This suggestion floats in my mind since a match warzone a few days ago Heavy Weapon Emplacements would be buildings which use tank equipment and can be build and equipped by commanders. They would need a player to man them or they would be just wasted resources. They come in 3 sizes, Light, Medium and Heavy. Either come avaible with or be a research after the tanks chassis. A tower would share the Weapon mounts of its tank equivalent and have 50% more possible weight and Armor strength (a medium tower for example would have 6 armor platings possible on each side). I think they should not be able to be equipped with nukes. They can overheat and have again a 50% higher threshold then tanks but they don't need to restock ammo. They can't be equipped with engines obiously, this would be to prevent too much coolant towers Additional i think these towers should be already in the light version be able to equip apc weaponry but that would require them to be playtested, like all the numbers would do. Their price would be for the empty building a bit cheaper then their tank equivalent and would be only increased by the equipment build into it. Pro: A Strong and more or less reliable static defense(depending on their gunner) that effectively shoot tanks with weaponry equal to a tanks one. Con: Might turn into primary targets and could become quite expensive, could lead to some cowards camping them instead of moving to the front. Hope you liked the idea devs.
I was thinking of buildable gun turrets placed in the map. Basically, they work more or less like the existing emp_eng_map_model (or whatever the buildable models are called) except that when you build them you can crew them like a vehicle. They only have room for a gunner, but they have lots of health, and the mapper can also provide entrenchments around them, so you can really dig these buggers in. Basically it would mean you could put these guns in strategically important positions, which would give the defenders of that position an advantage, and would also mean that tanks would not neccesarily rule the battlefield. The advantage of having them placed map-side is that it makes balancing them much easier, a competent level designer can simply place them where he wants them, and take whatever measures he feels neccesary to balance them as he sees fit. They could either be heavily fortified bunkers with high-powered AT guns in them, which you would need to infiltrate with infantry to silence the guns before your tanks could roll in, or they could simply be field weapons constructable near the base location to assist in defence against tanks. I was thinking of making them more powerful than tanks, giving them guns which have faster projectiles and do more damage, but offsetting this by making them static, and so sitting ducks for artillery strikes or infantry teams. I'd like them to come in lots of varieties, MGs, ATs, and AAs when aircraft are implemented.
Rather then light medium and heavy, they should be machine gun, cannon, and missile. with max of 2 slots per wepon.
Im pretty sure that people have ALWAYS wanted to option of mannable turrets. Its just the question of when. Personally, I think there should be two categories: Mobile and Static Mobile would be akin to Imperial Gaurd Heavy Weapons teams, for anyone familiar with 40k: a weapon that can be carried by an infantry (or on a jeep or APC), and placed at any location. It can be manned, and picked back up and moved if needed. They would mostly be MG/AT guns. Then static would be like the aforementioned commander-placed defenses.
What the OP suggested was basically a building with tank weapon. So I would say kinda like a bunker? So maybe it would be for base defense or something like that, sound like an unmovable tank with more HP. And I say yes to manable turrets.
I'd love to see every single weapon from Warzone 2100 in Empires Howitzers, groundshakers, hellstorms, ripple rocket batteries... all using engineer build radars to target areas they themselves can't see. http://warzone2100.ivanov.eu/techtree/ Ah, that would be awesome (the weapons/defenses, forget things like cyborgs).
I do like the original approach the devs had of simply putting every weapon on both a tank and a tower.
I would welcome that as well. I don't think that it is easily implemented though. Plasma MG towers => overheating the enemy Nuke ML towers => extreme radius and damage, but only fires to vehicles and only fires once every 30 seconds (for example) + costs as much as 3 ML turrets ER cannon towers => long range, but tend to miss BIO ML towers, HE MG towers, HE Cannon towers, .... Aaaaaaaaaaah !!
Man, i've been suggesting this EXACT type of bunker for the past year or two. I guess my suggestions just aren't very memorable. I agree 100% with this suggetion. EXCEPT for missile bunkers. Those would be murder if you stick one next to the enemy base and put salvo MLs on it and just have some guys sit in there and fire salvo after salvo of missiles at the enemy. And think how bad nuke bunkers would be...
Sounds fun, I think they should be structures. Though, not "pillbox vehicles" where you hit e when you stand next to it, to enter it. Should be a doorway, some ammo and health cache's and a gun or two. maybe like this Light NF Emplacement Sangbag entrenched location with a HMG Medium NF Emplacement Sangbag entrenched location with barbed wire around it, with mines in the front. Armed with two LMG's and a mortar. Heavy NF emplacement Walled structure(like a house) with barbedwire around the entrences and 'window slits' 1 LMG in entrance room overlooking door. With a tank cannon that looks like it was deliberately removed from a tank. BE Light Emplacement Short trench with sandbags infront. LMG emplaced. BE Medium Emplacement Extended trench system, with mortar pit, two LMGs BE Heavy Emplacement A Bunker with a short trench system in the back where it is entered. HE Cannon in the front. No mg's.
It would just be a matter of balance. For example: - Nuke ML towers would cost much, use up 2 turrets slots, fire only at vehicles, with an interval of 25 seconds, no homing missiles So you can have either 7 ml turrets and 3 mg turrets (league has 10 turret slots), or 4 nuke ml towers and 2 mg turrets. Now a fast vehicle can cross the road guarded by the nuke ml turrets, the nukes would be all fired, the vehicle would already be behind cover making all the ml's hit the corner, and all four towers would be reloading for 25 seconds. That cheap but fast vehicle will have no problem taking them down if he's carefull, while he would have had more problem with 7 lvl3 ML turrets shooting homing missiles at his ass. My point is that standard turrets could easily be more effective than nuke towers if balanced right, but the implementation of these towers could add to the strategic part of empires, since they really would be usefull if placed right. I'd love to place 1 Plasma MG tower, 1 Nuke ML tower, 2 lvl3 ML turrets and 1 lvl3 MG turret together, and still have 4 turret slots over for some other place to defend. Ow and sorry, but i usually don't take a look in here. Too much suggestions from too much people. I'm almost certain Krenzo doesn't come here either.
When I read about this heavy weapon emplacement, I remembered this: http://www.lki.ru/Guides/0/134/santinels.jpg It is a static tower in game called Hostile Waters and it could be moved only by helicopter, those won't come in Empires any time soon so this thing wouldn't be movable. But I was thinking that as meantioned these things would be placable by commander and there would be total of 2x3 slots for any weapon and naturally the more you put weapons in the less you'll have armor. The armor would be the same armor as used on vehicles so that composite armor gives you the most firepower and cover. And as said you could place 6 layers of armor in these towers and if you like, you could have 3x of salvo homing missile launchers in these things if you just wish but no nukes or rail guns because they are 3 slots big and you can only have 2 slots big weapons in these and total of 3 of them. In my opinion these would be interesting static defences. The commander could choose any weapons in these as he wishes. Like 3 HE MGs if he just likes. Well... Maybe even 2 omni weapon slots are enough and maybe 4-5 layers of armor would be enough because 2x HE MGs would be quite bad in these turrets. But this sounds very nice idea. And when the commander takes this turret from the menu and has rotated and has selected the place where he wants to place it, he would get a same kind of vehicle customization menu as you get in VFs now but naturally there wouldn't be any engine tab. You just select weapons and armor in the same window so that weapon placement would be at the right side of the window adn you pull your weapons there and the armor placement area would be at the right side of that window. That way it is fast because you can change the armor and the weapons from the same window and when the commander selects accept and after that build, the turret would get placed it would be ready to use.
Ow this was about bunkers? I meant automated defenses, like the current ml and mg turrets. Defenses that require people to fire it would take away players from the rest of the map. I'm not a fan of this.
That's the downside to these beasts. They could be plopped down at the front line by the commander and build by an engi. Then say you get your tank blown up and hop out, then 2 enemy tanks suddenly rush you. You get into the bunker and blow them away, or at least try to. What about when your team just lost a big battle and the enemy is pushing toward you base? You stick one of these on their route and stall them or destroy them until you can get some tanks to help. Tanks would still be a better choice because you can attack with them, but what if you just don't have one and you need to hold off some enemies? Get a bunker. With the armor, make the rear very very weak so that an enemy tank that flanks thie bunker can get kill it much easier, since bunkers are usually very weak from the backside. Like the old BE heavies.
don't make it an imobile turret controllable by players. that's not a good idea. make it a towable fieldgun. just link it up with a jeep and it can be towed to where it needs to deploy. THAT is a good idea. the fieldgun can be customised with whatever cannon or machinegun or mortar you need
