Let's Make Empires Great Again!

Empires is a game that, recently, promotes unilateral research paths and very little deviation from the norm, or else your team will lose. Other armors, engines, and weapons now no longer warrant the need of use. As a com from the early days when servers were constantly full, as a com who recently changed his name to Donald Trump and hasn't lost a single match, I have become dismayed at the state of Empires research path. I have commanded for many years, but until recently I am becoming tired of seeing the fun of commanding being drained away by research edit's that do not promote taking risks. I, like many coms, know the standard Research path is this:

Mechanical engineering --> Advanced Machining --> Composite Armor --> Gas Turbine --> Chemistry --> Improved Flargation Compounds --> Explosive Bullets --> Upgraded Chassis --> Medium Chassis --> Upgraded Cannons --> High Explosive Shells --> Advanced Chassis --> Heavies

That is the one research path for BE that will almost always guarantee a victory so long as your team is competent. This game has now fallen to a game of complete and utter skill, where before when I started playing noobs could actually and effectively counter the enemies armor and weapons.

I remember a time, long ago, where hard counters reigned supreme. Where people would be guessing and frantically trying to figure out the composition of the other teams tanks to try and effectively acquire the research to counter the enemy team. Noobs could destroy vets so long as they had a countering weapon equipped making it more fun for them, but somewhere we lost the way.

We lost the way of what made Empires so much fun, so much thrill and anticipation. We lost the way of hard counters for another term that warranted both teams be "balanced". The only problem is, both teams do not share the same heavy chassis configuration, resulting in unbalanced game play no matter how hard you attempt to balance.



Thus, in a radical, game changing and game re-invigorating I propose that the idea of Hard Counters be re-introduced to this ailing game. Here are my reasons:
1. It will make Com's job much more important than simply placing a ref, a rax, and researching the same shit every single game. It makes the coms job a lot more exciting and it shows a commanders true skill on knowing how to counter an enemy.

2. Noobs will finally be given a chance. Should it reach the point in a game where multiple armors are researched with many weapons, a noob can equip something at random and have the possibility to counter some armor or weapon that a vet has, making the game interesting and challenging for all once more.

3. It takes away from the monotony of stacking, as said in the above reason. Countering can seriously take away from the skill of a player because they do not have the capacity to fight said armor or weapon effectively.

4. This will promote a new diversity of research, it will make all research paths viable once again. The whole point of this game is to research weapons and armors, but that was taken away when counters were removed. Who the hell is going to get regenerative armor when it is incredibly weak to EVERY single weapon and Compo is the best? I remember when Compo was the BEST armor to everything, but it was also EXTREMELY expensive to go along with that. Armors and Weapons that are never researched will again become viable, allowing for teams to equip all sorts of weapons on tanks that are rarely seen now-days.

5. It will overall, impact the game in a VERY positive way. It will make Empires essentially, Empires again. It has become another... boring FPS where combat is bland because the same shit is researched every map. This will mix things up, make every match more unique, make each com known for their style of research.

6. Yes this might unbalance things at first, but it is a necessary step to bring back the diversity that makes Empires a unique game and not another FPS.

Thus, I conclude. I propose the addition of hard counters once more to bring back the golden era of Empires, a game which I know many of us have been playing for years. A game that was once great, but has strayed from it's original purpose of diversity and uniqueness. And so, I would simply like to Make Empires Great Again.

#MEGA


Edit: Some proposed Counters -

Absorbant, Cheap but strong first armor except to bio, strong vs cannons

Compo - Expensive but strong vs all but rails

Regenerative - Strong to most except DU and HE cannon

Reactive - Strong, weak to ER cannon and BioML

Reflective - Strong at angles except weak to UML and Homing

Capacitive - Strong vs Rails and Bio

Budget - Slightly Upgraded Plain, good vs nothing.

Plain - Shit.

 

First saying, I agree, but I still have to say that you are doing a "leading survey".

Of course we would like to promote diversified research and new styles, but that doesn't mean introducing hard-counters is the only way to achieve that.

In next patch, with Reactive/Capacitive and even Absorbant being more useful, I think we would have some sort of hard-counters.
For example, Reactive/Capacitive will have 120/160 flat HP, that's really impressive against vehicle-MG/Bio.
But Capacitive will receive much more damage from cannon and it will generate heat while taking damage.

Absorbant is already strong vs cannon, as a bonus it's strong against bio too, and Abs will actually be very cheap.
But Abs is weak against MLs and even though it will be given 15% damage reduction against vehicle MG, it would still be relatively weak against vehicle-MGs.

Regen will completely nullify Bio ML due to its 5hp/sec regen rate.

Reflective is weak against bio, it's pretty shit when not angled (I am giving Reflective 10% damage reduction so it wouldn't be plain armor with 72 hp when not angled).

Compo is and will be an all-rounder.

Budget? It's gone, we don't need a "slightly upgraded plain", doesn't matter how cheap/light it is.

 

That research is no good.
Everyone knows the real research path is:
walls, level3s, artillery

 

This is such a simple no brainer for me, I think the minimum effort to dramatically improve the game.

Hard counters do make the late game more interesting and definitely all balancing will be easier and more achievable if it doesn't have to account for that disparity.
For example - 2xHoming Salvo feels super OP on an NF heavy when combined with an MG, but feels heavy and pointless on a BE heavy.

 

Basically, yes.

This is why I am not doing full-hard-counters like "Capacitive is good against Ranged, bad against HE. Compo is good against Rail, bad against Ranged."

The farthest I'll go is "Capacitive is good against MG, bad against cannon" as described above.

All armors should be useful in a way and NOT be completely useless when enemy gets a certain weapon.
A weapon may be slightly more efficient at killing a certain type of armor, but it should not completely stomp the armor.

 

They are good points regarding discerning armors and how it prevents hard counters. I guess the only thing in their favor is the ability to break late game stalemates.

It would be good to have impact particles or something to distinguish the armors.

Maybe engineers when recycling a tank could recover some information regarding the tank's composition. That would be an interesting mechanic, maybe carcasses themselves could have hp so you would want to scuttle them to prevent the enemy getting resources and recon from them.

 

This is the best way to discern the armor type of a tank. With this addition, it would be so easy to learn the enemy tanks build, and learn how to counter it. This is the easiest, most interesting way to maintain that the game remains not a simple one research path as it currently is.

 

The old days of Hard Counters were the most fun for, well, just about anyone I think. Part of the fun was trying to figure out WHAT the other team had and HOW to counter it. I remember Com's wouldn't get heavies at times because they had to research something to counter, effectively nullifying the heavy spam, especially when a medium can counter a heavy.

Tweaking the research slightly is a step forward, but ultimately it won't provide the same thrill and diversified research that would be hard counters. Ever since hard counters were removed, diversified research has flown out the window because no matter how much you change the damage/health values of weapons and armors, there will always be that one path that is more effective than any other path. It will only be a matter of time before someone finds that sweet spot path and then the game is back to where it is now. With counters, we throw this sweet spot path out the window, no matter how much you tweak the values as something will always, dare I say, TRUMP something else.

Some ways to get around the basic concept of figuring out the enemy team's composition of tanks, when recycling the enemy tank, as A-Z-K has mentioned, it could inform you on the type of armor the enemy team is using, allowing you to relay that back to the com and for the com to research the respective weapons to counter. This is an intuitive answer to allow noobs and vets alike to relay information back to the com, making the game more teamwork oriented along with making research more important.

 

I liked when way back we had soft to moderate counters, tbh.

I may be a complete stinker here but I still see no reason why TWO new armours were introduced into the game, since if you divide the different sectors that armours can occupy - e.g. weight, cost, good against cannons, good against missiles, regenerative, angular damage variables, etc...there's going to be much more redundancy with 8 armours instead of 6. The armours themselves are (well, were) balanced around weight and cost and time (and previously cost) to research, not to mention how they perform against other armours.

That whole idea meant that not many people can even really grasp how many factors are affecting armour at once. And even if you grasp all of that on paper, we're talking about 3 different vehicle types, a multitude of different situations the armour has to be effective or defective in, to get the balance right. Even if cost and weight were taken out of the equation all together there's still a mega amount of variables in there.

To be honest, I think there should really only be a handful of armours in the game, because that way you're going to get less redundancy, and less ascendancy. And much better counters.

If you have 2 armours, you have the best counter-system. It's boring but there are hard counters. If you have 50, you have the crappest counter system that no one's going to bother with, because this isn't dota where you're playing your own way, but Empires where what's easiest for people to use and strongest besides, gets the most use.

Using 5 armours, with composite simply being a mild-to-moderate buff to plain's effective HP (and justifying it being in the only mandatory tree, since it's an upgrade) will give the other four (regen, reactive, reflective, and absorbant) much more room to perform.

Regenerative for skirmishes and cover warfare, reactive for heavy tanking pushes (slow, strong against missiles), reflective being a middling armour that can be fairly strong for those that know how to position their tanks, and absorbant being good against missiles and relatively lightweight. With composite upgraded plain being simply decent all around.

/rant rant rant explanation explanation explanation/

 

I didn't read this thread because I'm tired, but No.

The research trees are the same for both factions already. If you make both Heavies with 2C and 2ML, then only models and infantry weapons will be the factors of balance. What's next? TF2 style arcadey Empurrs? I disagree. Each faction must have its strengths and weaknesses like in every rts game. That's why I say Deflectve should be more NF armour since it's good against shells and reactive for BE for MLs. Well, there are so many weapons and stuff, it's hard to get it right, we all know that, but that's our goal I think and we won't stop until we achieve our goal. We will succeed or die trying. jk

 

Great Ideas. They would go good with Counters, which I think are ESSENTIAL for Empires to go forward anymore and bring back the fun and exciting combat that we once saw before it was removed.

Just from asking people in game if they support this, many will say "Yea, hard counters would be a good idea". Granted, not many will come on here to make it known but just from the poll NO ONE is against Hard counters. Everyone wants them back, and It's time we take Empires back. It's time to Make Empires Great Again.

 

Uhh, you should read the thread before you comment to see what exactly we are trying to say. It will benefit the discussion a bit and allow feedback on the general idea proposed by the main point of the thread. The whole post of the Cannons for BE and NF was proposed as a way to help balance the Tech Tree, in response to what Hard Counters might do, although I don't think they are necessary either.

 

About CV protection, I have a better idea.
Set a small circle(750 radius) around the commander, if CV is located within that circle, lock the CV.

If CV is not located within that circle, chances are the CV is in trouble and teammates should be allowed to get in the CV.

Timed-lock is bad because occasionally you do want someone else to get the CV for you.