Research Myths: I Can't Believe I'm Writing This

I agree - it's not fun since you spend all your time building - Money is the worst for com's. Just sit there staring at the fucking calculator for an hour. There's rarely a need for targets, and only a few buildings outside base.

I many times sit in spec until the game starts before joining, making someone else take COM. I also join Brentor, Whammo, Spartacus's teams since they would take com.

I hate commanding nubs, since they rarely follow orders. Although I will focus all my energy on the nub that does listen - usually costing the rest of the team targets and staying ahead of their needs.

 

Sometimes, it's not even that. Sometimes your team simply can't do anything. Like they get in tanks, but they can't drive them to save their lives.



I commed a canyon match yesterday and I botched the research hard, but I'm not sure that it would've matter since we were crippled in the SW of the map before we had enough money to pump out good mediums. We simply couldn't expand. They defended brilliantly with a ridiculous amount of patience. I was raging hard.

 

It's rarely any individual's fault. BE maintained a ridiculously good defense. Most people drive tanks into enemy main instead of just loitering outside of it and waiting for people to try to leave. And almost all of them did that instead of just one or two players. We would've need equally impressive coordination on the offensive end. I was telling people to build tanks, but I wasn't providing the classic JGF speech of how to keep them. We should've pooled vehicles near the back of main and attempted a coordinated attack.

 

I think it only fair to tell nubs they have not earned the right to be in a tank yet. Learn by going along with a vet. It's saved us more times in mismatched games then not. They drive right upto the front line - waste the tank then come back for another. Locking the VF hurts the team. You don't know how many times I forgot it was locked during critical times. I really wish there was a way to let com set a score level needed before a player earned a heavy, only to be overridden by the com - for new join vets.

 

Flasche - my point is they should not use more resources than the vets. I didn't mean to convey they should not be allowed in tanks. Although on rare occasions I have asked that they not use the resource that enable only 2 tanks on the field. I think everyone is allowed one tank to burn, then vets more, and nubs learn to contribute. I watch them from overhead com view, drive to the front line - fire a few times, get overwhelmed by grens - even jump out long before the tank blows up, and come back for another tank only to do the same thing again.

We've been getting friends of players joining recently who I think are excellent contributors, obviously because they have been talked to about how to contribute and how to learn.

Also I have trained many people on how to learn to fly R/C airplanes. It's not that different a learning process. You don't get to take off/land your own plane. Those guys that want to are welcome to - because they paid for it, and they are quickly out of the hobby. In Empires the team pays for it, so I have no problem explaining how they can contribute to the team win and feel good about it. Once you learn you become ahead of the game, you know what to expect and where to expect it. In R/C you initially are afraid of every little bump, you can't handle the controls, you make dumb decisions and eventually learn the physics of flight. Same for Empires - you stop thinking about keys, just what you want to do. When someone asks me how to crouch, I honestly can't recall what key it is. It's muscle memory. I have to press it and look.

Most vet squads have a respect for their other squad mates. I know players are better grens and I should be engie, so I mop their brow, feed them ammo, heal, revive and help them push. In other situations I go gren and hope one of the nubs is learning to do the same for me. You do have to earn your bars in this game and to think a nub is always racing to take a heavy from a vet only to have it last less than one minute in a game ruins the game for everyone on that team.

I would have no problem with this game showing a message:
"You've played this game for xx days - you need to earn the rank of corporal before you can push a medium tank, and sergeant before you are allowed a Heavy tank. There are X players with higher skill playing who are not in a tank, until they've use their earned resources to buy a tank you'll need to settle for a light tank, apc or jeep."

Regarding: "you could have defended a base singlehandledly on foot as well".
So the guys who are killing machines should pay for the nubs tanks, when the nubs could just as easily get out there as a gren and learn to be effective themselves?

 

I do think changes made set the first tank you build to a fairly decent default selection. I THINK that once someone builds a tank - that becomes the default, rather than plain armor. At least whenever I try to setup a default - it usually already looks good.

As for blaming nubs - only the dumb ones ruin the game, and we have alot of dumb ones that join and play for a week. We will always have the nub that is unwilling to invest the time and thinks of it as join - run out and do dumb things, then leave. And them leaving is no fault of anyone but them having the attention span of a bumble bee. This game requires a certain gaming IQ or gameplay to get good. The ones that make it to Vet status all are capable of listening and reacting to com or squad leader. The dumb ones shouldn't ruin everyone elses game.

That said - if you want to keep players and allow 5 year old nubs to get enough experience that they eventually make it to vet status there is something that could be done: (Time to derail this thread even further)

>Setup nub only servers. Vets are only allowed to join in Spec to help, but not play.
For that to happen you need ranking of players. Vets can still exploit this. The Commander Practice server is many times joined by vets since they want to play. Once it reach's 10 the nubs follow the vets to one of the other servers to their own chagrin.

>Setup a bot training server. Ideas on this have already been previously posted.

>Provide a decent training program - video, txt, web site. And kudos to those guys already working on this.

>Mentoring. I know when I joined it was difficult to get any serious help. Kudos to AZK who did help quite a bit though.

I asked a few questions of Candles the other night about the differences of the various engines, then asked "Where is this documented". Answer: "It's not - you have to play and learn it".

 

I don't like the idea of anyone not being able to have access to a tank. Straight up, I think it's elitist and it makes me want to rebuke people pretty strongly about it.

I do think, however, that the connection between resources and tanks isn't strongly represented in the gui. The focus on building a tank is on weight, so much so that I only look at the res cost if I can't build a vehicle (since I usually take 1/3 from the team and 2/3 out of my wages). I think there should be a few tooltips denoting chassis descriptions like "LT = fast, cheap, skirmisher" "MT = mobile, crucial tank, medium expense" "HT = slow, strong, very expensive", as well as actually moving the cost count to be more central on the GUI. Perhaps with a cost colour gradient with like 300 in green, 500 in yellow, and 700 in orange.

If it was doable I'd suggest balancing by cost instead of weight would remove this problem, but there's strategic value in the costs, slim though it is.

 

OK some things we as players can do:

1) Make a video(s) - "How to setup a tank"
2) Learn to mod a simple plain map to create some training maps. I think that simply using turrets you can make a map that has various objectives and teach's nubs to a) throw grenades, b) build walls, c) heal themselves with an armory, d) build a tank and destroy turrets, e) destroy an upgraded turret as either an engineer or gren.

I have tried to offer training to large groups of nubs that were online messing up a vet game. I offered to bring them to Commander Practice server and give them the initial information that will keep them from dieing so quickly and enable them to progress, but not a single one thinks they are a nub. One guy says "I know how to play, I've been playing for a month".

I don't know where to start with #2 above. Any advice?