I see it as a double edged sword. a attacking scout could easly plop a smoke grenade in that hole and render the pill box useless for a while. Serousely guys more tools means more statigys. I've seen a lot of games where a team went defencive for a while and built up resorces enough to turn the tide on those who exhosted them selves. Ive seen teams hold out long enough for thier ninjas to take the com. I've seen the aggresors run out of tickets due to thier over confidence. Defence is not a losing stratigy in empires.
Tell that to the people I snipe while standing and they're between a rock and a tree or a narrow slit.
This can be a pretty good idea. Make pill boxes very small (1/4 size of a radar). It can basically be a section of a wall converted to include a little firing slit with a small structure that lets one person crouch inside. I dunno how that will turn out but I can see the gleam in every person with a mine or explosive grenade
how about this: lvl 2 engy shall be able to place one of those things, it should have a single mannable mg on the ground level and some space and cover for 3 ppl ontop. in terms of hp make sure it survives 5 engy nades and ofcource keep it completely vulnerable from behind.
Keep defense where it belongs, in the bases. the way things are going, we'll be asking for trenchfoot next for people who sit in the pillboxes too long. Wars of attrition suck until someone actually does something, at which point its no longer a war of attrition.....
It looks really cool and all, but with a bit creativity you can already do this with walls and you can do more with walls, it doesn't really add anything. And more tools in empires mainly means more chaos. Maybe someone could model it so it could just be preplaced in maps along with the standard walls.
Pre placed? ok you guys just wait. next time you find your self in a game that I'm comming try and infiltrate my base. I dare you. I use walls like you wouldn't belive. An education from Turret defence on SC has taught me stratigys that translate perfectly. With the addition of this structure, defence will be more then worth it. because my team will see my carefully placed structures and think "hey I wonder what kind of cover that has". I even gave enough weaknesses in its design to make balencing easy. Don't say pre placed either! The best part of empires is the games are radicly diffrent every time. One of the key parts of that is base layout. ok now I'm rambling. But my challenge still stands. choose what ever class you want. But no single ninja or frontal apc rush will ever gain access! An my Com vehical is even farther from reach.
Trust me, turtling is NOT a good strategy in empires. The enemy team will have all res nodes and will just rape you with arty. Rushing is still a far better tactic than playing defensively. It's just like any other RTS. Rush tanks and tech = win turtle = lose (Eventually) This is how the devs intended the gameplay to be, and it won't change, because it's awesome like this. Nevertheless, nice try.
Defense is usefull if you want to defend one chokepoint and rush the other one. With good defenses a team can throw 3/4 of their recources into the rush and the rest is enough to defend well.
@Carnifex It isn't just "turtle and don't move a single step away from the base, get no refs and research nothing" or "drive CV to the most important location at start, build forward-barracks everywhere, get all refs and win after a few minutes". 1. Sometimes the teams are even and , as an example, the commander wants to defend one location while attacking somewhere else. If he manages to get up some good defensives at one location, he needs less man to defend it and has an advantage. 2. Better defensive structures would also make main bases harder to take. I don't know if everyone sees this the same way, but I like it when some games take longer and the loosing Team gets the chance to conserve some resources and counter the attack. This is nearly impossible at the moment. The only way to change a game now is ninjaing the commander... not very good in my opinion. 3. In every strategy game I liked building bases. I don't like it if rushing is the only valid tactic. To make my point clear, I'm not speaking of total turtling, but building bases while beeing offensive. In online strategy games I sometimes even joined servers where players aren't as good as me, just to have some different games and not allways the short rush-games. If the devs don't like longer games and better possibilities to turn matches around and and don't think building bases is fun, then we can't change it because it's their right to do what they want. I'm just saying that there are may players who would like it and it would increase the number of possible tactics and be very fun for most of the people including me.
You can implement that already in the form of constructable map entities in areas which will require defending, which mappers already do. You do not need to build walls around your base, it is wasteful to do so, the resources could be better spent on tanks, and the time better spent on micromanagement. And whether you like it or not, empires is not a turtle friendly game, you do not win empires by playing defensively, you only stall defeat. You can make doing so more fun by making your maps favour defence, but you cannot make it a viable victory strategy without also making the map repetative or king of the hill.
Yea, that's exactly how it is at the moment. What I and many other Empires players (approximately 2/3 of the community) would like is a bit more possibilities for defensive tactics. Again, I DON'T MEAN TURTLING! Not walling in the whole Map and spamming thousands of bunkers!
I think its something the devs need to make more clear. Most of the players on the top score list in pub games are not more skilled than the moderate score players. They only know that you have to rush in empires. For defensive structures, its hard to balance it because nobody wants defensive stuff that turns every game in an epic escort like stall.
Precisely, the way to break a defence in any game is to use the defence breaker units, which always take time to use (because otherwise the defence is worthless). In empires, this is artillery, now you either make a super powered weapon which takes a long time to shoot but which breaks the defence in one shot, or you make an arty like weapon which requires repeated use to be effective. And I am sorry to inform you that having the game require everyone to get into arty tanks and shell the same place for five minutes is not fun for either the defenders or the attackers. Having attackers pile into the defences using tanks to little effect is not fun for the attackers, and having the attackers run over the defences in a short time is not fun for the defenders. To make it fun for one you have to remove the fun for other. If you simply wish to incorporate a method of stalling a loss, then play a more defensive map, like cyclopean, or the one I'm working on now.
I think we need a wall busta weapon or something like in the other thread. Mabe a sismec cannon that gets walls 1-2 shots. But dont forget aircraft are going to change alot in empires so we shall have to wait and see. I just thort what is going to stop a team from 'air-ninjaing' the other teams comm? And dont say air defence cus a good ninja can get through alot. :eek:
