well, ofc i dont know either, im just very sceptical. my - admitably pessemistic - prognosis on this, its either gonna be real good (kills tanks and is cheap, maybe even accessible fast) and we know what that means or rather useless because its cannon fodder against anything going a tad faster than a rock. but yes, try it, what is there to lose except time?
I think a weapon dealing direct hull damage actually may work for a tank destroyer... But perhaps the TD would fit a different role... As a line breaker, not just a heavy tank counter. This vehicle would be designed to punch holes in a defensive line. Destroying single walls or breaking tank blockades that occur in chokepoints... This vehicle would not be useful in the open, as it would be easily outmanoeuvred, but really good at breaking holes in defences, for sniping vehicles (anti-tank), and helping end stalemates. It'd deal high single target damage with a long cycle time. I'm thinking like an artillery (the current beta medium cannons spring to mind). But with a lower angle of fire, and a forward facing barrel like tama said. Just my opinion
do you like stalemates? cause thats how you create stalemates. this the tankified version of a sniper rifle.
So it will have a resistance to tank weapons, rather slow, but can easily take out enemy tanks? Sounds good to me! (Could it be weak to infantry, to make infantry viable for maps that have a use for tank destroyers?) This tank is suppose to break stalemates, thats like the entire point of it.
you can intend a lot, the reality of a tankified sniperrifle will speak different. if you want to have people go into infight, high spread high rate of fire (and preferably also high mobility). if you want people to stay far away, low spread low rate of fire - dps stay the same.
Well, according to what Sgt. Security said it is meant to break tank lines, but not destroy buildings or infantry. Thus, if 1 team masses tank destroyers with no tanks to defend, Infantry will take them out with ease. It sort of adds a new counter to the game to break stalemates that may arise from tank on tank combat and adds more teamwork to the game.
Really I just think it would be nice to have a armor pierce property for weapons, or armor or both. You can do a lot with it really, but such a change would really help to diversify weapons beyond more damage or bigger explosions.
but it would still be only 2 weapons (cn and either ml or mg) for the majority of the round you dont have time to resarch tons of weaponry if you also want new chassis ... ... and since heavies are so retarededly strong in comparison to everything i doubt there will ever be a strategy which doesnt revolve around getting them in the shortest time possible. even if tank destroyers become good, their loadouts probably will be a compromise just to get heavies right after them (esp since if they can take on heavies, which means meds are free points to them). there have been many attempts to get variety into the game and force people to research more items, yet all in all we still follow this approach after all those years - even if we now open a tree more. after heavies its usually only a question of getting nukes unless its a version where rails are op since you just cant use them on a med. ofc as always theres exceptions from this rule. they just barely ever happen and all of them have been epic rounds going on for hours (except slaughtered, i dont like old slaughterd and hours might also be a bit exaggerated, but definately more than an hour )
When I mention diversify I mean there's just more choices in general. After all we only have 2 2slot cannons now, and 3 slot cannons aren't ever gotten til after heavies(assuming they are decent ). Tons of missile options, and those all actually serve a purpose. The problem with how research is now is 2 things. There isn't any sort of limit to when someone can get better chassis, so it's just as you say people get them asap. The other thing is that a couple of weapons, he cannon, bio ml, are so well rounded for dealing with a bunch of things that commanders don't have a need to get other choices for their tanks. So my point with piercing being added is a few things. Tanks will actually feel every hit because it will dwindle their hull, which could be further amplified because engines can take some advantage of hull damage like lower or higher horsepower or if it was ever added lower or higher top speeds(this would be better then messing with horse power). Weapons could be specialized a bit more so he cannon doesn't work well against something. Vehicle mgs like plasma could use it instead of the shitty htt system. Rails could be changed to be a pierce weapon instead of just being a ranged cannon+1. Or plasma could have some of it, though I would rather this idea for plasma. I'd also like those things, like rails, to be 2 slots because the 3 slot system has never made sense to me beyond maybe nukes, after all heavy tanks get 2 of the damn things so why do we make these sometimes better weapons for heavies only? Just saying a pierce parameter could potentially go beyond a rather specialized unit and help tank combat across the board.
They have this extremely fancy armor piercing system in World of Tanks, I happen to be pretty good at both games and......no, we are not introducing that. Of course we can simplify it so that it just penetrates all the time, but that's just dealing damage in a fancy way, nothing special. We can give it to TD and that's all. I mean, it looks cool, but it can be a bitch to balance and if we create a fancy armor piercing system, it's gonna make this game like 3 times harder to play. Angle modifier is kinda an armor piercing system, IMO. HE cannon? We can keep HE cannon an all-rounder like it is now, but slightly weaker. There were scenarios that Ranged cannon would've done the best, but comm researched HE cannon and it did 80% as good, sometimes they lost because of this, but people are so fucking bad at telling the reason why they lost. We can make rail just tier-3 ranged cannon, that's not really a bad thing.
maybe there should be all sorts of 3 slot weapons. i mean if you look at rails, if they are good and you want them, you will still need a differnt weapon for med since its 3 slots (is it still 3 slots?) maybe its a way to get more variety. but it can also just become a balancing nightmare and it certainly wont exactly help keeping meds viable either, since if the 3slot cns would just be as good as their 2slot counterparts, there would be no reason to get them. and ofc you could have two of them, so meds would have a even harder time. its really tricky since it seems empires was built around the idea of just upgrading tanks. the idea of those heavies we have with 6 plates of armor and double the main weapons, it doesnt really define roles, it just tells you to get a heavy instead of a med because its straight better in every shape or form - a simple upgrade, no addition.
Like I said it somewhere, yes, I am working on 3-slot weapons. About variety, let's rethink about that, IMHO Heavy/TD/Arty and APC = enough variety, is it really necessary for us to make all chassis viable in late game? Med tank can be easily dominated by heavy tank and TD. AFV/LT can be easily dominated by everything above and even turrets. I think it would be really silly to change the game just to make AFV/LT useful in late game, really. Also as I said, cheaper vehicles = lower cost = stalemate because no one runs out of res. Maybe we should throw medium tank into the garbage can after 30 mins, why so much love for it?
its less the love for meds than the hate for heavies. imho theyre just out of proportion, meds already scrap the top end. but heavies create their very own game, theyre almost completely detached from everything else, at least thats how i feel when i drive one. infantry is either free points if they dont know how to dogde the tank or just something to ignore, i only give a shit about other heavies (and not to drive into a blob of enemy meds) the rest just exist to be destroyed by me and get me points. ofc im not dumb and use heavies when there are heavies (unless we have superlights and its an open map, then i cant resist), i just dont like it. but as you decided on trying it out - and i encourage you to do so - we'll see if tank destroyers are going to change that. we all just can draw assumptions at this point and i think the major concerns have been voiced.
My suggestion was that the hull is the same, 4 shots for light, medium and heavy, which is why lighter tanks would be a good counter to them, because they are cheaper and faster - I still think we should make heavies a lot slower, btw.
Slower as in top speed? I think we had that, like top speed was 30 or something for heavies in one of spartacus's patches. No opinion on it, can't remember how others liked it.
I would like light-armored TDs. I can write an essay on why I really, honestly, seriously don't want to see heavy armored TD in Empires. And I also don't think it's worthy to change the game for so much, just for LT's appearance in late game. First, same hull HP removes one variation from the game(opposing to the purpose of adding TD, aka more variety), and it probably would make the use of TD so boring because everything has same HP for TD. Second, 1on1 sure, LT miiiiiight be a good counter. But in actual games, a bio ML, a mine, turrets and even TD itself will ensure that it's virtually impossible for a LT to hang around the TD for more than 3 seconds. This also means that a team just have to spam heavy/TDs, they don't have to downgrade themselves and get medium/LT just for the sake of killing enemy TD. Third, similar to above, you'll just have people with 20~30 ticket used because it would be pretty damn hard to kill enemy TD with LT/medium and what's more? Nubs will start doing the same and that's more "GG nubs used all tickets and resources" for us. Last, if people don't feed tickets, that looks like more stalemate to me because LT/Meds will just die instantly and now heavy tanks can't even push properly and we'll probably just get a lot of camping TDs like in World of Tanks. If my arty rework is going to work, we'll see heavy tanks/TD/Arty and APC occasionally in late game, I feel that's enough variety.
i dont think this is a good mechanic. if you need 4 hits for a heavy, but even a heavy needs more, whats the weapon of choice? if its better then x, it will replace x. do you have been around when there was mk2s? they were intended just as intermediate vehicle between LT/AFV and med. guess what, they made mediums completely obsolete, and often also heavies. did anyone see this in advance? i dont think so, even after their introduction it took quite a bit till everyone realized what has happend (and some still want mk2s back)
Assuming tama makes the tank destroyer have a limited turret movement, not as bad as arty but certainly not able to sit one spot, faster vehicles would be a counter. That said on choke point maps, which is like more then half of the empire maps, this speed factor doesn't help at all because lights and meds don't have the room to move the way they need to avoid fire. I really don't think it would replace heavies either, I see the tank destroyer doing dick all to buildings and infantry. There's other things that need to be considered too, like fire rate of the tank destroyer. If it's fast enough it'll end up being a forgiving weapon to use, longer cycle time and it's basically a sniper rifle but with no ability to head shot someone. Or rather with a limited turret movement it's going to be super hard to actually get all 4 shots on a tank. Honestly the more people talk about it I get the impression that tank destroyers won't actually destroy tanks terribly often but more soften up tanks from the inside so when other tanks get through that crunchy exterior they can take a big fat bite out of it's nougaty center killing the tank. Also heavy armor tank destroyer is silly. 12 plates is like 960 hp of compo or reflective, or 1440 of reactive if you forgo the other sides.
Great in theory, in practise this is how it will end 9999999999999% of the times 50% of the time: someone thinking they are a hotshot will buy it, thinking they are the next Michael Wittmann will perpetually buy these tanks, and lose them through exposure of rear armor or be useless for most of the match through sitting in wait for a heavy to roll by while the enemy went for meds and is already in the base shooting shit up. 50% of the time: since tanks are the main money drain tank hunters will either be OP or worthless, OP if they are good at killing tanks and themselves, since getting tank hunters will make all vehicles weak so not getting tank hunters will lose the game if the enemy does... always ending in tank hunters versus tank hunters. OR tank hunters being balanced against vehicles and therefore worthless since they are worthless against anything else. some rare obscure 1% error margin time: a team will have an epic match losing but somehow holding off the enemy wave after wave with tank hunters walled in in a way they can still shoot at a chokehold and constantly repaired by infantry, the defenders will have a blast and attackers will feel frustrated and press f10 Heres how i would implement this... make DU serve this function... the small one does 50% armour and 50% hull damage, the large one does 100% hull damage, damage is balanced as needed. since it can only really be placed on APC's, this leaves the 'tank hunter' chassis vulnerable to attacks from tanks, and make it serve as something that only works in packs to counter heavies with cheap light vehicles and !infantry support!, but meds or a pack of lights should take it out due to economic reasons + being more mobile so harder to hit. You can even enforce this more by making heavies. about half as fast as they are and meds a litle bit less fast. Meds already suck so a heavy nerf (in move ability and speed) is not the worst in the world. A true tank hunter doesn't work in empires, the maps are too small and tank combat is too dynamic... tank hunters in rl are used to protect bridges and chokepoints where they can just sit and wait for weeks or snipe beyond the normal tanks range... that is gameplay you do not want to enforce or support in empiresmod.
