Remove heavy tanks, and add more medium variants.

Seriously why does empires need a heavy chassis?

Either remove mediums and scale heavies down, or remove heavies and scale mediums up.

As it stands, heavy tanks need to be extremely powerful to justify the resource cost, and when they are that powerful they always outclass mediums, and make light tanks totally obsolete. If you reduce the resource cost, you can reduce the power, but then it becomes 'why is it a heavy if it's only slightly better than the medium? Why do we need it?' If you had only two main battle tank chassis you could fix that. Make one light and fast and cheap, and one heavy and slow and more expensive, but not as heavy slow and expensive as a heavy.

I mean thinking about it, if you removed heavies, teamwork becomes more neccesary, you can't drive a heavy into a base and blast a comm any more, and you can't go all uberheavy on people, battles become more spectacular because they have more vehicles on the field, and everybody can afford one because they're cheaper.

Now I'm not against having more chassis, but I think they should be variants rather than universal upgrades, like for example you can get a medium with more gun slots at the expense of armor, or more armor at the expense of speed, or more speed at the expense of armor etc. You can also do the same for lights if you want, the variant system might be a more like RPG attributes than specific chassis, like you put more points into guns, armor, or speed when you build your tank to create the balance you want, you might eve be able to do it with the weight system. You could also add more weapons to the other tanks, like give the light a two slot cannon, and the med a three slot, and add more guns for each, so you can blur the line between light and medium.

You might also include a different vehicle type altogether, such as a big beefy armored vehicle which the commander has to buy with most of the firepower being controlled by other players, like a leviathan without the big ion cannon. It could work like a superheavy except it requires lots of players to control it and so doesn't give any one player a lot of power, and scales better because the enemy team would have more meds to fight it with.

Of course people who like driving superheavies and dominating everything will whine, but while they enjoy it, the people they kill do not. People who drive mediums and heavies which are on an even par with the enemy team shouldn't object as much because it will make all games more like that. People who like being able to pick their playstyle should be happier, because the variants would support that, people who are speed demons would be better with a fast tank, people who are not as good at control will be better with an armored up tank, and people who like to stay back and do damage will be better with a gunned up tank.

Basically I just reckon that removing the heavy will make it more about team skill than 'person driving the heavy' skill, it will make the game easier to balance and scale, it means more people can play in vehicles (which is more fun) it makes infantry better in the late game, and it does not preclude the addition of new vehicle types as neccesary.

 

I have to agree with this. In the vein of heavies being able to blast too much shit, its too easy for a single heavy to rail snipe (BE) or missile snipe (NF) a base. I have seen many matches won due to rambo heavy tactics where a single player rushes and takes out the barracks and/or VF, crippiling the enemy team enough that its an easy mop-up win.

 

This is an interesting idea. In another thread, someone suggested moving arty to tier 2. What if we eliminate tier 3 completely?

I can think of a few issues. First, there's some weapons that only fit on heavies. Unless you're suggesting removing all that from the game, we'd have to revise things so there would be someplace to put them.

Second, I assume we don't want the heavy model to got to waste. So we'd be wanting to turn it into a variant tank.

Third, this could decrease the value of res and research, somewhat, because there's no longer an overwhelming win button at the end of the research tree. That might be a good thing, but it'll have long-ranging impact.

Death-APCs would become somewhat more effective in the late game -- they'd still lose to fully-outfitted mediums overall, but they'd be able to fight back (as opposed to getting slaughtered when heavies arrive like they do now.)

...so the big question is, what do we do with the heavy model? What variant tank do we create? Perhaps a tank with 3-4 armor plate and low speed, but that could render the medium obsolete if done badly. It could be difficult to balance them... and really, if we're going to have two variant tier 2 tanks, each should have their own strategy (just like Death APCs at the moment are viable and interesting because they represent an alternative strategy to normal tanks.)

What alternate strategy would the variant mediums represent? Right now, the only real strategy in choosing your offensive vehicle (death-APC, medium, heavy) is "wait longer vs. more power." Can we even come up with a different choice that is still balanced and avoids everyone taking the same thing?

Getting better weapons is a major advantage. Assuming you're not suggesting we remove rails/nukes completely, whichever tank gets the 3-slot options should be weaker than the alternative in almost every other way. Say, one tank like the medium is now, then another that is slower, with worse heat management and less weight capacity (so you have to give up armor if you want the really big guns.)

Basically, 'gun' and 'armor' tanks as opposed to heavies vs. mediums. The armor tanks would get up close with the enemy, and would be good for rushing or taking out enemy arty. The gun tanks would be good for wearing the enemy down from a distance, since they'd have better weapons.

Also, having one tank worse at handling heat would be good because it would avoid those annoying stalemates that come up when people use heat-generating weapons -- with that difference, whoever was using the tanks that handle heat better would easily win if it came down to a heat-fight (assuming they're both balanced properly.)

If they are optimally balanced, then it should be viable for a commander to (eventually) research both, because you benefit from having them support each other (armor tanks engaging the enemy and distracting them while gun tanks attack from slightly longer range.)

Perhaps there could even be some effort to set up a 'rock-paper-scissors' relationship where armor tanks beat arty, arty beats gun tanks, and gun tanks beat armor... I wouldn't want to put too much emphasis on this, though, because arty is a bit map-specific and games shouldn't be decided by a rock-paper-scissors of who researches what. But it'd be one way to ensure that researching all three is desirable in the long term, instead of just going for the 'best', and it would encourage an evolving gameplay instead of everyone just settling on one.

Their research speed should probably not be the same (to add more differences); but it shouldn't be as big as the one for heavies vs. mediums, of course.

 

as i heard

heavies are going to be multi-players controlled vehicles eventually

thats why they have the extra turrets on the side for the factionists and the tank command hole that is unused for the empire

but currently the code does not support it

my personal preference would go to generally cheaper/weaker tanks (all tanks evenly) once planes come into play, and then have the airplanes be the heavies of todays game, but anti air is there nemesis

 

I'd prefer that rails and nukes get cut, and then you get nfescort syndrome.

Look at nfescort, only noobs get heavies, because Meds are equal, if not better. Same in normal escort, you don't need rails or nukes, so mediums become more viable.

I say, cut rails and nukes, the stupidly imbalanced bugged superweapons that nobody likes fired at them. And leave it as it is, you'll get a lot more plasma tech, long range cannon fights, and medium vs heavy fights where the mediums actually stand a chance.

 

I agree with empty. Cut rails and nukes and maybe decrease the acceleration speed of the heavy. It moves a bit too fast for a heavy tank IMO.

 

3 Phase Heavies :D

 

Why not make it so that meds have a single 3-slot cannon, and heavies have dual 2-slot cannons. This way they are both useful late game.

 

I suggested something like this before and it got shot down.

Keep the heavy tank. Remove rails and nukes. Then do what Jephir said.

 

I still have a problem with heavies being too powerful.

As it stands a heavy is a force on its own, but why should one player have that much power in a team game?

Look at NS, the most power you can have there in one player is a HMG and a jetpack, and that might let you kill a fade if the enemy player isn't very good, but to actually attack you need to have lots of players.

If you have heavies you need to reduce their power so that they still require lots of players using them to actually work, rather than the four or five we have now.

More players needed for victory means fewer problems with team and skill stacking, fewer quick games, and less frustration at your team because it has fewer skilled players than the enemy and therefore you will lose.

I don't see how you can reduce the power of the heavy enough to make it still worthwhile having three tank chassis, if you reduce it enough then you're going to make either medium or heavies pointless or lights worse than infantry.

That's the main thing I'm getting at here, the heavy tank puts too much power in the hands of one player, even giving it dual 2 slots won't stop that, especially if you remove rails and give the meds only one three slot. Even if you didn't remove rails, a pair of 2 slots is still always better than one three slot, and the tank still has more armor than a medium, so it's still too powerful.

You could buff infantry which would make heavies less dominating, but then you have to buff lights to make them useful, and then you have to buff mediums to make them more useful than lights, and suddenly you have three chassis which are more or less the same and you had to rebalance the whole game to make it work.

If you dump the heavy you can fix that much easier, it's easier to chop off one end of the power scale than to shove everything else into a different place.

 

but then I wouldn't have my shotty tank

(5x ml's ftw).

5x40 = 200 damage that and it has practically no delay in firing, you have around 20 shots in a row, making 1000 damage easy to reach. serious muscle on maps with good choke points like slaughtered.

 

Make it so that the tank turret moves with the chassis, so you can only pitch up and down.
This forces heavy tank drivers to decide between taking a real beating on their front armour and being able to defend themselves, or running away with their rear getting shot up.

 

TBH at the current state I could see removing them then readding them once new models can be done. Its near impossible to balance them with the NF heavy being the size of a BE rax.

 

I'm fairly sure I suggested that at least twice before but nobody seemed to pay any attention.

 

It would fail too much tanks would just ram them and no one would get heavies. You could slow the turret speed or something but completly freezing it would fail

 

Meh. You could add something like this but it would be mostly frustrating to deal with.
Removing the heavy's... well they need something done. They are too much power.

 

Maybe have first seat controls movement, and second seat controls turret, so you either have to take 2 people to use a heavy effectively (which adds the element that heavy fights will be determined by what team is better at controlling their tanks) or a single player can use them but has to change seats to drive or fire, so a one-manned heavy can either move or fire but not both at the sama time, so they can be outmaeneuvered by lighter tanks.

If you had heavies there would either be a lot of them that are ineffective at rushing, or a smaller amount of them that are double manned so take up more team resources, and are only effective if the two man team can control it effectively.

 

What BumGravy is saying sounds like a good idea to me. Its done in Red Orchestra to good effect, and if done properly (i.e. it fits the gameplay, it works, it proves to be effective at balancing, it works in practise and not just on paper) then I see this as a good idea. One big downside I see to BumGravy's suggestion is that the amount of communication between the driver and the gunner would likely result in A LOT of voice chat, so we would probably need a voicechat button that communicates only to those in your vehicle.

 

Tank wars in Empires is fast pace.
I don't think you could use that method effectively but for people who have practiced with each other.
Think of how hard it is to hit a light tank with the BE heavy. Now if the heavy moved on it's own, think of how much harder it would be to hit the tank.

 

Thats kind of the idea, to make one man takes have the movement advantage and have a better chance of taking down heavies. Hopefully then you would see a greater variety of tanks fielded instead of the "everyone get a heavy!!!" we have at the moment.