Wouldn't it be nice? - New Research, engines/armor

You know, engines, armor, and tech take little space and require little programming to put into place. So, I was thinking, what else could you research?

My dream would be to have two of everything there's one of under research, highly opposite things in the ways of engines

Biology
- Engines
- Bio Diesel – Same
- Ethanol – Fast and cool, but stalls easy
- Armor
- Regenerative – Same
- Polyvinyl Acetate – Thick and soft armor, cushions against heavy, slow projectiles

Mechanical Engineering
- Engines
- Gas Turbine - Same
- Dual Rotary – Good power to weight, but cools better and stalls easier than gas turbine
- Armor
- Composite - Same
- Porcelain - Stops larger rounds easily, but fractures when hit by smaller rounds too

Electrical Engineering
- Engines
- Three Phase – Same
- DC Electric – Very high torque, doesn’t stall, but little cooling
- Armor
- Reactive – Same
- Electrostatic – Charged plates that explode a projectile before it can penetrate, very light, and doesn’t get depleted, but hull is damaged by each shot (less per panel)

Chemistry
- Engines
- Advanced Coolant – Same
- Ram Air Turbine – Similar to a jet engine, stalls easy and cools well, very fast
- Armor
- Absorbant – Same
- Alkali – Armor that can corrode a projectile, but it generates heat when being hit

Physics
- Engines
- Nuclear Fission – Same
- Gyroscopic – Nearly impossible to stall, but heats fast, and drives slow
- Armor
- Reflective – Same
- Faceted – Multi-faced armor has shaped panels that break or redirect a round
other tech:

LORAN – Engineer cameras/radars see 1.5x further
GPS – Engineer cameras/radar see 2x further

Infrared – All infantry and tanks visible when firing, and 1 second after, if you have a radar
X-Ray – All infantry and tanks visible when firing, + 2.5 second, then until they move more than 20 feet, if you have a radar

Upgraded Kevlar – Infantry have 130 health (with no upgrade)
Polysynthetic Nylon – Infantry have 150 health (with no upgrade)

Steel Core Ammunition – Small arms power 125%
Ballistic Tip Ammunition – Small arms power 150%

Research Grants – Allows research to complete 2x as fast for 2x the cost, selectable when researching anything, no prerequisites

 

Very good, but how will it all balance out?

 

That's the thing...I'd love new research items an' all, but let's be honest, it'll take like 2 months to balance those. It would be nice to think we could do it quickly...hey, maybe we can...

You never know, mebbe a dev will come by and say "hey that's easy, let's do it". Not sure about some of these tho:

The research grants sound interesting, not sure how evil it'd be to get out armour and engines in the same time the losing team takes to get regen. There's actually an actual armour modifier too, so your Kevlar/nylon (why didn't you use Biosteel? ) upgrades could effect that instead of health.

 

Bah, I hate things having to be equal, but the grant sounds pretty balanced, so maybe if you could come up with how to make them balanced you'll probably have a good chance to get most of these suggesttions in the mod

 

If you ask me, I think there is more than enough to research in relation to vehicles. In fact most research is exclusively for vehicles, the only other ones I research in most games is turret upgrades. I'd like to see more upgrades for buildings and infantry. The improved grenadier missiles are a good start. But maybe upgraded refineries (think tech2 in SupCom) so the commander has the option of placing a more expensive but faster producing refinery (with the added risk that it is a tempting target to the enemy and costly to replace) Stuff like that. Maybe a more efficient vehicle factory that produces vehicles cheaper? Again with the balancing offset of being more expensive to build (and therefore more of a blow to the team if it's destroyed, so if it's popped ofter only building two or three tanks you actually losing out in resources)

 

I agree hendar, new research should preferably focus more on buildings and infantry (like a research to turn armories into bunkers)

I think boosters to VF, refs and research speed are all gunna just beat down on losing teams more, which isn't fun.

 

Bunkers! Now theres an idea. Like a simple structure with vision slits around thats damn near impossible to destroy? To give infantry some cover from tanks anywhere it's needed. That would add something to the game. Infantry can't hide in any of th other buildings at the moment. because they are simpley destroyed too easily in the late game and they can't shoot out from them.

 

LVL2 armory? Sweet!

I agree. Upgraded engines, upgraded armour, upgraded research speed - it would make the loosing team loose faster. Empires is fun because it usually ends epic (unless ninja, but we invented alarms recently so there is a hope of 100% epicness!). If You give advantage to the team that has more resources, games will be shorter and less fun. Please mind this.

Everyone knows we need at least 19 kinds of armour and 25 kinds of engines in the game, otherwise it's boring!! (jk)

Ehhh. Trying out and remembering all current kinds of armour, weapons and engines takes about two months. Then You know what is what and what is it good against and how usefull it is and how much does it cost.

Besides, we already have a good cooling engine (coolant), a good speed engine (3phase), a non-stalling engine (bio) already. We have two additionall types of engines that have no particular use, but are researched 'by the way' because they are close to other researches, and they are better than bio (fission, gas turbine).

What new types of engines do You need in a game? One could say "a light one, so I can put (in medium tank) HE and almost full composite armour and a MG that is too heavy to fit. That's a good suggestion. I think Gas Turbine could be lighter than other enignes, that would be a reason to research it. Other could say: fission engine sucks, and we dont have a type of engine that enables You to ride the same speed forward and backward, so You can have a tank that has no rear armour at all, attack with it, and if You have trouble, just press 's' and run. Ofcourse turning when driving like that should be harder (more chance to spin). That is a good suggestion, because it doesn't unbalance the whole game and it doesn't make the research tree twice as big as it is now.

Other kinds of engines and armours that You suggest will only double or mix the functionality of current engines. You could have almost infinite number of engines with diffrent

• ability to stall
• heat management
• speed
• weight

And a weighted sum equal or almost equal to eachother. The question is, do we really need them?

Another suggestion that would make the loosing team loose faster... However, I have a brilliant idea of making the game more balanced. Lets take a suggestion and turn it around and see what happens:

Now that could enable the loosing team to produce basic vehicles only (jeep/apc/LT) so they are able to counter enemy attack to the end. When they loose it, they can afford to rebuild it. That would actually make end-games longer and more epic because players will not ragequit to spectate, if they can have tanks.
Yay, the anti-suggestion-method works!

 

Look what you've done sandbag.

 

heh, actually, I would love to have jeep drops available from the commander.

 

I'd grief people to death with it.

*The Commander has ordered a Jeep Drop on your location. Heads up!
*The Commander has ordered a Jeep Drop on your location. Heads up!
*The Commander has ordered a Jeep Drop on your location. Heads up!
*The Commander has ordered a Jeep Drop on your location. Heads up!
*The Commander has ordered a Jeep Drop on your location. Heads up!
*The Commander has ordered a Jeep Drop on your location. Heads up!
emp_recruit: wut
emp_recruit was killed by world.

 

Hm, on the bunker idea. . .how about a research that allows you to go from Mechanical Engineering up to Defensive Emplacements? This unlocks the ability for the commander to build Bunkers, which is like your level 2 armory. From Defensive Emplacements, the commander can get Enhanced Walls (2x HP, 2x as slow), Tank Traps / Barbed Wire (Stops Tanks / Infantry, built by comm), and also Bunkers (Like you said, level 2 armory.) Would be awesome to have a Maginot Line-esque scenario. Only with nukes. I love nukes. :p

 

KISS! Ahhhhhhhh!!!!

KEEP
IT
SIMPLE
STUPID

Please don't follow CryptLord12345. The more complicated you make something the less likely it will work or get used. Just keep it like Sandbag said research to allow armories to be turned into bunkers. Period. The other things CryptLord12345 said are ok, for map placed items, but a com doesn't need to be adding all these things.

 

My original idea, though, was that each veign of research would have more than one engine and armor, that way you could sort of custom tailor your armor and engines to your needs.

I still love the idea of electrostatic armor.

 

How about we add descriptions to the armors in game for what kind of weapon they protect best against?

Like Absorbant:
Good vs Railguns.
Weak against other weapons.

 

Wow, for a man with a face that makes me sick, you have a damn good point there...

(I'm refering to your creepy avitar!)

 

some great ideas here, I like it, maybe I'll try and get these into the game myself. I mostly liked the idea of having a second chemistry engine be balanced by receiving lots of heat when hit, which is one of the values that really hasn't been explored that much.
There is still a lot of variety that can be managed with current code scripting that is not in the game yet, but keep these suggestions coming and maybe we'll see more of em

The idea of having multiple engine/armor from a single tree, balance wise, fits in with what i am currently doing to the weapons, so unless someone else implements this, I will be adding it to my list of things to do.

 

It's gunna be hard to balance the engines without having one specific "good" engine, or an engine/armoury that is rubbish. We've got a pretty good balance right now in this sense (except fission), in that you can go down any tree and with some smarts, your team can do well with them. I'm not saying don't go for it, do! but don't make some engines 'better' than others.

 

I like your ideas. However, new ammunition types should be introduced as well to counter the new armor. E.g. smaller and weaker rounds that don't do a lot of damage, but tear through Porcelain and Polyvinyl Acetate like they weren't even there while doing almost nothing to Electrostatic or Absorbant.

 

Private Sandbag has a good point, however I feel that both Gas Turbine and Fission Reactor engines are not used in like 98% of the games. That's because they don't have a feature and every other engine does have one (cheapest+non_stalling, most_heat_efficient, fastest+good_efficiency. What is good in fission/gas turbine?).

About the engine that takes much heat when hit... Heat is determined by weapons, plasma is good in adding heat to target (but it heats the shooter too atm). Engines should not change that, however, some kind of (absorbant) armour could absorb some heat.
I like it the way it is now.

We don't need another engine type, as we already have some engines that are not used.
We could have the 5 introduced (polycarbon, porcelan, polyvinyl acetate, electrostatic, etc) armour in addition to 5 already implemented kinds of armour. Is it obvious to everyone but me, that we need 10 kinds of armour and 12 types of engines?
Current armour types are sufficient.
Current engines are more than we need (noone uses gas turbine and fission, if they were replaced by one of coolant/3phase, noone would miss them). We may give a purpose for those not-popular engines (weight and backward speed, I wrote about it in this topic).
Coolant engine is overpowered, it's researched in most games. It should stall when damaged (not overheat when hit, as the heat system is plain and clear now and I like it how it is), that is a good point from dizzyone. Currently noone cares about engine being vurnerable to stalling ("just dont fire the shot that would overheat You and You will be ok").
The game is already very complicated, dont give us hundreds of technologies to learn before playing.
Too much confusion = no new players.