I'm not sure I'd like to see 3-man tanks vs 1-man tanks, if that's what they're planning. Getting gunners is neat in theory but generally a hassle and I think it makes the sides harder to balance. And as Chris mentioned, it would be a pain for the driver if he's sharing a heat or ammo pool with 2 gunners that he has little (if any) control over.
the balance wont be all that bad. When side cannons are implemented the NF heavy will lose the double ML slot row, and have only the normal triple slot. The BE Heavy will still have the dual triples, so balancing wont be all that difficult.
But NF will have to have 3x people in their heavy tanks to use it effectively whereas BE will only require 1? What happens when there is enough money for the entire team to be in heavies? Do you make NF tanks 3x stronger? Then how is it balanced when there is only money for a few heavies? Or if NF tanks are equal but only with 2-3 people how is that balanced when there is low money BE will have more players to do other stuff? I think those were the balancing questions Slamz was getting at. Points to him for thinking outside the box(I would like to think stuff this obvious was inside the box).
firstly, I imagine that each gun would have, no, would NEED to have a heat bar of its own. if you're gunna have to dedicate a player to manning the gun, he should at least get his own heat bar as if he was manning his own tank, otherwise yes, it would be a waste of time. With that added though, your heavy tank with 3 players is basically a heavy tank with two medium tanks stuck on the side, which would be both useful AND cool AND balanced, even if the tank only has the armour of one vehicle. whats more, it'll only take up the space on the front line, and money of one tank with lots of guns. so yeah, this will be cool and balanced. As much as i appreciate someone with the balls to be realistic about all the fun ideas, it'd be worthwhile you coming up with solutions to them as well (solutions which are pretty simple too imo) instead of just shooting them down.
Will the cost be the same as 1 heavy + 2 meds??? 1 heavy 2 meds is much more versatile. They could be responding to 3 separate situations if the game warranted you lose mobility. With the armor of 1 tank but the firepower of 3 your tank becomes much more vulnerable to non-tank anti-tank weapons. If a rifleman sneaks up on you do you lose the cost of 3 tanks whereas if they were separated you would only lose 1/3 of it(1 tank). Same with mines. Grens to a lesser extent because they are kinda useless. If cost is the same in games with lower res how do you balance the extra cannons on NF?? the side slots would act like 2 free medium tanks and you could have 2x engineers for repairing and a gren for defusal without them being useless in the top slot.
I guess per default the side cannons will have a field of fire of exactly 180° to either side, meaning they can aim parallel to the main cannon as well, which they would do by default when no other person is gunning with it. Depending on wether they're fixed to the chassis or turret this would mean that a single tank driver would have two (fixed to chassis -> main gun + side gun on the appropriate side) or three guns (fixed to turret -> both guns fixed to straight forward) pointed at his target. But I guess chassis makes more sense as turret could be a bit overpowered. While slightly disadvantaged in this setup vs. a BE Heavy it would be at an advantage when passengers would then be able to take over either side gun, harrassing another tank while the driver is busy with his own target. And considering that on huge servers Vehicle limit is too small for everybody to get his own tank (or not having enough resources to give everybody heavies), I can see this happening often enough to make it all balanced. Add to that Sandbag's idea of individual heatbars for the side guns and I can see this design causing lots of fun at the frontline. Post recap, since I figured that it was a bit confusing before I was about to hit submit: - But NF will have to have 3x people in their heavy tanks to use it effectively whereas BE will only require 1? A single driver would be at a minor disadvantage vs. advantage with passengers. - What happens when there is enough money for the entire team to be in heavies? a) Vehicle Limit b) see one point above - Do you make NF tanks 3x stronger? Side guns are only 2slot? So Rail + 2xHE/plasma/ranged vs 2xRail. Also Heat, need to man sideguns for full advantage, etc. - Then how is it balanced when there is only money for a few heavies? Kill one NF Heavy and send three people back to spawn instead of one. - Or if NF tanks are equal but only with 2-3 people how is that balanced when there is low money BE will have more players to do other stuff? Tradeoff between advantage when fully manned vs. disadvantage when going solo again. Sure this will take quite some balancing, but if that's done, I can see this being very much fun. PS: This is an organic post that grew from a quick comment, while emp_recruit and Sandbag posted their respective last posts which I took into consideration while writing. Feel free to point out any inconsistence that came along with that.
Look at the current NF Heavy tank model. Both cannons are there, affixed to the sides of the chassis. They just don't do anything yet due to lack of code support.
I beg to differ that a HE + UML + coolant medium is the most fearsome tank, it will outmaneuver and outrun both heavies whilst having superior firepower, and also being a smaller target to hit. Heavies cannot dodge shells- a well-driven medium can.
This is why I said it would be hard to balance. :-p If you have a 3-man tank with the armor of a 1-man tank, then effectively we're fielding, say, 9 vs 9, but the BE has 3x as many actual tanks and 3x as much armor to plow through. NF won't have 3x the firepower, though. I dunno... Good luck figuring out how to set the values for cost, firepower and armor so that a 9v9 tank battle (9 single man BE tanks versus 3 three-man NF tanks) is fair. Also bear in mind that you'll rarely be able to employ all 3 positions, even if the side guns can aim directly forward. Facing my enemy is usually not what I'm doing. I want to be at a 90 degree angle so that I can quickly back up behind cover and scoot forward again, meaning one gun is often going to be useless. But if you balance it assuming a "2 man tank with 3 positions, where one gunner swaps spots as needed", will that make an actual 3-man tank too powerful in a head to head fight? Meh. IMO, if we want a multi-crew tank, it would probably be best to redo the model to supply a second smaller turret on top of the main turret, not unlike the Terran Republic tank from Planetside (although hopefully the second gunner would have an actual cannon and not just a piddly machinegun like in Planetside).
Slamz, your logic is screwed up with the 3 NF tanks vs 9 BE tanks. The balance is supposed to be each teams heavy is about equal, but in different ways.
Well then, what about if one NF Heavy costs the same as 3 BE Heavies, but has a huge amount of armour, is substantially slower, but the side turrets can just aim forwards of the tank and behind the tank. That way it would be more of a goliath thing, making it far more different to the Medium, which would actually make the medium used.
for once in my life, I fully agree with arklansman. And Trid3nt, your idea sounds ALOT like the Land Raider from WarHammer 40k.
Eh? I was responding to the idea that the NF tank could be changed to hold 3 people -- the driver and two gunners. Therefore in a 9 person vs 9 person fight, BE would have 9 tanks, NF would have 3 tanks with 3 people each. I suppose it could be a money situation. It could be balanced so that NF is still better off having 1 tank per person if they can afford it, but if they can't afford it, then buying a couple extra guns to fill out a single tank with 3 gunners could be their alternative. But that seems to suggest that in a low-money situation, NF would have an advantage over BE! So the real question is, is this proposal going through serious circles at all or is this just Forumcrafting?
I think this is good. we're getting somewhere. so, assuming 2 men in the NF tank, as will generally be the case, and that the second man switches sides NF tank has about equal firepower to the BE heavy as both will effectively have 2 cannons for the majority of the fight. NF tank will effectively be a medium tank and a heavy tank against the 2 BE tanks. NF will have the armour of one tank, it'll have the firepower of two tanks assuming everyone is using HE. the 2 BE tanks will have 4 HE cannons at their service. the ONLY benefit that NF will get will be price: their "two" tanks will cost only a little more due to extra guns than one tank. assuming unlimited troops and limited money, NF will be equal in firepower (assuming no missiles, which is unlikely also) and half as much armour as BE. Assuming more money and limited troops as is generally the case, NF will be at a massive disadvantage because they will be fielding less armour and less tank s per player. what's the solution? either make the BE heavy naturally weaker than the NF heavy (reduce side plates on BE heavy to 5 and back plates to 2 like it used to be) or give the NF heavy a 4 slot Missile launcher instead of one 3 slot and one 2 slot. I'd like both of those, sounds reasonable.
Just make weapons be a larger cost as a percentage of the tank. That way if people on NF want to stack up in one tank it costs them more but if they want to spread out over more tanks they won't be paying for that cost. Haven't read I'm just posting this in case noone else has.
i think sideports is an awesome idea, would need some way of telling whether or not a person has a sideport weapon simply by looking at the tank though, or many people would jump in your tank thinking you have a sideport weapon and get disappointed
Okay, then what about if the side ports would flip over? when you are looking right, you control the right hand side one, and when you look left, you control the left one?
Only problem there is that it would further make the NF heavy inferior by limiting its already inferior firepower.. IF you have a single passenger, they can just use F3 and F4 to swap between cannons as needed.
I use the medium for the speed, although it's kinda prone to spinning out compared to the BE med, so it does put me off somewhat.
