Make it a penetrative weapon, instead. Let it deal a low regular damage but let that be distributed among the layers the enemy has, e.g. 20 to first plate, 10 to second, 5 to third. If there's no 3rd plate, that 5 goes to hull, if there's only 1 plate, 10 goes to hull, etc. It could also be counteracted by something like reactive, which would destroy the round on contact so it could only damage the first layer for (in the example) 20. It could be reduced by something like composite, because of the differing layers in that armor, so it would be something like 20, 7, 3, etc. Bio would have an effect against it (only) due to regenerating plates, reflective could reduce the original projectile's damage due to the angle incidence it has always used, but still take full from Secondary and Tertiary damage, and standard could take damage normally. If you did that it might take a little coding, but it'd be a unique and useful weapon. Only thing is you'd probably need to replace ranged and er...DUMG, and move those elsewhere, but that's a small price to pay for an actually working cannon. Alternatively, you could use it to simply do direct damage to the hull, with reactive having it affect the (first) plates only, composite fracturing the round in the 2nd and 3rd plates and hull, and reflective just doing a blanket damage reduction due to incidence. That seems like it would be more tricky though. And much more of a hard counter, which really buffs the tougher of the armours.
A lot of you aren't really getting my point. None of these weapon ideas you mention really require you to use the weapon differently. Ikalx's for example. I don't see how that forces me to use my cannon in any other way than I use standard, rails or extended range? I point at the enemy and I still go for the lowest value plate. The only cannon that really gets used differently is HE, and even that's minimal. Guided, Homing and Bio are all unique. They are used in "more" ways than the base weaponry. It's things like that we need more of, things that force you to actually PLAY in a different way, not some bullshit rock paper scissors statistics circle jerk. I mean, if it was something I could balance, Plasma is at least more unique in terms of usage than a lot of other weapons, as well as a lot of the other weapons that other people are suggesting.
I wasn't really answering you Trickster, more about getting another usable cannon with its own differences, than a different kind of weapon entirely. * Let's look at it (random discussion ideas ahoy!). With Cannon the weapon will always fire in one direction, and its properties are based on how it flies and what kind of explosion happens. You could, in theory, have a bio cannon if you wanted. That's the easiest of the the examples you had. Guiding and Homing are just completely out, since the purpose of the cannon is that it is a direct projectile (even if its main use is splash - arc excluded). Missiles on the other hand, can delve into both fields. Added to that, we have Artillery tanks which really reduce what you can do regarding Cannon Arc - its major attribute. In that case, what we're left with is how it explodes. Missiles can do the work of HE (i.e. HIT), Ranged (by default missiles fly straight) and Rails (salvos etc). In theory, we don't actually need cannons at all, because missiles fill all the niches we have so far in the game. Except, of course, it plays quite differently in certain situations. Those situations pertain mainly to arc and range, right? Cannons are useful for hitting over an obstacle because they actually come out of a directed turret. Missiles simply shoot out of the tank and fly in one direction by default. Guided beats cannon on that in the long run, but let's just forget that for the moment. One thing missiles don't do, so far, is hit multiple targets. There's no shrapnel shot in the game...though we do have splash. Which is rather infuriating. Basically you have two weapons which have overlap on almost every sector. If you shot missiles out of the cannon turret, there would be almost no reason for cannons at all. So...maybe you have to go back to what niche do cannons fill and what niche do missiles fill? Are missiles supposed to be direct damage hp-sucking weapons, or are they supposed to be penetrative weapons that spread damage? Are they supposed to be splash weapons or not? What are cannons supposed to be in contrast? You either have a direct weapon that deals pure (ish) damage at a good rate of fire, and a set of extra weapons that deal a range of effects. Or you have a splash weapon and a penetrative weapon that can punch through armour. You don't have both for both weapons. I can't help feeling that this has happened because of the way NF evolved to use missiles and BE evolved to use cannons. Because they became primary weapons for each team, they had to be balanced against each other, rather than together, like they should have. Those weapons should complement each other rather than being Nukes vs Rails, which is was in the past. I think the problem we're having is because that's what they came out of, instead of being used together. MG's on the other hand are perfectly complementary. I think also if you're looking at new weapons, you might have to look at why plasma works for you as a different weapon. It's basically a type of freeze/stun weapon. It makes enemy tanks shoot less often and you can keep firing. Though the mechanism is "over heating", the effect is the same. So what do you want to do to an enemy vehicle? You want to make it less effective, you want to slow it down, and you want to kill it quickly. It could be argued that plasma is among those that makes a tank less effective, but what else would do that? Could you fire a weapon that would cripple a tanks weapon damage? Its flight? Make it difficult to turn or manoeuvre? I think it's been said that crippling another tank and overheat is one of the more irritating mechanics in the game, and not really something that should be encouraged, so let's put aside movement penalties for now. Weapon penalties are something different again, but largely is it complicated and kinda fail? Or is it a good idea to make someone unable to use weapons/have a damage reduction? That seems like a difficult alley to pursue so let's stick to killing faster, or better. So we have Bio which is DoT and applied to missiles. We have splash which is multiple targets which is applied to both HE and HIT (though with HE it's not about multiple tanks, more about anti-infantry/building). We have...nothing else that I can think of. What else is there? A higher arc weapon for non-arty tanks? A phys-push weapon? A stun weapon (well, plasma we already have). A weapon that kills the driver? A weapon that disables other weapons? A weapon that changes the enemy into a biscuit? * The problem you really have when saying the weapon doesn't play any different, is there's not really that much scope for difference. Missiles share many attributes that cannons have already. Also, in most combat situations you try a number of different types of weapon to see which one works best. In a FPS you'll have a fast firing weapon, a slow firing but deadly one, an accurate weapon, an explosive splash weapon, a room clearer, a stun gun... That's all more or less covered in the game. In most other games, you have to try and see what works and what doesn't. You try fire against water, lightning against metal, stuff like that. What do you try in Empires? I really don't know what else there is. No apologies for a crappy long post!
Maybe I'm longing for the "quick laugh" that you speak of, but "more" sounds good. I feel like Empires shouldn't be a cold machine that measures a team's skill. It should be an outlet for fun. People have fun in a shitload of different ways. I remember when we'd get groups of players on Empires that insist on roleplaying. Some CoD kiddies just want to play rifleman and sniper scout. Some douchebags like to drive around in jeeps and drive me mad. Etc, etc, etc. So even if a heavy APC heavily overlaps an existing weapon system, it might still bring some different kind of fun that isn't present in the existing weapon system. And yes, I would almost completely give up mediums if I could drive a dual DU/BioMG vehicle that supports remote spawns. ove:
i know adv. cooling probly solves this...and really i should try the setup in game sometime except ppl whine when they dont know how to use a certain weapon...but i imagine that adv.coolant makes plasma useful but wonder how much it really could accomplish...perhaps as a defensive mechanism its great but on offense it would be nearly ineffective... and i hear u trickster, but i do like the skip-the-armor concept of it, if we could do that AND come up with a new gameplay shooting style then people would use it, the question is how many methods are there for a tank to shoot at an enemy? perhaps increase the spread massively and reduce the 'damage/heat' but make it go direct to hull. At least that would encourage people to use it for clusterfecks and cause radius damage. ?
Would that be achieved if Plasma put off a shload of heat? More than currently, that is. I kinda like the idea of combos. Pairing an accurate & strong yet hot weapon with a cool but immobile engine means you get a turret.
Ooooo, I kinda like that!!! Every time the weapon causes damage to an enemy, the driver takes a tiny percentage of that damage. So health regen and engy aura can help vehicle combat?! That's incredible.
My overall point was that there aren't enough script features for weapons in Empires. There's little more that I can do which is actually unique. If people want to actually think of ideas, I'm all ears. I'm just saying, you need to think "how will this weapon be USED differently to current weapon". That's not just from the perspective of the guy firing it, but the guy who is getting fired at as well. Generally speaking, pass-through damage as discussed above by a few people is pointless because it doesn't change the way you right. There's no unique aspect to that. Just like the vast majority of "multi-shell rounds" ideas that people have, it's really just a big splash weapon, and is used as such. Give me interesting ideas that change the FUNCTIONING USAGE of the weapon, and if I can work them in, I'll request them for the next patch. As an example, I have 3 new weapons lined up (posted this before): Bio GL - Won't work like current bio, but rather a gas cloud which you have to leave if you want it to stop hurting. EMP GL - A multi-explosion grenade. Functionally speaking, similar to Bio GL, so I'm hoping to try and find a way to differentiate it, possibly by making the grenade slide/roll a lot more so that the explosion area moves. Tesla Bolt - A lightning bolt type weapon, which is basically an MG which does lower damage but requires you to hold it on the target. It's essentially a limited range MG with low damage and a super high rate of fire. This probably forces you to get up close, or stay stationary at longer ranges. These are average at best, but it's all I had at the time. If you guys have interesting ideas for other weapon functions, please, by all means, post them up. Forget about the balance or even the name or whatever of it. It's entirely irrelevant. It's just the unique function that I care about. The rest I can deal with later.
Cluster bomb cannon? Split up into x smaller fragments on impact which fly away and do as much damage as standard cannon each? As Ikalx pointed out, a cannon is a cannon. You can only do so much with it.
Yup, it's tough. You could do an armor piercing cannon that ignores armor but has no splash. A cannon that fires three shots, one centered and two +/- ~20 degrees to the left & right. That's low-hanging fruit. I'm sure that's been thought up before. You're not going to get that. We're spent. You can mix and match the typical modifiers like homing, guided, salvo, HE, bio, etc. You can get more mileage there than you seem to think. You can play games with velocity (a slow, strong guided missile) and how the projectile gets to the target (a strong, fast missile that randomly fires at integer angles between +/- ~20 degrees left to right). And you could fill out the slots. We need a 3-slot grenade and there's plenty of room for 3-slot missiles. You're asking for "new," but I can't think of anything that wouldn't make the game feel childish. I feel like a broken record, but the only thing that's remotely cool to me is a fast dual MG tank. We already see MGs used in tank combat, but you can't solely use MGs on tanks because 2 slots just isn't enough to combat dual cannons/missiles.
Even your ideas Trickster are pretty much the same. Sure, one is a gas cloud and that's nifty, but at the end of the day it's functionally the same as a bio splash weapon. The other two are in the same boat, really. Even if you say it's Thor's thunder, it's still as you said a high rate of fire mg. Though what would be kinda interesting would be a weapon that deals lots of damage but supercools the enemy so they are free to fire their barrages. If you're telling us that the sky's the limit right now and we should suggest anything, then that's a different story. A rather tame suggestion from me would be a cannon that gathers kinetic energy depending on how far it's travelled. That sounds like it might work somewhat differently in battle. Sorta :eek: Edit: I mean, i'd love to throw corrosive glue at people, but really it's not like the tank models can melt. If we get a stuck vehicle that takes damage and some funky particle effects, it's really still a bio-heat weapon. That's my point. What does that fundamentally change except to make a vehicle kinda useless..?
Yeah, I don't think we do enough with cooling. That's our more intuitive way of disabling (erm, enabling) a vehicle and we don't do jack with it right now. But seriously though, we could have a supercooled tree right next to the superheated tree. I like that. Perhaps something in that tree could allow a tank to cool a friendly somehow? Let damage/speed vary based on time since fired? That's another avenue to get new weapons. Good thinking. If you put this in the game (and you should), you may want to rename BioMG and BioML to something like "acid" MG & ML. We want to be clear and consistent about the effects. The two effects are similar enough to be lumped into Biology, but they should not have the same name.
Holy fuck a cannon that actually benefits from range? Give this man a medal Make a cannon or a missile that shoots a predetermined distance and then instantly drops down and can deal a shitload of damage if you manage to hit the enemy with the falling projectile. Put it in physics and name it some vaguely psuedoscientific gravity related weapon.
[Was going to be an edit.] And Flame Bursts. A high damage 1 second burn weapon that fires out the front (or back) of the vehicle (speed boost optional) but only very very close. Could have a restricted 3 use per loadout or something like that. That's different, but is it dumb? That's the question. Most of us are very used to thinking what we could do *within* the boundaries of our coders and the game so far. We purposely train ourselves to think inside the box, because lots of things are outside what our dev team can implement - at least easily. But hey, maybe i'll just throw the wackiest things in there. Probably be quicker to look at everyone's first post, actually Edit: Really, a kinetic cannon isn't a daft idea? ^,-
Put this in along with an mg that generates shitloads of heat but doesn't use ammo that is in some other tree (the lightning/tesla mg?)
Definitely not. The whole concept of varying a parameter based on the time since firing is awesome. What about a missile that moves slowly, but significantly accelerates? Suicide nukes that do a laughably absurd amount of damage close up that decreases to almost nothing after ~2s of travel? An MG that randomly accelerates a portion of its slow bullets? That leads me into the other avenue that I've always liked: randomness. We have accuracy, but that's only used in MGs where the large number of projectiles makes the total amount of damage very predictable. Accuracy is used as a second damage parameter, which makes it redundant and silly. A skilled driver can go onto the field and consistently perform well. What if a noob launches a missile salvo of random size that just happens to contain a dozen missiles instead of its typical 2-6? Now the skilled player just lost his tank and he needs to learn how to mitigate his now inconsistent tank abilities. Is it possible to fire a weapon from the chassis? If it's only possible to fire from the turret, then this still has potential. It could be the opposite of the Tesla gun in that it has a lot of damage, but only fires for a short amount of time (with a presumably long reload & low ammo).
flamethrower -mg slot needs obvious particle use for decent implementation - anti inf and possibly extreme building rape at close range also flame cannon (find a name) - Building DoT -designed for burning buildings to the ground -limited duration per shell and DoT stops after 2-3 seconds so u cant just target every building with one shell each also reverse plasma affect for friendlies ( if addable) or make it a separate item of its own ex: shoot your friendly to cool him off so he can pummel the enemy. Other ideas i've seen heard that have potential are : -the self-accelerating shell over distance -random ML spread/missiles - bio nades - EMP GL (hope this disables building functionality for 20-30 seconds (ya it will take code and would need extremely low ammo clip and RoF
