[Public Test] Empires Unbalanced Edition

IMO there should be multiple paths for some things.
e.g.

MKII and Medium chassis are in the root of Mechanical Engineering. Researching Mediums takes you to the next level where you can research heavies.

At the same time, researching MKII's takes you to the same tier as if you researched mediums.

Choices along advancement. Do we get this or this? The subsequent researches are the same, what would be better for us at this time?


One problem I see with the current concept is that upgrading YOUR RPG's with YOUR chassis' give you a larger advantage than just the chassis'. I can easily see teams teching straight to heavies so that they have rape tanks and rape grenadiers, while the enemy team takes a more conventional research route. IMO it would be better if upgrading YOUR chassis' upgraded the ENEMIES RPG's. The reasoning? The only reason RPG upgrades are a research is because they are overpowered early game, and without them grens are almost useless late game. Why not make your RPG's scale with enemy tech?

Also, see this thread for another alternative.

 

I prefer putting weapons, armor and engines in separated trees, like so:

Well, the design in this post also allows you to select different fields, but you can only start from the lowest tier. It's an interesting idea, but that depends on balancing.

This design is already a step in the right direction, imo

 

-Trees need to be more unique, more constructed around a specific play style (trees are too similar, no real reason why to research a specific tree atm)
-The name of the trees need to clearly show the function of the tree (like precise, cheap and fast asf)
-The tier 1 weapons are boring, tier 1 weapons are not very different from standart weapons. Nobody wants buffed standart with the first research.
-More interesting weapons, less upgrades of existing or lower tier guns. (over the top future tech, we have plasma and rails so dont argue about realism)

Yes I know that would need coding but whats the point of making a new research tree if it isnt as perfect as possible.

 

@Mayama: I rather have some working results + fun while testing it. I'm not good at planning and making "the perfect system" I make something that can be released with the next version. Long term plans are different anyways so I don't see why I should waste more and more time on something that just has to work better than the old system for a few versions.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/534848/Research/Emp_Scripttest2.zip

Anyways, revised version in installer-form. Slightly shortened research times. Cost down by 75%. RPG upgrades tweaked a bit. Large salvo missile rack replaced with TOW missiles. Reactive armor and some of the artillery cannons had a line in the script missing. Scatter cannon has some more ammo. NF heavy tanks can carry 2 3slots but not more than 2 missile launchers total.

Btw.: Medium tank research stays where it is because dawgas annoyed me so much.

 

First impressions of the new scripts:

Research time and research costs seems much better.

TOW missile seems awesome... But its called an Heavy TOW in the selection screen, and upgraded TOW in the tank, and there's no other TOW, so no reason to call it anything but TOW. Also, I think giving it reloads that take a really long time would be better then just 3 missiles and then you need an ammo box. Maybe 3 extra clips, 3 per clip and 10-30 seconds to reload a clip. Firing 3 missiles then requiring an ammobox Is rather annoying.

NF heavy has a 3 slot missile and a 3 slot MG.... Was it supposed to be that? I thought it was going to be 2 -3 slot missiles.

RPG upgrades no longer stacking sucks.

Anti wall weapons aoe still doesn't kill unbuilt walls.

Keep up the good work!

 

Trickster, you've utterly missed the point. Your suggested system is almost exactly what we currently have. I'll try to leave out the fluff but it's basically the same points:

No commander researches niche weapons, because that's time wasted when you have adequate weapons.

It completely goes against the axiom I layed out, that there is no time to spend getting unneccessary things, commanders need to tech upwards not sideways or they get left behind.

No team should be left, no matter what path they have chosen, with ineffective grenadiers at a late stage. It really doesn't make the choices a commander has to make significantly different or difficult, but having some games, (ANY games) where the player as an infantry is ineffective against enemy tanks, in a game where limited tanks forces you to play an infantryman, is going to give players a bad experience.

 

I do

 

Am I completely missing something here? Why is everyone saying your team should get RPGs at the same rate as the same team gets better tanks. I honestly don't understand. That's like saying "well if it wasn't enough that the enemy team's tanks dick all over us, so do their infantry". Why the hell would you EVER give the winning team MORE advantages over the losing one. I don't get it. At all. You guys are all going "it sucks because as you get better tanks you don't get better RPGs and thats unbalanced".

Also, by getting unnecessary things (i.e. things not suited to the situation) you're simply griefing your team. That's like saying "our commander researched plasma to give us some diversity, instead of getting a half decent weapon against their tanks.

Also, the idea is tha Niche weapons come WITH the tiers or are easy to get (quick).

It feels like you're all saying "we should give people weapons that are completely unsuited to the situation so that they can see some different particle effects". Seriously...guys....wtf.

 

In reply to: "Why is everyone saying your team should get RPGs at the same rate as the same team gets better tanks"

Because it means that you're getting the upgraded RPG at the same rate as the enemy gets better tanks. Most of the time, and more so with this simple system, the teams are fairly even on research.

I see you standpoint, that this is somewhat a buff for the team with greater research, but it would be a far greater ill to leave players fighting impossible battles as infantry against tanks that they cannot damage.

researching grenadier research seperately exclusively only increases the [tank (as that's almost exclusively what research is about)] tech gap. So it doesn't really help the losing team.

The whole point of getting the niche weapons is diversity in tank combat. Yes, in some situations having exclusively HE tanks would be more powerful, such as if you're all attacking a base, but allowing tanks to customise more and choose from a selection of weapons will allow players to decide on a role for their tank instead of just the generic "tank" role.

For instance, in your tech tree trickster, a commander that goes the "coolant" direction will get a very few of each category of weapon- one small cannon, one middle cannon and so on. So a medium tank really doesn't have much to choose from on the cannon front. And once a commander has gone down the "coolant" direction, it would be foolish to then go down any other direction before getting bigger chassis and basically reaching the endgame.

One of the big flaws in tank combat is that there is no diversity. The enemy is all in one type of tank. Your allies are all in one type of tank. This is a definate flaw, and makes late game a lot less intresting.

I'm looking for some weapons to be good damage per second against all targets, others to be great against tanks, bad against structures, a bit of variety. You can't have that speciality in a weapon that is the only level 3 cannon availiable down a tree, or nobody will research that tree.

 

Rpg Upgrade Was Never Implemented As A Choice The Commander
Can Take. It Was Implemented To Fix The Problem Of Useless Late
Game Grenadiers. The Old System Didnt Work. So They New One
Automaticaly Gives Grens Better Late Game Rpgs, kthxby

 

I've always felt that it was a long overdue rebalance after vehicles (re)gained the ability to run players over.

 

RPG upgrades should exist as a separate, but easily accessible upgrade. That way comms have a relatively easy time getting to the upgrade (no searching through random tech tree), but it still costs enough res and time that it's still a choice if they want to use it as their counter to the better tanks. Or, they could research better tank stuff.

 

I like how you have to go MKII, then Medium, then Heavy, instead of getting Upgraded Chasis where you can get Medium, Artillery, or Advanced and then just go Heavies with no mediums.

 

Rpg upgrades are not a choice, its not a strategy.
Its a cheap way to scale grenadiers with late game tanks
without the need of coding or other recources.

 

Thank you for your feedback. I didn't change RPG upgrades functionality, just some values. Either they still stack or they still don't stack

The TOW has a very high damage output for strong alpha strikes. They shouldn't be used as a normal weapon you constantly reload and keep firing with. You have to carefully place your shots to overpower enemy tanks, even if you drive just a LT/AFV. Increasing their time to fire won't help its role of overpowering one side a tanks armor to go for the kill. However I can give it 1 clip for reload.

There is a heavy TOW because I planned a normal TOW for tier 2 but I didn't get around to it yet. Maybe this normal one can be reloaded faster or will have clips.

Hm, I think the NF heavy script is wrong then, but hey, why not try it this way till next scripts

Any yea, as mayama said, rpg upgrades are not optional researches for your "uber grenadier strategy" they are a technical necessity as I can't bind them into the weapon trees or anything else for that matter.

There are no infantry focussed researches. There will not be any with this setup. If there will be infantry researches in future versions it will be with a completely different setup in mind and then properly done, not just give + 10 damage to weapon x.

 

This. nicely put.

 

People saying RPG upgrades need work, see http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=9805

 

Yea I think I'll do that now, or more like, test if that part of the scripts work.

Edit: Committed to SVN.

 

That suggestion certainly helps scale the grenadier damage as the game progresses, and for that it's better than both the current and proposed research system.

I think an underlying and important question posed is: why only the grenadier? MLs, and early game tanks also suffer, though both can be given good reasons as to why they are set up as such.

the fact that early game tanks get out dated it to give a definate bonus in tank battles to a team that has researched better weapons instead of sticking the the current tanks and spending the money on tanks.

as the game progresses the number of MLs in play also increases across the map as they are placed and built. In order to prevent the map becoming filled with MLs and potentially made a stalemate, late game tanks need to be able to dominate MLs. This makes the game at a late stage flow better, as the barriers that kept the front lines more constant earlier on are relatively easily broken down.

If you want to ensure that MLs and early types of tanks don't get outdated, then perhaps a decrease across the board of the health of the upgraded armours would be a good suggestion. However, for the reasons outlined above, perhaps it's a good idea that we just go with killx' idea.

 

Might be an idea to change ml's to whatever you research in terms of uml/homing/guided/bio. Bio Mls would be awesome....no?

Might be a bit overpowered with being homing, but idk.