Hello. I am *Dead*๖ۣۜRanger This is my first post ever on the Empires Mod Forum. I have actually just finished the registration, even though I've been playing for 2 or 3 years. I have been upgrading and improving Empires in my mind or doing small projects like designing new vehicles for the fun of it, but now I think it's time I start writing down my thoughts. I've never understood why tanks weigh so little. For balancing reasons? Then Why not make it with slots instead of messing with weight? Because it's simpler? Ok. I'm here to suggest to increase it to increase realism and avoid dirty tricks like pushing a CV into the water with a tiny jeep. A tank can carry as many weapons as you want, in real life, as long as you have space for them... In Empires I presume you don't want that for balancing reasons, even though it would be sexy to have a fully armored tank. Main idea is to increase all other weights too. For example, a cannon can doesn't weigh only 2 or 3 tons. It come along with dozens of shells... I hope you see what I mean. I also think, from my experience from Garry's Mod that it will affect speed. Not sure how. Increasing engine's weight used to make the engine more powerful and considering empires is in source, I wonder if that would make tanks faster or slower... o.0
That's a work in progress, but it's interesting to hear someone request that tanks should weigh more. The heavier the vehicle, the harder it is to make it stable if it's moving fast. Heavy tanks particular move really fucking quickly but should intuitively weigh a ton. You can make them weigh a ton, but then they slide around a ton. It would be easier if we could significantly slow heavies down. It's a similar situation with mediums and the CV, but to a lesser degree. Maybe we'll get there someday.
I was actually thinking they should weigh from 30 to 60 tons depending on their armor and weapons. I understand that it might cause new issues with the brakes and like... but can it be worse than a WW 2 Russian tank? I play War Thunder...
They weigh around 1500. We can step that up to around 9000. I wouldn't go much higher than 6000 in practicality. I don't know what the units of weight are, but that's just how it will have to be once we increase weight unless we have some breakthrough in the suspension department.
I don't think it's any realistic value at all. Seeing as gravity is also pretty arbitrary in Source. Concerning speed: That is how heavy tanks are supposed to be: slow. You can read up on tank warfare, if you like. Up to pretty much around the 60's there only used to be Light, Medium and Heavy tanks. They each had their role. But nowadays those tactics are deprecated and the tank types got replaced by a single "Main Battle Tank". I mean I get that the tanks in Empires are pretty much tiers that need to be researched, but we still shouldn't stray away too far from their intended role. TL,DR: I'm all for slowing heavies down and making them heavier.
In Garry's Mod the max value for weight is 50000. I don't know what it is though. I guess if we could weigh a player we could calculate how many source units a tank should weigh. Portal uses weight much. I also agree with slow tanks by the way, even though it's unrealistic.
Slow tanks are not unrealistic. Heavy tanks used to be damn slow. What drives around today are main battle tanks. Those are faster and more like the medium tanks that existed before.
Slow tanks are unrealistic in Empires. They should appear technologically superior to our modern tanks, at least for the Brenodi Empire.
Regarding the realism of the weight, Empires isn't about realism in it's design. It certainly tries to not be too out there in how it is, but rarely do we go, "How does this work in real life?" and try to implement it that way. The majority of us aren't interested in playing a game that favors realism over balance or gameplay. Regarding the actual values, the weight you see when you make a tank is only tangentially related to the actual physical weight of the tank. Trying to think of it in absolute terms is a bad idea because video games use a simplified physics model that doesn't work very well with extreme values.
1800. I tested setting it to 9000, they're drivable, when pushed (by a jeep) they just push the jeep back. However, if the weight override is too high, they'll sometimes start to float in the air for a few seconds when pushed. Tested with 9000. Tested with 6000, they don't seem to start floating and they push the jeeps off. (At least I think the behavior is different from the original weight).
If you are interested, I have a few script configs for the various tasks that would be a great start if you wanted to tweak them and increase the sexy quotient. It's pretty fun watching a jeep bounce off of a tank.
==Vehicle Speed== Played around a bit with vehicle speed, setting the max speed in the vehicle_engines.txt. Anything below 20 makes it feel like it goes in slow motion. So keeping it around 20 would create a slow weapons platform that needs mediums/lts/infantry to protect it, could work. At least it would spin the balance off a bit for a while.
Also of note is that handling is much much easier when the vehicle is moving slowly. I'd you want it to feel like a prototypical classic tank, then the slower the better.
If you want to argue it would be unrealistic for Empires, I can tell you that the lore puts the game pretty much exactly at our current point in time and technology level. So no, they wouldn't be more technically advanced than our modern day MBTs.
Is that before or after we talk about the genetically engineered Jekotians and the nanotechnologically aided Brenodi troops?
I am only talking about the tanks right now. At least that is wjat Anhry told me when I had to come up with new concconcepts for the tanks. He pretty much wanted the prototypes of today.
As someone who did a vehicle once for gmod with valve's vehicle scripts, it's a nightmare to get values that work, so I wouldn't vote for changing the actual one.
But .. But.. We just.. did that. Go to the scripts folder. Change shit. Play around with the values. Then say something.
Just had an idea. As far as I understand, the actual weight of a vehicle that's used by the physics engine is separate from the weight used to put in components. What do you guys think of the component weight altering the physics weight? TL,DR: The more stuff you put on your tank, the heavier it actually gets.
