i wouldnt buy one even if my comm tries to force me. unless its heavily protected from other, real tanks, its gonna be cheap 2 points. you cant turn your turret, ded. good luck trying to hit a vehicle zipping around the map, wallriding and whatnot. yeah there have been tank destroyers, but do you know how tank combat worked in WW2 times? those tanks didnt drive full speed and fire, they didnt have a reactive mechnism to keep their barrels level as modern armor has (we dont have that in empires either btw). they needed to stand still to hit shit. what does standing still mean in empires terms? ded. id rather play scunt and try to kill them by throwing my body at them in the hope to block the air intake, that has better chances even if its not implemented.
You're focusing a bit too much on open wide maps. Does artillery work on duststorm? Naaaaaaay. Does artillery work on emp_slaugthered? yäääääy. Same with tank destroyers, you use them in maps with chokepoints and where your teammates can protect your ass.
Scouts could sneak up and sabotaging the radar could provide a list of their current research. That, or engineers recycling enemy tanks could tell you what armor they have as Weapons are rather unique in how they perform allowing for easy identification of them.
I think, IN GENERAL, that they should be able to restrict certain types of vehicles. Such as, 1 artillery tank, or 2 artillery tanks. Or 1 tank destroyer or 2 tank destroyer. Com's get jipped on their research all the time by retarded teammates and we should have SOME way to stop losing because of idiots.
The whole point is for a tank destroyer to be protected and fire from a decent range and hit directly into the hull of the tank, negating the armor giving the tanks in battle some benefit. Turrets on tank destroyers can move a bit, but not much yes. I get that empires is a go go go type of combat, but a tank destroyer might be the answer to lopsidded warfare when 1 team has a ton of heavies and the other team doesnt. (Plus, it would also stop boomtanking)
Yes they could, that or a hundred other mini-game mechanics that would have to be carefully considered and tested BEFORE implementing counters. Because you want it to be interesting enough that people will actually do it without the commander having to yell at them.
That's the thing, variability is currently dead. No one strays off the main path for fear of loss, which occurs quite often, and this results in bland gameplay. However, this is for a tank destroyer, not research counters. I made another thread about that Issue called: Make Empires Great Again! As for Tank destroyers, it adds variability to all chassis of tank in the game currently by being something teams who are down on resources could utilize in an effort to repel a team with lots of resources. That, or it breaks the monotony of a teams just rolling 20 heavy tanks at each other and seeing who has the most noobs to lose.
and how would that work out? if tank destroyers are supposed to help a losing team against heavies, they have to be rather cheap, and take and deal a whole lot of damage due to their lack of mobility. immobile glass cannons probably aint the best choice for defense. and then you have something cheap that takes a lot of damage and can kill heavies. well you archieved killing heavies, but in a differnet meaning.
You can hunker down a tank destroyer, walls on the weak sides heavy armor on the front. Suddenly, it becomes viable especially with a couple of these firing on one tank you could easily kill heavies. Not to mention a losing teams usually wall up and dig in and could include tank destroyers in that. On top of this, out in open combat, a tank destroyer could easily open fire on tanks from a distance while other heavies go at each other... it just adds more variability to the game especially on certain maps where they would be most useful. Not to mention, it would make Infantry again viable in late game.
You know infantry would be a great counter to these, and infantry are the cheapest thing in empires, something both teams can spam. When a team is losing I doubt the winning team will be lacking somewhat competent infantry players to deal with this, I think most of the best players in empires are people you want on the ground anyway... Just saying this sounds good on paper but I really feel it won't work the way you want it to if you think it's mostly to help losing teams on the defensive. Not saying tank destroyers are a bad idea, but more of an idea when teams are somewhat evenly matched, like arty but less bank breaking then arty...
uuuh walls, i shiver. if you can hit me with your tank, i can hit you with mine, but mine is mobile so i just drive behind you over all the infantrists guarding you and unload into your weakest side - a heavy can take it - drive in, collect free points, drive out. and if you wall of your back so well i couldnt fire in, i still could just park right next to you and shell your base without being threatend because you are a sitting duck. its exactly like arty, just that it has the disadvantage that you cant wall off completely while still being able to fire at the enemy (with team effort arty can be quite imba on maps like canyon for example. but it means a large portion of your team will need to dedicate themselfs to building and maintaining walls and nothing else wich is kinda boring so its very prone to fail in a random game) and if such tank destroyer could take on a heavy on a map like duststorm because you cant close in our outmaneuver it before it kills you. walls or not, why should anyone build heavies?
Okay, so in the scenario of choke points, tank destroyers would be good. Its all about where it is needed, and its price/performance ratio. Depending how quickly it can take out enemy tanks and if you could fire from range, it would be a great counter to enemy tanks even from afar before a tank can close the gap. Walling was an example, not one that will always happen but one that could happen. There are multiple uses for this type of tank depending on the scenario. Open maps, fire from afar like arty but actually damaging the core tank. On a map with choke points like slaughtered, have a couple of these preventing enemy tanks from driving on through without heavy losses. Team at the disadvantage? Roll a couple of these and coordinate to take out tanks quickly. It really is depending on what is needed and at the moment, adding a new variable to a 1 variable game.
but thats my whole critic. if its efficient against heavies it will replace heavies. if its efficient and cheap its even more likely. if its only en-par with mediums, it wont help a losing team against heavies (and might replace mediums)
No, its effective against tanks. It is weak vs Infantry as unless it scored a direct hit it would deal no damage due to no blast.
Tank destroyers are already in the game under the form of double artillery battering rams. Unsuspecting heavies will stay still and start firing at you. But then you ram them from the flank and block them. MUAHAHAHA
Would be possible with the imperial arty tank model however it is not possible with the nf arty tank model. It would not really hard to make a working BE tank destroyer and weapons. example below. These were made sometime ago while i was experimenting with the empires scripts.
I think a tank destroyer that deals direct damage to hull would be a wonderful addition to the game. Much like in stratego, where the spy beats the Marshal, we have a game where you progress from lights through mediums to heavies, each stronger than and easily beating the former. A tank destroyer has the potential to be made stronger against heavies than against light tanks, precisely because we allow only that to ignore armour. This means that if a team has only heavies, it will be a good strategy to get tank destroyers, but if you get a bunch of tank destroyers, the enemy will get mediums or lights to counter that. Of course the earlier comments in this thread about mobility are valid - you need to play well to use tank destroyers; you need walls and ideally you need the enemy heavies to be stickied so that you can actually get those 3 or 4 shots on target to take down a heavy. My proposal: Lights, mediums and heavies all get the same hull health - this needs to be offset by making the armour plates slightly thicker to come down to the same, assuming full armour. A tank destroyer takes down a heavy, light or medium in 3 shots by ignoring armour. It can support up to 12 plates of armour on the front, 3 on the sides and none on the back. This means that tank destroyer is also a decent counter against itself, when one is so well walled and defended that you cannot get around the front armour. It also takes 3 shots to take down its own hull. It deals std CN damage to buildings and virtually no damage to infantry. The cannon can move about 30 degrees to either side before you need to move the tank itself. You can build tank destroyers when you get the research, which is next to heavies and arty (in advanced chassis).
Okay. I've been thinking about this and I discussed with a few guys. Here's my opinions. Heavy armored TD? No. Light armored TD? Yes. Basically, Light armored TD will only have 4-3-3-2 armor or something like that, but of course, it can 1on1 a heavy tank and survive. For example, I can give it resistance against tank weapons..etc. It's pure anti-vehicle so you can't really push a line on your own, even a single Gren can fuck with you. This TD will cost around 1k. In fact, just look at my new 180/203mm artillery shell, I wanted arty to be viable for frontline skirmishes, it's actually kinda similar to TD. Heavy armored TD? In short, IMHO it does NOT fit into empires at all, will probably make our game flow even slower. It has too many potential issues on both chokepoint and open maps.
I disapprove heavy armored TD probably even more than you, really. But light armored TD actually looks like it's gonna work.
