12 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

(Edit: This post's question is answered already, but feel free to read and enjoy the posts; please be certain to read my posts after this one as I give more information on the video series I'm making for the community. There may be new questions near the bottom, especially if you are seeing this again.)

I'm doing a youtube series introducing the mechs, churning out lore and information for newer players and I need to make sure I have some things right.

Now unfortunately my info on Inner Sphere Mechs is pretty limited since I've always been a Clan nut. Thus one of the resources I'm using is among the most trusted of Battletech wikias, Sarna.net

Since the Hunchbacks are the most suggested for new players, the Hunchbacks are my current focus. I've collected lots of footage of Hunchbacks in action with purely default rigs for introducing the variants. Collected info from players who do really well with certain variants such as how they use them, what roles they believe the 'Mech could fill, etc. Everything a new player could want to know before making his or her purchase.

I have the design to go in videos of no more than 5 minutes each. One for each variant, and one to introduce the chassis as a whole.

That said, I came across something on Sarna.net that has my attention. They refer to the Hunchback's "Chassis" as the "Komiyaba Type VIII"

I thought this was really neat since one of the manufacturers is the Komiyaba/Nissan General Industries.

The Trebuchet is listed as the "Corean Model 9C" and Centurion (made to compliment and escort it) as the "Corean Model K7". Both produced by Corean Enterprises.

The Awesome is listed as the "Technicron Type G" and its company is Technicron Manufacturing.

But then I got to looking at other mechs, and I'm seeing the Atlas as "Foundation Type 10X." Which has nothing to do with the company names (not that it has to). This really started to worry me as being on the wrong track when I looked at the clans, who list their chassis as certain metals. Madcat (Timber Wolf) for example listed as "Type W3 Endo-Steel."

Was I on the right track, with the chassis being the corporate name (Komiyaba Type VIII) and the military moniker being what we all know (Hunchback)?

Edit:


The question has been answered. However since you're here, please read the other posts by me as I give more information on what I am trying to do.

(Image credits: Photographer, LordRed. Mech, AssaultFox. Members, Zhizhu Mercenary Corporation.)

Edited by Koniving, 03 April 2013 - 10:26 AM.

[ThinkTank]

Its most likely a combination of them both. A manufacturer will have product designations for in-house purposes. When a military tests a prototype, they give it their own designation like "X-1" or something. When the final product is ready, it will be given a production name, like HBK-4J or whatever. When the final product comes out, some joker looks at the HBK designation and sees a big cannon hump on one shoulder and calls it a Hunchback. The name sticks and everyone starts calling it that.

[Steinar Bergstol]

You are pretty much correct, yes. Of course, not all corporations/manufacturers will name every chassis model after their company, as you see with the Atlas for example, and the Clans being a bit of a "there are no private enterprises, it all belongs to the clans and the military is in charge" tend to have military designations for their parts rather than manufacturer names. You see the same thing in weapon models. The Thunderbolts 3 medium lasers are Diverse Optics Type 18. Meanwhile the Hunchback IIC is armed with 2 Devastator Ultra AC/20 and 2 Series 7J ER Medium Lasers. The IS weapon has the manufacturer name and a designation while the clan version only has the designation since it was the clan who made the components, not an independent corporation.

[Escef]

Chassis names often reflect the name of the manufacturer, and often times do not. Sometimes you will see a chassis "reused" on different mechs, this is usually just an indicator that the chassis in question are made by the same manufacturer and from the same materials. Sometimes, however, it means that the two mechs actually do use near identical chassis (like the Enforcer and the Watchman, or the Vindicator and the Snake).

[Gristle]

It's kind of like how modern car manufacturers do things. For example the Ford F150, Navigator, and Expedition might all use a common frame, drive train and suspension.

Edited by Gristle, 11 March 2013 - 10:40 AM.

[Koniving]

Thank you. This helps a lot. Wanted to make sure I'm on the right track.

Next thing I could use is any sort of concept art for interior rooms in the battletech universe, or possibly links to 3ds, obj, lwo format science fiction rooms or props, preferably pre-textured, which I could use for a sort of briefing room. (Can add furniture easily).

I'm a 3-D animator by hobby and as part of the introduction, I was sort of hoping to have the pilot "enter" the room and sit down for the briefing for that added tidbit of immersion before the actual video starts. This may get dropped later, but I am hoping it'd be a nice enough touch to help bring people back for more.

I already have the pilot mesh ripped from the game and have him rigged (although I lost all the textures in the process.)

[Gristle]

Koniving, on 11 March 2013 - 10:42 AM, said:

Thank you. This helps a lot. Wanted to make sure I'm on the right track.

Next thing I could use is any sort of concept art for interior rooms in the battletech universe, or possibly links to 3ds, obj, lwo format science fiction rooms or props, preferably pre-textured, which I could use for a sort of briefing room. (Can add furniture easily).

I'm a 3-D animator by hobby and as part of the introduction, I was sort of hoping to have the pilot "enter" the room and sit down for the briefing for that added tidbit of immersion before the actual video starts. This may get dropped later, but I am hoping it'd be a nice enough touch to help bring people back for more.

I already have the pilot mesh ripped from the game and have him rigged (although I lost all the textures in the process.)

Trial under Fire said:

...The smallest briefing room aboard the DropShip Black
Hammer. Enough space between the gray-painted bulkheads for a small table surrounded by half a dozen chairs, three of the seats currently occupied. A duct in the ceiling blew down tepid air tasting of the metallic
tang left by atmosphere scrubbers. The Star League ensign hung over one wall—a silver eight-pointed “Cameron” star against a black field. The room’s one concession to tactical briefings: a flat-D screen opposite the flag, connected via spiraling cable to the keyboard cradled over the left arm of Lieutenant Connor Sinclair. Connor stood next to his own seat typing one-handed, his gray eyes studying the blank screen with a frown of concentration....Finally the screen glowed to life, and against the backdrop of a star studded spacescape a world grew to fill the frame. Dark blue oceans covered a majority of the planet’s surface, with two large land masses standing out in brown-green relief....

The planet rotated quickly, and froze when the smaller continent came under the camera’s eye. One final flurry of keystrokes, and as the land zoomed in to fill the screen he set the keyboard into a special wall receptacle designed to hold it.

Edited by Gristle, 11 March 2013 - 10:54 AM.

[Oy of MidWorld]

Koniving, on 11 March 2013 - 09:41 AM, said:

I'm doing a youtube series introducing the mechs, churning out lore and information for newer players and I need to make sure I have some things right.

Now unfortunately my info on Inner Sphere Mechs is pretty limited since I've always been a Clan nut. Thus one of the resources I'm using is among the most trusted of Battletech wikias, Sarna.net

Since the Hunchbacks are the most suggested for new players, the Hunchbacks are my current focus. I've collected lots of footage of Hunchbacks in action with purely default rigs for introducing the variants. Collected info from players who do really well with certain variants such as how they use them, what roles they believe the 'Mech could fill, etc. Everything a new player could want to know before making his or her purchase.

I have the design to go in videos of no more than 5 minutes each. One for each variant, and one to introduce the chassis as a whole.

That said, I came across something on Sarna.net that has my attention. They refer to the Hunchback's "Chassis" as the "Komiyaba Type VIII"

I thought this was really neat since one of the manufacturers is the Komiyaba/Nissan General Industries.

The Trebuchet is listed as the "Corean Model 9C" and Centurion (made to compliment and escort it) as the "Corean Model K7". Both produced by Corean Enterprises.

The Awesome is listed as the "Technicron Type G" and its company is Technicron Manufacturing.

But then I got to looking at other mechs, and I'm seeing the Atlas as "Foundation Type 10X." Which has nothing to do with the company names (not that it has to). This really started to worry me as being on the wrong track when I looked at the clans, who list their chassis as certain metals. Madcat (Timber Wolf) for example listed as "Type W3 Endo-Steel."

Was I on the right track, with the chassis being the corporate name (Komiyaba Type VIII) and the military moniker being what we all know (Hunchback)?

That's a cool thing you're doing there. Do you already have some viewable material?

[Koniving]

Oy of MidWorld, on 11 March 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

That's a cool thing you're doing there. Do you already have some viewable material?

Of 3-d animations with MWO? Not yet. But plenty of plans on the 3-D side including a Red Versus Blue (Halo) style series with the Zhizhu group. The Pole read some of the initial skit ideas and referred to them as "Critical Hits in video form with our voices? FUND IT!" on the mech-focused portion and someone else mentioned there was a bit of "Foamy the Squirrel" on the pilot-focused portion.

On the topic of 3-D, This was something I recently posted up in college, a vid of an animation I did in 2006 based on the Guard Scorpion of Final Fantasy VII
-----------------
As for this actual series? Not up. The Hunchback will be the first of the series, with plenty of footage readily recorded for Cicadas, Centurions, Stalkers, Trebuchets, Ravens, Awesomes, etc. There is also quite a bit recorded for Every Hero Mech released to date. (An expensive endeavor I might add, which is why I'm hoping that as this takes off I get enough subscribers to get a machinima partnership soon to help fund it.)

Plans are for a woman (read, not a teenager) to read the script as if giving an intelligence briefing (or as a pre-recorded voice in a film that the pilot is watching). So the vocal information will be delivered by a mature chick (that's an instant plus right?).

I used to teach English online and made friends with lots of students, so I can easily get it in a few languages or even fun accents (Chinese, a few Arabic variations, British, "American", Russian).

The first video will introduce the chassis. Subsequent videos will introduce the individual variants with the info mentioned above. Only the introduction videos to each chassis will possibly feature 3-D animation of characters outside of the actual game footage.

Introduction video will use lots of exterior footage collected by the Zhizhu group (and while we'll try to showcase a number of colors, the prevalent color scheme will clearly be Zhizhu Mercenary Corporation and the Jade Dragons.)

The variants will be mechbay footage with the details on everything from where everything is mounted on the variant when freshly purchased (important for trial mech users of it) and mostly footage from using the default rigs in game.

Exceptionally good matches sometimes get posted as part of regular gameplay videos, such as this one from earlier today. Purely default Hunchback 4H, only thing changed was the paint job. No CASE, no ammo relocation, nothing else modified. Pugged as this footage usually is. I get 691 damage and a few kills in spite of one counter-productive Trebuchet.

[Lootee]

The Atlas has many manufacturers and was designed specifically at the SLDF request. It was probably contracted and licensed out to all those different companies with generic specifications. As long as the final product passed inspection the SLDF didn't care what each company internally named their version of the chassis. Foundation 10X could be the military nomenclature for the generic chassis.

Kind of like how the M16 is called M16 whether it is made by Colt or Fabrique Nationale or GM.

Edited by PanchoTortilla, 11 March 2013 - 12:26 PM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Here are a few guidelines to help you out a bit.

1 - The Inner Sphere has a mix of state-run companies and private enterprises, but most current factories are likely state-aligned, heavily-regulated private corporations (ie, they mostly make stuff for one House).

2 - The Clans are a bunch of crazy communist psychos who run everything via military dictatorship with duels as the primary means of settling disputes. They don't have private factories, they have state-run production facilities that bow to the whims of the military aristocracy. Hence, you'll see names based on specs far more often with them than with the IS (basically, mech names are going to be the main imaginitive place for names, and most of those have some deeper significance to the Clan that first came up with the design).

3 - IS tech is going to follow vaguely real-world protocols for things like naming, Hence, you'll see some things named after corporations, or corporate alliances when the R&D was too pricey for just one company to manage, and you'll see some named after people, and some named after code words, and some just named for aesthetic reasons.

This won't help with specific cases, but it might let you interpret your findings against a wider context somewhat more effectively.

[Koniving]

Thank you all. As you may have noticed from the edited main post, the question has been answered.

However I will continue use this thread to post updates, any additional questions, to post some test-samples, and finally to link the thread that the series announcement will be found at.

The actual video will be posted in the Guides section with the original post being edited to include each variant of the Hunchback's variants as the videos get finished.

I suppose the next question is which 'Mech to focus on next? I'm trying to go in the order of most common suggestions to new players (hence why Hunchbacks were first). Or should I go by the order that the mechs were released (the original 4, and then in order of their release from there)?

Again thank you all, you've been most helpful.

[EvangelionUnit]

how about the most common mechs new players going to meet on the battlefield ? the may can't get them as fast as other "starter" mechs. but they learn about their in and outs and how to counter them, while they might get an idea what to grind for next