Altered? The original suggestion had the bombs be pretty much WMDs, and I'm trying to conserve that concept here. Making the bombs weaker would destroy the whole point in having them, as they'd be just another frequently used weapon favoured by some players' tactics. Their usage would not concern the commander very much, since it would just require small-scale, foot soldier-level tactics, not large-scale strategies - they'd be nothing that could necessarily turn tides in battles. Now, back to the point. If they're as powerful as I described originally, then their usage should be cut down to 5-10 times per team per every match that goes on beyond the point of getting aircraft, as I said. Now, if the bomb is a weapon mount that anybody can attach to a bomber which they build, everybody wants to use it. A few good pilots will keep their aircraft in good shape, drop bombs, resupply, and repeat. An elite player could cause way too much rape - way more than with artillery shells or nuclear warheads. I think too much. And what did it cost him? The $1000 weapon "mount", ie. some silly metal rack that the bomb hangs from. The bombs themselves would be free, as you could resupply them infinitely, like any other weapon. Remembering again how powerful the bombs would be, I think that would be comparable to getting tanks for free from the VF once you had it built. In that sense, the VF would cost practically nothing, when compared to what you'd get from it. Same with the bomb mount concept. Now, if you increase the cost of the mount, it becomes increasingly risky that lots of money goes to waste if the pilot doesn't happen to be an elite that can do 50 combat flights without getting shot down, and can't use the bombs well enough to compensate for the cost. Okay, let's suppose that you get the bomb only once when you buy an aircraft with it attached. If the bombs' prices truly reflect their effects, players would be tempted to buy new bombers just to get more bombs. Allowing players to make such expensive buys could seriously put economy in deep shit, forcing the commander to restrict aircraft building. The case would be the same if players were allowed to re-buy the bombs in aircraft factories and repair pads, as I'd imagine them being already expensive even alone. Limiting players from buying them too frequently would work pretty well to cut down their usage as well as to reduce the possibility of the team's economy being drained, thus making it safe to have unrestricted aircraft building. However, it would be much more sensible to have the weapon's usage be more controlled by the commander. As I've said many times before, it should be a strategically major weapon. The commander is the one who leads the whole show and decides the strategy, so only he should have the power of giving this weapon to whoever he wants and whenever he wants - it will allow for much wiser coordination. I'm all for more commander control. Lastly, if I didn't make it clear, one of my most important points is that the bombs should cost invidually, just as tanks cost invidually. If you'd only have to buy the mount, a less experienced player might drop the bomb once, do little damage, and get shot down before returning to resupply, whereas an elite would keep coming back with the same bomber to make hundreds of bullseye-hits resulting in mass rape. In some situations he could probably win the match all by himself, unlike a skilled player with only a tank. But, if bomb usage is limited, I'd have the commander give the bombs to the experienced players, rather than allow everybody to get them. Having a noob waste a bomb would be almost as bad as having a noob commander, since the noob's failure to fulfill the commander's important task would have a heavy effect on the gameplay - poor/wasted usage of bombs by random people would have a notable hit in the gameplay just as well. We already have enough to worry about with people handling expensive tanks, especially artillery tanks, so let's not multiply the potential risk of losing the game due to a random teammate's inexperience.
This is how i'd like it: One time use for those bombs you mentioned , vehicle has to be built by the com in order to be able to equip one of them badboys. Remove arty manned by players and use it in a similar way, research different strikes and/or increased power, as in more shots fired (could be something like standard HE 1,2,3,4 shots (infantery NOT as powerful per shot as arty HE is now, does little to no damage to vehicles depending or armor), gas/smokestike,napalm,HEAT grenade(s)(must put the artymarker ON a vehicle)). Arty used as follows: 1:arty researched 2:commander buy atleast one or several strikes should be able to stockpile like 5 or so strikes 3:Scout requests a strike, commander then has to send the strike by choosing a strike, strike hits after a set amount of time maybe 10-30sec.. Shouldn't be 100% accurate, except HEAT stike. One strike per request, and to prevent scouts from spamming artyrequests give the binoculars "ammo" similar to the repairtool (if out of ammo clicking on a target will "spot" it, clicking ground does nothing) or something, blah...
think of a tank like a bomb: in 10 minutes time, eather way, both are going to be destroyed. given an average driver, a tank will destroy a certain area. the bomb is the equivilant of this. I'm all for the scout binoculars making it easier for aircraft to bomb, but offscreen artilliary are a bad idea because they don't give the defenders any chance to take down the aircraft. I imagine that any aircraft with a "super" bomb on it, would have a specific glow comming out of the bomb bay area, similar to the blue glow of the plasma rifles in Dawn of war, so you know which units are the more powerful ones. basically, so that if a scout sees the bomber en-route to the base, the base has a chance to prepare defences, meaning that attackers will start having to use an escort...
A glow, what the hell? That would be silly. Why not just look at the aircraft closely to see if there's a big bomb with it, in a rack?
not all the way, but out of the bottom compartment or something. or perhaps a special set of lights on the underside of the wings that light up to show its on a vital mission...? wait: what if the bombs were visibly attached to the outside? that would be great.
I think sub-models would definately be the way to go on this. So the scout would actually have to look at the plane through their binoculars and try to make out the shape of the warhead. Or... an idea for another scout skill: vehicle scanning. It could give scouts an alt-fire to the binoculars that would output the loadout of a vehicle to their screen. So you could see its weapons, ammo and passengers (armor is detected by grenadier, so why not?).
Hmm didn't quite mean for the scout to help targeting stuff (well other than illuminating targets, but that can be done with "spotted" or cam/radar) and how is offscreen arty any worse than what we currently have? I'm not saying that it's supposed to be OMFG-overpowered, just a viable option for helping infantery push forward without the need for tanks (taking out turretfarms, weakening/taking out tanks and such). I for one am sick and tired of arty spamfests, esp considering how overpowered it is. Hate nuke aswell, but hey, atleast it's expensive and timely to research Would be cool if the researchtree was balanced up once we got air to sorta contain 3 "main" roads of research Tanks, air and arty/infantery that'd rock *edit: Oh and if you're concerned that arty cannot be countered then one could force a structure to be built in order to be able to call in strikes, let's call it a radiohouse or something, names are not important and then let's say the scout has to be inside that structures area of influence to be able to call for arty, however radiomasts (easy to destroy, but cheap) can bu built on the edge of the area of influece in order to increase it. Also an enemy scout can jam the signal preventing the other team from calling in arty by using a jammer (methinks slot 3, as in smoke,flashbangs or jammer) on the enemy radiohouse.... Plah, or not.. It would rock, but i suppose it's just to much to code and such and there are people having trouble understanding empires as is, having this aswell would proabably make then cry from sheer confusion
Obviously. It would look silly for a big bomb to appear out of thin air, it'd be a too noticable goof.
I think he meant that you could tell what kind of bomb it was from the outside, instead of being hidden.
Ahh, I hadn't noticed that that was the thrust of the original suggestion. In whatever context, I still disagree with the idea at a basic level. (By altered, I mean altered from the current style and thrust of the systems in Empires.) Exactly. Just like everything else in the game. The players decide if it is the strategy they want to pursue. They are not forced into pursuing it because without it they'd be sitting ducks. One of the major design premises of Empires was that strategy would be open ended so that the people who played would have actual choice in what to pursue. This isn't very logical. Unless you're suggesting that the players would get to decide which bomb to equip an aircraft with. That's player tactics. Whether or not the players get aircraft in the first place is commander tactics. And then where they go and what they attack is commander tactics. And that can turn the tide of a battle. If this is your suggestion, then your argument is is too narrow in scope to address the issue. If that is not your suggestion, then you seem to be suggesting that the use of aircraft does not concern the commander. Artillery: There was a thread about offmap artillery a while ago. I've forgotten how it turned out. My objection to it is that it shifts a responsibility that is inherently the soldier's onto the commander. The commander orders an artillery strike, and a player sees to it. If you have so much time on you're hands while commanding that you need this sort of thing to spice it up, you probably aren't doing a very good job. The soldiers fight the battle, the commander commands the soldiers. Research Tree: The idea of the research tree is that you research into fields, which lead to theories, which lead to technologies. (I'm fairly sure those were the terms Krenzo used.) The idea being that, rather than research the generic "vehicles, vehicle weapons, cannon 2," you research, for example, "chemistry, explosives, explosive weaponry."
the players would be the ones deciding to build a bomber (origionally with normal load out), and also be carrying out the execution of bombing. the idea about the bomb being visible, is that if it gets seen by the enemy (any enemy) before it's used, it will create an exciting kinda panic as they try to man AA weapons, of get behind cover and such. plus, then every attack will meet some resistance instead of being a turkey shoot.
And that is why so many matches are lost because people are stubborn lone wolves who don't understand why they should do what the commander tells them to. Such matches are the worst kind, frustrating the sensible players beoynd any measurable levels. When it comes to something as extreme as choosing who will use an expensive WMD and where he will drop it, it definetely has to be controlled by the commander. He can give it to whoever he thinks will do it best and drop it where told to. I don't quite understand you. The commander would equip players with the bombs, so OBVIOUSLY the commander would also choose what bomb type it is, if there will actually be multiple types of them, NOT the player. Whether people get aircraft or not is not revelant to this argument in any way. I was saying that if the bombs are too weak, then the commander would not be interested in how they're used, since he wouldn't be extraordinarily hopeful of them turning the tide of a battle. That's NOT what I suggested, we're talking about WMDs. I'm sure there will be weaker bombs that the player can equip their aircraft with, alike any other armament. So to get it straight: this is about WMDs, and isn't related to normal aircraft weapons at all. The aircraft would merely be a tool of conveyance with the bomb. The bomb should be more important to the commander than one or even two random aircrafts. Maybe this example might clear things up for you: think of an aircraft that could be equipped with a building. The team doesn't have lots of resources, but a new VF is needed - it could be built only with the aircraft. The commander equips a chosen player with a VF, who then drops it where the commander said. Now if any player could equip themselves with the VF, there would be a huge risk of resource drainage and really bad placement. Same case with the bomb. So why shouldn't the bomb just fall out of thin air just like the VF? Well, the reasons are obvious, and numerous, so I won't go on to explain that.
this is how it would work: a bomber, with normal outfit, is made. while it is landed at the airfeild (having taken off already or not), it can be given a WMD by the commander. once the WMD is used, the bomber must return to the airfeild to get its normal bombs back.
That makes them very vulnerable to anything that attacks them during that loading time, and reducing loading time would make it too powerful.
I think he was refering to a time spent putting the bomb aboard the bomber while it was landed, but I would disagree. its completely defenceless in the air.
What the hell would be the point of a load time? It would change absolutely nothing. Besides the delay already comes from the time to get enough resources to build an aircraft and a bomb. And whether the aircraft is endangered or not when the bomb is loaded, depends entirely on whether the commander has placed the supply building inside the main base behind safe defenses, or, for reasons beyond my understanding, in the middle of a warzone (?). I don't understand you at all. It's like you said infantry is too vulnerable in barracks because tanks could kill them. Can you explain your point again? Maybe you missed some key part of my suggestion, I don't know.
WMDs would be incredible, and totally not overpowered. their only one use, and only as powerful as a barage of artilliary shells, so it would work out. +100 points for amazing coolness, and attractiveness to new people that it would bring to the game.
Ahh, alright, I had thought that the suggestion was to replace traditional bombs with massive huge explody things. I'm still not understanding how these would be different than superweapons... Unless it is the intent to make them superweapons.
Umm.. a superweapon is super, and a WMD causes mass destruction. Finding the difference between being super and causing mass destruction is your problem.
