The Thousand Pound Ape in The Room

I was mainly referring to his idea that you could somehow have aircraft integrated with the ground troops by having them fly in a separate area of the map and using a skybox to render the opposite side, and somehow link them up. Which I think is kind of absurd.

This is before we get to the point where his idea doesn't actually address the fact that maps are too small, he just wants mini, ant-sized aircraft flying around on a map where everyone else is regular sized. The amount of short sightedness just really begs belief.

 

Why not have AI aircraft as a commander power?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqfXVHzhqsE

 

To add my two cents, aircraft can be added and balanced, and so can any other vehicle type you just have to sit down and plan ahead of time what are aircraft, and strengths and weaknesses, and tailor the gameplay to that. Also through coding you could still have maps like slaughtered, and all you would have to to add a restriction to vehicle types like aircraft, or setup a mode called "classic" or something like that to accommodate mappers.

Edit: The commander view would also benefit from a free roam similar to a spectator camera

 

wow actuallly love this idea

 

Speaking of planetside, have you seen their changelogs? They make me chuckle sometimes, would've been great if the empires devs were more light hearted with their changelogs.

 

Shut up.

 

I thought that would be a good idea. Posted something about it years ago.

I think if it was a spawn point it would need to be really limited in range or really fragile. But as basically a very threatening turret it would be kind of cool for the commander to be able to have something like that.
But yeah, I pretty much see this as an addition to existing gameplay, whereas player aircraft basically change the game entirely. Like Last stand was fucking fun but then it was a map built with that in mind. Its just too hard to have any kind of tangable territory control when you can just fly past the front line.

But then if it needs AI surely that is even harder to implement than playercraft?

 

It just needs to be sucked up and add god damn blimps. Seriously. It gets rid of the excuses being used of being unable to have realistic jets - who the hell even cares? Just add blimps, who cares if they control like bricks. Copy the vehicle code, make them slow, add vertical controls, change the perspective to be on the bottom on a turret or something. That's really all that needs to be done.

Who even cares if it's not flawless? Let's be realistic here - the mod is all but dead. It's sad, but that's how life goes. Just let people have fun with it, it'd be a great way to see the mod off into the sunset.

 

Thank you for your valuable input.

 

Adding stuff for the sake of adding new things is a false economy.
Effective air transit will break nearly every map there is, it is a really fundamental change and a bad one at that.

However what Harryhoot was tlaking about the idea of having what is essentially a moving turret in the sky doesn't really break anything so long as it can be shot down. I think that'd be cool, thugh it won't happen so whatever

 

Bring back Sky Jeeps.

 

In much the same way that researching arty means you will lose because all the noobs buy it. (All the noobs wait for aircraft, waste all resources on it, then one smart enemy in a light tank destroys their entire base)

Sounds like fun doesnt it?

 

Then why dont you knock up an example of a source mod to prove it can be done?

So..is that a "cant be done dev team" or a "cant be done lawnnome"?

Also:

Surely it wouldnt even be possible to load 2 maps at once with 2 dynamic skyboxes? (Getting each skybox to show whats happening on the other map), nevermind even being able to fight between the two. Even if it was it will kill the server cpu, so therefore this thread should surely be about adding multi core support to empires :D *troll*

 

Actually that's how it's done in Eternal Silence, it doesn't even need two maps, because since the fight between the two can't be accessed it just uses an entity that is similar to the skybox camera to show what's happening on "the other side", and it works flawlessly. But it works flawlessly there because it makes sense that humans can't walk around in the outer space portion, so they can't access what is essentially a battleground the size of a vehicle factory.

 

When the Source 2 engine comes out, then we can have aircraft. Until then anything added will probably be seriously gimmicky.

Now, theoretically small blimps could be added as a slow-moving spawnpoint and bombardment thingy, but as much fun as that could be we already have artillery and APCs. I'd love to see blimps in Empires, but it would take a dedicated blimp-team to make it happen. It really could be done, and adding blimps would actually revitalize the game somewhat, but if we had people who were willing to put blimps in Empires right now than we wouldn't be in as much of a snails-pace development as we are currently, would we?

 

Bet you dont have a source to backup your first statement. Never mind the rest of that post.