139 replies to this topic

[Thunderheart]

I think you should be able to customize your mech. I don't think it should be something you could do for every battle and should cost major C-Bills. There are many diffrent variants of the same mech. The Hunchback has diffrent variants and yes there are some with out the AC/20. There are some with SRM six racks and LRM five racks increased Medium Lasers. My point is if you have fixed har point that can only accept
certain type of weapons you wouldn't be able to even make a established variant of that mech.

[Karyudo ds]

Thunderheart, on 27 March 2012 - 07:03 PM, said:

I think you should be able to customize your mech.

My problem with this is that Inner Sphere mechs weren't omni-mechs and fictionally build-a-mechs were very rarely mentioned in which this comment at it's base level assumes they were more common then the actual mechs in the universe. Of course that's normal for Mechwarrior so I suppose there is only so much point to arguing it depending on how many mechs we get over time. I certainly would see no point to custom mechs if PGI gave us EVERY mech from EVERY sourcebook. By that point if you don't like a design "there's another one out there, keep looking".

I don't expect that though so I would expect to see some weapon mods for sure but in their skill-tree rough they mention variants. Now I agree it should at least cost a chunk of change (but at least be sim-testable) and have some hard point limitations. I'm curious how much we will get though. I mean swapping an AC/20 with a several AC/2's sort of makes the base Hunchback worthless as a variant in a way as you completely change the nature of the machine. That's just my opinion though and might be their plan. Guess we'll find out but I would like to see Omni-mechs in this game and not have them be every mech.

[Solis Obscuri]

Javelin156, on 26 March 2012 - 08:21 PM, said:

If the devs decide to go with the Mechwarrior 4 mechlab the game will be broken within a few months of launch. There is no balance with this system. People are going to level up or do whatever they do through progression, get the assault mechs and dominate. There is no way to make a light/medium mech that can compete with an assault mech. Its going to be big mechs one shotting you with there 4 ppcs, gauze rilfes or whatever the standard assault mech comes with. This is fine, i expect a light mech to get blown up easily by an assault mech, as long as they can hit me. I am sorry but not being able to equip your light/medium mech with proper weapons is going to cause major issues.

I dont see the issue with making a nice 50 ton mech that has like 12 medium lasers and grouping them. Whats the problem here? Why am i a frankenmech? What if i wanna just put all LRM 5's and run around like a crazy person. Customization is probably one of the best and most important parts of battletech. You use the Mechwarrior 4 mechlab you really wont have that ability in game.

I hope the devs say something soon though.

IIRC, MW4 borked the weight and ammo/ton of heavy weapons in order to make the PvE game easier, which destroyed some of the limitations that were normally present in the previous games. If anything was the culprit for rewarding sheer firepower, it was that, not the way the Mechlab was set up (which was more limited in other regards than the complete redesigns allowed in MW2 and MW3.)

Belisarius†, on 26 March 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

...wait, what? How does the MW4 mechlab ruin the game by promoting alpha boats, when at the same time your dream 'Mech is a medlas boat? And regardless of that inconsistency, how does the MW4 system rule out your boat? Just because there weren't 'Mechs with slots for 12ML? That's pretty easily changed.

People need to realise that free-for-all customization is the most broken thing in the world in an online PvP environment. The only reason you can get away with it in TT is because there's a GM standing over your shoulder. Hardpoint systems get around that need, and give designers tools to balance over-powerful configs.

In MW4, at least there's only one or two assaults that can take 3CERPPC 2GR, and you have a mechanism to balance those by removing their JJs or whatever. With 100% ground-up customisation, every single 'Mech will be 3CERPPC 3GR ECM BAP JJ. Your 12ML medium is not worth that.

MW4 was a little too arcade-y in the way it handled a number of mechanics, and people are going to abuse the hell out of that. That didn't mean it started weapon "boating" or alpha-striking, it just means that it rewarded certain approaches that lead to some abuses. I agree that hardpoints were a reasonable compromise for allowing some customization and field repair, without making everything into an omni-mech, which is essentially what happened in MW3, IIRC.

Nik Van Rhijn, on 27 March 2012 - 05:37 AM, said:

Not to mention only a few chassis' that had the best hit profile etc. Assaults only (with a few exceptions). The dev's are trying to give this game diversity and make all classes/types viable. Not something thats ever been done before. I really don't want to go through the cookie cutter FOTM saga again. It gets old very fast.

Yes, yes it does. Another reason I have mixed feeling on an unrestricted 'mechlab - I understand wanting to experiment and try new stuff, but once the powergamer set decide one or two combinations of equipment are "the best", a game can get pretty dull in a hurry.

Javelin156, on 27 March 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

Mechwarrior 3 was amazing, probably the best Mechwarrior game to date. Honestly wait till they have clan mechs and your inside your innersphere mech with old tech. You think mechwarrior 3 was unfair lol. Mechwarrior 3s multiplayer let you design whatever you wanted, you didnt get charged c-bills. You really have to understand if there is an online economy your not going to beable to just whip up the mech of your dreams. Your going to have to earn it. This is hopefully what will keep people from reinacting your mechwarrior 3 scenario.

Define "earn it".

We haven't seen anything about how C-Bills are earned, or how the 'mechlab will work yet. We also have had no hints as to whether Clan tech will be available or under what circumstances.

We also don't have any inkling as to how many different 'mechs people will be able to store in their hangers to cover different situations ideally.

We don't even know that much about getting 'mechs or repairing them, besides dev hints that it's going to cost something.

In any event, I'm always leary of expecting "cost" (or grind) to be a limiting factor that prevents people from abusing mechanics or spamming "best" gear - either people find ways to break/goldfarm/circumvent them, or else they do lots of combat avoidance if they can't come with exactly what they think will give them the best advantage under the map scenario. I think it's better to have some designed limits, and just encourage people to go out and play.

I liked the weapons design for MW3 better than the other MW games, but it brought about screwy legging mechanics (necessary for the salvage-based campaign mode), the abomination that is the "coolant flush" (ugh), and insta-knockdown from Annihilators. It also lacked DFA. Besides that, it wasn't bad, and I definitely enjoyed the homing SRMs and destructible landscape!

Tyzh, on 27 March 2012 - 06:14 AM, said:

I don't understand why anyone thinks they need to minmax their mechs with long-range/high damage weapons (or 16 tons of medlas) to have fun.

Some people's idea of fun is just playing a game together, some people's idea of fun is making the game game demanding and challenging, some people like making the game freeform and relaxed, and others just want to win by any means possible and could care less about competition or "fun".

[SirDenOfYork]

An old saying " You can please some of the people some of the time,but not all the people all the time"...

[TerminatorII]

Kael Tropheus, on 22 March 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

OP I am exactly the opposite of you. As an old time TT player, what ruined the few games we allowed mech customization was customized mechs. Only one group I briefly played in allowed it as it took away all the negatives of an established mech and replaced it with all positives and you couldnt play your favorite mech since you had to customize it to compete.

Fluffwise customizing a mech is a labor intensive process which for anything more than a minor change required sending the mech to the factory for an official varient refit which was costly. Flat out re-engineering a mech outside the established varients required a full engineering team and more money than any one pilot had available. Anything done by the pilot and his tech crew tended to have funny side effects and was never perfect again.

I like the module idea and strict chassis and varients, however I will likely be very disappointed to the point of not even playing if what the last dev interview comes true and its full customization. I can understand for clan mechs, thats what omnimechs were designed for, thus the name "omni". Inner sphere mechs were never designed to have weapons swapped out at will. I mean really, can you imagine the ammount of reworking it would take to pull the chain gun from an Apache helicopter and replace it with something else. Balance will be off, ammo belts reworked, all the electronics redone, targeting way off. You are talking a multi-million dollar refurb taking months to do.

FWI it's a repeating connon not a chain gun. The A10 Warthog has a chaingun. (both 30MM)

[Karyudo ds]

SirDenOfYork, on 28 March 2012 - 06:50 PM, said:

An old saying " You can please some of the people some of the time,but not all the people all the time"...

And some of the people, never.

[Sir Ollie]

I really hope there is limited customization, I mean the fun part of the game is making the best use out of the resources you have. IS mechs where never meant to be modified heavily anyway. Needing massive amounts of time in a Mech bay at best and Huge Costs to boot. and it was not until the Clans OMNImechs showed up that you really had the option to Swap out weapons with much ease between battles. That was the clan strength, they had the better Tech. but they had strict ROE that had to be followed or you would dishonour yourself and your Clan. I know that with the folks I tended to Play the MW games with we liked to enforce the Rules for the Clan of 1vs1 fighting, Unless the IS broke that rule first.

But it all comes down to Working with what you have. If you want to customize your Mech, Become an ACE pilot and make a lot of Cash and gain prestige, then maybe you could "Customize" a Mech to your choosing. but even the most well known Pilots used Standard Mechs with only slight Variations. I hope they use a similar System that World of Tanks uses, each Mech will have weapons/ gear you can unlock and you can swap out X for Y but only once you've spent the xp to "unlock it". This could be how they allow the "varaints that are typically available for each Mech.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

It all comes down to the MW games, which were basically single player, allowing unrealistic customisation, not to mention other changes to the base game. This has created the expectation that any MechWarrior has immediate access to a personal mech factory which can turn out a custom mech in a few minutes. To go back to the fluff - out of what 100,00 mechs in existance 35 were "customised"?
The original PnP game was multiplayer PvP and all the balances in place were designed for that using stovk mechs, complete with all their faults.
How may online PvP games do you know where you can totally rip apart your "character" and make them something totally different in a few minutes, and keep doing that?

[BerryChunks]

Vollstrecker, on 22 March 2012 - 07:24 PM, said:

I posted my opinion in the other thread, however as having gone through phases where I made the most broken 'mechs ever and then also using nothing but stock variants, I kind of like how Mechwarrior 4 handled it for non-Omni chassis, where you kinda had to keep it within a similar design pattern. Frankly put, some chassis weren't meant to do some things.

Customizing an Inner Sphere Battlemech should be both costly AND time-intensive, especially since this is occurring in real-time. I wouldn't mind terribly if some things were available via real money to speed along the time part some (F2P model) since it doesn't give a "true" advantage, but it should still be prohibitively expensive in-game.

This will also have the bonus effect of making the Omnimechs that become available later on more desirable as well. Also, if they've keeping to the Tabletop rules, you people aspiring to Clantech are going to need to be very good to keep your machines in repair. You need top-notch technicians on top of expensive maintenance costs to keep Clantech in working condition in the Inner Sphere. Those costs are what landed The Black Thorns on Wolcott...

So wrong. IF you've ever played Eve online you know that people who can transform real world currency into better ships sooner has an advantage in a war.

Free person pays zero dollars, receives slower refits, and thus can fight less often, or has to fight as often with less powerful units.
Payer gets faster units that are better. Can fight more often and has a better chance of facing weaker non-paying persons because the non-payers want to play instead of wait.

If the model is based on "pay to get to play sooner" anyone who doesn't pay is automatically behind. And the more people who pay get to play and sooner, the faster they level and get all the goods.

How can you say thats not an advantage?

Javelin156, on 22 March 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

If you read the compendium they can be modified. Inner Sphere would rarely do this because of the cost but could be done if needed. It doesnt dumb the game down. I get what your saying about the chassis. But honestly, this game is going to be free to play. You honestly think your going to get any of your favorite mechs for free. You know we are going to be charged for them. Thats how they will make there money.You may even have to pay to be in a multiplayer campaign.

No game that is truly competitive and successful would offer restricted better weapons for a RMT business model. name me one game that does that. Even with call of duty, that loves whoring RMT and making its consumers pay retarded costs for maps people usually make for free out of love for the game, they never restrict better guns in the game by forcing players to pay. And call of duty isn't what I consider really a good competitive game, even though it's played as such.

It would be suicide to this game and the reputation of the company to offer "power" for RMT.

[Garth Erlam]

Kael Tropheus, on 22 March 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

OP I am exactly the opposite of you. As an old time TT player, what ruined the few games we allowed mech customization was customized mechs. Only one group I briefly played in allowed it as it took away all the negatives of an established mech and replaced it with all positives and you couldnt play your favorite mech since you had to customize it to compete. Fluffwise customizing a mech is a labor intensive process which for anything more than a minor change required sending the mech to the factory for an official varient refit which was costly. Flat out re-engineering a mech outside the established varients required a full engineering team and more money than any one pilot had available. Anything done by the pilot and his tech crew tended to have funny side effects and was never perfect again. I like the module idea and strict chassis and varients, however I will likely be very disappointed to the point of not even playing if what the last dev interview comes true and its full customization. I can understand for clan mechs, thats what omnimechs were designed for, thus the name "omni". Inner sphere mechs were never designed to have weapons swapped out at will. I mean really, can you imagine the ammount of reworking it would take to pull the chain gun from an Apache helicopter and replace it with something else. Balance will be off, ammo belts reworked, all the electronics redone, targeting way off. You are talking a multi-million dollar refurb taking months to do.

I think people like the ability to refit 'Mechs, much like Airforces do today with their loadouts of planes (such as extra fuel tanks for longer flights, Air to Ground missiles, Bombs, Air to Air missiles, etc. for specialised tasks.)

Also, I don't recall anyone at PGI ever, at any point, saying there would be full customization. Where.. was that said exactly?

I can see everyones point of view here - myself, I like moderate to heavy customization, because frankly half the variants in the BT universe have head-scratchingly bizarre loadouts. That means if you can't customize at all the 'Mech is largely useless. However with tweaking, maybe it won't be.

Again these are just my opinions, but I think you can agree that there are times where some customization is by far the lesser of evils.

[Vollstrecker]

Fully custom 'mech loadouts are almost unheard of in the Inner Sphere at this time, as such is both highly expensive and very time-consuming. This is basically only done for high-ranking Nobles and Solaris champions, from what I recall.

I'm in favor of either variant refit kits or a hardpoint 'mechlab for use with salvaged/purchased components. Mercenaries (and pirates) often have to make-do with what they can get, especially the disreputable outfits. After having played with min/max 'mechs in Tabletop and the Mechwarrior series of games, it's often more fun to see what you can do with the stock 'mechs in my opinion.

Let the pilot shine, not the equipment.

[Tuborn]

As in the books, more or less armor and heat sinks, changing out weapon types and sizes, difrent size and types of power plants and structure. Its the not knowing when you run into a Mech, if its stock, a close in fighter, a long range fighter, maybe he is all offinse and no definse. it makes how ever many Mechs we start with X 50 or more.

[Solis Obscuri]

Garth Erlam, on 03 April 2012 - 03:45 PM, said:

I think people like the ability to refit 'Mechs, much like Airforces do today with their loadouts of planes (such as extra fuel tanks for longer flights, Air to Ground missiles, Bombs, Air to Air missiles, etc. for specialised tasks.)

Also, I don't recall anyone at PGI ever, at any point, saying there would be full customization. Where.. was that said exactly?

I can see everyones point of view here - myself, I like moderate to heavy customization, because frankly half the variants in the BT universe have head-scratchingly bizarre loadouts. That means if you can't customize at all the 'Mech is largely useless. However with tweaking, maybe it won't be.

Again these are just my opinions, but I think you can agree that there are times where some customization is by far the lesser of evils.

Everything released so far has variants that are, for the most part, quite useful. Unless 'mech 9 turns out to be a Vulcan or something, I think we're in the clear.

[Eximar]

TerminatorII, on 28 March 2012 - 06:56 PM, said:

FWI it's a repeating connon not a chain gun. The A10 Warthog has a chaingun. (both 30MM)

The A-10's GAU-8 Avenger is a hydraulically operated rotary cannon. The AH-64 Apache has a 30mm M230 chain gun, though.

[Javelin156]

BerryChunks, on 03 April 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

So wrong. IF you've ever played Eve online you know that people who can transform real world currency into better ships sooner has an advantage in a war.

Free person pays zero dollars, receives slower refits, and thus can fight less often, or has to fight as often with less powerful units.
Payer gets faster units that are better. Can fight more often and has a better chance of facing weaker non-paying persons because the non-payers want to play instead of wait.

If the model is based on "pay to get to play sooner" anyone who doesn't pay is automatically behind. And the more people who pay get to play and sooner, the faster they level and get all the goods.

How can you say thats not an advantage?




No game that is truly competitive and successful would offer restricted better weapons for a RMT business model. name me one game that does that. Even with call of duty, that loves whoring RMT and making its consumers pay retarded costs for maps people usually make for free out of love for the game, they never restrict better guns in the game by forcing players to pay. And call of duty isn't what I consider really a good competitive game, even though it's played as such.

It would be suicide to this game and the reputation of the company to offer "power" for RMT.

Hey look at League of Legends, they charge for different characters. Trust me this will be the same here. I have a few friends that have spent hundreds of dollars in Leage of Legends. Its a good game. If they make MWO good people will pay the cash.

Edited by Javelin156, 05 April 2012 - 09:20 AM.

[KurganFr]

One of the things I enjoy most about the tabletop Battletech is the challenge of making do with the limitations of the mechs I am provided with for a given scenario. Certainly, having just played through the MW4:Mercenaries campaign again, there is nothing on the Solaris 7 assault circuit that can stand up against my Hauptmann with three Clan LBX AC20. I am not against customising mechs, but the more customisation you allow, the less unique each mech chassis becomes. Is a Catapult with a pair of PPCs still a Catapult, or is it just an armless Warhammer?

In addition to the standard matches (everything goes), I would love to see matches where only stock chassis are allowed; if you enter with a customised mech, it would automatically set your mech to the stock loadout for that match.

[Damien The Omen Thorne]

Ok. I'm going to wade in here.

** I am ** NOT ** playing the beta ** yet **

So by fixed hard points, do you mean this game works like MW4 where you had a standard config, and can swap the weapon out for another of it's type?

Or am I missing something.

There are positives and negatives inherent in this system. The biggest thing is that a mech will never truly stray far from it's original loadout.

This was actually a set of house rules we incorporated into our TT games. And I have to tell you, it made the game more fun. Sure you'd see someone swap out AC/10s for AC/2s, or an LRM20 for two SRM4 in my case.

All of a sudden you didn't have a freaking Jenner sporting a PPC, being so unrealistic because you literally could not model it on to the pewter.

And for a house rule, it sticks very well.

But I have to imagine the same scenario where you are playing CBT rules, anything that can fit does. And it simply does not fit with what I have seen from IGF and SSs.

From what I have seen, Our developers have decided to model up our mechs to a standard chassis image. And to fit with that they've incorporated the house rule / mw4 standard.

IMHO, to allow otherwise and still remain somewhat photorealistic like they are doing (ever so well), They'd have to drop a bucket load of armor frame design from every chassis and make interchangeable armor plates with hardpoint variations for Every Mech. Not a very tantalising concept from a design POV.

I am now drooling over the keyboard because of anticipation for when I get beta approved.

Please, soon Mr Devs.

[Whoops]

Kael Tropheus, on 22 March 2012 - 04:05 PM, said:

Grimlich you are correct in terms of fluff. However, the earlier mechwarrior games said to hell with fluff and made wholesale customization possible and created a group of spoiled players who think thats what mechwarrior is about. I had high hopes this iteration would continue in the proper steps following MW4(which had more limited customization but still not real battletech) to make the game more like the actual battletech universe but it doesnt appear to be heading that way.

Ah yes, MW4, where you could salvage a mech off the field, look at it's hardpoints, and easily tell it was complete trash to you based off it's weird *** hardpoint allotments. Good times. Also, glad it died on it's title of conception.

To the poster above me: a laser weapon gives you an energy hardpoint, anything fits as long as it's energy, you can stick a ppc in a small lasers place as long as you have the crits & tonnage. Check out youtube now-a-days, should find vids with it, NDA down and all.

additional final words: can we get this one closed? bit of a thread necro ~.^

Edited by Whoops, 11 October 2012 - 07:25 PM.

[GDL Germ]

The customization that is already in the game is enough for me. You an already put anything you want, as long as your mech has the hard points for it. And the tonnage/slots.

Edited by GDL Germ, 11 October 2012 - 07:33 PM.

[Asmosis]

Orzorn, on 22 March 2012 - 04:09 PM, said:

Woah, hold your horses. We'll find that out for sure when April rolls around.

Personally? I expect a hard point system that also has criticals. They've already confirmed criticals are in the game, but the fact that they're including base variants, especially ones that actually visually change appearance, somewhat hints to me that they're going to have hardpoints mixed with criticals. The best of both worlds, really.

I'd like this. The current system offers arguably more flexibility than say MW4 mercs which was the last one i played. That one at least put restrictions on what ballistic weapons could go in a ballistic hardpoint by giving each hardpoint set critical slots. Being able to put a AC20, LRM 20 or gauss rifle on a 35 ton mech is cool but a little silly.

MW4 mercs also let you do fun stuff like put idk 14-16 machine guns on a mech, and while it wasnt efficient at all it could kill stuff since the game was pretty easy

Edited by Asmosis, 11 October 2012 - 09:17 PM.