I'm starting this thread to collect all of the comments, thoughts, concerns, and suggestions about the armor and weight system. If you have anything you want to say about it, post it here. I'll keep this post updated with plans and changes etc. -------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not sure the current status of your armor/weight updates. However, I played last night and I couldn't even get 1 plain armor on each side of an LT. It could only support 3 layers of armor total. This is with a std cn and chaingun. I'd like to return the LT to its original weight constraints.
LT/AFV definitely need to have a more generous weight limit. I realise you don't want people to stack up a tank with everything, but cannon + MG + 2 layers of armor is not unreasonable. I mean, given the current weight you couldn't have any weapons at all if you wanted to actually use those armor slots, so why even have them there? It just becomes an expensive armoured jeep.
Tanks should be rebalanced to get plenty weapons and medium armor, or plenty armor and medium weapons. But not ever be forced to approach into the poor category.
Agreed. I thought the LT was nefed enough with the dumbing down of the normal cannon. I might agree that you should be limited to the basic mg if you want all the armor. Maybe sacrifise one plate to get the cg but thats a trade off. As of now the LT or the AFV flat out suck. On a plus side you see meds and heaves faster.
In my opinion, the problem is the fact that you have to trade almost 5 plates of armor (5x15) for a chaingun (70). The standard weapons shouldn't weight more than ~3 plates (45). This alone would probably fix the LT/AFV. Medium tanks can equip 2 2-slot weapon and maybe 8 plates of armor, so they're basicly lights with 2 slot weapons now. If there are no 2 slot weapons researched then they are inferior to lts/afvs. They will benefit from lowering the weight of the standard weapons, too. Since they could equip 2 2slot weapons and one standart weapon, while retaining their 8 plates of armor. Or go for 12 plates of armor by removing the standart weapon, or even more armor by having a single 2slot and 1slot weapon. This was only an example, no exact calculation. Even heavies would benefit a little, allowing them to equip additional standart weapons, like 1 railgun, 1 cg, 2 standard ml, while retaining armor. Having all armortypes weight either 10, 15 or 20 is horrible.
I think myriad has a point when he sais the standard cannon weight is too high. I presume you made these changes before krenzo nerfed the St. cannons ? Everything seems to be fine, except the LT (damnit, still haven't tested the AFV). I also said to raise the max weight of an LT, but now that St. cannons have been nerfed already i suppose lowering their weight would be the best solution. Everything else seems fine. I really like having to decide between the different " weapons/armor/# of armor plates " combinations. Was there a specific reason for having all the engines have the same weight?
What the hell is a standart? I like how the new system makes you choose what you want. It used to be that you'd get all armor and all weapons and just had to worry about heat. Changing the light vehicles is my only concern with the system.
I don't like the new weight limits at all. It makes researching weapons useless because you probably won't be able to equip them on your tank without sacrificing most of your armor. Tanks (and most research) are nerfed at this point, something needs to be done.
I say up the weight limit a bit so I can least add a cannon (or missile), a machine gun & some armor to the LTs. (Also what's up with the "1337" weight limit on the BE Heavy? :p)
Yeah, it makes you choose "Do I want armor, or do I want guns?" More like "Do I want to install 1.07 because tanks in 1.08 are useless?" Honestly, there are ways to make people choose - making tanks useless like this...is not one. 1.07 did a much better job with tanks...even if that meant NF Heavies had shitloads of armor. I really dislike this new system, and it makes me wary to play emp (esp now that Emp is stable for me...) NF lights are the most useless things ever...and frankly, I preferred them before. Even if they could take on a single med or heavy...fine. They only did it by speed, and NF Heavies had no speed.
I'll try and make this short and sweet :p Although I disagree on how the numbers are being applies now, I like the overall strategy of trade offs. My concern is that in all these "tank tweaks" being applied, it has thrown off the balance of tanks vs infantry vs turrets. Tanks have progressively gotten weaker, while gren. and turret dmg remains the same. Spawning as a grend. is free, while tanks represent your teams investment and progress. Right now, tanks feel weak and only marginally better than infantry/turret. :D Idea: I was thinking of how new technology starts off as being bulky and cumbersome. Over time, they get progressively better. How about adding 1 more tier for each tank chassis? Researching them would allow you to add more weight onto your tank class. ie: after researching med tank, you can research an advance version of meds tanks, allowing you to add more weight on this class. There would still be tradeoffs, but they would be less harsh.
I had a hard time yesterday killing tanks as a grenadier. I used to take out BE heavies by hitting their rear, but that tank had 6 plates on all sides. Even when a few other grenadiers came to help me (with an apc close by so we could always respawn), he kept killing us. He just turned around making us hit the other side of the armor. Then another heavy came, giving the first one time to repair himself. Only when someone from our team in a med tank attacked both heavies were we able to destroy them. And tanks vs turrets ... i think that's an improvements as well. If you want to get inside an enemy base that's no problem since you can now have more plates of armor giving you some extra time before getting destroyed by ml turrets. If you have good weapons but poor armor, then you should easily be able to destroy the turrets from a distance. Beside if a tank equiped with powerfull weapons could just drive into a with ml turrets defended base, there would be no point in having ml turrets no would it?
Chassis weight capacity should be the absolute upper limit of how much you can put on a tank, to stop it from becoming a complete rolling fortress. Next comes heat, which stops you from having too many powerful weapons firing too quickly, and finally comes the resource cost, which should decide the lower limit of what you can afford. With these new changes, weight is restricting players to a greater degree than any other factor. This means that heat and price are now not worth worrying about, because you know that you will always run out of weight first. I totally agree that players should be forced to choose between heavy armor and heavy weapons, but players should at least be able to equip average items from both fields.
I am please with the changes at the moment. A tradeoff should definately made between armor and weapons. The main reason I think, why people are complaining, is that they're used to not having to make any decisions about tanks. The weight system at the moment has changed the 'usefulness' of all the tanks, but I don't think this is a bad thing; just something that players need to get used to. With the light tanks/afvs at the moment, the player needs to decide whether he wants to kill armor/emplacements (by choosing cannon/ml) or infantry (by choosing chaingun, or even going for an apc). This is beneficial imo, because you can't be really good at both aspects at once, meaning that the drivers will have to work together to breach their enemy's defences. I prefer this type of gameplay to previously, where every tank would have a means to destroy infanty aswell as one for armor/buildings. On a side note, I really like the idea if tuning the plasma cannon to work _really_ well against vehicles (as in, it would have a damage rate close to that of the HE cannon, with added heat) but stay weak against infantry/structures. This, followed by reducing the damage done to vehicles by HE, would lead to enhanced teamwork, as plasma tanks work to defend HE tanks from other vehicles as they charge the opposition.
In my opinion that already is the case. You can make a heavy with a nuke and 6 plates on each side. True, it would have to be composite armor, but comp armor isn't that bad. And a nuke ... well it's the mother of all weapons. i'm gonna go online now and test that. Although I seem to remember making a heavy with full armor (not plain armor) and a nuke, i'm not a 100% certain anymore. Edit: it'll have to wait, server is stuck on district, and i need 2 people to take all the flags and end the map.
Omg, how could it happen?! Heavy tank can ignore few grenadiers?! Seriously, you need tanks to take out heavy tanks. As grenadier you can take out LTs or maybe even med tanks. But you shouldn't kill heavy tanks by 2-3 missiles. Actually that skill that shows how many inches tank has is useful now. Turrets: they are only to slow enemy down. No amount of MLs and MGs can stop good team that covers each other, makes walls and rocket snipes turrets. So now you will have to make some more walls and more turrets to slow heavy tank down.
Sorry, I should've been more specific: I was referring to the LT/AFV. I haven't had time to test anything else yet.
