Pale Rider 010, on 08 April 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:
My problem with penalizing teamwork is this:
In the past, Mechwarrior games have been about an arms race, as the developers have covered here extensively. There was little incentive to take a light or medium mech, because as fast as you were, an Assault could still core you with one well placed alpha strike. That as not fun. Being a supporting player earned you nothing. If you softened up that assault mech with a barrage of LRMs, but you're not the one who got the killing blow, chances are you got nothing. Also not fun. If team play isn't rewarded, or god forbid penalized, we're back to the old arms race where everyone wants an assault mech, everyone wants to be the hero, and all of the work they're putting into Role Warfare is wasted.
There is another option to help balance overly powerful clan tech. Numbers.
When the clans come, put four lances against a binary. 16 IS mechs, 10 Clan mechs. If that's weighted too heavily in IS favor, three lances (12 mechs) for the IS and 10 clanners. We could even get something in between.
We need to preserve Role Warfare if this game is going to become something really worth playing.
Role Warfare doesn't exactly have to exclude Zelbrigen, but the roles are markedly different for clans. A defender in an IS lance would use its charging capabilities to interrupt another mech wailing on its lance mate, but in a Zellbrigen environment, you'd see the defender mech "call" heavier mechs and intentionally get in their way to ensure they don't engage his/her binary mates, but you would not likely see a defender mech interrupt a fight, as that would be against Zellbrigen.
However, there would have to be some concessions, since Zellbrigen says that area of effect weapons are prohibited, and no indirect fire is allowed (along with C3 and TAG lasers), so certain scouting roles would pretty much be out.
I understand wanting to keep roles, and I do to, but I also want Clans to actually FEEL like Clans. In every past game the Clans were just the bigger dudes with the better tech with none of the drawbacks of coming from an extremely alien society. I want players to actually experience that society, instead of being able to just hop on the tech bandwagon for the best stuff.