Make heavy tanks equivalent to upgunned mediums.

I don't object to giving a heavy a lot of firepower, it's mainly the armor that I find to be a problem, and the penchant of heavy drivers to just roll past everything and kill the comm, making them slower and reducing the armor would solve that somewhat, and if you limit the traverse of the turret it will make the tank more like a support unit, which I think is neccesary because otherwise tank battles would be quite impossible to have. If you just reduced the armor and speed it would make tank battles a constant standoff, so you need to give people some incentive to try and charge through with a faster tank, making heavies really weak when flanked would be a method of doing that.

I suppose what I had in mind was more of a blend of both heavy tank and tank destroyer than a dedicated heavy tank. If you reassigned the heavies to this role you could then consider increasing the versatility of the medium tanks, perhaps allowing commanders to up-armor and up-gun them slightly through additional research, and bringing out more weapons and perhaps chassis variants which can mount larger cannons in exchange for fewer missiles, or vice versa.

I think it would be more fun in the long run for more people than the current 'bad, better, best' form of progression we have now.

 

8*75=600
Don't think heavies should be rock paper scissors, but a Heavy would die pretty fast to 8 ML turrets. Even when Regen and dual HE he'll only have 5 layers of armor which those turrets would tear apart if that heavy is within range.

So, honestly losing one 75 turret for a 770+ tank isn't that bad. I wish I could get exchanges like that all the time honestly. I wish heavys and mediums would all run up to my turret range and get hit.

6 mines tend to kill most 5 plated heavies moving at a decent speed. 8 will be certain death at a decent speed. If they slowly creep up, 5/6 layers of armor tends to take all the damage. But I've survive 8 mines with a medium as well.

It tends to be 4 stickies to kill a medium or a heavy. Plenty of time on Escort teaches everyone that lesson. Then again, some mediums go down with 3 and some heavies flip with 2 but why risk it and not get the points.

Mortar tends to destroy armor and completely bypass it sometimes. Just cause you have to focus your mines doesn't mean they're useless. If this is honestly the logic here, then the comm vech needs a nerf cause 8 mines won't kill it.

These same noobs tend to lose their heavy and cost us the game.

With Advance RPG they do. Plus if you double up your mines you'll probably flip their tanks.

If anything, what you guys seem to want is more of a rock paper scissor system with armor. Such as, armor is horrible against everything except it's one true purpose.

Like comes back at a rate that halves DU damage but against everything else it's like plain armor.

Reactive is good against missles but against a cannon, it's like plain armor.
Ect.

I don't think the solution is making the tanks chassis should fall under the 'rock paper scissors area' of Empires but just a status symbol of how well your team is controlling the map and if you can substain the resources to use heavies.

 

You do realize you just explained to us that ONE lonely heavy stands a chance of being defeated? We know that

40 or 48 slot servers should be more common with the next release (compared to the 32 servers we have now). Even on 32 slot server i often see 5 heavies in the east of slaughtered and another 3 crossing the bridge.

If i engage heavies as infrantry it's because ... well i don't know actually. Because some part of me probably thinks "Let's annoy the tank driver" or "Well someone has to sacrifice himself to get two layers down on that tank".

I never enjoy fighting heavies, not even when there's 10 of us against 2 of them. I don't like killing grens with a heavy either, cause it makes me feel like a cheating bastard.

- 8 turrets cost less than an heavy: true
This makes no difference, cause heavies usually retreat for repairs and comeback. They can easily take out hundreds of turrets, it will just take a while. Also a heavy will NOT go to a place where 8 turrets can shoot him. He will come around a corner and shoot one, then the next, etc ....

But sure, turrets are to slow tanks down, prevent rushes and NOT to destroy everything that comes towards them. I can live with that.
Problem: they do not slow down even ONE heavy, he can just drive past them

- 6 mines tend to kill most: probably true
Doesn't change much, cause heavy drivers usually have defusal, and 9 mining will be removed. To kill a heavy you need some infantry dude to step on a mine close to the heavy. Otherwise bad luck.

- Escort is not a good example of the effectiveness of stickies versus heavies. A skilled heavy driver will detect you in maps like canyon and kill before you have thrown 2 or more stickies. For that matter, he can kill 5 rifleman and 6 grenadiers with one nuke/4 HE shots/3 bio MLs ...

- What does a heavy being too strong against infantry for fun gameplay (don't look at this only from the drivers view) mean that CV's, the core of Empires, are too overpowered?

Oh and the only time my mortar does a lot of damage/bypasses armor, it's often because of some bug that gives it double damage by shooting at some place close to the turret. It's been a while since i've seen it happen though. Actually it should never happen.

- I'm sure many noobs will lose their tanks yes. But like you said, they do that already, they won't do it more if their tank would have less armor. On the contrary, like i said people losing their tanks were usually under the impression that no one would be able to destroy their heavy. it's like "Hell, no one could kill the enemy heavy so now that I have one i'm driving straight to their base alone." If a heavy becomes a weapons platform instead of an armored bunker, they will know they shouldn't rush, and just don't do it. After all it can't withstand more than a medium. Or at least not much more. It just has a lot more and stronger weapons.

- Why would i research upgraded rpg? i mean i can research the heavy, or extra weapons/engine/armor for my heavy. So much more effective

 

If one lonely heavy can die to one lonely infrantry. Then maybe teamwork might work. Gasp.

Cool, 40 person servers lag horrible everytime I've played them. Oh, I see what your saying. More people, more heavy wars.... Or the other team goes DU APCs rush the other comm.

If I engage a heavy, I kill it or die. It's cool.

Ramming a heavy with a jeep and holding it pin, as my buddy hops out and puts 4 stickies on it is great. A 120 res jeep killing a heavy is priceless. This tactic works good when they're in groups too. Could it be possible different things are fun for different people.

It's not like you made some situration where all the turrets where shooting a heavy and trying to remark it would live a insane long amount of time which I think most of us know is untrue.

This is simply untrue. While a single lvl 3 doesn't slow don't a heavy. That's unrealistic to expect that from 75 resources. Yet, 4 will slow down that heavy. Plus even with basic vechile support for those turrets it will be hard/annoying for one or two heavies to get past that point.

Do you play the same empires I play? Most tank drivers are Engineers unless they're a lot of grends, which doesn't seem the situration. I know I tend to drive tanks as a Engineer, that way I can drop ammo and repair it. Plus then I can get Refs. Heck, ealier in your post you said the heavy would fall back and repair.

Escort is a amazing example of how many stickies it takes to kill a medium and heavy. The answer is 4 most of the time. If you get 4 on one side. It's dead there is nothing they can do to stop it.

Also, Escort doesn't have nuke. :colbert:

If we're talking about fun now, then I want to talk about DU APC rushes. They're not fun and nearly impossible to defend against.

Maybe, wouldn't know if it's a bug. But I've lost 5 layers of regen to a single mortar.

Experience players have lost enough heavies to realize they're not imortal. Thus when players have heavies, they tend to baby them. They don't rush into the turret farm, they snipe at it from a safe distance. If you let heavies still be the weapon platform it is now, you'll still have the same thing happening that your complaining about.

It's a end game unit, it cost too much not to be a end game unit. In reality, mediums are better then heavies. You get them faster, you can have more of your team in them. You can in theory be nailing the enemy's base before they're heavies roll out.

But mediums require players that are useful. Most public games we know people are not useful. It's hard to get people to make light tanks. Thus from the strategy side, if my team only has 3 or 4 tank drivers. Might as well get them heavies to maximize the useful ness of your tank drivers.

Cause, you want infrantry more useful against tanks. Advance RPG is way better then normal RPG.

Just a day ago on the training server BE was getting slaughter on slaughter. They only had those two crappy refs, and a few fail APCs as their spawn points. Yet with advance rpg we grind down the enemies tickets, and won by the skin of our teeth.

You do realize, your argument isn't base on numbers or any logic other then 'heavies are good, that's lame'. From a RTS view point, the heavy needs to be stronger then the medium. The difference between a heavy and medium is 2 more layers of possible armor. Non-new players realize, you don't deck out your heavy with lots of guns cause then you'll have no armor. Thus every heavy on the field already sarcafice firepower for armor. They don't run into the turret fields, cause they'll quicky kill them. We've all seen that heavy one into the turret field and die.

They stay back and kill the turrets from a range. Heavy tanks don't charge in and destroy everything. They stay back taking out threats and when it's pretty safe they move in.

What charges in, are stupid DU APC. In all their flaming glory they unload into the comm in 5 to 10 seconds later the comm is dead.

If I can choose what is coming after the comm, I would take 6 heavies over 6 DU APC. At least the heavies can be slow down, blocked, and the Comm has a chance of getting away.

 

Also, because of different stats for different teams, they can be exploited even further if one team's com doesn't like a certain research.

Basically NF = Bio and NE = Mech is a bad idea... Needs some customization fix in that part.

NE mediums can take out NF heavies, and NE heavies can take out anything else, provided they have enough tanks.

1 NE heavy is compared to 2 NF mediums, and 1 NE medium is compared to 2 NF lights...

NE tanks seem to have a much higher advantage, and vehicles are the only important thing in the game currently...

The game needs a fix that balances no matter how you play it, of course with some limitations.

If the game doesn't have a rock-paper-scissor kind of system, it can be exploited.

Yes, heavies uses up a lot of resources, but I don't think anyone would care about resources when they can do long range nuking...

 

I think we're talking about a different game here Geese. I'm very surprised to read all that cause in all these years that's not how i experienced it, not in clan wars and not on public servers.

apc's a problem? I can take'm out as scout if i want to with those stickies + hide. Actually i can take'm out with every infantry class, or any vehicle chassis for that matter.

Also i'm against driving jeeps under tanks. It's so ... dumb. I wish something could be done about that. They should impact vehicles as if they were walls.

I'll look you up ingame and i'll grab an heavy whenever i have the chance. Let's see if you can slow me down with turrets/rpg/mortar/mines/stickies/...
I'm 100% certain you'll need someone with a heavy or a group of meds to come after me if you want to see my one heavy getting destroyed. You can have 4 grenadier buddies to help you, and rpg upgrade.

 

Sure, your heavy vs my 3phase jeep. We'll see who is the greatest.