Although I have played empires and read the forums since ~2.1 this is my first post. Even though you didn't ask for it, here's my opinion of the game. To be played properly empires has a steep, steep learning curve. Like most noobs, when I first started playing I crawled around as a scout and tried to snipe people. Sniping was more effective back then, but eventually I realized that I made no contribution to winning. I then successively played through each of the classes to gain some proficiency. Scout: Most poorly played class. Recent boosting of the sabotage rate to killing buildings has made it now the even more annoying. I would like to see sabotage's effectiveness reduced, but not necessarily back to previous levels. People also need to learn that hide is not necessary to play scout. Fav 4 upgrades in order: speed, melee, enhanced senses, aim Rifleman: Easiest class in which to gain proficiency. I think it is balanced well. NFHR, however, needs to lose the weird recoil animation. Also, putting 4 stickies on one side of any vehicle should kill it. Fav 4 uprades in order: speed, aim, bullet damage, ammo or health Engineer: Easiest to play well as a beginner. Devastating if played extremely well. Most all players need to be taught how to play engineer well. ie..don't throw a grenade, then drop a turret and wall, then continue spamming. Fav 4 uprades in order: heavily depends on the situation Grenadier: Most fun class. I side with dubee grapehead on the gren debate. The mortar is the most fun weapon in the game. Gren needs some sort of rifleman-esque bullet resistance or more ammo upon spawning. Gren is nigh unplayable, though, without speed upgrade. Speed upgrade is necessary to the 'tank dance'. Fav 4 uprades in order: speed, ammo, armor detect, health Tank driving: For a long time I resisted tank driving, and a lot of it was because the of the vehicle customization window. It is unintuitive to new players how to assign weapons to groups and buttons. And then how to use those groups effectively in a battle. Fav tank: full bio nfmkII Although, the steep learning curve results in many new players leaving, it is also the thing that has kept me playing. New players will never progress unless they are very observant or are taught what to do and when to do it. The learning server sometimes accomplishes this, and I think that it is crucial. Where empires is most lacking, however, is in creative commanders. Myself included. With each new version, the nf and be standard research trees are quickly hashed out and adhered to as religion. Why doesn't plasma ever get used? or vehicle grenades? I think maybe the next step for the game is to make it extremely advantageous to have a wide variety of tech to use at the same time. Some sort of compounding effect, so that a well organized and coordinated attack with multiple light tech could counter the current all-awesomeness of the single tech heavies. In summation: love the game. wish it had more room for unorthodox strategies.
I shall Quote this for Truth :p I agree with you on the bottom part about that wide variety of tech should be encouraged, not discouraged. Good job for your first post, though you are still a newb :p :D
I have seen quite a few games won by rarely used things such as upgraded nades and bio mg. What I think empires needs is techs that are more effective defensively then offensively, such as upgraded gren RPG, which can make it actually possible to have comebacks later in the game.
Since commanders have little control over who gets vehicles (besides tedious micromanagement), you need to research to the lowest common denominator. I would love to research plasma MG and have teams of tanks + plasma APCs devastate the enemy (I've seen it done on vehicle training to great effect). However, the more likely result is that 2-3 newbs will drive numerous plasma tanks to their death or abandon them, wasting precious res and tank supply. Therefore, I research the standard tech tree. Same reasoning goes for arty, composite, UGLs, bio weapons, homing/guided, etc. If there was some restriction (like you need 10 points before you can build a vehicle, unless the commander builds one for you), then I would gladly go other, unique research paths. Until then, non-standard tech paths = highly likely to lose.
ScardyBob, you make a valid point. I guess most empires players eventually reach a point where they would like to see more coherent teamwork to see how much farther the gameplay can be stretched. But that's not going to happen on a public server. Still... fun can be had.
I think plasma is pretty cool, I always had a plan to use plasma to overheat an enemy vehicle then have a teamate run up there and shoot the hell out of him with anything that's good against tanks. The scout rifle should be 1 hit kill BUT when not zoomed in it's inaccurate has hell, it is still accurate as any other gun when zoomed out and crouched.
stuff like plasma atm will only work for clan matches AND pubmatches if you make 2 different types, a plasma type for pubbers ("weak" plasma) and a plasma type for clanners ("strong" plasma) weak plasma the pubbers plasma, adapted to pubber play with more an "augmenting" weapon style then an actual main or secondary weapon note: it will get you the upper hand in a perfect situation of equal skill and chance, where the enemy does not have it consider it a standard MG with special plasma "augmented" ammunition almost no or no vehicle damage, but some (standard mg) infantry damage negatives: very low weight (maybe 1 or 2 layers armor on one side less when equipped) very low heat (only matters and is noticeable when using other weapons extensively in combination with this gun, basically you should be able to spray just this weapon with standard engine and not overheat) positives: gives a small heat penalty to the enemy on hit, nothing major but enough to turn the cooling properties of gas turbine (8 heat) into a bio diesel (6 heat) when under constant hits from this weapon note: this will make it so that hitting your enemy with "just" this weapon will deal less heat to him then he loses heat automatically when he is not doing anything Strong plasma the clanner plasma delivers high heat impacts, very slow fire rate and pretty accurate negatives: weighs quite a lot, can be considered about the same as it is in current versions heat is low enough to keep firing indefinitely without moving and having an engine with coolant properties of 8 or more positives: delivers massive heat to an enemy, but combined with the lower-then-DU hmg (cycle time of 1 /") fire rate you will need about 6 consequental hits to bring someone in the overheat with a 6 heat or less engine while he drives delivers about the same damage per bullet as small DU in fact, im gonna post this in the suggestions forum
if you would say "requires 6 consequetive cannon shells with a 2.5-3.5sec cooldown" then i could possibly agree to ur suggestion... yet i would still think its slightly OP considering the overheat time once a person pass the limit... but 6 hits with a MG is just crazytalk... Quick example: 5 v 5 tanks. each of the plasma tanks take 1 tank each.... plasma wins EVERY time due to the very rapid application of the overheat state... not to mention that once tanks are already in the overheat state, then its very easy to keep them that way with that MG ur proposing... iow 1 tank handling 3 overheated tanks at once. (presuming they reach this state to begin with due to aid of allies)
depends on other research, also you cannot "kill" the enemy with it (since your damage will never be even close as high as the enemies) and 6 bullets mean you need to hit at least 5 of them or you will be reloading with an enemy that is not yet overheated and can fire at you
wat.... its a 6 bullet mag...? also, neutralizing a tank is just like death... try going sticky stun action as a scout its all about disallowing ur enemy to leave the battlefield, while ur own tanks can run off if they take too much dmg.
i am currently working out the specifics, but yes i intend to make it a 1 mag = 1 tank overheated gun see it as a large calibre rifle, like one of those anti tank sniper rifles but vehicle mounted with many tanks driving around it will be harder to hit every round, resulting in enemy tanks being way less effective, but still able to flee from the battlefield OR do some damage if they are outgunned by plasma
Simon always said that, and he was not wrong. Plasma is reworked in the testers version atm, but i'm not sure if it's just a test or something finalised. Right now it does damage but I think it overheats you pretty quickly as well as the other tank...it really is a teamwork-only based strategy. Any other way is fraught with overpowering. It's not really a good weapon, which is why people don't research it. However, vehicle grenades I get quite often if i'm in the tree as a few people like them - and can use them to devastating effect. When I started playing Empires, I didn't really feel it had a steep learning curve overall - it had an initially steep one, but once you understood how the battlefield worked, it was more like Empires had a lot to learn, rather than a lot you had to learn to play. I still see people who play the same class after a few months and don't really know the rest of the game, but it doesn't really stop them from being effective (except for the scouts ofc). I have to admit though, I started off as an engineer and read the quick-manual as the mod was downloading.
I dont like to use Plasma... It seems that it overheats the attacking tank more than the attacked one.
