their own niche, they don't have a manned turret or anything like that which would make them actually USEFUL to drive around, not just to disrupt people. They aren't very easy to accurately shoot out of - so it's not like you've got 4 homies doing a drive-by. And they've been compensated by getting weaker and weaker, so they can't be used as a drive-by vehicle either. They're basically pointless except as sneak and chaos attacks. And that's really a shame, I think jeeps should be re-purposed so they're not looked at as a nuisance, but instead be something cool. Something that has a use other than chaos or outwitting an enemy with a "VF first" tactic. Something more than just "wheeeeeeee!" :p
Slow down jeeps a bit so light tanks can give them a run for their money, give them a utility slot. Either an ammo/health pack strapped to the back or something like that. Also ditch the back two seats for NF, that shit's more unfair than BE getting a turret spot on apcs. Thats it, jeeps are OK, scouts gotta get around somehow and harrassment is a part of the game. But if jeeps can't outrun MLs then there is your problem mostly solved.
I use jeeps to get from point a to point b. I like them better than apcs for ref duty because of how small they are, so people don't notice you as often. I don't agree that jeeps are a downgrade of an apc, for the cost of nothing I can move around the battlefield. Apcs need an engine, they are highly visible, people like to spawn in them then drive away, they can get expensive. I won't disagree about some people using them to harass others by driving into tanks and it is a bit off they can run past a bunch of tanks or around a base pretty easily. Azk's idea of slowing them down would be good, if you also slow down apcs which you intend to anyway.
Maybe make bio -> genetic engineering. We've had tons of talks about infantry research, never have we acted upon it. Maybe with this new wind of developping that isnt getting blocked by conservative fags we can get that going. Make infantry skills less general and put the general stuff in research.
There is a team specific function in the research scripts, so you could presumably change(read: add in a new tree) it so it reads nanomachines for be. I haven't tested it though, so it might just show both anyway, but only one team can open it.
you just named the problem empires vehicles have in general. you can just drive pass everything ... so if apcs couldnt just drive pass everything they would be ok as is but their ability to spawn people has nothing to do with that. thats the whole point, dont fix what isnt broken, fix the broken part. cripple their ability to just drive pass everything the ways to archieve that are to many to name, but making them less agile and weaker would be a good start. (and while youre at it continue doing this to all the other vehicles) i also dont think you rpg plan works out. if its balanced for unupgraded rpgs, upgraded rpgs are going to be overpowered. no matter how you turn it, as soon as you introduce upgraded rpgs you have to balance against them. please reevaluate those two points. both of those features already were part of empires, even at the same time and it has good reasons they got reverted. i also might add, both introduction and removal had broad acceptance.
I'll just re-state because people have missed it: I'm retracting APC spawns as a utility because people have given my good reasons not to use it I think infantry research is interesting but ultimately there's not much to research unless you take away all the skills at the start (which I personally think is a bad idea because skills are very interesting tactically and give a lot of choice to players, your skill choice early game is very important and can change depending on the map.) an alternative is upgrading skills or unlocking even newer ones but we've had enough trouble in the past as flasche points out with advanced RPGs being OP that letting all infantry stuff get upgraded poses a large problem. Jeeps already take huge amounts of damage from impacts and the only people that punishes are people with high ping or poor handling skills. And those people aren't the ones abusing jeeps. Imo the best route will be making them no longer immune to infantry weapons, you can still drive around but infantry can respond to you if you're being a dick, and you won't see these fucking retarded situations where a jeep orbits around two squads for like 3 minutes and they can't do anything to respond because ML turrets and RPGs travel too slowly and mines are countered by defusal. Also the fact that jeeps outrun ML turrets easily is fucking retarded. Honestly I think I'm vetoing your input on jeeps because I think you're biased towards encouraging stupid jeep antics. I don't mind the possibility of getting roadkills (if you sneak up behind a group in a jeep, sure, you can get kills, or if it's one guy again, not a big deal, it's the use of jeeps as an assault weapon that I think is just silly) I think it's silly to state a damage upgrade can never be balanced. Certainly grenadiers are 'free' but I think it's possible to find the butter zone.
no i dont mean to say its not balanceable, but the sideeffect of balancing is making the usabilty of the grenadier class reliant on research. as soon as you make upg.rpg not overpowered, the non upgraded version gets weak and the research becomes a necessity - and vice versa, if you make the std version balanced the upg. version get op and the research gets a necessity but for another reason. if youd ask me id say make tanks considerably weaker to rpgs but increase their damage output to infantry. it would solve 2 oddities of empires, first if you headshot infantry with tanks they dont necissarily die and second they can just go wherever they please even if there is no support.
If you are a gren it means you aren't in a tank, which can cause a lot more problems. I think 20% would be a modest buff, it's 26 more damage which adds up to one armor plate after 3 hits. Useful to people who gren but not mandatory. If you really hate it you can make it a perk people have to take, then the buff could be even higher because these grens have to sacrifice a bit of health or speed to do that extra damage. It'd be neat if it opened a rpg for grens to take but it took 50-100 wages to get, but I guess that's getting complicated.
it really only adds up if you put more grens in your calculations. but yeah ofc you can make it weak enough so that it has almost no impact but then its pointless to introduce in the first place. also what does it fix? the crying if you straight buff the rpg instead? make vehicles mortal already. and if it fucks up resources, cheaper. the survivability of vehicles is just too good and to mittigate this their damage output to infantry is a bad joke (except for nukes). and its obvious, i mean its more efficient to just run people over then to shoot at them.
