There is no benefit for the element of surprise for vehicles.

When you rush into a room where nobody expects you, you can easily take out enemy infantry while they're busy turning around.

But with vehicles, when I ram the fucker in the back and proceed to shoot missiles, all it does it cause a little damage and then he turns around and we're about even.

Something needs to be done about this.

Proposing weapons do more damage is stupid, as it will make vehicles more overpowered, but when I take the enemy by surprise and give him good 3cannons and 3mls, I expect to win. Instead I keep on shooting and I die because he turns around and has more armor than me.

One easy fix would be make the vehicle weapons very innacurate (except mgs), so that there will be a bonus at standing right behind the enemy when you attack him, and making the armors weaker. That way, buildings won't be taken down by rails in seconds, and element of surprise will benefit you.

 

A soldier jumping into a room is different than ramming someone in the ass with a tank.

If someone snuck into your house while you were throwing a party, it might take you more than 5 seconds to notice.

but if someone rams your ass in a neighborhood, you probably take notice of that quicker.

Tanks pack some serious power, and the down side is that you really can't hide them due to size and noise. In other words, nothing is broke, don't fix it.

 

Thats more of a problem with the vehicle damage/health ratio. With a good solid armor and standard weapons battles can last a very long time. Your best bet is to ram them in such a way that they cant turn around, and just unload into 1 side until they die.

 

I understand your "pain".
What is different in Empires, is that the tanks here can take quite a few hits compared to real tanks, and you might be reacting badly to that, maybe thinking that tanks should benefit more from shooting first.
So more dangerous tank weapons are a "realistic" solution to this.
On the other hand, you must keep gameplay. Why buy a tank if you just present a larger target with it, and are easier to kill by other tanks than normal infantry?

 

Brbbabrbbbabrbbabrbb. Vroooooooooooooom.

 

hm.....

Come to think of it, besides the NF LT bigger chassis doesn't always equal easier to hit in empires. They don't really get too much larger. Heck, the Medium for BE in some ways is harder to hit than the AFV.

Empires has a more arcade shooter feel which means more health than a "realistic" tactical shooter. At the same time, I would hope that it would be hard to hide a tank.


Something to help may be limiting the turret rotation speed (zomg it appears yet again) so that if you smash into them on one side it takes some time for the turret to spin around and shoot you. That way you can fire a couple extra rounds and have more of an advantage. Again, limiting the rotation speed to "realistic" values would kill gameplay making it tougher to track targets. We're not trying to make Red Orchestra tanks, but maybe more along the lines of the UT3 Goliath.

 

Metal Smith has it right. It's not like a 15ton vehicle is supposed to sneak up on anyone.

 

Limit max number of back plating maybe?
So you have to watch your back, and if you are ambushed, you are screved?

 

Attacking someone who is busy fighting from another direction is a very good way to kill them, because they can't run away as easily.

Obviously if you attack a tank which isn't doing anything it's not likely to make much difference which side you attack them from unless they have weaker rear armor. It's statistically more probable to have weaker rear armor than on any other side so it's still advisable to attack the rear of a tank.

If you are to make tanks weaker from behind the most logical method of doing so would be to make the turrets turn slower, so attacking from outside turret range gives you free hits, although to be honest you should be getting them anyway because it takes a second or so for most people to react when being attacked from out of their FOV.

 

Or, just be smart about what you have at your disposal. Ask yourself: what can I do to fight this tank? What do I have?

If you're smart, you will remember that you still have all of your infantry weapons at your disposal.

Gren? Hop out (or go second slot int he tank) and toss out a pair of mines. Then, bait the poor bastard with some cannon shots to the rear.

Engi? Place a wall, build it to your tank turret height, lets see him hit you much now.

Rifle? Get out and stick him int he back once, then hop in and start shooting when the sticky blows.

Scout? REALLY poor bastard. Just sticky stun him, and then you win.

 

That's a bad analogy. Let's not compare a game to RL shall we.

Nothing is broke, but players should be rewarded for their patience and thought.

 

Let me get this straight. A person's awareness in real life will have no bearing on their awareness in a game?

That's like saying a person's real life reaction speed has nothing to do with how fast they can press a button when giving a specific stimuli.

The fact is that a person's ability to be aware of what is happening is the same, in or out of the game. Their reactions are completely different, but they are still aware of what is going on equally as fast.

How you can say that you cannot judge what people would do based upon what people do is beyond me.

 

If you want to bring up realism then 99% of real tank combat is about spotting the other tank rather than actually engaging it. He who spots first shoots first, and in tank combat he who shoots first wins. Sound only comes up in combined arms, it's kind of difficult to hear someone else's tank when you're sat in one yourself with an engine running.

So even if you wanted to bring up realism then that's just arguing that the first shot should make a much bigger difference than it does now. Which of course you shouldn't, because realism has no bearing on a game beyond making things intuitive.

The problem from a gameplay perspective is that if you make tanks die faster to give the first shot more of an advantage then you encourage more distant fights since charging in is suicide, but cannons are almost useless at a distance whereas homing missiles would be the be all and end all of weapons.

All that said I would definitely prefer to see positioning and surprise count for a lot more so that tank combat doesn't consist of reverse back and forward randomly, spam shots at the enemy, turn around when your armor facing is weak and if you sneak up on someone ram him and hope he gets stuck on top of you.

 

It only takes 2 plates to vanish off your back before you turn to your strong side.

 

No. He who shoots first and both tanks land all hits and no one turns to show other sides of armor and they both have the exact same loadout wins.

This isn't an argument of realism. It's an argument of gameplay advantages of the element of surprise in tank combat.

Not really. Would just mean fights end faster. Does the 2-shot death in CS mean it drops into a sniping war in comparison to Quake? No. It just means you die a lot faster. People still do the up-close-and-personal, you just have to make use of cover to get closer and get outside their ideal range for their loadout.

Agreed. Thus this entire thread.

 

who said anything about realism.

Saying that human behavior is 99% of empires doesn't mean that empires is realistic. it just means that 99% of the playing done in empires is by humans.

Also, knowing where enemy tanks are and their movements most times does in fact mean the difference between victory and defeat. If you know where htye are coming from, you can coordinate a strike with 3-4 tanks from multiple sides. having 1 larger tank in front and 2 MKII's in the rear usually is a great way to kill an enemy tank, as they will generally focus on the much more expensive, and usually much more deadly heavy tank, even though 2 MKII's is just as deadly.

overall, the person ends up not killing any tanks and dying.

You can only see one way at a time, making knowing your enemy's position and movements invaluable in making the approach on him to best suit your particular situation.


Also, there are different ways to drive tanks. Doing a stronger weapon or weaker armor would only give advantage to faster moving harder to hit tanks (NF light tank...). It would also force commanders to go with heavy tanks and fast moving weapons, which would mean cannons.

anyhow.

 

We need the ability to snipe tank drivers like Jarmen Kell from C&C Generals. I recommend making it a scout ability. This should give infantry some element of surprise when fighting tanks, other than laying mines.

As for tanks sneaking up on tanks, I believe tanks are so heavily protected by armour so that they cannot be killed before they can react. The only way to rape tanks using surprise is with nukes or a combination of plasma and something else.

 

Positioning translated to Empire is not about sneaking up and firing first, it is about getting 3 tanks to advance togheter and gangbang enemy tanks.

 

making tank armor and hull hp weaker in general would be a huge step in the right direction imo, for this problem and many others, including long, drawn out tank battles and underpowered grens.

 

How about have only the halve of the maximum possible be assigned to the rear armor. In case of the BE AFV that can have 3 sheets of armor, it can have only 1 sheet at the rear. For medium and heavy tanks it would be 2 and 3 sheets.
You could even give a damage modifier for rear hits. All damage to the rear is increased by +50% or even +100%.
I miss the ability from Battlefield to ambush tanks by killing them with rear hits. Nice effect would be that tanks better retreat like in real with hull down.