The RC4 Developer Script discussion thread

Why would you want to do that?

 

how long would it take for a engineer to decon a wall

 

I'd guess twice as long.

 

Wait, are you god damn serious? Walls double HP? You know what you'll do to maps like emp_money, don't you? First half the armor of tanks and then this. Being offensive gets worse and worse doesn't it...

 

They are already resistant to everything on the world as it is, please don't go through with that. The only things that can effectively take out walls right now are mortars, calc, and nuke.

 

Idk, I've found that walls go down ridiculously easy. It's a few seismics, or a few mortars. Back in the days when walls just didn't take damage for anything except calc, the battlefields seemed a lot more dynamic, because walls were actually used to shape it, rather than just as cover. If the change sucks I'll revert, I have no problems with that, but I want to try it out.

 

If its possible to keep the decalc time the same while raising the hp please do.

When you raise the HP of the wall will it still take the same calc?

 

shh... I saw that... its why I asked...

 

It would be a very hackish way to do it, but yes, I can make it still decon in the same time. If people think that deconning will be the problem, then I can try and keep that the same.

 

Raise heat of all chemistry weapons slightly. AGREED

Lower cooling of Gas Turbine slightly. AGREED

Homing/Guided tracking (Homing especially) and speed should be lowered. AGREED

Wall HP should be doubled, will probably have a huge effect, but hopefully a good one. AGREED as long as engineer tool still decons the same

Try to meet halfway with the LT problem and Regen. Resist and HP. perhaps a resist to grenadier rpg only?

CV armour health raise slightly. AGREED

BioMG DPS on bio effect should be lowered a bit. Maybe lower the bio-time even further and keep damage as is. AGREED but bioML seems very strong against vehicles now.

MG heat has to go up. standard mg seems fine, agree on chainguns and .50 cal.

Fission cooling whilst moving needs to be raised further. AGREED

Coolant should be changed so it actually overheats slightly whilst moving (much like Mashav did with the CV during testing some years ago). not sure what this means :/

Lower absorbant HP marginally (-5). AGREED

i'll list the things i'd like changed even though nobody will think they are good.

could the angles that reflective does well protecting against be increased?

increase plasma cannon vs infantry? i think plasma should hurt more than high explosive and it disvalues chemistry rushing.

buff plasma mg to be good against reflective armor?

buff explosive MG to be good against reactive armor?

slight increase in top speed on non-overheated biodiesel engine?

 

im worried that youre going to make all these radical engine changes and "test" it (we all know that testing and 2-3 months later are different stories) and have shit be wildly imbalanced, but then it's the last patch, so empires just dies as an imbalanced wreck.


when are you expecting to release btw?

 

Maybe - or it could be much better and more interesting, drawing a few people back.

Are you talking about factional imbalances?
As for imbalance between the trees - everyone is at the same disadvantage, the worst possible thing that will happen is that everyone will get the same research every round with no thought (which has been the case since before the steam release)

I'm pretty sure rolling back is relatively easy if not quick?

 

Well these "radical" changes aren't really that radical in comparison with what's already on, and that's been in testing since June. The only major change is the change to walls, the rest are minor.

We missed the summer release window (i.e. time in which we can get the most players from the update), so we're aiming for Christmas. Code is pretty much done besides a commander crash. Ducky is just finishing off his GUI skin, and Varbles is finishing off some maps. There's a few other bits and pieces to do but we should be good for Christmas.

 

Trickster, in all honestly, what the flaming fuck?!

Why would you ever fucking try to apply blockbuster marketing logic to a source mod?? During big releases (and chrstmas is biggest of them all) nobody will even give a fuck about some still-in-development mod, when the have many "A+" titles coming out. Empires only has a chance to get any attention when there is nothing else coming out and people are bored to death. Summer was exactly that period. Now that it's a no-go, there is no point in stalling its release. The few people that are new right now won't just sit and wait for the release for the next 3 months.

 

Not to mention A+ titles are going for 50%-66% off on steam during christmas.

 

You're implying that we could just release right this second. We can't. There's still stuff to be done, but the point is, for the sake of what will end up being an extra 2-4 weeks, we can get more testing in, and release during a time when everyone is off school, and most people are off work. That way, we get the maximum player intake.

You can BS your theory about AAA titles coming and whatnot, but you only need to look at the christmas and summer playercount for the past 5 years to know that it spikes during this time. Remember, a patch isn't just aimed at new players, it's aimed at older players who stopped. Don't ever underestimate the word of mouth. You're acting as if, during the christmas sale, people buy and play AAA games constantly. They don't. People have a fuck tonne of time on their hands, stuck indoors if it's cold, and every single christmas, without fail, Empires has a playercount spike. The patch is aimed at retaining that spike for as long as we can, rather than it dying down the moment we hit January.

As I said, for the sake of releasing 2-4 weeks early, we can test more and hit a better release time.

 

tbh i dont know what else there is to be done with the patch

 

Well, as I said, Ducky is tidying up his GUI reskin.
Varbles is finishing off Urbanchaos, Slaughtered and Money. Slaughtered is 95% done, as is Money. Once Money is done, I'll try and get servers to cycle it alongside Money_redux so we can decide on which one we use. Urbanchaos is his main job, because he's doing major work on it.
I've been trying to get in contact with Terminator about doing some work on Crossroads, and I still need to find someone who can put some time in on the Tutorial map.
When he comes back for October break, Omneh should finish off emp_forest, and I still need to pick a couple more community maps that can become official.
I'm obviously still doing script work, which I want to be balanced for release.
And finally, there's one crash (that we know about) with the commander, which Jephir will fix once we get testing again.







People need to remember that this is probably the last release, which is why we're putting so much effort into getting everything we can in it. There probably won't be another patch (except a hotfix if there are major balance/code problems), so we just have to treat this as our last chance to get everything right.

 

tl;dr, I am not implying anything, there are nearly 3 months from this day to christmas, which you say you are aiming towards. I said you should just release it asap or avoid christmas time.