Certs & Customization - how it might look

[Malorn]

There could very well be cosmetic changes to the vehicle as a result of these upgrades.

A more maneuverable vanguard might have a little bigger engine in the back, or a few less armor plates (or both) to indicate that it's been modified for additional speed and reduced armor.

the 200mm howitzer option would obviously have a much bigger cannon.

In the case of aircraft, they could have additional wing bits or tail-fins and stuff like that apart from the obvious aditional weaponry like rocket pods and what not.

They might plan on doing that, which could explain why they are cutting things like vehicle jacking. If there's cosmetic effects then the work load for Tramell's team goes through the roof. However with no vehicle jacking they can use resources that would be spent on the different versions of vehicles and instead work on cosmetic changes to accompany upgrades. From a balance perspective, Vehicle jacking would really screw with empire-specific upgrades and the cert system due to all the extra customization and possible empire-specific certs that may not exist on the other empires (or not have a direct counterpart).

Nothing prohibits cosmetic changes...in fact I owuld expect it for some of them, especially weapon changes. If my tank has a scattercannon secondary gun instead of a 20mm, that should be obvious, and any infantry spying the tank should see that and know that their best option is keeping distance.

[razor851]

Originally Posted by 2coolforu

Then make the upgrades have a visible component -> ERA upgrade would add ERA Tiles onto the glacis of the tank, so then you know you shouldn't use C.E. weaponry and instead you should use K.E. weaponry.

If the upgrades added visible differences then you can easily judge what the vehicles capabilities are. I mean, you can obviously see what changes a soldier has made to his armor and weapon as well, a scope is pretty visible as is increased armor or a silencer.

As long as every customization element has its own, unique visual along with it, then yes, this deep customization business could be a good thing.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Goku

Between their comments relating to speed, handling, and using other weapon attachments I wouldn't be shocked seeing a similar skill tree. If it proves to be like this I am already planning on having an all out tank character, all out grunt, and mix between the two. That is probably going to be the best way for me to retain my current play style. My Outfit often ran tank columns with 5-10 tanks depending on how many we had on. I was normally the lead tank/commander, so I will need every bit of advantage I can get when doing this.

In eve, they make alts useless by letting you only train one character at a time.

This may be the way of things here as well. If it is, alts would be of minimal value.

Originally Posted by 2coolforu

I was also thinking that we would get upgrades like

'Ablative Plating' - 10% less damage from energy weapons 10% more damage from KE weapons

This is an armor upgrade that provides protection from the Vanu Sovereignty's energy weaponry but makes you more vulnerable to the Terran's Kinetic weaponry. There would be an opposite like 'Composite armor' that protects against K.E. but is weak against energy weapons

'Explosive-Reactive Armor' - 10% Less damage from C.E. Weapons, 10% more damage from K.E. weapons.

This would be a Vanu upgrade that strengthens against NC weaponry but weakens against TR weaponry.

Alternatively weapons like rockets that infantry use could be C.E. damage and tank weaponry could be K.E. damage, so ERA armor would provide a bonus against Infantry AV weapons (for urban combat) and an upgrade like 'Armor Plates' or 'Composite Armor' 'Depleted Uranium Armor' would give a bonus against tank based weapons for open combat.

I'm not terribly keen on the idea of resistance plating in an fps. The weapons will already have roles based on pure physical traits.. Adding resistances like that is a mechanic added to dice roll games to keep one weapon/spell from being useful for everything. In PS, no weapon will be useful for anything. Its enough that an anti-tank weapon is already useful only for tanks, etc.



@OP. Not a bad list. A few things I'd see changed, like I feel a coax gun for the gunner should be standard as well.


One thing I'd like to see is if the gunner has these certs while the driver doesn't, they can still pull the upgrades, at the least for the gun stuff, but ideally for all things. I don't want to see a situation where the guy with the most certs is always pressured to be the driver.

[krnasaur]

I think you hit the nail on the head. Running ideas through mine with customization this is basically the same thing i thought of

[Malorn]

That's a good point about the resistance plating. That might be a little overboard in terms of complexity and gameplay concepts. Neat concept but may not fit well or be too overwhelming.

[2coolforu]

It could be pretty cool if you could nudge your tanks in a certain direction. Just taking an example from real life, infantry based anti-tank weaponry is typically chemical energy, explosives and tandem warheads because kinetic energy can't be used due to recoil. If you wanted an 'Urban' tank you could deck your upgrades towards C.E. defense and have this tank that has good visibility (Bigger field of view? More driver periscopes?) to spot flanking infantry, an anti-rocket mesh like the ones they have on Striker IFV's and M113's. I'll try and flesh this out a bit

Vanguard - Urban Combat Tree (Infantry support role)

Base -> Coaxial Gauss gun --> ERA tiles -----> SLAT Armor ---> Urban Camouflage pattern -----> Explosive 150mm Rounds ------> Pintle-Mounted .50 Cal Heavy Gauss Gun ----------> smoke launchers ------------>Trophy active defense system --------------------> Active radar

That's just a basic one I thought up from the top of my head, the lengths of the arrows dictates learning time and relative mineral cost.

Coaxial Machinegun
So the first upgrade you would have is for the gunner to get access to a secondary machinegun weapon. This would be a more anti-infantry version of the 20mm twin-linked cannons

ERA Tiles

The second adds ERA tiles that increase survivability against infantry based AV weaponry, the ERA tiles are a visual upgrade that would add reactive tiles to the vehicle like this picture



These would only improve the protection of the front and turret.

SLAT Armor protection

SLAT Armor is basically a mesh that causes tandem warheads to explode prematurely negating their penetrating power, this would also be a visual addition that adds SLAT mesh to the sides and rear of the tank body improving the armor values against infantry weapons in those areas



Urban Camouflage Pattern

This would just add some form of grey coloured digital/dazzle camouflage to better conceal an urban based tank, perhaps even some grey/rubble coloured camouflage netting could be added. This can make a huge difference in an urban environment. I think this would actually be better as an outfit upgrade, so an outfit would set their camouflage as say urban or desert (and design the colour and pattern themselves) and would then devote themselves to fighting in such environments.



Explosive Cannon Rounds (150mm)

This is self explanatory, the upgrade would switch out the HEAT rounds of the standard vanguard and replace them with FRAG rounds, which would have a bigger splash but lower damage values and much lower damage values against armored targets. This would mean an unupgraded vanguard would easily beat an upgraded anti-infantry vanguard but this upgraded version would wreak havoc on infantry positions.

Stuff like the pintle-mounted .50 cal just allow the tank to cover more arcs of fire at once which is important in an urban environment, the pintlemounted gun would require another gunner (Filling the role of tank commander) who would have access to the smoke launchers. It would basically be a trade-off, you need 3 people but you can stop people sneaking up from behind or flanking you in a dense city street.

The Trophy system is just something I put in there on the spot, in real life its a system that protects the tank from guided ATGM's, in game it could perhaps lower the damage from air-to-ground guided missiles from aircraft or maybe infantry.

I'm just shooting the breeze and throwing a few ideas into the mosh-pit, they aren't particularly well thought out I'm just theorizing how far the system could be pushed to get cool results.

[Malorn]

As far as camoflauge goes, I was thinking that the NC adaptive camo would be something that is automatic and and adapts to whatever terrain the tank is around like a chameleon. I'm hoping this could be achieved with a modern game engine reasonably well. It's not an infiltration suit because its not cloaking, but rather masking the tank's profile with patterns and colors from its surroundings. The wy it could work is if the tank is stationary for a period of time it would automatically adapt to the surrounding terrain. If it moves it keeps its camo until it has a chance to stop and re-adapt.

Probalby no way in hell that's actually going into the game due to complexity but I think it'd be cool and fitting to the NC.

[2coolforu]

Originally Posted by Malorn

As far as camoflauge goes, I was thinking that the NC adaptive camo would be something that is automatic and and adapts to whatever terrain the tank is around like a chameleon. I'm hoping this could be achieved with a modern game engine reasonably well. It's not an infiltration suit because its not cloaking, but rather masking the tank's profile with patterns and colors from its surroundings. The wy it could work is if the tank is stationary for a period of time it would automatically adapt to the surrounding terrain. If it moves it keeps its camo until it has a chance to stop and re-adapt.

Probalby no way in hell that's actually going into the game due to complexity but I think it'd be cool and fitting to the NC.

I suppose you could do it with Render-to-Texture if the engine supports it, might be laggy though.

[Rbstr]

This is exactly how you think with skill trees.
Things that give you obvious situational advantages and disadvantages.

[Malorn]

That's why I think it should only be done when the tank is stationary for a period of time. That limits the texture capturing & image manipulation to being infrequent. After that the texture is just the skin of the tank until it re-adapts. Its a peformance optimization as well as a nice gameplay mechanic that differentiates it from cloaking.

[2coolforu]

I think the idea I was trying to capture with my examples is that there would be 3 forms of the Vanguard, the skill trees would give you no advantage in my examples. The end result of the 'Infantry Support Tank' would be a tank that is very effective on the urban maps, but at a disadvantage on others. To get all the add-ons would also be very expensive in resources limiting how often you could pull the tank, with every add-on attached it would require an extra person and be perhaps 20% more effective against infantry, with increased survivability and offensive capabilities, however it would be 20% less effective than the 'Standard' unupgraded Vanguard at Vehicular tank v tank combat and a vanguard fully specced towards anti-tank weaponry would be say 40% more effective against tanks than the 'Infantry Support' Vanguard, 20% More effective than the bog-standard however it would be 40% less effective against infantry than the 'infantry support' .

In other words the bog-standard vanguard would be the neutral stance, equally effective against infantry and armor, perhaps it could have common-pool addons as well like a mine sweeper or some ammunition - so that people can spend their minerals even if they haven't developed the skill tree. One example would be the anti-aircraft turret upgrade that Matt Higby spoke about, this would be an upgrade for the 'bog-standard' Vanguard to enhance it's versatility whereas the 'Tank-hunter' and 'infantry support' would be close-minded and focused on very specific maps and extremely resource-inefficient.

[Malorn]

I think I like the idea of keeping it open ended and letting players choose the customizations they want to use for a situation rather than having templated variants. It also has the effect of letting players tweak their tanks to their liking for general use, or for outfits to coordinate their tank customizations to their outfit strategy. A tank outfit might spread around those secondary benefits and main gun benefits so they have tanks covering different roles and protecting the entire column.


Another thought here is that the buggies might converge on the empire-specific buggies and there may not be a skyguard or harasser.

The Enforcer for example could have a main gun swap from the rocket to flak rounds, which would convert it into a skyguard. That conversion could have armor reduction & maneuverability increases go in conjunction for that purpose.

Then you have all the other enfocer upgrades as possible augments to the skyguard without having to have a specific tree devoted to it. In effect you're a "buggy specialist" and that covers buggies and variants, similar to how a tank specialist has all these different tank options.

[2coolforu]

That was the kind of idea that I was trying to head towards with the vanguard 'Infantry support' example . Rather than just having a tank you make the vanguard a kind of splurge that can cover a variety of roles, rather than have this plain Vanguard that fits into a slot there are multiple variants that slot into multiple niches which means that there doesn't have to be say a 'Fury', 'Basilisk' 'Wraith'. Instead you just have an 'ATV' which can have a 'Tank-hunter' variant (Fury), 'Main' Variant (Basilisk) and the 'Covert Ops' Variant (Wraith).

It's a much more true to life way of dealing with vehicles, most vehicles have multiple variants for different situations.

[DviddLeff]

Great post and great ideas for modifications, here are the ones I have in my upgrade project which were to be unlocked via merits or cert points:

Infantry Weapons

• Silencer
• Bipod (makes weapon deployable, decreasing COF and bloom)
• Bayonet (increased pistol whip damage)
• Various magnification sights (4x, 8x, 12x)
• Laser Pointer (reduces initial COF bloom)
• Extended clip
• Under slung grenade launcher (frag, smoke, EMP)
• Under slung shotgun

Vehicles

• Reactive armour plating (increases damage absorption, decreases speed)
• Slat armour (reduces explosive damage, decreases speed slightly)
• Decoy flares
• Smoke launchers
• Fragmentation grenade launchers
• Electronic hardening (reduces effect of EMP weapons)

These ones are all generic, and obviously some would apply to certain types of vehicles/weapons more than others (slat armour on an aircraft? ).

All of these would be visible on the weapon or vehicle, making it simple for the enemy to work out what they are up against. I feel this is very important and I am not overly keen on seeing modifications that cannot be seen such as the different ammo types; if you are going to change the weapon, make it obvious as Malorn suggests with the artillery pieces.

Great idea to have empire specific modifications that fit in with the ethos of the Empire.

[Dreamcast]

Yeah Im sure is gonna be similar like that which is a good thing.


Sacrificing to gain.


Allthough they did mention 20% difference in favor of Veteran Players compared to new players or unmodified guns.



I mean 20% might not be that much, but I actually think it is....Still that is Veteran new player, once player ranks up, there should'nt be much of a difference.