Core principles on this rebalance. 1: Emphasize the differences between options, so it is clear how they are changing gameplay and what can go on. 2: Increase *player* choice (rather than commander), by increasing the incidental options that exist. 3: Keep things as close to the same current total power level as possible. Please tell me if you think I veer off from anything here. Weapons that are put earlier in the tree will often get a bit of a rebalance here. Format (time): Sub research 60: Physics: 60: Plasma MG (thought this would need changes but its *really* bad atm). 60: Plasma Cannon60: .50 Cal Machinegun** 60: ER Cannon 60: DUHMG 90: Reflective Armor60: Fission As standard 60: Chemistry 30: Improved Flagration 60:Explosive Tipped Bullets60: Improved Heat Transfer 90: Advanced Coolant Engine90: Upgraded Grenades 60: HE Cannon30: Improved Explosives 90: Upgraded Missile Warhead90: Absorbent Armor** 60: Electrical Engineering 80: 3-Phase Engine 60: Railguns120: Reactive Armor 60: Guided Missiles** 60: Homing Missiles 60: Mechanical Upgraded Chassis (as Current) 90: Gas Turbine 90: Composite Armor 60: Bio 150: Regenerative Armor 60: Bio-diesel Engine 60: Bio MG** 90: Bio ML * Slight Changes ** Moderate Changes Weapon Changes: Plasma MG: Cost 50>40 (this is really bad, I cannot make it worse and pretend it will be usable). Bio MG: Cost: 60>40 Weight 50>70 .50 Cal MMG: Cost: 60>40 Weight 50>70 .50 Cal HMG: Cost: 75>60 Weight: 65>75 Guided Missiles: Cost 75>50 Weight: 70>90 Armor Changes: Absorbent: Cost 12>4 Armor Notes: There is totally space for a super-lightweight armor right now. Maintaining HP/$ and having considerably better HP/Weight than standard. Engine Changes 3-Phase: Max Heat Output 3>4 Fission: Max Reverse Speed: -25% Gas Turbine: Reverse speed same as max speed. -10% max speed. This is something of a first draft, but you can probably see the goals I am going for here pretty clearly.
These are bad changes... I'm sorry but they just are... I'm sure you can understand why if you think about it. and about your "research tweaks", Lazybum said it all:
Let me get this straight here. Giving players options is a bad idea because they can use those options poorly and make bad decisions with them. That seems to be your core premise here, but if this is true, then the game has a tremendous number of problems with its design. For one, why isn't the commander deciding what people can build, what classes they can be? Why isn't he setting what a 'tank' is, and everyone else has to use that? A major element of the game at the very least pretends to be the choices players can make with building vehicles. No form of counter structure can possibly work, no form of valid build variety, if you act like players need to have safety helmets. Now, if you are serious about the need to restrict choice, then people should be making serious proposals on how to do that better in the game. Seriously, give me a real answer as to why you think these are bad ' I am sure you can figure it out' is pretty trash.
Most players will make bad choices, and commander SHOULD have control over which tanks are built and with what. Doesn't mean that players can't chose, you can still have different sorts of tanks on the battlefield, but it's the balance that's important. For example, if you ever research arty you will only want a small percentage of tanks to be artillery, if you leave that to the players, they will fuck it up, mostly because they're stupid, but also because they don't have a way to know how many artillery tanks are present already. Commander MUST be able to control that. Classes are the same problem, there needs to be a balance. TL;DR: There needs to be a balance between all the different elements of your army, players have a choice as to what elements they want to be as long as the balance is kept. Plasma MG is useless right now, increasing its cost is pointless, out of all the many changes there are to do on the balance of weapon, why do that? Bio MG is already worse than DU and HEMG and you want to increase its weight? why? is there any logic behind this? So 70 weight on your tank for an anti-infantry only weapon that doesn't shoot behind walls, why would I want to use this instead of HE cannon? Beside the weight was just reduced and you want to bring it back? really? again weight was just reduced in connection with APC weight reduction, why increase it? why lose an additional plate of armor? so, is that because guided missile is too strong? Let's reduce the only weapon which doesn't make tank fights last forever, what next? nerf ER cannon? HEMG?
You seem to be looking at this on a pretty superficial level. This isn't a set of balance recommendations. This is a change to the tech tree to make more parts grouped together and reduce dead-space. Under the interests of maintaining overall power level and at increasing build variety, those weapons that were made easier to acquire were made worse, but cheaper. In order to increase possible variety, its recommended that one piece of armor becomes genuinely light weight here. These changes were based off of the assumption that all weapons were balanced. Obviously not the case, but it shows the overall goals here. To bring weapons that are incidental into a class of lower-grade cheaper weapon, with the tradeoff of being heavy. I was going to do the same to Plasma MG, but its like someone already did it, several times, to the poor thing. If there is any single thing that shows you mindset going into this, its that you thought I also nerfed Plasma MG. I get you have some conservative tendencies, but you aren't even seriously looking at the idea, so why are you pretending to?
I'm sorry did you just assume you know how I think? You've never seen me and from a single post you're concluding that I have conservative tendencies? You wanted me to explain why I think the changes are bad, I did. And instead of giving me justifications as to why they're needed you just insult me? If I understand anything about what you just said, and I really don't because none of it makes sense, you want to make weapons worse and force people to research them if they want better weapons? how stupid is that? Do you even realise that researches used to cost money and the research tree is still based on researches costing money (example: sub-research that give you nothing but were made so you don't have to spend all the money at once).? Have you ever considered what I just said about Commander being the balance in the team? The only reason the build variety is at it is, is because this is not a Rock/Paper/Scissors games, there are no counters (anymore). And without counters (even minimal) there will always be one on top. Forcing people to use crappier weapons (because that's what you're doing, which is even worse) before they get better once will not solve variety issues, it'll just make everyone hate you. I am now done with this thread.
"If I am not removing it, I should make it useful." That's my policy, you shouldn't worry about that. Now, I am not being a jerk here, but if you think dropping a weapon's cost by 10 is going to help it in any way, you probably aren't ready to suggest script changes. Still, feel free to let us know if something obviously broken. Below is my script changes for next patch, please give it a read. https://forums.empiresmod.com/index.php?threads/script-changes-for-next-patch.20105/
You seriously need to tone down how much politics you watch if your first and only reaction to someone claiming you have 'conservative tendencies' is that it is some sort of insult or claiming some sort of deeper unrelated insight. That said, good to know research doesn't cost money anymore. I was assuming it did. I don't get why there are even still those pre-techs then.
You misunderstand, the insult is to assume you know anything about me after reading a single post, implying that I am a shallow person. If you had bothered to find out you'd know I'd change everything in Empires if I could. And you're doing it again, so one last time, please stop making assumptions without any base. I never watch politics, and stay as far away from them as I can. My point exactly, either re-implement research cost (what I would do) or remove sub-researches, ultimately it just cost the commander's time for nothing, not to mention that it's confusing for noobs. I can't say that I agree with how technological advancement is made in Empires, it's lacking a lot of things, but forcing commanders to research things they do not want isn't the way to go.
