Maybe if you spent more time reading and less time being a dick you'd know I didn't say anything about making the change for light tanks. The idea is strictly for the weapons I outlined, which were fairly obvious. Vehicle combat in this game is exactly like it in every other. Maybe because you haven't played anyother games that you care to ask me if I've ever played this one. As for the comments about people driving, I've seen plenty of people drive into water, run carelessly over mines, and run into friendly tanks and or players. I respect your dislike of this idea, what I don't respect is your constant assumption that you are right. A slight change to gameplay doesn't ruin the game. People like you with shitty attitudes ruin games.
That is what people call skill. Dont change a part of the gameplay just because you are bad at it. If you wont hit with a rifle you wouldnt post a thread to change it, you would probaply try to get better with it. Same for tanks.
Empires already relies on teamwork; a team thats working together can decemate regular ones; as proved by constant whining about "Clan Stack". Now lets look at your suggestion in detail. The idea is to break down the operation of "Heavy Weapons" so they require 2 people to use properly. Just by the sound of it, a great idea. Now lets think of it ingame. How in the world are you going to get 2 people who have never player with eachother and don't know eachother to cooperate like that? Hell, they will have more fun driving around in jeeps then trying to work together. You say it is in the sake of balance, I say it adds to many variables to actualy balance, and creates a more "Elitist" group. Imagine with this kind of thing, pubbers against skilled vets that known eachother? The vets are going to blow the pubbers out of the water... If I had to depend on someone else in a game to get kills, I wouldn't like that game. I want to deal damage and see the enemy dead by my hand, if there was an ally nearby, then great, I enjoy seeing a field of dead people by others and my hand (Ingame only :p) Now if my ability to play as an individual player was a direct result of someone else, I will have problems; lag is no longer the only excuse. So in the end it might provide nothing but bitching at eachother. This is also the reason why I am worried about side cannon ports on heavies. Side ports are an excellent idea for giant sitting duck target with lots of guns, where you absolutley NEED other people to make it effective: like a seaborn battleship. I am worried about how the side ports are going to be ballanced. In the end, what will be better, a fully manned heavy? (I presume it takes 1 driver and 2 side ports) or 3 heavies each manned just by a driver who can also shoot? Speaking purley in HP terms the 3 tanks will win
Ok Mr Ideal Aim. How do you use railgun, 2 upg MLs and a MG at the same time with hitting using every shell, missile and bullet? There are situations when second turret/gunner would be useful. For example you could give MLs and MG to the 2nd gunner ONLY WHEN 2nd person enters the vehicle. When 2nd person leaves it then the driver controls every weapon again. So to sum up for people who don't read anything: Plus: - efficiency - driver can use ALL WEAPONS when alone - less resources spent on heavy tanks where people use less than 50% of their weapons SO shorter queue of people waiting to buy a heavy tank Minus: - more time spent at customization phase to split the guns - some coding needed (changes in customization) and this part of code is pretty hard to change
Today i shoot 14 rails on a standing lt ( like 3 meters away) and one, ONE HITS Ok back at topic, let implement it and you handle the whine posts like "my second seat gunner overheats my tank every time i have to flee cry"
You don't get to ignore the cons that you disagree with when you're summing up a thread. You forgot "Could be frustrating if other players don't cooperate," "Could cause conflict between driver/gunner role," "Could cause argument over who's fault something is," "Complicates heat/overheat system," and "decreases size of tank battles." In addition, the only substantive plus you posted is that people might stop wasting resources on weapons that don't get used? Solution: stop wasting resources on weapons you dont use?
I like the "hand over controls" idea... but it's needless, when one person can do the job equally well in most circumstances another player in your tank, using up all your heat may not be a good thing it takes players away from the battle, so instead of having 4 tanks duking it out, you have 2, with no real bonus I think having machinegun posts on the tops of tanks would be cool though, and wouldn't suffer the same way.
Just to clarify, I'm not trying to be an asshole, honestly. I ask you to state you opinion, but not to state it as fact. Why? Because when you state something as fact it dissuades other people, and I'd prefer people who are interested in the idea draw their own conclusions from their experience playing, not their experience reading. In this case, it has been stated that it just doesn't work, which Jephir confirms what I have said, so it isn't a fact. The main game I was referring to, was in fact Planetside, where you could quite litterally have 14 tanks with several guys in them running raids on a base, without a noise on the mic...(just to justify that it has been done before, successfully) I admit there would be issues that would have to be addressed but, over all, it was just an idea for you to think about. I don't care either way, I barely have time to play.
Woohoo, let me shoot the idea down! KK, have you ever sat in the BE second APC slot with an RPG and tried shooting it as the driver is driving or moving the turret?? Different players moving different parts of the same object does not seem to work well with source at all. This may present several issues while playing that would make this very very complicated. I think that you should really consider the lag and response time lapse between 2 people's computer and 2 people manning one machine. Again, the issue is not whether it is a good idea or not, but so far the only vehicle with a anything like this enabled is terribly difficult to operate like this. idea is great, but as it stands, this may not work so wonderfully, if the tank driver, for instance, drives away without his turret cause it lagged out somewhere. (comical sarcasm not intended to insult the devs ability to code >_>)
I believe this suggestion was shot down a long time ago due to its demanding nature of interaction among human species. I recall someone mentioning that another game/mod had a similar approach and it failed to work. Imagine the amount of communication required to operate a tank with multiple players, it's not worth the effort.
Metal: I'm talking about additional turrets with MGs and/or MLs. Independent from the main turret. BTW you have barely any idea what you're talking about (lag, coding and so on) FalconX: - conflict between gunner and driver? Not at all - driver can't control everything efficiently on a heavy tank with full equipment. He can try if he wants to:he can lock the equipment: side turret seat would be unavailable. Missile launchers and machine guns usually do a little heat so it won't be a big problem. - size of tank battle - size will be the same. If you need 20 heavies people will buy them. If they're more efficient with 10 heavies that actually hit something then fight will be more "epic". (tanks hitting each other are more fun to watch than randomly fired missiles) It's not just about resources (50(or whatever it is) res for additional MG on a heavy). It's the simple fact that given: railgun, 2x upg ML and 1 MG you can't shoot them at the same time. Railgun requires an independent turret to not interfere with aiming for MLs and MG. It's not a rare situation or something that you can completely ignore. In even simpler words: heavy tanks can take more weapons than you can efficiently use with 1 turret.
The only two games multi-crew tanks work is in Red-Orcistra and Flashpoint (my fav game ever) and both are real hard core realisam FPS. But other games it dosnt work.
This is a change from your original post where you said that "This means, railguns, bio-warheads, nukes, possibly he, and guided missiles require a person in the 2nd seat to fire them". Now if while building a tank you could specify which weapons a passenger can control would be better idea. This way if you want to work with another person you can, while still keeping the old way if people want. Only the basic ml and mg do little heat. Upgraded ML produce around 15 heat and MG can run about 3 heat per second. Given on average a tank sitting still dissipates only 7 heat per second, you can overheat easily. If you have it so people can decide if they want buddy gunners or not, tank battle will be the same. If we do it like your original suggestion then it'll be smaller. Beside having more people in a tank won't make it more efficient or magically increase a person accuracy. If you can't hit something while at a stand still in the first place, having someone else drive while you shoot won't make you a better shot. This idea has some merit I'll give it that, but the major problem that tanks in empires has that other games that have multi-crew vehicles don't is heat. Most people overheat their tank just fine by themselves already, what do you think going to happen with 2 people. Given that you're a sitting duck when overheated I imagine there's going to be a lot more dead tanks, especially when the driver trying to get away while the gunner just blazing away overheating the tank. On the other hand with two experience players working together in a tank, will make it that much more deadly since now the tank can engage two targets instead of one. One person can take out the ML turret, or that rifleman about to sticky nade the tank while that other takes on the other tank that's coming.
"I want to gun, someone come drive for me!" "Screw you man, I'm gunning." "wtf< SOMEONE FKING GUN!" "I'ma go build my own tank. With blackjack, and hookers. In fact, forget the tank. And the blackjack." That's what I was referring to. I don't follow. With twice as many people per tank, you have half as many tanks... And this is a problem because... it makes you think about how you're going to setup/use your weapons?
i wont be bothered to read the thread, just a quick note: if you need 2 people to effectively man a tank, the game will drastically slow down. the beauty with the current system is that since it takes 1 person, you have a functional fielded tank, and other people can do other stuff. if you needed 2 for the tank, thats 1 less person helping build bases, or scout out enemy targets, or defending. to maintain the current pace of empires, you would need to increase the player count. the player base just isnt big enough for that. how many games that use your proposed system also require a chunk of your team building bases? empires falls into 2 main categories. base building and combat. now, your idea means taking people away from base building, and adding them in combat. that means less people building bases. that means bases take longer to be built. that means that the game slows down because you NEED to have a base up before you even consider an effective assault on the enemy. again, if the empires player base was larger, this would be possible, but to need 2 people in every tank will slow down the base building, and hence progression into mid to late game. maybe in a year or 2 once we have 100+ player servers, and the player base to fill them. and even then, you would still need to prove that its more FUN than the current system. empires is about fun, not realism.
this discussion has inspired me to make this in gmod using snvwire. Im pretty good with it and i've made my own fighter planes by myself, so i don't see why i couldn't make this with my friend and have the turret and the tank body mapped to different seats. That is if i can find the time, although half term is coming up in a few hours :D
How about this; keep tanks like they are now if they are occupied by one operator only. If a second person enters your tank, you as the "tank commander" (ie. driver) should have the option of delegating the weapons to the second operator with the press of a bound key on the keyboard. The second tank operator will then hear a voice message "you are now in control of the weapon systems" and also see a message on his screen informing him of this. If you as the tank commander thinks the second operator is no good at shooting, wasting ammo or doing nothing you can take back control of the entire tank by pressing the same key again, turning it into a regular good old Empires tank. When the second operator is in control of the weapons the cannon should auto stabilize and also try to keep the same heading as the tank turns (ie, strive for the same elevation and heading). This way teamwork is rewarded in the form of better accuracy but at the same time it will not affect the game play in a negative way.
1 question: why would homing need more people? the javelin anti tank rocket is shoulder launched and just requires a quick lock-on using a thermal lock (or something like that). HE is maby only required to have a secondary "lookout" in numbers, but having a scout able to "lock on" to a tank or building with the binoculars then have the closest tank recieve the lock (within a sensable range of course) and fire the missiles, which would zoom up, then fall on the target and boom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dezg8aflMmk <- javelin missile launcher in action. There is 1 good thing about 2 people (tho guns can be set to fire from other seats), you dont have to worry about both driving and shooting. I cant remember how many times i was defending the base in a heated battle, trying to dodge rocket spam from the nf heavies, then getting myself stuck on a turret or something.
LOL!! watch this one... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZPOfwVhokI&feature=related 0:53 LOL!!! :D Also this one rocks lol what dum asses :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpEX21Az-UM&feature=related
