In 2.6.2, BE keeps rushing rail heavies

Well, I am talking about a bunch of heavy tanks vs a bunch of heavy tanks + 1-2 good grens.

Because not all tanks can be useful at the same time, especially when you don't have the resources to give every single player a heavy tank in the first place.
Non-ignorant rev engi (in a tank) + gren combo is strong against rail heavies. With 2 grens you can have 18 mines on the field(aka traps) and two stably mediocre damage sources.
2-3 mines can very easily turn the tide of a vehicle skirmish.

 

Is it bad that now you have me missing the "one-nuke to rule them" all gameplay of back then? Rail heavies? Use nukes to stalemate everything!

 

The idea of powerful heavy tanks is tightly tied with the goal of minimizing stalemates, so at least that seems to be working, lol.

 

Arty to counter Rails - what a Maroooon.

I've seen this work once, but it wasn't due to the Arty that enabled it to work. The map "Steets of Fire" and the NF team - was OP, the NF won the match and dominated a team that couldn't effectively use rails. In most match's it was 4 v 2 so the weaker NF heavies over ran the 2. The commander did good job providing repair bays. Ground troops kept infantry on BE off the field and dominated our refinery hold. No push was effective since none of the non-vets knew how to support the forward heavies and that meant constantly retreating for heals and ammo. It was pretty frustrating and glorious loss. Kudos to NF on that game. I commanded BE and eventually jumped into a heavy. We lost everything and got pushed back to only our base. I was saying "Everyone go gren - we have to hold them off for one minute and we'll win". We held them off them pushed back to middle where we just did stupid things with tanks. One nub lost four heavies.

So here is the real deal - attempt at balance - but still not quite as effective against BE Rails. Plasma cannon - NF can only carry one, and the 2 slot Bio ML. Slow then down and slowly kill them. This will absolutely not work if you are fighting 1 v 2 or even 2 v 2. It can only work vs a solitaire BE heavy in a back alley street fight. It might cause two to withdraw for a heal - but will not dominate the map. NF can only win Streets of Fire with a significantly better team.

Funny if we push single Plasma vs BE, they will counter with DUAL PLASMA - like that's even more fun than being Railed to death. Bio engine is now useless since it's soooooo slow. Why was that done ? Why was all the engines on heavies truncated to be super slow. BIO, 3Phase, and Fission are worthless on heavies. Coolant is only good if you can stay close to base - it's a dog. Gas is your only real option. But hey Gas and Compo live in Mech research so just rush full mech heavies and that is exactly all you ever need. When you get to heavies research Electrical and get either 3 crappy ML's for NF or rails for BE. Throw in nukes - which you may never get to because the game will have already been over. There used to be a reason to research BIO, Physics, Chemistry - but no longer.

I'm still waiting for homing, salvo nukes.

Your only real options on NF are - WIN Before BE gets heavy rails. That means develop those skills most of us hate - of rushing the com incessantly. Just watch Spartacus push APC after APC landing last on the score board as he fails a Money rush.

Even if NF three slot ML was exactly the same damage as rails it would not be even. On BE I just align 90 degrees to the enemy, watch for the flash and inch forward to miss the full six missile volley. While continually pounding on the NF heavies.

NF Heavies CAN win on large maps where they remain mobile, but BE faster to target rails is easier to lead the NF tank. I agree ground troop grens can make it difficult for heavies but who wants to be caught on the ground now that an Engineer can kill anyone at distance with two bullets. We played district last night and one guy was laughing cause he would just rush with SMG2 and spray three guys killing them all with one load.

I told some vets on District - Go Rifleman, lie down on each side and rack up points. I think I got 20 kills in one minute just playing like a nub.

Gotta love the improvements!

I play each side about the same number of times, but NF only when I feel like a real challenge or when buddies are joining my team causing a stack.

MORE TURRETS - they need longer distance, higher fire rate, and let me build them on top of jeeps. Ya babay!

 

Can you tell the difference between "A certain tactic works." and "The other side is just mostly consisted of newbs?"

I was right there and I am telling you, it's the latter.

Not saying you are wrong, I am just supporting the fact that arty isn't good against heavies.

 

I meant gren support with rev engi driving heavy tanks.
You can pick any average gren to do this, but you need a pretty good engi, because he has to drive his tanks while reviving people.
I've been doing this intensively.

I don't think, and my experience disagrees that an inferior team can win, even with rail gun.

In case you wonder, yes, I don't think rail gun is OP.
This is kinda offending, but my experience also tells me that you guys are retardedly bad at telling what's truly OP and what's not, so I stopped believing you guys like 5 years ago. *ego*

 

Going spec

 

Arty was a decent tactic on "Streets of Fire" if you maintain ownership of bridge. It was a very innovative choice by NF and it pushed us off the bridge and surely could have cost us tanks - but only those driven by guys unwilling to do repairs. So kudos to who ever that commander was. Once we found the vet hiding the Arty inside the building and crushing us in center with support from his other heavies. Also with cool blocking of the flank - it was obvious we were against a very good strategy - but we squashed Arty by targetting the building and nuking every attempt.

The main reason we lost was not arty. It was the infantry maintaining ownership of middle. You had engineers reviving and supporting grens. They built upgraded turrets in all the right places. They dropped our every attempt at making refineries. The tanks were unable to get us - the grens and tanks together bled us dry. When we were ten tanks strong we could have won - had it not been for the squandering of those tanks. One guy pushed right through middle and died instantly only to push again, causing us to lose momentum. Others were just hanging around main and not supporting tanks. I know when I died I had an engineer sitting in my tank watching the fight. I was red and blinking and plasma stunned and he wouldn't get out to give me a heal.

My point is that one NF win by an effective team neither justifies Arty as a good option, nor does it mean NF is as powerful as BE. Hell anyone who plays this game on both sides regularly can tell the difference.

I see the main issue with the game with 2.62 as:
BE and NF heavies unbalanced. Can anyone check statistics to see which wins the most?
http://www.vipergameservers.com/hlstats/hlstats.php?mode=weapons&game=empires
Shows:
BE Heavy tank kills at 8925
NF Heavy Tank kills at 3301

Come on - Take a snap shot on every release and check statistics over time for each class. It's OK if one class is higher than the other - but the team classes should balance. You can't account for some good players prefering NF over BE which might be the reason NF rifleman is so high, but that analysis can be checked against the top ten players.

Just from statistics NF Rifleman is much stronger than any other class. BUT a good mix of NF and BE in there - needs more analysis.

Infantry rifleman should be returned to close range assault status
Debuff the assault and weapons on all classes to remove insta-death
Stop slowing down vehicles. It takes skill to fight with a fast vehicle - why are we making vets less effective and making nubs who lie down the desired mode of fighting?

 

I am not defending patch 2.62.

But you do know that the tank kills are the total kills from Aug 2014, right?

1: BE have 2 cannons, few patches ago we had a lot of HE, a lot of the kills should be infantry kills.
2: Player preference is also a major factor, for example I alone probably contributed 500 BE heavy tank kills in the past few months, but maybe just 100~200 NF heavy tank kills. We also have more decent drivers that tend to join BE.
3: Don't forget we have Escort, even though heavy tank is only available on EPIC, but I think this contributed AT LEAST 1000~1500 kills or so.

BE may have a little more kills, but it's definitely not 8925-3301.

 

Like i dont want to turn your argument to shit but you know those Be heavy kills are all whores spamming double HE or BioCN on escort.