Not 1 heavy. 4-8 heavies. (1/4 the vehicle limit?) You can be pretty sure that heavies aren't nearly powerful enough for a single one to justify 1800 res and 4 minutes of research time.
I'm more with this school of thought. If two mediums can take out a heavy again, then that's fine and how it should be, but atm, you often need to go further to make mediums worthwhile, and a rail heavy/uml heavy is often easier. I kinda want to bring back meds as CN/ML combos, or possibly CN/ML/MG combos. It's entirely possible that they're powerful right now, actually, just that most people don't use them for some reason. Most of that reason is heavies are cheap, because res is off the chain atm.
You could make meds automatically unlock once you get mechanical, like mk2s. Also increase the research time for heavy tanks so you get about 10 minutes with meds. I would suggest adding some more researches before heavies, so you can put say 2 minutes into unlocking them and then go research something else.
I'd just use "extra" bs filler research to spread out heavys across multiple steps so that if you don't do it in one shot, you aren't 10 minutes behind.
Yeah that's what I mean, add time by adding more steps to get them, because you can't tie up 10 minutes solid of research, but you can give the option to put 2 minutes or so towards heavies. I might suggest drawing from the warzone 2100 research tree and having chassis unlocks be done by researching chassis stat improvements. For example, you can research mechanical, which gives you MK2 lights which have an extra main weapon slot (cannon/missle for BE/NF respectively) one extra armor plate slot and say 100 more weight, then you can research improved chassis for 2 minutes, which gives you medium tanks and opens the arty research. From improved chassis you can get advanced chassis research for 3 minutes, which unlocks medium MK2, which adds 3 slot cannon/missile for be/nf, an extra armor plate, and 150 extra weight. Finally, you can research heavy chassis for 3 minutes, which actually unlocks a weaker heavy model, with 1 less armor plate and 200 less weight than current heavies, should theoretically be an upgunned med mk2. Then you can research heavy Mk2s for 3 minutes, which brings them up to current standards. This has two effects, it removes the massive power jumps with each chassis research, and makes it more smooth, and it brings medium tanks into play in all games, as well as allowing them to compete in the late game even with full strength heavies. It also does this without adding any more complexty because MK2 chassis replace the base ones, and the research is linear so you don't need to memorise anything new. Only thing you might have problems with is that you need to introduce a new 3 slot missile launcher, because otherwise it's going to be BE rails vs NF nukes, NF need a conventional 3 slot missile weapon I think.
1. 10 minutes is too much. If at all possible, I think most people would prefer not to fix mediums by boring people into using them. It would also risk unnecessarily extending the game if mediums are not strong enough to be the game breaker at least some of the time, or be pointless if the opposite and mediums are effective enough to nearly always end the game within 10 minutes. 2. MK2s should never be attempted again. The massive power jump is fun. Having discrete models for discrete tanks is not confusing. Adding three MK2s is "...". 3. A conventional 3 slot missile would be nice, but an NF heavy tank would then need two 3 slot missile launchers and could potentially wield two nukes, which is bad. -------- Your idea of unlocking the mediums at upg. chassis was fine without messing with heavy tank research times, or at least it didn't open up too many cans of worms.
Which will work on clan matches or PUGs. But for normal games the risk will lead mostly to defeat. Here the current research times: Mediums --> 90 seconds Heavies --> 120 + 120 seconds Difference --> 150 seconds (2,5 Minutes) Increasing the difference to 10 minutes might be too much. Therefore I suggest these values. Mediums --> 30 seconds Heavies --> 150 + 180 seconds Difference --> 300 seconds (5 Minutes)
On its own maybe, but if you use the system I suggested you will constantly be getting small upgrades every few minutes, not to mention the comm will benefit from getting new weapons and perhaps armor/engine in between. The idea is that you don't take 5-10 minutes to max the tech then have the rest of the match be a heavy tank slugfest, instead you take 20-30 minutes to max the tech and the match goes on during that time, with the research being a destabilising factor to keep the match changing.
Yeah, i'm not sure I agree Chris. In theory it would be good to throw a lot of prereq's at heavies, but 2+2 minutes is already a long time to just wait for research to complete. Also, imo, MKII's and even more tank variants aren't really the answer. MKII's are fun, true, but i'm not sure they work with the tanks, rather than making them obsolete. I mean, who doesn't want to drive an NF LT MKII?? I think most of this would have fallen by the wayside by now if we'd gotten in the light-vehicle sidewinder type, but the landscape may change again with aircraft. If mediums had a short time (as SIP suggested) it would work, I think. But otherwise, if you did want MKII's back in, you could have medium chassis unlock both and replace the default lights with the MKII's. I also think there's something to be said for making 3-slots researchable, but it may just be another level no one really needs. The research tree is still a bit duff right now, HE CN took 120s just for the shells. That's half of what it takes to get heavies. Considering how uneffective it is right now, that's just not right
I'm not really thinking of mk2s as a separate chassis, of course in a technical sense they would be, but in game terms they would simply be a better medium, or a better light, or a better heavy. They would be like the RPG upgrade of tanks, or the stop-gap armor you get before the proper armor, like getting absorbant because you're in chemistry but you really want reflective, or whatever the current strong armor is.
Used your values. I also lowered the base cost of Mediums by 100, and increased the base cost of Heavies by 100 and 130 for BE and NF respectively. I also raised the max weight for artillery and lowered the base cost. All weapon costs were halved based on MOOtant's wishes. Oh, and to combat the faggotry of salvo homing being a total lockdown weapon (dual salvo homing stops any APCs or Jeeps leaving the base it covers, due to 8 missiles of 43 damage each) I made it a 3 slot weapon.
Here the result of the changed: APC, 9xReflective, HeavyDU, Fission: Old=400 New=327 18% cheaper AFV, Reflective, Std.Cannon, Std.MG, Std. ML, Fission: Old=580 New=436 33% cheaper BE Medium, 16xReflective, Ranged, DU, Fission: Old=700 res New=480 res 46% cheaper BE Heavy, 20xReflective, 2xRanged, Fission: Old=910 res New=890 res 2% cheaper Generally the costs are Ok, when you only compare the different chassis. Only APCs are too cheap especially when you compare them to AFVs. On the field one APC is much more worth then one AFV. But the big problem will be the resource flow on the maps. We already have too many resources because of the wages. Making the tanks cheaper by about 25% will finally turn on tank wars on every map. From my calculation wages increases the overall resources by 10%-20%. With these additional 25% for tanks the resource output must be decreased by 25%-50% (hardcoded). To keep this thread clean I made a new thread for salvo homing: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=14048
The resources are another problem. I think we're going to experiment with lowering the resource interval on certain maps, and see how many need the interval lowering. I.e. rather than getting the resources every 1 second, it might be every 2 (effectively halving the income). APC difference seems fine, but I might have overdone it with Mediums, I don't quite know. There are 2 reasons resources are so high. 1) The player multiplier system was fixed in 2.25. This means that most maps got a resource buff at anything about 12 players. 2) Wages. If anything, I think it has more than a 20% effect.
I'm pretty sure that wages only seem significant when you're buying jeeps or you're not buying anything at all. When you get to heavy tanks when even dumbest person gets a tank from vehicle factory resources drop to 0 within at most minutes. Even if team has enormous amount of resources saved (20-50k). Change from 2.25 is still there but the map where it mattered the most - streetsoffire had it overriden.
The time it takes to research mediums is not worth their benefits compared to going straight to heavies. How about skipping one step in the research tree? Like Mechanical Engineering -> Mediums Light tanks and AFVs will hence be relegated to the lesser role of being used in early game rush tactics, while mediums become the norm.
Trickster, MOOtant: General question: Why all weapon prices are halved? For standard weapons this is OK, because they made LT and AFV too expensive. But why should for example powerful heavy tank weapons be cheaper? If certain tank chassis should be cheaper or more expensive it would be more effective to only adjust the chassis costs.
Idk, MOOtant's idea. I don't really care either way, I don't consider it much of a significant problem, except maybe vehicle MGs.
