Firing Mortar decreases stamina bar

Yeah that's pretty much it. Would stop people deathmatching with mortars and winning versus smg's/riflemen, but would still be a good weapon for those sneak up moments or when you know an enemy is coming round a corner to lamp you. Means the grenadier is more dependant on his team versus infantry.

Also would make the RPG more the wapon of choice when fighting tanks, as the mortar gets used instead of it an awful lot, when the mortar should really be used more as a support weapon.

 

All that would do is stop the mortars sprinting from target to target. You mostly want to sidestep when firing the mortar, and sprinting only goes forward...

 

I actually suggested this before in here but I really hate that idea now..

I hate it for the sniper rifle too.. I don't think any weapon should drain stamina.. Stamina in emp is a bitch enough as it is.. And I personally already use the stamina upgrade a lot because you have a lot of room in empires classic maps to move before you get cover.. I can see this being good in district and other small maps.. But I think this would severely nerf it in the rest of the maps.

 

I have a much simpler set of suggestions:

When someone is crouched with the mortar, immobilize them. They can't move around. This is logical; it has to be 'set up', and you couldn't aim or use it if you want to move.

Add a delay to 'ready' the mortar when you crouch with it. To avoid having to make more animations, just make it so whenever you crouch with the mortar, you have to go through the 'loading' animation. If you stand or move, it's unloaded, and you have to go through the full loading animation before you can fire it.

Finally, standing or putting the mortar away leaves you immobilized for a few seconds while you 'pack it up.'

Basically, I feel deathmatching with the mortar should not be possible, period. A player who attempts to ready or use the mortar while in the sights and range of a SMG-wielding opponent who is aware of them ought to be an idiot who will die 100% of the time for making that mistake, irrespective of skill; the mortar has enough uses as it is, and should be made absolutely and unquestionably useless as a weapon against medium- to close-range infantry, and particularly against SMGs.

Using a mortar against an SMG should never be a fight, ever, at all; it should have the same result as trying to use an SMG against a tank, and should always without exception result in the mortar-user dying because they are using their weapon stupidly and against the wrong target.

 

no delays please. There is already a 1-6 second delay from when you first to when it hits. Why make people have to add another second-2 seconds to guess where the enemy will be?

 

I'm no longer sure what the mortar purpose is, it pretty much the anti-everything but buildings weapon. Takes forever to kill a ref with a mortar.

 

No way. Current reload time for mortar is high enough.

 

Do you not think it is used too much as a weapon to deathmatch infantry with?

But yeah I don't actually like this idea I was very tired when I posted it. Aquillions idea to have a set-up time and immobilise him when firing would be much better, and would mean you could decrease the reload time so grenadier can actually provide a fairly useful barrage with it.

 

Being a grenadier and using mortar is fun. Running away from mortar shells is a bit less fun but it isn't irritating. I don't see any bigger problems. Also look at mortar reload time.

 

Mortar reload time is irritating. If you nerfed the mortar some other way you could decrease the reload time and perhapsit would be used less like a deathmatch RPG that happens to fire at an angle, and more like a... mortar.

I realise that it's a lot of fun deathmatching with the mortar, in fact it's pretty much my favourite thing to do in empires, but I think it would improve balance and teamplay, which is ultimately more fun than deathmatching, if grenadier didn't have such an easy time versus infantry.

 

Next time your getting raped by a gren switch to the rifleman class and profit..

 

The problem is that the effectiveness of the mortar in infantry fights helps discourage people from using riflemen as an anti-infantry class. People pretty much only do it reliably on infantry maps.

Yeah, sure, a rifleman can beat a grenadier... but a decent grenadier can usually beat an engineer or a scout, and have some chance against a rifleman, and also hurt tanks and buildings at range. That reduces riflemen to a very situational role.

It also discourages people from working together. Grenadiers are by far one of the game's most common 'lone wolf' classes; as long as they don't run out of ammo, a decent grenadier has a decent shot at handling anything they run into.

Because mortars don't require cover, you end up with one skilled guy with a mortar substituting for more elaborate tactics; who wants to worry about controlling an area and covering your team when you can just be good with a mortar and accomplish everything yourself?

This also decreases the overall usefulness of infantry. An infantry surprise attack from the hills should be hard for an unprepared opponent to react to -- there ought to be specific anti-infantry weapons in the game, but if you're not using them you should be at a disadvantage. Allowing mortars to be so effective in infantry duels, though, means that almost every team can just have their grenadiers respond to an infantry attack -- it weakens infantry as a tactic, because it means there's too many ways to counter it.

I feel the grenadier should be at a disadvantage against all other infantry. They're effective against tanks, and decent against buildings; they don't need significant anti-infantry capabilities on top of that. Let the rifleman take the anti-infantry role; teams with no riflemen ought to look at their scoreboard and say "Hey, do we have some MG turrets / anti-infantry MG-armed vehicles / HE? If not, we're vulnerable to an infantry attack."

That will make infantry much more useful than they are now, and make for more depth of strategy, since comms will have to plan more to deal with them.

 

No, no nerfing. The mortar is the anti infantry, the rpg is the atm, sucky against tanks.

Ask yourself: Why should riflemen be effective vs tanks and infantry? But not a grenaider.

 

The mowtar is not as great as everyone makes it out to be.. Grens are not the primary anti-inf class.. I said this before and no one caught it.. Have you ever shot a rifleman in the face with a mowtar? It doesn't kill him.. why? because he comes with body armor! You can have a pro gren vs a noob rifleman and the rifle will always win as long and he can point and click.

Scouts and engy's should lose battles with the gren because one is primarily a builder and the other a light sabotage class.. Those 2 classes shouldn't be duking it out with the big boys.

I disagree and think scouts are the most lone wolf class.. But that's an actual broken class. Grens only go lone wolf when they try to ninja.. Which will be removed in 2.2.. I guess I'm just trying to say quit trying to fix a class that's not broken.

 

not to break your argument, but unless i am caught by surprise and the other guy is not, i win against any infantry with scout

mortar should remain anti infantry, but i suggest making it less mobile but more powerful, something in the area of more area damage and less direct hit + more time to set up.

maybe decrease the damage by 40 pro/cent and make it a cluster bomb of 4 parts? this would make it ineffective against close infantry (needs to arc before clusters released) but quite deadly when dropped on a point where infantry is stationary (cant run/pinned down)

just some ideas though

 

Giving the gren more mortar power is too much. I don't want to see 1 hit kills for all early game tanks.

Grens become useless if you make them less mobile or nerf them in any way when it comes to RoF or mobility. If they aren't mobile, they might as well be tanks.

I just hate the idea of making grens into some slow moron that has no armor or health to keep him alive in a hostile smg environment.

A skilled rifleman can be just as annoying and unbalanced as a skilled grenadier. Same goes for a scout or an engineer. Any class can be played well, or usefully. Those that are more specialized need to be slightly stronger to make it worth the time to learn how to play it well. Otherwise, we might as well all be engineers and drop our turrets and grab accuracy upgrade.

 

How about a range dmg fix? The farther away and more longer the rounds are shot, the more damage. So if a Grenadier wants to DM riflemens in close range, they won't deal as much damage because there isn't enough room to launch them high enough to kill.

default range = 100%
If grenadier shoots at a smg at a shorter range (40%)

100-40= 60% damage is dealt if hit directly, and even less if it isn't as close.

Mortars can have a minimal damage of 20 from point blank.

Note that range varies from elevation, so the time a round is in the air, is also a part of damage.

 

good idea, make the airtime influence the dammage of a mortar. i like it :D

 

Ninja isn't removed, just 9 mine. 8 mining followed by a mortar for detonation is more powerful than 9 mine in the ninja role.

 

as far as I'm concerned ninjas died in 2.0. It was a lot better in 1.7 and now its a waste of time last ditch effort unless you do an apc/sticky stun rush..

But smart gren's in 2.0 would do lone wolf missions to 9 mine bases and forward barracks.. That will no longer happen.

That was also suggested in that link i posted earlier.. I like this idea more then the others but still don't think it needs it.