"Flying the aircraft will be difficult"?????

Do you read what your typing. You want the greatest challange to the flyer of the aircraft to be the actual flying... This is akin to the biggest challange to the jeep driver being the actual driving lol

Anyways your right who would want to be on the ground at all if their is a way to fly around... the answer is knowone at all... it's true... knowone will give a damn about tanks because regardless of the aircraft, all of them will be as fun to fly as it is to drive a jeep. But that is wrong assumption because in Warhawk... i loved driving jeeps, and being sniper, and flying the hovering plane and shooting missles and all that shit. (the ONLY problem warhawk had is infantry mode occured in the 3rd person instead of first person... otherwise it is superior to empires and even a less complex game (which is a good point also)). The aircraft could literally go into hover and be a floating weapons delivery platform and with the hit of a button go into foward-flight mode. And in hover mode you could rise and sink on the Y axis and pivot around the Y axis... it was a kick ass game. (wish my ps3's blueray drive didn't die else i'd be playing it now lol)

 

Then go play Warhawk.

 

I think that flying should be easy, killing will be hard. In fact, since it looks like the main theme with the aircraft seems to be that they will be VTOL/Hovering, there isn't any reason they should crash except for being shot down. Have them automatically switch to VTOL and hover just above the ground instead. That way, you won't lose 1000 res every time somebody wants to try to learn how to fly.

 

I'm thinking, aircraft speed is quick enough, so that any single pass would only be good to take out one target, infantry or turret, maybe two targets if your experienced

Repeated passes and skill/natural ability would be required, or reduce, the time it would take to take out a tank

Personally, I think the idea of rail-sniping an aircraft trying to dive on me in a heavy tank would be hilarious, cause some people have mastered cannon arcs

Plus, tanks shouldn't have too much of a balance issue, I've seen some mediums tanks shoot almost straight up, like literally, around 75 degree angle looking up, not counting hills/slopes, so the aircraft would have to fly straight down on a moving target to not be shot at, (sound difficult yet?) the angle problems with tanks, is that AFV's, APC's, NF mediums and heavies, and yes BE heavies too, have problems shooting down, which is more realistic, if the idea of a light tank getting underneath you and shooting you up wasn't so unrealistic


AND, am the only one actually giddy about AIR JEEPS!!!

Just Think!, Rocket-propelled Hang-Gliders, WITH SEATS FOR MORE THAN ONE PERSON!!, only 100 res!, omg!!!

It's just an idea, I think it would be hilarious =)

 

Because VTOL airplanes suck, you'll have your hovering gunship to practice with, and advanced planes take OFF VTOL and fly normally.

VTOL FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DOES NOT ENTAIL HOVERING

See Harriers, they're fighter planes, but they have VTOL gear.

I believe I suggested a tutorial that had to be completed before you may fly, I can't remember what the devs said, but it wasn't an outright no.

 

Wow theirs a warhawk demo out for ps3 for all to see how empires should be lol

anyways was fun... jumped into the aircraft... little messing around with hover and off i was doing barrel rolls and hugging the ground at high speed to escape missles... and then some chaff and before long i was downing targets with the guns and using the swarm missles to fire off 8 or so guided rockets at enemy planes.

Only thing though with that game is their doesn't seem to be a way to lock onto ground targets... but their is a droppable bomb i remember. Anyways i think the reason is to balance it out so people and tanks are only worried about each other and the air targets worry about enemy aircraft (and ground to air missles/guns)... it kinda makes it a skill requirement (and a hover requirement) to engage ground targets with the aircraft because of how impossible it is to kill ground targets with a plane at highspeed (without napalm lol).

What this game needs is helicopters not airplanes!! Maybe an unarmed scout copter that can laser targets and then any nearby ground missle turrets fire off to the target that isn't in line of sight

 

VTOL is dead weight on most aircraft, it has limited fuel for it so it's limited to Vertical Take Off and Landing, which is what VTOL stands for.

 

Yes, understood... VTOL is NOT hovering. It's just become shorthand for it because people have gotten lazy and it takes 4 fewer letters...

What I see however, if we have strictly-forward-flying aircraft is the same problem we're having with scouts now. Once we get the aircraft factory, people will start spamming planes, and nobody will bother being on the ground, just flying around looking for stuff to kill. (which is the same as waiting on top of a hill)

As a hovering platform, they could stay in one area (more easily) and defend it in the same way tanks are used as mobile turrets now. That way there won't be a rift between air and ground, with Air only being able to kill other air (and the occasional stationary ground targets) and ground being able to actually have a chance at killing a plane...


On that same note... how many are planning to try to sticky a plane?

 

Aircraft are planned to be fairly costly I believe. I vaguely recall Solokiller saying about 2k res alone for a fighters airframe somewhere on the forums or IRC.

 

I never gave specific numbers for cost, just that they're going to be expensive and have their own maps, which are mostly aircraft but also have vehicles.

 

This is going from pure assumption, but i'm guessing the 2x or 4x maps will be best for both aircraft and vehicles? With maybe a bit of infantry thrown in as well?

8x and 16x seem a bit big really... 256 duststorms... thats IMMENSE.

 

umm, most maps are currently 8x. 16x will be the sized used for planes if I'm not mistaken.

As far as the price goes, it would have to be determined after they are released and beta tested. I would also imagine that there would be a very limited amount of available aircraft. For example, you can have up to 10~ tanks by default I think. Most servers increased that to like 16. Imagine aircraft with a 5 or 6 plane limit. I think something like that would be in effect. If everyone could have 1 on the team, it would suck. This may also make it more important for a com to start using that build button on the factory screen.

 

You are. All current maps are 1x.

 

-_-'' lies.

I thought cs games were 4x relative to empires, which would be 8x in map size, and the new maps would be 16x relative to current empires maps. -_-

That could also mean that the new maps would be 2x scaled relative to current maps I suppose.

 

I'd like to make 2 points here.

1) Check crysis wars, the aircraft their are incredibly simple to fly, have very few controls and work really well (the War Helicopter & VTOL).

2) I plan on using my PS3 controller plugged in for flying, which is win.

 

if planes are harder to use they will only be effectively used by certain players

what about the commander assigning pilots that are able to buy a plane?

 

If aircraft are both expensive and difficult to fly then there will be a huge amount of resources wasted by people who are learning to fly. This could mean losing a plane's worth of resources approximately every 10s (6s respawn, 2 seconds to get to AF, 2 seconds to buy and crash plane). With a tank to loose resources that fast you have to have the VF near some water and mange to sink the tank every time. With a plane you just need to hit something, which can be very easy with a hard to control plane.

 

The Y in Yx doesn't refer to the size of the map, it refers to the scaling. The average Empires map may be 8 times the size of the average CS map, but both maps were made on a unscaled (1x) grid in hammer. Remember that the map sizes aren't changing, technically 16x maps are the exact same size as 1x maps. The maps, as well as all the ingame assets, are being made scaled down Y number of times so that it gives the illusion of a map Y times larger.

 

All source games are made with the same size hammer grid... If you stood an empires model next to a CS model they would be the same height, there is no distinction in scaling between mods. This diagram will help explain:



Unike other mods, most empires maps take up nearly the entire hammer grid space, so where it says Normal you are talking about the entire grid size of hammer. This is the reason scaling is being implemented - you simply can't make bigger maps with normal scale, because the hammer grid is not big enough.

 

Keep in mind that all information on aircraft is speculation, until we can test the way they function we can't give accurate expanations of how they operate, so we're currently just going with what we currently have planned.