If working and playable aircraft ever make it into an official Empires release, I will donate 50 bucks.
As long as an aircraft just sneaks in because some guy had enough and obtained the source code and created an unofficial Empires WITH AIRCRAFT OMG AND UBERCHARGE, then it would be awesome. My thoughts on the bomber- is to have it like tribes 2 where it was 3 seated- Pilot|Bombardier|Tailgunner(for teh flares and mowtar) And Manned aa/flak turrets so that it really does become team work where players are defense(around the base looking cool:D ),offense(at the frontlines looking cool:D ),and support(building raxes, having worst job)
IMO aircraft are a waste of time without x16 maps. And since the mapsizing doesn't seem to work I don't think its worth adding. Everyone just has this dumb idea that LOL PLANES ARE AWESOME ZOMFGG Empires could be an amazing game without them. Look at NS, way more polished and fun and it doesn't have any vehicles.
I've never been too wild about aircraft. I think transport aircraft would be great, but I don't want it to be like Battlefield 2 where (literally, as in I actually made a record of 100 deaths) nine times out of ten you are killed from above with absolutely no warning. Obviously, Emp is not BF2, and the balancing will be all different (aircraft won't spawn for free for a start) but I am worried that they will dominate too much. I tried BF2 and, aside for the complete and total lack of teamwork in the community, the aircraft pwnage made me stop playing. This was my experience of BF2. All (aircraft) maps, all servers: Walk twenty feet. Dead. Get in a tank. Drive ten seconds. Dead. Walk twenty feet. Dead. Get in a tank. Shoot a dude. Dead. Hide under cover for five minutes. Cautiously check the skies. Listen for sounds of jet engines. Take one step outside......Dead. Five hours later, rage-perma-quit.
Mootant is my new favourite developer. I shall tear down the beerdude shrine and construct a mootant chapel in its place.
look before anything drastic is added, everything that exists should be perfected. once empires is as good as i can be with everything it has now, then you new stuff can be added to cock the whole thing up
Every new feature breaks balance anyway. Get everything perfect, then the second you add aircraft reflective becomes OP because aircraft always shoot at tanks at an angle, ER becomes the only cannon that can shoot down far away planes, everyone starts abusing aircraft to get above, below, behind maps, JPL figures out how to sit on top of planes dropping mines onto the enemy base, arty becomes redundant, walls become a waste and infantry becomes airplane food. It isn't going to work very good without bigger maps though :/ You can already get from one side of duststorm to the other in a few seconds with a 3 phase light tank, planes are going to be akward without at least 2x maps.
A o_O already pointed out, new features inherently break balance. It really depends, though, on what they feel the end state of Empires should be. I pointed this out in the spring on whether we should judge empires as as an extended beta as they keep adding things or as a polished version. The devs at the time claimed polished version, then proceeded to do the 2.23 debacle. If we view this instead as more of an extended beta, then while balance is good to keep stuff playable, they should also be focusing heavily on implementing the new features so that they can tweak the overall game, not just a snippet of 2/3 of the content.
i say that by adding features to the game it actually allows balance to happen, aircraft can take down annoying arty attacking your base which most can barely get to to attack because the artys can fire very low and at incoming tanks, with aircraft flying over water destroying those usually unprotected artys people will start strategizing more and more to counter those aircrat like more defenses around arty, it will also repel noobs from the arty as they will usually not want to get blown up by a flying aircraft, so then we only have veteran arty people while the noobs are on the front line doing something
You do realise that a vehicle which can do that would become 'the annoying aircraft which are shooting your arty' and add serve only to add yet one more 'annoying <noun> that is <verb>ing your <noun>' and therefore result in any instances where arty is not annoying one team being because of aircraft annoying the other team. Efforts have been made to remove most of those, like the annoying rocketsniper who is rocketsniping your rax, or the annoying nuke tank that is raping your base, or the annoying dual rail heavy that is rushing your comm, or the annoying sniper that is sniping your infantry, let's not try and think of more things to add to that category shall we? It makes far more sense to find a way to remove the potential for arty to cause problems for gameplay, rather than to try and crush it with something else which is just as potentially annoying. Otherwise it's like buying a nest of snakes to get rid of an infestation of frogs, sure you'll have fewer frogs, but you might want them back after a few weeks. There is also the danger that someone might decide to solve the snake problem by using a rabid mongoose.
The implemention of an Anti-Air tank with flak cannons could stop the overall base rape of aircraft, which could create a rock-paper-scissors style combat.
go ahead Chris , make one I would be happy to take piss on it also Chris, really, i though more of your arguments The ones you mentioned can be easily fixed, you just need to use some part of that 99% of unused brain ---------------------- make an anti-air softcounter to prevent single planes from taking down many targets also ,imo, adding airs would make other tanks more usefull so late game isn't about having 4 he arties and 6 heavies clustering in one choke for 1 hour. side note : there is no need for anti-building bombs if they could be op
I have an idea lets do a theoretical battle. And don't bother posting realism >> theory or strawman theory or anything like this. This post is strictly to make creative units/tank combos to counter Lets imagine BE researches arty on slaughtered. NFs tanks get hurt/killed as they attempt to reach the BE base. NF researches light aircraft (ex gunships, transports) the gunships fly in and kill the 1st wave of arty but runs out of ammo and returns to rearm. (Were assuming both commanders are competent) BE researches AA vehicles and in the mean time places a couple of AA turrets which 1 on 1 will kill a gunship. NF returns to Base rape but meets flak resistance (i think flak would be better as AA but thats another topic) gunships retreat (they should be able to move fast enough to delay death by missles or just be hit by the edges of flak shrapnel) and are chased by BEs AA vehicles which en route hit NFs armored legion(s). Basically gunships should be able to kill efficiently but they should have limited amounts of ammo (and cant refill at ammo boxes only repair pads/airpad) if they move fast enough they can have limited armor (think no armor jeeps currently) and AA vehicles/turrets should be able to kill 1 on 1 with (im thinking) ~50% health left but lose 2 on 1 but only leaving 1 aircraft still alive Just my thoughts PS: weapon loadouts im thinking should be MGs and missles no cannons for gunships
TL;DR if tanks are pwning a team, the other team gets arty, if arty is pwning a team, the other team gets anti-tank aircraft, if anti-tank aircraft is pwning a team, the other team gets AA tanks, if AA tanks is pwning a team, the other team gets tanks. The game would take as long as it takes to win sbend in slaughtered.
Way lower polycount. But still excessive on the rotors and underside weapon mounts. The gun sight amuses me.
