put apc spawns back to research

whoever put apc spawns back is a fucking retard, i thought they were removed for a reason, they detracted from gameplay and many games were ruined before they really started, resulting in empries being a loading screen game!

and dont give me your bullshit about "dur dur, just place turrets and mines its not that hard dur dur". very oftenly in a public game most people would forget/ not know to do this, and in a private game there are not usually the numbers to basically turtle at the start AND push out to take ground.

apc spawns were fine when researched, only problem was apcs that were in the field were not upgraded, you had to buy a new one to be able to spawn from it.

so do one of the following, remove diffusal, reduce apc armour, increase apc or vf cost or simply copy paste the code for researchable spawns back

 

I believe APC rushes teach people valuable tactics in Empires strategy;
-Teamwork
-Coordination
-Defense
-Driving
-Different areas to spawn
-How to use the grenadier

Now if I was honest, I'd say that the radar should be ~900-1.2k res. It seems with the barracks being only 200 now, there's much more res, and the radar/VF can be placed in a minute into the game.

Also, if there was any sort of uhh...what's it called...an agreement that meets halfway for two people..that thing..
Active APC spawns as soon as MechEnging is researched. So one team can gun it for armor and use rax's, or one can go APC spawns first.

 

pre, you raise some good valid points

- ie, spawning from the apc with the shouting person in it, hardly teamwork

- see above

- to learn defence try slaughtered, its agressive defence until you get hit with nukes

- N/A and too general for this application, the person who is driving isn't going to be new to the game.

- meh, i'm thinking about people who get past the "how i spawn" stage

- consider team composition there are oftenly not enough useful engineers normally, what with people thinking riflemen being more obviously useful in defending engineers, there being the usual 2+ scouts because they think empires is like cs, mw2 or whatever. Now we have to assign 2+ people to be grenadiers at the most important part of the game, the start, where so much depends on taking ground and building reffinarys eg. engineers

- that might work but its still only a 30 second research, it would give time for the other team to set up defences. but by increasing the cost of a radar, it would work.

 

I stoped reading here ...
Make serious suggestions, f.e. :
higher ml turret dmg against all armors and give resistance to plain to balance it out, or,
make apc spawns avaible after a radar is build or
revert it to reseach or
make it a expensive option of apcs, like apc spawn for 150 res or
make it reaseach but not in a reaseach path or
make it reseach with "upg.chasis"

insulting won't get you anything ...

 

Both teamwork and coordination effort are reduced with APC spawns, not having APC spawns requires both in its true form. APC spawns are a simple way to force this to happen more often because of the coincidince by timing. Usually this means that you aren't "thought"these things as they simply just happen, infact it makes players lazy as they don't need to have any real teamwork or coordination, simply by spawning in an APC you take care of these.

Defense, hardly a tactic that comes through APC spawns, APC spawns effectively overpower the rush strategy, which overshadows turtling and booming, where defense is an important part of your teams strategy. With APC spawns you are forced to defend because of its effectiveness, you aren't thought about defending, its a cause and reaction game. It's like teaching either theory or how it is applied, those that were thought how it's applied know how to achieve something, but they don't know the foundations it exists on. Therefor defending would simply be a necessary evil and not part of a real strategy.

Driving and different areas to spawn aren't arguments to APC spawns. Distribution and management of your resources, like players, is something that is effected by APC spawns, which is practically the only part of APC spawns that are prefered, however, turning it into a research doesn't remove this, if you would want to argue this as a negative side to APC spawns, you'd probly suggest removing it all together.

Enabling spawns by building a radar is by design very incosistent with the rest of the gameplay mechanics. Research perhaps makes sense as research in general allows you to advance in technology.


Most arguments I've seen so far on the fact that its better to have APC spawns from the start usually ignore a lot of the side effects and only focus on an improved distribution of your units, as in a quicker deployment of attacks (hence the name "Advanced infantry deployment"), which keeps the game fresh and allows for assumingly better games. This is true and I'd definitely agree that it's a pro that should've been in a game that is concerned with squad based strategy or simply a teamwork game. However, for a FPS/RTS hybrid, things like APC spawns allow Rushing to be the dominant strategy over turtling and booming. Which means the game is not a hybrid as the Strategy heavily favours only a single strategy. Anyone who disagrees with this, either does not play Empiresmod or has no clue what hes talking about.

 

Might as well just wait a month then, see how people adapt to the change. Eventually an easy counter to APCs will be formed, and the rushes will become a death sentence unless carried out very nicely.

 

I'm not talking about rushes, I'm talking about rushing as a strategy. Obviously the way to defeat any rush is to counter it, the fact that such a counter exists does not mean the RTS side of Empiresmod is balanced. If there wasn't even a counter to APC's, then we'd be even worse off.

The problem here isn't that APC's can't be stopped, or that people can adapt to the gameplay at hand, thats again a cause and reaction game.
The problem is that the other 2 main strategies of any given RTS are completely non existant, most, if not all the effective strategies are Rushing strategies, turtling is not just impossible, there is no way to get out of the spiral once you are forced into a defensive position (without rushing strategies). Booming is also completely non existant as the limitations in the core of Empires gameplay (max team capacity, max tank capacity etc) make good distribution and management of your players much more important than any other factor. This isn't a detail, this is crucial to success.
Next to these limitations you also have the balance that obliterates most of the variety in strategy, these are all done to enforce a better FPS experience, at the cost of RTS.

For instance, as SIP calculated, a single building can be taken down in 38 seconds by one engineer, now mix an APC full of units in that mixture. Another example of this is that it doesn't matter whether you have 10 barrackses or just 1, the right unit at the right place makes all the difference in the world, now add this to the mixture as well.

Countering is one part, and also another argument that is used a lot, not just for APC spawns, but this doesn't account for all the effects these changes could have on gameplay.

Yes you can counter ninjas, you can counter grenade spam, you can counter APC rushes. Without counters these things would be invincible, and thats a completely different category than should be discussed at this point.

I've read a lot of discussions on this forum and one of the thoughts on gameplay that stood out for me, which has been said in a dozen different ways, is that the RTS side is considered boring or badly done. This may be the reason why most people will always be pro FPS biased suggestions and against the "RTS"-ization of Empires. I don't think RTS side is necessarily boring, or can't be fixed, so I'd always try and steer away from these short term fixes.

 

2.24 had a lot of stop and start action, 2.25 doesn't and I believe that's due to both apc spawns being enabled and rax's being cheap again.

Apc's need to be a bit weaker (plain, I mean, not hull), or maybe just slower with standard engines in them.

Bases need some minimal defense in the future so you can still rush into the enemies base, but it's risky - i.e. 2xml turrets as standard.

Grens are a lot better now, which has helped a lot imo.

APC spawns should have some sort of limit on them, which has been discussed before and now again. APC spawning is pretty fast, and atm it's almost like a barracks is a static version of an apc, which is only a little bit harder to kill.

And we really need to bump tickets again.

 

Some people already suggested to have APC spawn as deployable weapon/tool.

Maybe add a 2 slot grenade launcher, which will allow the driver to shoot his passengers to the desired location? :eek:

And now the serious part:
This deployable weapon/tool should weight about 100. This will allow APCs with 2 plates of plain armor and no weapons.

 

Just give APCs a -15% resist to everything.

Bam-O! Done.

 

Map dependent features, like being able to wall off your base isn't really a strategy.

Canyon has low resources and 2 chokepoints, turtling itself isn't the specific strategy that is defined by slow advancement.

Slaughtered, slow advancement as well, not turtling.

Well yeh, we already established that its completely overshadowed by rushing. So it's obvious that it would only work if there are map dependent features that constrain its effectiveness. Does not make rushing less overpowering though.

If you made a map where BE's base is locked off and impenetrable and has 15 resource nodes, you could call that booming or turtling, or even a fair fight.

The whole strategy of that round is based on saving up money for nuke heavies? So you're saying you don't expand for map control at all, you do not attack the enemy at all throughout the whole round, and completely at the end you manage to save up money for a full squad of heavy tanks with nukes?

I doubt this ever happened, you're confusing resource management and brute force with booming.
Even if it happened, I'd question it as being anywhere near as effective as simply expanding, taking map control and attacking the enemy at all times, which makes it a non viable strategy and with the balance (includes the resourecs you receive) makes it non existant.

Nobody suggested anything should be done about it, I was only implying the importance of distribution of your players. Which makes APC spawns overly effective compared to real teamwork initiatives.

to what extent? I never defined what kind of RTS it should be, the abbreviation stands for real time strategy not some preconceived assumption you didn't care to explain.

 

I don't think it's as much as a game breaker as it is a game changer.

So far I've noticed that it's cut down a lot of those lame long walks to front lines in round starts. But I have also seen APC's that are really too hard to kill.

It's different than 1.7.. That's for sure

 

I noticed you put a question mark behind your first question; you can find the answer in my first post.

Saying my definitions might be too strict is like me saying your arguments are too loose. .

The game is labeled a rts/fps hybrid, the word hybrid suggest its a cross-breed of the 2 genres, while in truth the RTS side is very under represented, this isn't a real problem as by definition it wouldn't be completely wrong. The thing I do judge it on are the game mechanics that are badly done that are supposed to represent the RTS counter part, the mechanics and features are there, the balance, consistency and implementation is lacking.

I love RTS and especially FPS/RTS, so it would be obvious for me to pick the side of the discussion that favors RTS. Just like a debate there usually isn't a definite wrong or right.

Lastly, whether APC'd encourage teamwork or not wasn't the question I raised, as I have said in another thread as well, you don't need APC spawns for teamwork, but because apc spawns exist, the difference between real teamwork and APC spawn teamwork in similar situations is very small, most of the work is organizing such an attack, which APC spawns takes care of without much coordination required, most of the time it probably happens through mere coincidence (people die and respawn, it just happens to be in an APC full of other people that happen to do a very lethal push).

I wouldn't mind a more controlled kind of teamwork, but this should be done so with intent. And more features should be geared to emphasize this direction in gameplay, as it stands right now, most features are completely incosistent and are backed up by shallow discussions on the subjects, simply giving 2 arguments "it has had a positive effect on gameplay" and "its easy to counter it" is not an indepth and thorough discussion. I'd call it only touching the surface and simply hoping for the best.