Best use of rifleman is stickys+ammo upgrade+ a jeep(usually). At the cost of like 30-60 seconds and 30ish res you can remove those super expensive heavy tanks. Your doomed if they actually bother with nukes though, but you can still try to be sneaky ninja rifleman and sticky them from the shadows. Oh something I don't know is if damage upgrade works on bio damage. It probably doesn't, but it's something to think about if taking rifle tanks.
Don't, fucking, encourage, that. That's not even close to how it actually works. You'll just donate tickets while being absofuckinglutely useless, enemy don't even need nukes to kill you instantly.
Your right, it really only works on people unaware. I just do it when the team is way poor and can't even afford meds. Tickets is almost a nonissue on a lot of maps though, never really comes up that often in public games. I guess when server is full sure but that feels like a rare occurrence.
Hey I used the rifleman sticky tactic on Crossroads. My underwhelmingly skilled team was sitting back waiting for death, no money and no clue. I had an engie drop ammo near middle and traded about 1.5 lives per heavy as rifleman sticky. No revives, so wasted about 12 tickets, but about 8 heavies too. Later more experienced enemy players joined, like they really needed the help. We had heavies but wasted them all, and the tactic was useless. NF heavies are unbeatable, especially if the skill is on the NF side. Com'd a game last night on Downfall, great team. We had an early lead. Pounded their base, precise and fast research for our BE team to get decent heavies and useful APC's earlier, forward repairbays and upgraded MG turrets to keep their grens from advancing. BE weapons are weak as shit. Took back middle three times to eventually be completely overwhelmed by NF weapons and extra armor, and lighter everything. When are the devs going to address balance? This has been well known for a very long time. When I play with a less skilled team as NF com, all I need to do is get us to heavies and we're assured a victory. On another map BE had 3/4 of the map and I just said "Wait and conserve funds, we will dominate". Completely devastating the BE heavies. BE can win - but they have to do it early. NF and BE are about even with mediums, but NF is way OP with heavies. And to correct this - PLEASE LISTEN - it only needs a very minor tweak. Fix the BE unbalance by SOME.
yeh missile spam suck this version especially since the "always hit missiles" turned useable for whatever absurd reason. in previous versions at least only uml was good ... (and maybe two tripple slots were not that good of an idea either) ... and since LTs > AFVs brenodi now has a hard time. but maybe all comms i played under so far did it wrong and neither ranged nor reflective nor compo is the answer?! just because that seems to be the current research fad ... hemg seems to be not that bad and if shit goes sideways you can still build apcs as cheap weapon platforms - but not against heavies much unless its really open and you focus fire. a homing salvo and bioml and its goodbye apc ...
Du is actually a lot better on apcs. Sure it can't hurt buildings but it does 50 dps, which is like old rails damage. But it's a case of good luck on getting 2 or even 3 apcs to stick together. They'd melt heavies but nah, lets not have fun with du-hmg. Honestly I think part of what might help be is to not use dual cannons. Put bio ml, hemg and just one cannon so you can max out on armor. This way you have near equal armor as nf and because everyone is using reflective you can get more out of hemg and bio then you can another cannon. The slight flaw is long range combat, nf will always have a better time here. It used to not be so bad because I think guided was kinda ass. Yeah, it got a 20 damage increase at some point, which is an extra 100 damage if you get all on target. Being able to use hemg or du with it also helps it a lot on the long range front especially because it doesn't jerk your aim like cannons so you actually use guided.
yes du is good too (in terms of damage). mgs should not be "good", theyre hitscan weapons. same goes for homing or guided. the harder to use, the more damage and vice versa the easier the less, its rather simple. i absolutely fail to see that in the current version. especially burst damage with missiles is bad. or actually good - if youd bring CNs to a similar level. and brenodi being able to use dual cns is kinda implicit?
I meant that in how the balance currently is be would do better to forgo the second cannon. As bizarre and dumb as that sounds. Homing is a crap load of damage, but at least it's heavy. Generally that means either no way to deal with infantry or only like 4-5 plates of armor on each side. One thing I don't like about homing is how it doubles as antibuilding, it's pinpoint accurate. It needs a minor spread so it can't be used as a siege weapon too. The high burst damage of mls can be fine honestly, salvo ml does a lot but it's got that big ass spread so it only works up close. Uml also does pretty good burst damage, but it's not as fast as cannons so people tend to have a harder time hitting, it flying a straight line also is a minor blow because of how much lower the be tanks are, but that's a minor point. All this gets tossed out the window with new update though, I really wish it would be pushed out. I don't even care if it breaks things, we've played horribly broken empires before and, well, people played.
mmm sry if i worded it badly, this wasnt meant as critic of your explanation, but of the balance itself. and yes i hope for the new update aswell :D
With the increased damage of Guided ML, 80 extra loading advantage that NF is allowed on their heavies over BE, and BE's primary weapons being nerfed so badly there is no contest for who will win. BE will be pushing 4,4,4,2 layers of light Reflective armor with only dual ER (which is (correction) 10 heavier than HE), and one volley of Guided strips all 4 and does some damage, but not enough to kill. Follow that with some HEMG or even drop one layer of the armor on NF and load Guided, HEMG and Extended Range canon, while still having more armor than BE and there is really no contest. Replace the 60 weight ER with 30 weight HEMG and add back some armor whilc still carrying very decent load of weapons and 2 plate advantage on 3 sides. I tried maximizing BE's armor and add weapons with the very light absorbant, but that is really bad. It's actually more ideal for NF since they can load 7,7,7,x layers of absorbant and as long as they can turn and get to repair stations it works for them. There are just so many benefits added to NF to overcome the previous BE advantage. Nerf,Nerf,Nerf then Nerf some more - aw good no one is complaining BE is OP anymore, must be good. The imbalance was obviously added, easily fixed and still being ignored. There is no canon worth considering. Staying far from the enemy or winning early game is BE's only option. HEMG, or Bio ML, or even Guided, with one ER and hope NF sucks or does shitty research.
Hold up, what? HE is 10 weight lighter then ranged, has been for a long ass time. I wanted to say plasma might not be a terrible idea, but nf tanks that are using stuff like dual bio or guided aren't actually generating a ton of heat, so they wouldn't feel the effects that much. Plasma does output the same damage as ranged though with bigger splash, but I don't know I haven't had chance to use in like forever.
OK - right - got that backwards. HE canon is very weak though. Only value is arching over things, which I like, and ground troops. ER is stronger vs tanks, but sucks vs ground troops and BE can't afford to fit another weapon if you run dual ER without going to 3 layers of armor. Plasma would require long distance since you'd be at 3 layers of light Reflective. Plasma used to generate lots of heat, but heat is completely not understood by the devs, so who cares. We've finally reached a level of gameplay that is uber boring. I play BE sometimes just as a challenge. If I want an easy win, I go NF. That 80 difference was done a long time ago by Spartacus, who was downplaying tanks, and trying to balance. BE was OP, he just swung too wide as he always did and at one point explained why. It made no sense, but at least he thought it did. Just load up Tank Training and do some blow for blow testing with a buddy some time.
Let's consider four cases. Narrow map, multiple tanks : NF slightly OP. Narrow map, 1v1 : NF favored. Open map, multiple tanks : BE favored. Open map, 1v1 : NF has a really slight favor but it's mostly up to skills. NF tanks are extremely vulnerable when flanked, but flanking is essentially impossible when the map is narrow. I'd suggest drop 30 weight allowance for NF, drop 3~5 guided ML damage, then it might be pretty close to balanced. Further nerf and we might go back to the old time with BE tanks being OP.
Your words make no sense at all, elaborate. You probably wanted me to say that NF tanks are OP no matter what, but that's a lie.
if its "favored" in 1vs1 how does it suddently get less good in 2vs2/3vs3/...? especially in a way where it turns around. i could understand a bit of an equalizing effect because of skill differences if its more players, but that should only shift it if the average skill level on BE is a bit higher. and no, i dont want you to say something to please me, your opinions are welcome. i also agree (and i think i even said it myself) that on open maps where you can keep your distance its less of an issue, but you also land less hits.
Actually that was Trickster, not Spartacus. It was discussed in some thread, can't be arsed to find it, but the idea was that because nf tanks have worse handling and are simply a bigger target the extra armor was to compensate for that, and the first update for that which was 2.5 it worked out pretty well. It's just extra minor buffs to other things make things swing the balance a bit and make it look bad. Actually I already said this on like the third post of this thread, along with basically what security suggested at like post 5. What a strange conversation.
Security - when you play on a better team, use Stickies and rush tactics, you are not comparing whether one tank is better than another. BE can win - if they starve NF of refineries, and NF has a shit team that doesn't focus on armories. And it being a "Lie" is just plain шав Lazybum - The code history shows when it was done. And certainly something needed to be done, but the accumulated buffs to NF make NF a better heavy. I'd recommend an iterative change making the difference 50 instead of 80, which will enable BE 5,4,4,3 sheets of reflective, Dual HE Cannon and HE MG. Dual HE canon misfiring 90 degrees in some cases is another fix that is needed to help balance.
"Security, when you play on XXX, you'll see YYY." Derp, obviously I've seen it all. Don't try to convince me with your inadequate experience. I know pretty much exactly why a team won or lost. Obviously I shouldn't take the result of a game seriously when one team is stacked. Derp. NF heavy will lose its 7 armor plates next patch, along with 30 weight. Not final decision. Scripts aren't GUI, not gonna listen to newbs's opinions on how to improve it.
Edit: On second thoughts this probably belongs in Suggestions. Still I think there is some healthy debate to be had on the subject of Asymetry that can live in this forum. Move it if you want? Heavy Balance: How to fix (IMHO) The answer to heavy balance is a simple, fundamental change. I'm convinced that what follows is pretty much irrefutable. TL;DR - Assymetric Heavy tanks is a poor design decision that can never be 100% balanced. Fix the root cause of the problem. Option 1 (Easy): Both Heavy Tanks have 1x 3-slot Cannon, 1x 3-slot Missile. BAM, Done. Go home, Raise damage stats on 3 slot weapons to compensate you just fixed heavies. Option 2 (Best): Both teams should be able to research both types of heavy chassis configuration. Both team's Tech Tree should contain BOTH: Heavy Chassis with 2x 3-slot Cannon, 1x 3-slot Missile Heavy Chassis with 2x 3-slot Missile, 1x 3-slot Cannon The assymetrical balance in the smaller/lighter chassis balances out OK as the differences are smaller. (Though passengers shouldn't be able to throw grenades as that breaks things) Once you get up to 3 slot weapons it becomes much more complicated because these weapons are powerful by design (or the game would grind to a stop). Cannons are purely skill based (Arc, Timing), whereas missiles have a variety of different mechanics (Read: Tracking), which alters their effectiveness/accuracy. As long as there is disparity in those mechanics there will always be cases in which one outperforms the other and it will always be impossible to balance for generic situations. Making cannons and missiles all function in the same way, with simply different damage types is a poor solution (that would be boring and removing depth from the game). I'm sure this very assymetric chassis approach has always been the real problem with balance and that it cannot be solved by tuning out values in scripts. Don't get me wrong I like the assymetry becuase it is interesting, diverse and give players a chance to master different weapons But - it cannot be balanced without butchering the current weapons and making them more samey. By allowing both factions access to identical platforms it will: Add a strategic end-game choice for commanders. Making the RTS element (only a little) stronger. Immediately level the playing field and solve a myriad of balance issues Allow 3-slot weapons to be balanced more freely, which, in theory would permit them to be more unique and have accentuated features in the way they behave. Fluff: The only problem I guess is how this pairs with the models themselves in terms of their appearance. No-one really cares, though I would like to think the models could at some point be altered to reflect it. Technically with NF's second cannon I would think it can be implemented by simply stacking another spawn point for the shell inside the existing cannon. As far as lore is concerned it can just be explained to work as per the Metal Storm weapons systems, stacking shells atop one another: So there you have it. Fixing Heavy balance is easy.
