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If you've already read this before please check addendum *1, if first read ignore this, thanks for reading. Addresses concerns regarding free to play monetization and how it would interact with salvage. "I Don't want to lose what I paid for!"
For a more comprehensive discussion we'll need to make certain assumptions to fill in the gaps of unavailable information/provide a basis for the argument. Please keep on the topic of how salvage would work, how you'd like it work, etc. and not on whether or not you think it should be in the game, this: http://mwomercs.com/...c/1846-salvage/ thread serves that purpose
Salvage and risk versus reward play a big part in Battletech, especially when it comes to Mercenaries. Salvage rights were often more important than the paycheck. So it comes as no surprise that many people want to see it as part of the game. That said, where does it fit?
The one big thing detractors seem to focus on is players do not like losing things, to some extent this is true obviously. Nobody likes to lose, much less have things taken from them. But many people do feel that the risk of this loss is what creates the fun in the victory. The other is people are worried about some sort of arms race, I would say this effectively eliminates it, much more than some repair fee + always positive sum system. And if you make repair fees more expensive than average earnings from a match, you're doing the exact same thing as this system... without any of the fun of salvage, just abstracted.
I'll put the TL:DR here.
- Every repairable 'Mech goes to the winners, each player gets a share with the option to buy out the shares of other and buy the 'Mech or simply sell the 'Mech and get their share directly in C-Bills. Friendly downed 'Mechs are given back to their original Pilot.
- Tactically relevant actions award C-Bill bonuses. Call them performance rewards. Ranging from killing the enemy, capturing points, relaying information, jamming their sensors, Narcing an enemy, defending an objective, etc.
- End of mission rewards on top of salvage, every contract awards a certain amount base for risk, then if your team completed any objectives, you get some C-Bills for that. If you won you receive an extra bonus of C-Bills. The amount of C-Bills between this and performance rewards is designed to allow you to almost always be able to afford cheap 'Mechs, but not be able to sustain expensive 'Mechs every round, choose when you bring out your best or when to play it safe. Risk and reward.
- If you find yourself in a position where you do not have an owned 'Mech available, your house will offer you a stock 'Mech with no, limited, or full customization. One assumes a mech from any weight class or role is available, if you want to play an assault or heavy, you can. Any customization would still be out of pocket for the Player. This would be in exchange for salvage rights, so you'd gain money no matter what you do, in exchange for using a weaker mech or a loadout that isn't exactly what you're looking for.******
I see two paths available, three if you count marginalizing salvage but lets assume that's not on the table for the purpose of discussion shall we?
One: Full salvage, as it sounds. Which I'll break down further on.
Two: Full salvage only in conquest mode. But with a simulator***** for arcade action with no reward/loss, your pilot would still gain experience though. These would not impact on the conquest mode.
Breaking down full salvage. All repairable mechs and still working weapons go to the winners, if draw scenarios are possible sides recover all of their respective equipment for the sake of simplicity, this could be expanded upon though. A legged mech is always repairable, a blown cockpit is always repairable, an Ejected mech is always repairable. Reactor breached mechs are the only one that has a chance to be unrepairable, what this chance is, or if they're ever repairable depends on lots of game design decisions. Lets assume a moderate chance, 25% or so.
This leaves us with a net loss even assuming a 50-50 win rate, or some people think. What they forget is every mission rewards c-bills. As well as hopefully actions in every mission reward C-Bills like MW:LL.* Between mission reward and average performance bonus you earn an amount that is based around the cost of mechs for each role/weight class**, 1/3-1/4 of a top tier 'mech, 1/2 of an average 'mech, 2/3-3/4 of a bargain bin 'mech (Looking at you, Urbie.) The goal here is, on average, you will make more money if you use a bargain binner like the Urbie, but if you opt for something ritzy like a Puma with it's medium mech weaponry in a light chassis, you stand to lose some money on average, in exchange you give yourself a better chance of winning the match. Risk/Reward.
The goal would ultimately to be, for a pilot to use multiple chassis, not just one. Perhaps you know the people you're playing with and you're more likely to win, you bring out the Puma instead, or you know the people you're with happen to suck/likely to lose for another reason, hedge your bets and bring out the trashcan or a flea. Or you just really want to go the extra mile to ensure a win for this mission, Puma.
If you use a cheap mech, you make a profit, if you use an expensive mech, on average you lose money. Within any weight class you've got multiple roles, and within each role you'd have cheap, standard and expensive models. You decide when you want to risk that expensive 2 ERPPC Puma, or when you just feel like playing it safe with ol reliable urbie. If your mech of choice is in the expensive tier, you won't be able to play it every match without going broke. But is variety really going to kill you? I heard it's the spice of life.
Let me stress here, you can't afford to run the best-in-class every mission. Assuming 50-50 win/loss, you will lose money when running the best in class. Yet on the other end of the spectrum, even when doing poorly, you will have the starter mechs from your house and/or the bargain bin mechs to make sure you can always get into the action. Nobody is advocating a game you end up not being able to play.
End of mission, how does salvage work? Well, first we need to make an assumption, you can trade with other players, be it manually or at the very least a way to sell/buy at a market, be it to players or NPCs. Another assumption*** is that conquest works along the lines of many iterations of the same battlefields for control of a planet or subsystem. Whichever side reaches X victories or N percent of victories, or total points, etc. Gains control, whether or not it resets back to "Zero" or stays as is, up to the devs. I see merit in both for different reasons. Essentially, the only limits to spare parts and such, is C-Bills. A more in depth limited supply model etc would be great, but I assume that's asking too much, this system would work very well with it however.
Winning team, all applicable salvage pops up, remaining weaponry/electronics are part of the overall chassis. Downed allies receive whatever is left of their equipment. Every player on the team is given an equal share (Or****) of the mech's current market sell value that is adjusted based on repair costs to get it back in full working order, assuming sell value is moderately lower than buy value as it should be. If there is just two mech up for salvage for simplicities sake and 5 players, the top players in descending order get to pick one 'mech to buy out the others shares:
So player A did the best and gets to go first and buys Mech 1, all four other players would get their 20% market sell value out of player A's C-Bills. Player A would get Mech 1. It's a simple, quick and dirty method of fairly distributing salvage, see sidenote** about making it more or less fair depending on point of view. Player B would then be able to choose to buy Mech 2 or not, if not player C would get his chance to buy it, etc.
Sidenotes section
Anything below here uses a symbol to denote what side note it refers to, if you saw a * for example above, you'd look here to see the expanded thoughts on the subject. This is all extra information you can read to get a better understanding and answer some questions etc.
*1:To purchase a 'Mech one must first purchase a licsence from the factory owner for that 'Mech. You could buy these with C-Bills or real money. If you capture a 'Mech with salvage that you don't own a licsence for you can still pilot it - Or not, up to Devs, maybe change it to a Pilot Cert like planetside where you need the training, both work.
Another thing that the dev's should do is along the lines of Eve's method of selling game time, then letting players trade gametime for in-game currency. So for all the aesthetic, cert/licsences, whatever else you can buy with real money, it's all based off of a separate currency from C-Bills that you buy with real cash, and you could exchange this separate currency for C-Bills in much the same way. This means nothing in the economy is "Created" and the economy remains stable, it also gives the Dev's another easier source of income. Many people have more expendable income than they can justify paying in a non pay to win game, but if you let them buy things for other players in exchange for those C-Bills, it lets them spend more without ruining the economy.
* I feel it's important to stress this more without cluttering the main post, the performance bonuses are not solely for killing people. In an assault your job is killing, perhaps defending or assaulting a base. In a light however your job is not just combat, Recon, information gathering, point capture/theft, Narc Beacons, scrambling enemy electronics etc. In heavies and mediums you have more flexibility, Medium leaning towards light style objectives, heavies towards assaults, but with more tactical flexibility. A medium might not be as fast, but it can pack a whole lot more hurt. And a heavy won't pack the same firepower as an assault, but a good 70~ tonner can move twice as fast maybe even have JJs while still bringing a good payload of weapons. In a multiple objective match, speed's important. Remember Mechwarrior escort missions where your big stompy assault had to be traded in if you wanted a chance in hell? Like that, but not so one dimensional.
But until we know more about the roles and information warfare this is a general idea: Ultimately the idea is simple, there's more to the game than just a straight up deathmatch, how the roles/weight classes are divided up is actually not important to this salvage system, it's flexible enough to work with any setup.
**Assumption being that 'mechs are separated by role/weight class, and then within that role/weight class by some sort of BV. The key here is that tonnage is not a factor or, more likely, is only one factor rather than the only factor. This separates from canon somewhat, as larger mechs were usually more costly, even if their BV didn't match up to their C-Bills.
If heavier mechs are on average more expensive, I would also suggest that Pilot's using them also receive a comparative amount more for mission reward/performance rewards in a curve that equals the curve of price/tonnage. Keeping with the theme of every weight class being equal in a tactical sense, they should be as equally viable in an economic sense. The difference being, do you field a Longbow or an Atlas or a Daishi sort of deal, if you're on a budget but want to play assault, you play a weaker assault, not an expensive heavy.
***Personally I'd prefer a more campaign based, limited resources, land on a planet with a sizable force and do what you can, having it function sort of like a ticket system perhaps across multiple battles, but I'm guessing for ease of use and player friendliness things like taking days to travel around, limited resources (Physical limits, not how many C-Bills you have limits) etc. would be too complex for the average player, they'd need to make the conquest portion of the game targeted to a portion of the playerbase rather than the entire focus of the game, and that's bad in it's own right. I've this vision in my head of making a list of everything I want to bring with me to the planet, spare parts, chassis, ammo, etc. and waging a war, but I seriously doubt anything like that is what we end up with.
****Or a share equal to his percentage of earned 'points', by points I mean objective points and combat points. if the tech existed for example, being a C3 slave providing intel for indirect fire, capturing an objective, killing an enemy mech, these sorts of things would award points. Something far more complex than a simple kill/damage = points model. The idea being everyone would get a share, but the better you do, the more you earn. However you'd already earn more from these points, so is that necessary? I think it's a small consideration, and would be happy either way.
*****I envision this as some sort of league of legends type deal with it's own progression system of permanently unlocking 'Mechs rather than everything being available from the get go, perhaps you could spend C-Bills earned in Conquest to unlock 'Mechs here as well, as well as you just automatically have access to any 'Mechs already in your conquest garage.
******Another option would be to make 'Mechs significantly more expensive, and have the majority of time be spent in a stable of provided House 'Mechs. Making them fully customizable (Assuming customization is in), but any customization is lost when a 'Mech is downed, and non-standard components can be salvaged by the enemy. This would keep 'Mechs feeling expensive, in exchange for making all but the most successful Pilots spend a large portion of their time in loaners.
Edited by Haeso, 30 November 2011 - 02:49 PM.
