Make them fast, so they cant concentrate fire in one area. Tanks aren't meant for anti air, unless they have guided or homing. to make airplanes easy to be killed with cannons or shitty missiles would make airplanes just another shitty slow floating tank. If the other team has the time to research airplanes, and you haven't researched anti-air yet, which should be tons faster to research, it would be the same as trying to get a light tank to kill a fully research heavy, which means the light tank dies.
They can't be too fast, because of the max map size. Aircraft will end up hitting the other side of the map rather quickly if they go much faster than a 3 phase jeep (which is a pretty much ideal speed anyway)
They just need to be faster than whatever chris has in mind, because whatever chris has in mind is sure to be boring and sux. Also, machine guns can be good anti aircraft weapons. You don't need special missiles or cannons, because, unless they have some outrageously sharp homing system, players are going to have a hard time hitting the airplane anyways. All tank mounted machineguns should be able to damage airplanes.
One day I was bored, so I loaded up sketch-up and drew what I thought the Empires AA Turrets might look like, its concept of ideas so don't flame me. I thought that NF had more of a WWII style to it, since they did not have Surface to Air Missile, AA Guns would be best. Since BE is more Modern Warfare style, I thought SAMs to be best.
Nice job on those turrets. I would keep the NF ones a it like the Flak 43 from world war II or the flak 88 and make them a little less blocky they just look a tad weird. The BE ones look great i think that you got the SAM thing straight on and i think only minor improvements would be needed.
Aircraft shouldnt have any plates of armor at all, a rocket salvo should wound the thing really grievously, but be maneuverable to hunt down tanks and stay behind them.
thanks, For NF AA guns I was shooting for M45 Quadmount and the SAM idea came from the patriot missiles defense in C&C Red Alert 2 I'll still use it as an anti-aircraft
NF have tech comparable to Soviet Russia during the cold war, so I'm not sure if a flak battery or whatever would be suitable for them. Both teams would have to have similar AA systems, they only need to be different aesthetically otherwise they would be a bitch to balance. A surface to air missile/gatling gun combo would probably work best considering there is not much you can do that is plausible as anti air beyond missiles and guns. Flak cannons are a little too old tech even for NF, and Jekotia/Jessiah/KILLX would probably have a fit if you suggested lasers.
Flak would suit NF very good, I remember that DonMegel even made some kind of anti air vehicle which used flak cannons, or at least high calibre machine guns. It looked really awesome.
I did a reskin of a dod prop to match NFs style. It looks nice but its not animated or anything and I don't have the model's source file just the compiled one. I think it would be cool but it might be too big to be a placeable turret. this is a slightly outdated screen of it, it looks better now
Using DOD:S models in empires would require people to own DOD:S to play empires. You wouldn't be able to put a DOD:S model in the empires installer because it would probably be copyright infringement.
I mean its a third party custom props made by Ranson for DoD, just like the third party props made for empires. I just made a skin for it in lieu of my own model. I looked for permission from the author but I couldn't contact him just for reference if you think flak cannons would actually be an option.
They are VTOL... That means they hover. That means there's nothing stopping them from hovering with salvo homing or whatever other anti-tank weapon they have and mowing everything down. If they are beaten easily by AA then all that happens is everyone researches AA and spams AA turrets and aircraft become useless.
Automatic cannons and high calibre machineguns are still mounted on AA weapons today, they are perfectly effective against helicopters. Soviet russia used shilkas, which are basically quad mounted 20mm cannons on a pair of tracks. Their modern AA systems use missiles as well, but they still have big-ass machineguns on them, so does the american avenger. I think machinegun based AA would look much better than missile based AA, you could put big flashes on the guns and have them fire big tracers with a nice firing sound and small explosions where they hit.
Ground goes in and takes out the turrets. Airplanes come in then do sweeps. Its been like that since the dawn of time
Er, no it hasn't, aircraft haven't existed very long and in most of that time stationary AA has been relatively ineffective against them, they have always been used for long range bombing even where there is heavy AA cover. Nowadays they are simply capable of doing it much more reliably. Helicopters have been used as transport, never really as gunships I don't think, because they could be shot down too easily. Nowadays they are used as sort of mobile artillery, using high power long range missiles to destroy things from a long way away and hills for cover. If aircraft can't advance ahead of the ground forces then what is the point? They move faster than the tanks, people are going to want to use them to go ahead and shoot things in enemy territory, also if tanks have been and killed the AA turrets they have probably killed everything else first, as people tend to attack things which are dangerous to them before things which aren't. You would also need a way of bringing AA with you when you attack, otherwise the aircraft would massacre any attacking force, unless of course you make AA turrets easy to drop in which case you have the aforemetnioned problem of being being unusable due to AA. Also if the helicopters are to be restricted to non-AA covered areas, they are going to need long range high power weaponry like they have in armed assault, and that makes them really really overpowered against tanks, because they outrange them and/or outdamage them.
Re-done AA Turret Idea O.K. After that post with the models I made, I went back to sketch up with a process I found using Crafty. I can export models out of HL2 or any Source mod, in the format of an .OBJ file. Then import em in to SketchUp, through a plug-in. I have modified very little about the turret base, i other words, The Bases Are To Scale 1:1 . Disclaimer - I do not own any of the models I used as a base, I'm just using them to help get ideas for the mod... NF AA Turrets BE AA Turrets
I don't think AA turrets should be the same as normal turrets. I would say they should be non-spammable, probably mounted on the radar base or even as an addon to radars, they would have long range but their effectiveness would be reduced the further out they go. AA turrets should protect bases from aerial ninjas, but anywhere else the players should be fighting each other, not turrets.
