Get rid of Plasma and Nukes, Weaken Rails, Allow admins to disable research items

I think Plasma should be removed from Empires. It ruins tank fights. It isn't any fun to kill a tank with plasma or get killed with it.

Nukes are completely ridicules. They overheat everything in their blast radius, do a huge amount of damage and are regularly abused.

Rails should be weakened, as they are way to powerful and aren't matched by anything except nukes (which should be removed).

One other suggestion. When you are driving a heavy tank, APC or AFK, and a LT rushes you, you can't shoot it while it's ramming into your side. The tank turret should be able to aim lower.

Server Admins should be able to disable certain items in the tech tree from being researched by adding something like

emp_sv_disable_research_item "Item Name"

I know that there's an emp_sv_unresearch_item, but that doesn't what I'm suggesting.

From a programmer's stand point, I don't think any of these ideas would be very hard to implement.

Possible Solutions

For the disabling research item, you could do something like

Code:

 
const int TOTAL_RESEARCH_ITEMS = 51;
const string[TOTAL_RESEARCH_ITEMS] researchItemNames = {"item1", "item2"};
bool[TOTAL_RESEARCH_ITEMS] researchItemsEnabled = {true};
 
void OnEmpSvDisableResearchItemCalled(string item)
{
 
   // Stores the index of the item to be disabled
   int index = -1;
 
   // Search the array
   for (int i = 0; i < TOTAL_RESEARCH_ITEMS; i++)
   {
      // Check if the current item is equal to the item we are looking for
      if (researchItemNames[i] == item)
      {
           // Store the index and break from the loop
           index = i;
           break;
   } 
 
   // If index >= 0 we have found the item so disable it
   if (index >= 0)
      researchItemsEnabled[index] = false;
}

For brevity's sake, I didn't include the code for a binary search, but a more efficient searching method should be used.

If my memory serves me correctly, Source based games are coded in C++, so those examples should be pretty close to "compile ready" C++ code.

 

I don't see any reason why I should do that. So, no.

 

and while your at it, remove all weapons and vehicles and replace them with flowers and VW vans, so we can all run around saying "peace man" and "save the trees" in our hemp trousers etc,etc. Theres no need to get rid of plasma and nukes, i do however feel that rails is overpowered, but it can be easily dealt with.

 

No, No, No, and Sure, why not?

Just balance plasmmiers so that they are fun, make nukes more accurate, give NF a good endgame weapon, and yay!

 

Gief plasma-mls.
And reduce the heat that plasma adds to your own tank by 2 or 6.
I agree with the nukes-part though. The actually only annoying thing with them is the insta-overheat.

 

I disagree with initial idea and hope the training server never figures out how to restrict thhose things.

 

nukes? Bio engine anyone?

*slap* "what the hell you doing man, don't use bio, use 3 phase!"

 

I like the nuke, I like the overheading. It is a very good defensive weapon. It has proper weight cost for its infantry destruction. The only thing I personally don't like about it is it nearly makes artillary useless.

Plasma cannon overheats the shooter too much. Plasma MG is nice as is, although most APC MGs have two benefits, and the plasma MG only has the one. A crappy 1 slot version of the Plasma MG would be a nice addition.

 

Nukes are fine, I say more damage but less overheating as well as acctually fix the explosion effect to the set radius of the blast, also make nukes have a longer cooldown 3-5 seconds extra.

Railguns, carry more ammo, slightly faster shooting but less damage by any chance I like to see Quake 2 railgun effect like stuff :D

Plasma is fine as it is just overheat self a little less like what Lolum said.

Advance Coolant is my counter against nukes :D

 

Try to fight 5 nuke tanks.
Even bio/advanced coolant-engines won't help.
(and you want to actually have a chance to shoot the enemy, don't you?)

 

Now I don't like overheating at all either and it actually made me suggest something crazy like fuel for tanks instead of heat.. But this might be an issue for the training server because of the upped res and fast research.. A normal setting game will usually not last long enough for nukes or plasma unless it becomes a stale mate(emp_money)

But I could of swore there was a research thing like your asking about.. I think it was implemented to disable nukes from escort.

 

Its actually a command for researching things. So if you have a comm/radar the command is no good. I'm fully for getting rid of heat myself TBH. Engines could be differentiated by speed and weight capacticy. Be kinda interesting. You could have big heavies decked out with crazy amounts of weapons slowly rolling everything over but me at a disadvantage with the enemy doing small tactical strikes. Theres alot of stuff that would have to go along with this like only allowing 1 of each weapon type for slot ie no 6xsc. But IMO it would improve the game. But yeah.... doesn't really seem like its too viable of an idea for 2.2. Also, I think engineers should repair tanks redic slow. Like none of this oh lol I park my tank in nme lines and i'm at full health in 10 seconds despite all my armor being gone.... would nerf tanks alot and make repair bays and frontlines more useful. Anyways I'm just rambling on now.

 

I totally, 100% agree. heat is just a fun sucker, in that it sucks the fun out of playing. there should be a better way of getting ammo too, because having to use ammo boxes puts more pressure on the player to be engineer.

i totally agree that it sucks when you can jump out and repair; in the middle of a tank battle i know that if i jump out i'll be able to repair before he can kill me.

BUT at the same time, it feels really nice and tactical when other players that ARN'T in a tank repair me. so what's the solution? well, it may seem a bit contrived at first but: double repair speed when the vehicle has a driver in.

tanks repairing too fast wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the repair upgrade skill. i honestly think that empires would be better if that skill had never been added; and people wouldn't complain about it being boring to build because they wouldn't have known of any other way. and at the same time, it isn't altogether

and how come engineer grenade box is the fastest way to take down a building... faster and stealthier than a grenadier even, the guy you should be relying on, working as a team, to take down enemy buildings. yet also tanks have so much health that the grenadier is generally fairly average against them, but to make up for it he's got a grenade launcher (aka mortar, though it's really a grenade launcher. what kind of mortar would you ever fire DOWN? and don't you have to drop a mortar into the tube and then it fires imidiately?) so the grenadier isn't exactly unbalanced because he's fairly good against infantry but that's beside the point; he's totally lost his role. that dude should suck vs infantry and whoop ass vs tanks and buildings. I sometimes get the feeling that if something is put in one way and people get used to it then they assume it's the best way empires could be, and often when you do change things, because you may have to go back a step in gameplay before you can go forwards, nobody's willing to risk upsetting people. and then i worry that empires isn't even being developed at all.

i just felt i needed to say that stuff.

 

I agree that repairing tanks on the battlefield sucks but i disagree that
heat sucks its another layer that makes the game more tactical.
I dont even think that heat (beside nukes) is a problem because its really
easy to handle.

If you want to make grenadiers good against tanks than you have to make
middle game tanks devastating against infantry because esle you have the
battlefield series problem that a single player can, as infantry, rape tanks.

I like the grenadier as it is, yes bla bla conservative bla bla, but its a effective
anti turret/light vehicle unit and thats how i see the grenadier. And btw its
the really unique class in empires (because of his mortar ) that u wont
find in any other game

 

Uh, if you're fighting enemy tanks 5-on-1, your problem isn't nukes...

Anyway, there's already another thread about disabling plasma. I can see the issue with it being really frustrating, but I don't really see either it or nukes as being particularly powerful in most cases...

 

Double NUKES, It's painful.

 

Nuke overheating is rather annoying, they aren't an effective combat weapon against tanks but they are very good at stopping your tanks from working on a map with confined areas, like streetsoffire, crossroads, or some parts of cyclopean.

They don't actually kill tanks, they just make them kinda useless unless you use the shitty bio engine which at least lets you nudge them to death. Bio in itself is a kinda shitty engine for tank battles because it doesn't perform very well, and it reduces tank combat to just building big tanks with many guns on because you can't go fast enough to use a medium for speed based fighting, which is something we already have too much of in empires.

Plasma does a similar thing, but I haven't seen it used much.

Personally I'd just like to see both have the heat transfer knocked down some, and the damage upped to compensate, having plasma as a high-dps high-heat cannon would be fine, and having nukes be more destructive would also be fine as long as they don't disable any attacking tanks in the process.

 

Ok what does Maksalot/Sonecha all time?
He rushes nukes on maps like Canyon or Slaughter and walls every
chokepoint completly off. If you restrict vehicles and only wait til you
have bio/nuke heavys you roll out 10 of them or more and crush the
enemy without any effort. It works against every team no matter how
experienced they are. On slaughtered it even works (but not so effective)
with plainarmor standartengine nukeheavys. With that rushtactic you
make infantry worthless in midgame even bevor a standart research gets
he cannons and you dont care how big the enemy tanks are because
you nukespam them to death with your nukeheavyswarm. Biodisal dosnt
help cause you always fight against 3 or more.

THIS WORKS ON STANDART RESEARCH/RECOURCES SERVER

 

that was just emp_sv_unresearch_item nuclear warhead in the map cfg, it doesnt stop it from being researched, unless theres no commander

 

give nukes less reload time,more damage,bigger radius, and make it a 1 slot ml.