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Assumption: actual Conquest is practically Assault with some bases to cap and no or rather few incentivation for capping them.
Matches usually last longer (when you can't get the last enemy light mech), earnings are far lower than faster ending matches in Assault. I personally play only the latter, and even with the resource cbill boost of the latest patch, you simply don't earn as much as you do in Assault game mode (notice: I don't consider premium boost, I don't have it).
Following the ideas below, resources awards for Conquest mode should be restored to previous values (25 cbills per oil unit mined) and resources addressing per team should be adjusted accordingly to a fairly longer match time (maybe even 20 minutes to last a round).
All the actual system is fine. Consume the enemy team by chasing them all the time, deplete their respawns before the resource limit, you win. Capture all the bases with no enemy players alive, you win (the enemy won't be able to respawn). Reach the 750 resource limit before the end time of the match, you win.
1) Respawns.
First of all the game mode should be overhauled with respawns. So for all of the players that "no, we don't want respawns" sorry, this isn't for you.
But I'm happy if you find other ways to re-ballast conquest without them and feel free to share them. This system is built around respawns, so without them there's not much discussion.
Assumption: fully captured friendly bases AND free of any enemy stepping in the cap for a whole minute before, are a safe respawn location for allies. The respawn happens with the mech performing an orbital drop with temporary rocket lifters.
Game starts pretty much like what happens now, each team owns the starting base and all the team start already dropped. Die, you can have 1 or more respawn tickets, depending on the class and tonnage you've selected before the game start.
Once the game develops you can chose on which base you want to respawn, pretty much how you do it in any Battlefield game, you see the map and then click the desired respawn:
- -Green bases are safe (and belong to your team since they have been capped) and you can perform the re-entry at any time,
- -yellow bases belong to your team but an enemy has stepped in the cap within the last minute (or is in the cap preventing your respawn by capturing that base),
- -red bases belong to the enemy,
- -grey bases are neutral or being captured.
2) Tonnage and respawn cap
Each player can chose which class to use during conquest. Matchmaking can be troublesome but since the ton and respawn cap is the same for both teams, it shouldn't be horribly unbalanced, since each player will tend to employ up to 200 tons.
Tonnage and respawn caps are performed the following way: you chose between 1 of each classes and this allows you to employ a limited number of mechs with a maximum tonnage cap. See the following list:
- Assault class: you can queue TWO assault mechs with a 200ton max cap.
- Heavy class: you can queue THREE heavy mechs with 200ton max cap
- Medium class: you can queue FOUR medium mecsh with 200 ton max cap
- Light class: you can queue FIVE light mechs with 175 ton max cap.
A player choses to queue up two Awesomes? Fine, he employs 160 tons of 200 for the Assault class. The bonus is then 25% of the free tons employed that are 40; then this player will get (40x25)/100=10% cbills and XP boost.
A player that employs two Atlases will then get no bonus. A player employing 1 Atlas and 1 Stalker will get 3,75% cbills and XP boost. And so on.
The same is for heavies, mediums and so on.
The only class with lower tonnage is the light class. This is done by several factors: getting 200 tons cap limit would allow them to reach 6 respawns (which is 1 above the maximum for medium mechs class employers) and lights can be a pretty much powerful tool in conquest, since when they just step into any enemy base they can halt their respawns for 1 whole minute.
Plus, if you queue up 5 spiders, you will get a huge 18,75% bonus in rewards.
3) Mixing Mech Classes
The system above can be tweaked by mixing up different mech classes, but for each mech you queue up for the following class you'll be limited by the max tonnage cap and a total max number of respawns of 5.
Example. You select TWO hunchbacks and then you want to spawn an Atlas. You can, but then you've chosen to use all of your 200 tons and you will be able to get back in game 2 times (you start the game with 1 HBK, then rewpawn 1 time with the Atlas and a last time with the second HBK). This without getting any reward since you didn't left any tonnage unemployed.
Some examples:
2 Dragons, 1 Awesome. (200 tons total)
1 HBK, 1 Centurion, 1 Atlas. (200 tons total)
2 Jenners, 1 Cataphract, 1 Dragon. (200 tons total)
4 spiders, 1 Atlas (5% reward boost for not employing 20 tons)
4 Commandos, 1 Atlas. (200 tons total)
1 Dragon, 1 Atlas, 1 Cicada. (200 tons total)
In few words you can mix up whatever you like, albeit you'll be limited to 200 tons and 5 maximum respawns.
4a) Troubles and weaknesses
To avoid exploiters that select a and spawn a single spider and would like to get a huge 38,75% reward.. You can't, you're forced to either queue 4 other lights. You don't spawn (afk or "disconnecters"), you don't get any reward or very limited rewards like what happens now, since you don't perform any action during the game.
The above hower poses up a serious trouble, whenever a player decides to afk/disconnect, crashes to desktop and so on. You'll lose a considerable amount of tonnage/firepower on the ground for your team.
The only way to limit the above trouble would be to allow a player to reconnect to the game within 2-3 minutes, if this doesn't happen than another "launching" player ("pug") can join the match, but should be limited to queue mechs within the max that the previous player employed before disconnecting.
However the above i suppose it's tremendously tricky to perform both by servers clients and coding and would force the newcoming player to play with a limited tonnage limit defined by the player that he substitutes.. so.. nope.
So.. the backdoor (still tricky but possible) would be to distribute the tonnage left by the disconnected or afk player to the other 7 players of the team suffering the permanent loss. If the disconnection happens at the start of the match then any of the 7 other team members will get 30 extra tons to play with.
The latter however would have to take in account an interface allowing players not to queue up the mechs before launching the game from those available in the owned mechbay, but should allow each player to select the following mechs in real time as soon as a respawn is possible.
EG. You die, but you've employed an Atlas at the beginning of the game. You then are able to select which of the owned mechs you have within the 100 tons game limit. An allied player disconnects?
Your cap is then raised up to 130 tons. So you can spawn 1 Dragon, 1 Raven and 1 Jenner.
You've already used up all the 200 tons and you're spectating the match? You're awarded with 30 tons and you can rewpawn back in game with a light mech (a commando or a spider for now, since we miss a 30 tons light).
You don't get use your respawn the you then will get 7,5% cbills and xp bonus whether if you leave the match or you chose to not employ those extra 30 tons.
4b) Trial mechs; weakness when you don't own many mechs.
Solution: you can repeatedly employ the same trial mech. Eg. You own an Atlas but no medium mechs, you can queue up 1 dragon and 1 cicada from the trial list, or 2-3 times the Commando, depending from the trial mech rotation.
However, since repairs have gone (and the trial mechs rotation would lock certain tonnage combinations), you should be able to get back with the same destroyed mech that you employed in the previous respawn/life.
I would prefer not to be able to perform this, but we have to understand those players that may have owned mechs but use 1 engine rotating it in their mechbay or those who don't have all the necessary weapons and so on. And since repairs and rearms are gone..
5) Repair bays.
Adding repair bays that works for repairing allied mechs and are near and powered by any conquered oil rig.. could literally change up all the above and prevent respawns. But this would be a totally different question and game mode compared to the above.
So.. thoughts? I'd like to hear what you think, if you like this or not, how you think this could be tweaked, or how this system could go fubar (I'm certain there are still many aspects left that I haven't covered yet)
Edited by John MatriX82, 09 January 2013 - 03:26 AM.
