Idea: Engineer ability: Salvage gives the ability to salvage dead vehicles and buildings to add a little to resources. This might help speed up the game slightly, Ive gotten several comments from people that they find the most boring part of the game is waiting for resources. --------- Idea: Mini VFs A much smaller, cheaper and efficient building for a quick forward vehicle factory to launch quick attacks such as apc rushes, jeep rushes and possibly light tank rushes. This would only support jeeps, apcs and possibly light tanks. This building would also have to be researched first to prevent a quick game. ---- Idea: Charge stations The other classes can refill their ammo at the armory, but why can't engineers recharge their repair kits too? I think it would be worth the resources to build more than one armory per base if this were implemented. ---- Idea: Turret upgrades: If the commander has researched lvl2 turrets, any engineer can place level 2 turrets whether they have the upgrade skill or not. The same goes for lvl3 turrets. --- Idea : Improved refineries Research improved refineries to be more efficient in collecting resources. This would be upgraded like an engineer turret upgrade skill, they would have to be rebuilt, but without having to recycle the old one first. The improved refineries would also cost 50 more resources than the original. so it would cost 50 res to upgrade. --- Idea: Improved structural materials A researchable item that improves the health of all your buildings by 50+ health points --- Idea: placeable ramps or gates the commander can place a ramp or gate that makes it harder for the enemy to get in and easier for the friendlies to get out. --- This is just a few ideas ive been thinking about to improve Empires. feel free to add your own ideas or give some constructive criticism
charge station: very very interesting. I can picture this being kinda overpowered... getting one of these up allows one engineer, wherever he is (perhaps constructing a base in your base) to build everything very quickly and easily. Refinarys and Structural materials: I think these will only really benefit the winning team. Anything like this is something the winning team is going to be able to research while the losing team is struggling to get vehicle research to stay in the game. Turret upgrade: I agree. Either this, or if 3rd level turrets are researched, upgrading your turret from level 1 should take it straight to lev 3 because having to build level 1 and then level 2 and then level 3 when you could just get one instantly at lev 3 from your commander is really annoying.
Maybe I just wanted the opinions of the devs and the testers and not just the average player. It all depends on how fast the charge station refills the battery pack for the repair kit.
Charge stations This would only realy be use full for when you have just changed to engi or when you are getting a new skill as engi. What about making the armorie have an aura that speeds up the recharge rate of the calc? Global turret upgrades I think this could be very over powered because engi turrets don't count towards the turret limit so teams could jsut all go engi and have like 30 lvl 3s (depending on the size of the team) Placeable ramps / gates I heard one of the devs say that moving gates would be too cpu heavy to implement but i like the ramp idea.
Well charge stations would just be like upright ammo boxes in the armory, they wouldn't be a building on their own, that would be stupid. no one has seemed to comment on my mini vf idea, i think it would be great to have a smaller, easier to access and placeable vf that would be limited to certain chassis types.
I seconded the salvage suggestion. The way I see it working is whenever a tank or building is destroyed either team can salvage it and get about 1/4 the resources. Also whenever a object is salvaged it disappears immediatly. So say an engineer destroys an enemy ref. Right now you have to stand and wait for the destroyed building to disappear before you could build a new ref. With the salvage you can make it go away immediately and get some res from it. Another scenario I see this being useful for is teams that are low on res and being surrounded by enemy tanks. As it is right now that's basicly an end game situation. Either the low res team slowly dies or manages to ninja the other team comm. With salvage in, every tank the losing team destroys and manages to salvage, gives them a boost that might turn the game around.
I like the idea of the charge station, perhaps incorporate it into the exterior of the barracks? I think the armory would be too open to abuse, because you can place those anywhere, but the barracks is the hub of a base, so if you get one up you should be able to build other things in the radius of the barracks more quickly, it should charge slower if the barracks is under attack, so it would be good for bases but you couldn't simply use it to make the barracks invincible, having it on the outside would also help with that. Episode 2 supports moving collision meshes with model animations, so you could make open/close gates using that system if you wanted.
I Support Salvage,i can see salvage makeing a good appeal to the dev's. Maybe for the Charge stations. but how about this, the charge stations would be solar powered and have a battery and, once in range it moves all of that from its battery to your's makeing it almost instant recharge, or if your next to it while it collects extra power that just goes to you, it would work out like this , if you do not have a repair upgrade , it would be the same as that ,if your battery was empty as for the regen rate, and a bit faster then normal if you did have the upgrade. I Also support the turret upgrade idea for engineer with the connection from commander research,because they can be destoryed without hassel by artillery or mortar.
We could always take a page from the Protoss and have microwave energy transmission towers. (Which are actual, current technology) + Microwave Towers: Pros: Allows engineer within tower's effect radius to build/repair while using tool energy at reduced rate. Would make building base much faster. Researching 'Electrical' & 'Fission Reactor' increases range and energy transmitted, respectively. For future vehicles/turrets that use energy-based weapons, reduces recharge time. Cons: Limited, though still substantial, radius. Energy transmission drops relative to distance from tower, building near edge wouldn't reduce energy needed to build much. Because of height and low HP, easy target. Alternatives: Uses resource points to cover other percentage of energy needed to build/repair.
hmm, microwave towers sound like the devs would like that better than just basically an ammo box that recharges the repair kit. I support the microwave tower. I really hope the devs see the salvage idea because i really think it could improve the game.
I think it would really have been better to make a seperate thread for each of these... Having so many generally unrelated ideas bunched together makes discussions harder. Still, some of these are good... I don't know about this one. On one hand, it would give teams that are behind (or at zero resources) a way to catch up... on the other hand, it could be unbalancing. I'd say only a few resources should be gained, at most. Possibly. But it would definitely have to be researched first to prevent the game from becoming too much ZOMG ZERG RUSH, and by the time you've researched it I suspect most commanders won't want it (it would encourage people to waste the tank limit on weaker things when bigger tanks are needed.) A very good idea, but I'm not sure the armory should do it... it could be a seperate structure, just a small pylon or socket or whatever engies walk up to and use their tool on. It'd take much of the pain out of establishing a base. On the other hand... one of the major reasons tools have limited energy is to make it so you can't just put a bunch of engineers in a building/base to make it invincible against weaker attacks via endless repairs (this way, they run out eventually.) This is the major reason why the armory shouldn't provide it -- it would make the armory invulnerable against anything but really nasty tanks while there's an engineer inside. It's also a major reason why recharge stations shouldn't be buildings, but small switchbox-things or whatever instead; engineers definitely should not be able to hide inside them. I would suggest, for this reason, several improvements: First, charge stations should require some distance between them and another building. Second, they should not provide charge while damaged, even if it's only 1% damage (using your tool on them would repair them instead, costing you charge as usual. This makes logical sense for the interface.) Without that, they'd be very tough to destroy. Third, they should themselves contain a set reservoir of energy that slowly regenerates over time (but not while they're even slightly damaged.) This would keep them from making bases too indestructable, and would also give an advantage to having more than one, which is nice. In fact, any damage at all should shut them down for several seconds even after they're been repaired; this is important to prevent networks of them + engineers who revive each other from being too tough. Also, sabotaging one instantly empties its reserve, even aside from all the other usual things damage does, so even after it's repaired it takes a while before it can be used. They should offer some defensive bonus if used right by engineers, but not a major one, and it should involve an investment by both the comm (as a seperate building) and by engineers (who have to spend time using / repairing it and don't instantly get their charge back); I think these additions would ensure that that's the case. I actually dislike the 'microwave energy station' thing for that same reason -- it's too "easy". It doesn't involve any more work or effort on the part of the engineers, so you'll just get every single base having energy stations in it. I don't think we need more no-brainer buildings... I think energy stations should be a possible defensive strategy, but only if you place them right and have engineers who work to use them. Also, walking to the energy station is at least marginally more interesting than standing around / trying to build with a dead engineer tool. The microwave station wouldn't fix that, overall; it'd just make it take a bit longer for your tool to die. I suggested something like this in the infantry upgrade thread. Possibly, though, it should require its own seperate research in addition to level 2 turrets... although it's hard to say. I don't know about this one. What's the point? What does it add to the game? Not such a bad idea, but again, what's the point from a gameplay perspective? This would be nice for big walled areas, but a ramp could let tanks get to places that they're not supposed to go... I think gates are a perennial suggestion, along with heavier walls that defenders can climb up and walk on.[/QUOTE]
I agree, but how bout u get like 5 res for every 1 charge from the calc used to "slice" an enemy vehicle or wall, so that its not just time spent cutting down enemy walls, so the enemy wont just spam lots of walls to block an area and be strategic, gates would be good so enemy tanks cant just run right in, and auto upgrades, maby not immediate, but an engi could upgrade them by walking up to it and using the calc to build it to level 2, but it would get confusing for the engi to know which is his and recycle it to build it elsewhere.
