Indicate in class menu what a weapon's strengths and weaknesses are

Problem:

Many beginners still believe that rockets cause the same amount of damage a mortar would do on a structure, which leads to them using rockets on structures. There is no visual nor audible indication of it taking almost no damage.

Suggestion:

Add a sound or visual indication that the rocket does little to no damage. This would help new players to understand this fact faster by giving them understandable signals which wouldn't require text to understand.

In the class selection menu, each weapon should have symbols (minimap symbols to be exact) to indicate what each weapon is good/bad/useless against. Also this won't require much dev work/programming.

Example:

(Just an idea, could be done better, just reply in case better ones come up)

Minimize weapon icon, put symbols into the right border of the weapon panel, legacy in bottom left of class selection window.

Green = Good against...
Red = Bad against...
Grey = Useless against...

Image:



P.S.: This won't support color-blind people much, well fuck em.

UPDATE:

I made a first version based on this suggestion.

Download:

"HUD Suggestion v1.0"

Installation:

Go to your "empires/empires/materials/vgui/" folder and backup your "guns" folder, i.e. changing the original guns foldername into "guns_orig". Then place the "guns" folder from the download into the "vgui" directory.

Content:

- Weapons all done.
- No legacy yet, needs further chat with dev.
- Tools such as (Mines, Calc, Binoc., ...) untouched because it is unclear if it needs symbols.

Image of grenadier class selection:

 

Here's an example of how I imagined it could look like (yes, the texture is that small):
behold my paint.net-skills




EDIT:
[01:14] <DarkTerror> now that i think of it
[01:14] <DarkTerror> it would not look pretty, but it would be impossible to misunderstand if we just wrote in words what a weapon is good against

 

Renamed thread title to fit with your changed suggestion.

 

Strong vs and Weak vs could also be written in the weapon discription. But making the information more visual seems like a better idea

 

While its meant for noobs so it doesn't really apply, I still feel it would be weird to classify rpg and mortar. Mortar is just hard, but without weaknesess per se. Rpg can kill inf just fine if you are not bad.

 

Descriptions on weapon usage is a very good idea.

 

Yeah, empires doesn't really have any hard counters.

 

Anti-Tank/Anti-Emplacement/Anti-Inf?

 

I like this idea. Add it. I can help.

 

Three little icons to attach to each weapon. Either green or red.... I like it.

 

Well I am pretty sure descriptions would work too but with symbols you can easily avoid language barriers. Nowadays visual information is far superior in comparision to readable information for many good reasons.

Also thanks to Beerdude on changing the topics title.

 

And the mortar gets all 3?

Lol, I guess it would help set better expectations for new players.

 

That is what I was trying to say :x

 

Alright, updated first post with self-made image. Now, I am not an expert in VTF editing but I could do it with some time given, if anyone could help or thinks he is better at it than me then please tell me. I am still waiting for some responses in order to decide if anything could be changed for better results.

@Jimbo: It's cool bro. I just said that to make clear that descriptions suck.

 

I guess you could argue which color to use but TBH I made this suggestion so new players have a clue on what's effective against which target. This isn't meant to be a detailed graph showing how much damage it actually does to the target itself which is why there is 3 main groups. Infantry, Vehicles, Structures.

 

Forgot dat calc

 

I think it helps a lot.

I don't see an issue

 

Calc isnt a weapon, its a tool.

Neither can I explain that you can heal friendly infantry but not decon enemy infantry with those 3 given symbols. That's why it's missing.