I've been wondering, since the release of Snord's Heavy Metal Highlander if they are breaking the mold of the Highlander. For your reference I submit Sarna's description of the various Highlanders. I have looked everywhere for details on Snord's Highlander, but cannot find the exact model or details of how her particular Highlander was armed.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Highlander

The Heavy Metal is bugging me. Unlike ANY of the Highlanders out, it has it's lasers in the left arm and not in the right torso. This bugs me on two levels. One is because I have no reason to believe that other than the speakers, her Highlander is an HGN-732 model. Why, other than the c-bill boost and speakers be any different than any other HGN-732 model? (Yeah, yeah, to make it an unique variant, but that is unnecessary. Identical or not, they could call it a separate variant for experience sake the same way that two of the Stalkers are identical save for the extra AMS slot. After frankenmeching them, they are identical anyway...)

I must say that I LIKE the fact they moved the lasers over to the arms, because it makes the lasers so very much more effective than if they were stuck in the chest.

HOWEVER, this leads me to my second and MUCH more important worry.

What if the Heavy Metal is the ONLY Highlander they made this change to? That would mean that Snords Highlander was MUCH, MUCH better than the other variants. Anyone who has remembered to unlock their arms from their torsos knows that the ability to aim your lasers and track targets beyond the torso movement limitations makes those lasers twice as effective.

So, will the rest of the Highlanders be canon, or are they all similarly altered. If not: we have a clear situation where the HERO mech is MUCH, MUCH better than the other variants which means PGI is going against its previously stated policies and promises to keep the HERO mechs equal alternatives to the canon variants.

As an Atlas RS pilot, I would venture to say that it is the best of the Atlas variants, save the D-DC, which is only better because of the ability to mount an area cloaking device (aka ECM aka FUBAR). If the RS was only available as a hero mech, then people would be screaming on how unfair it was that the HERO variant was so much better than the other variants, as it IS that much better.

So, can someone 'in the know' answer the question posed above: are the upcoming Highlanders going to break from canon in their hardpoints/loadouts similarly to the Heavy Metal mech - or - are they going to remain as they are canon and thus INFERIOR to the Heavy Metal?

(And just in case they are going to remain canon (lasers in the right torso), are we going to be able to purchase a non-hero clone of the Heavy Metal? This would be the only fair way to deal with the problem if PGI has overlooked the fact that Snord's Highlander as it is is FAR superior to the other Highlanders expected to be released.)

The following image has scared me. I really don't want PGI to be accused of breaking another promise (real or perceived). Below is the Highlander from the in-game files, if I understand correctly. Note the placement of the lasers in the right torso, which is cannon for ALL of the currently (3050 era) Highlanders, including Rhonda Snord's, unless I am mistaken. Credit: Adridos

One shot kill mechs and/or boats are taking away from the spirit of the game. Because we can super-customize our mechs, we can pull off what no mechwarriors in the history of the canon game could. Even alpha striking in lore and/or the tabletop didn't do all the damage to ONE location on a mech unless the random hit location rolls were all identical. Even a Swayback (Hunchback 4P) with all it's medium lasers didn't all hit in one location, the spread all over the opposing mech.

Here's my solution: Make it so mechs could only fire so many weapons at a time, or a certain percentage of weapons at a time. Perhaps it could be done with allowing only so many possible points of damage per shot. So, for example, if you have a 6 PPC stalker, but you're limited to 20 points worth of damage per trigger pull / pause / pull.

We don't have 10 second rounds in the game like in Classic Battletech, but if we set it up so that you could only put out so much firepower per say, 2.5 seconds. So, you could fire all your PPC's in those 10 seconds, but you would have to stagger your shots throughout that time to get them all off. Unless you were firing at a stationary mech, the odds that you'd continually hit the same spot would be much less than if you could alpha all 60 points of damage to that one spot.

One of the reasons we have double the armor points on our mechs is to make up for the fact that 1. players are better than tabletop mechwarriors and can pinpoint damage on mechs more effectively and 2. we're making ubermechs, not the mechs that made up 99% of all the mechs used by the military and merc corps.

So, splat cats could still carry 6 x SRM 6's, but you wouldn't be able to walk up to something and fire them all and knock a part of a mech off. In tabletop you'd have to roll first to see IF your missiles hit, THEN how many missiles hit the target, THEN randomly roll where each missile hits. If you had to chainfire your 6 packs with one shot every second, then the pilot would actually have to AIM their weapons.

There are already enough games on the market where one shot maims or kills your opponent. Battletech/Mechwarrior is unique because it's sort of like two knights fighting with each other, bashing at each other's platemail hoping to find a weakness and either penetrate and maim/kill your opponent, or beat on them until they are exhausted and give up. Only in this game, instead of physically hitting each other, we shoot at each other from various ranges. But the principle is the same. Work on each other until a weakness is found, hope to exploit that weakness and either force your opponent to eject or cripple the mech so it is combat ineffective.

Warning, incoming stereotypes:

Young gamers look for every exploit and use it to their best advantage. Older, more experienced players are looking for a battletech simulator, or at least something that resembles the knock down, drag out fights like you see on the tabletop. Min-maxing, base capping, jump sniping, alpha strike/boat builds annoy the crap out of us because we either know the lore or are looking for something more challenging and logical. Younger players don't know any better, or even if they do, they know that they don't want to be on the other end of the alpha-striker/boaters, jump snipers, splat cats so they fight fire with fire and do whatever it is they need to win at the cost of the enjoyment of others.

The thing is, with the current meta-game, everyone loses. The old guys get sick of the gimmicky mechs and want to play with the basic, stock mechs because they represent challenging mechs to use, and fall in with a logical and well documented canon. The young guys find the perfect builds, play them for awhile, get bored and walk away.

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Another solution:

Create arena fights where anything goes. So, all the fantastic, tricked out supermechs that are dominating the field can be used in these team or free for all type of fights and the twitch gamers will have a lot of fun there.

Community warfare/ planetary capture would use stock builds, or builds that only allow minor modifications - perhaps earned through loyalty points or via black markets. (For example, you could replace a large laser with a LPLaser or ERLarge Laser, but not a small laser or PPC.) Very few mechwarriors moonlight as advanced engineers. They had a whole team of well-studied techs keeping their war machines running, and those techs had all they could do to keep it running like it was first manufactured to run. To keep a modified mech running, you'd have to set up a completely new supply/logistics chain to keep it supplied, and you'd have to have a really fantastic (NAIS scientist) working directly for you just to make up the plans to get something different to work in a mech that took a couple decades just to design and get all the stock stuff to work.

I am willing to bet that if you had these two modes of play, that you would see the game live on a long, long time. But if we keep going with the current meta-game of uber-specialized, alpha-kill, jump sniping, splat catting the players won't stick around. Stock mechs are all balanced to each other, and flawed. I've never once had the pleasure of fighting a battle with stock mechs only. But my guys are bored. The guys I started playing this game with have already come and gone and I have pretty much replaced them with an entirely new guard of Devil Dogs, and these guys are complaining about the same things the old guard did before they left. Yeah, we all love tricking out our mechs, but in the end, we want to play a game that is balanced and competitive because of our skill as pilots and tacticians rather than who can field the perfect mech.

And yeah, I know now after writing this wall of text that no one will read it. But my conscience wouldn't rest without at least giving it a shot. Us gaming veterans can see how this game is evolving and we know, because we're old guys, what will happen if it keeps going in the direction it SEEMS to be going in. A lot of us don't care about new gadgets/gear/mechs as much as we do about game types, balance, lobbies, the comradary of friendships formed by 'campaigning' together for months on end to expand or defend the borders of our chosen nation. And I'm willing to bet that by the time planetary capture comes, if all of these gimmicky mech-builds aren't regulated to the Solaris arena, the old guard is going to throw up their hands and ask: so, what was the point of all that? Do you really want to go play against a bunch of pop-tarts, splatcats, ECM/invisible lances, and PPC/Gauss boats some more? Or do you want to play a well developed, great game, with a variety of mech builds, all flawed, but all necessary to play a role in a company of mechs set out to perform a mission?

So, there it is PGI. Please take my words to heart. I've got guys who are brand new to Mechwarrior and I've got guys who ran battletech tournaments and played at the Battletech centers among all my friends at House Steiner and in the Devil Dogs. We talk about the future of the game a lot, because we all love the game, the world, the fiction, the whole shebang. I've got guys scouring used book stores trying to find the old novels so they can understand what the old guys are talking about and they're having a blast learning the rich history of pulp science fiction that serves as a foundation for all that is important in the game. And the more they learn, the more they want to play out the historic battles they're reading about. They want to play out 'what if' scenarios like what would happen if the FedCom got sick of the Comstar blackout in the 4th Succession war and decided to attack earth instead of Tikinov. What if Kurita didn't order 'death to all mercenaries' and retained them. What if Victor never left to wipe out the Smoke Jaguar and instead prevented his sister from taking over and wrecking the FedCom? We could play out all this stuff in community warfare. Or, we could play a bunch of endless death matches and the game will disappear in the history of 'just another 1st person shooter.' And BY GOD this game has so much promise to be so much more! Let's make it happen!

Dear developers,

Just a little brainstorm on NARC's and a way to increase their functionality.

NARC's are very hard to hit any mech with, are heavy, and have limited ammo. They work in tabletop because things in tabletop work differently. 20 seconds, or however long NARC lasts isn't like the 6 rounds on tabletop. Games often were decided in 6 rounds, where 20 seconds is nothing in game. HOWEVER, and I'm thinking information warfare and tactics here, perhaps NARCs could be used for other reasons.

NARC beacons could be shot at a place/object/the ground and act as a homing beacon for anything that could read a NARC beacon's signal.

TACTICS: It could be used to designate waypoints/rally points on the fly for commanders and pathfinders.

INFO WARFARE/SUPPORT: They could also be one of the components necessary for calling in air support or artillery strikes. Similar to an artillery beacon in MW4, for reference. It seems to me, if you're going to call in an air or arty strike, you need to have some way to direct the incoming fire, this would be an ideal piece of equipment to use for that purpose.

Here's to hoping everyone out there in this God-forsaken, bleak, rainy, snowy, misty, cloudy, cold world finds a little warmth and good cheer to break up the death throws of winter! Soon the pus sy-willows will bud, the snowdrops will bloom, and the birds will return to sing us all into spring - if we're lucky. Until then, throw off the yoke of uncertainty and doubt and have live a little! Life goes on, whether we deserve it or not, so we mind as well have a good time.

So, raise your glass to God, the coming spring, and to each other because just for today, we're all Irish!

Please read all of the following before answering the poll.

Prologue: Today I was killed when I hopped over a hill into a Splatcat. I had full armor on all torsos and yet, I lost all three, along with an arm. Okay, I was piloting a Jenner. It was, perhaps, a lucky shot. This is not a diatribe on Splatcats. I have enjoyed God Mode in my Raven 3L at times until I get sick of cheating and go back to slogging it out in a more balanced mech. So, here's the solution, and one that would be easy to implement. This solution would appeal and please EVERYONE, even though some people may choose to play in only one mode.

We have two game modes.

1. Historic Mode
2. Fantastic Mode

Historic Mode would allow for Stock Mechs only - as they are bought, no upgrades or customizations allowed. In Classic Battletech novels and lore, with rare exception, these are the mechs that fight their way across the galaxy. To customize or modify a mech requires a great deal of work, and a good deal of money. House armies, and even merc companies like to standardize things so they can order supplies and spare parts according to the mechs they have on their rosters. Quartermasters aren't technical specialists. They see an Atlas RS on their roster, they look in the Chilton's guide for the proper spare parts, order 5000 gallons of 10w40, and generic spec windshield wipers for that model. They don't know that your mech has neon, double bladed windshield wipers, uses 10w30 synthetic oil, and runs a 350 engine, and they don't care. They are a cog in a great war machine.

Fantastic Mode would be the mode we're playing in now. Everyone has their own dropship with an army of techs, scientists, and a corner on the black market or royal storehouses for the specialized parts they need to operate their Formula-4 unique mechs. They fight a thousand battles a month, in which every battle their mech gets trashed and within minutes it is completely rebuilt, overhauled, and even trimmed in a new paint job, if not equipped with a whole new coolant system, Extended Ranged weapons traded out for LRM racks, and so on. Your mechs are a quartermaster's nightmare, along with your entire staff and crew, and you are the God-Diva-Queen-King of all battlemech customization. There is nothing short of the SDF-1 that can match your mech in unique godliness, and you'd have it no other way.

Back to brass tacks (though that was fun writing):

User Accounts would have two modes as well. SO: players could play in either mode with their same stables. The only major change that would be necessary is to allow for a button that would switch their mech loadout from stock to modified.

Re: Community Warfare and matchmaking:

Not knowing how community warfare is going to work I would suggest one of two things.

1. Allow everyone to play in the same inner sphere map, but select 'historic' or 'fantastic' before the drop. This will work if who we fight is a proxy of who we're 'actually' fighting for the planet. I doubt this will happen because let's say that 'Lambda Lambda Lambda' controls planet Zardoz, and the 'Omega Mu's' want to capture it. The game isn't going to make the 'Omega Mu's' wait until the next time the triple L's show up to play as a team again, if ever again. A proxy team will be put into place to defend the planet. Then again, it could be that the matchmaking computer gives the team the choice to defend their planet. If so, the defender could choose whether to defend in 'historic' or 'fantastic' mode and the attacker would have to choose whether to accept said contract to attack it.

2. Have two servers with two separate Inner Spheres. One is 'historic' mode with only those types of mechs and the other 'fantastic.' The 'historic' inner sphere could also put into place more 'realistic' systems of supply, battlemech repair/rearm times, pilot injury, whatever. This would go beyond the 'simple fix' I suggested above, but might very well go towards pleasing the 'old guard.' The 'Fantastic' mode could go towards pleasing those who are playing this game as if it's Call of Duty VII or whatever the young whipper-snappers are up to these days.

WHY would I actually CHOOSE to play 'historic' mode???

Many of the stock mechs are balanced, and flawed to equal measures. Most run extremely hot, have limited ammo, and have terrible armor allocation. However, if EVERYONE runs stock, EVERYONE is equally challenged. ONE ECM tricked out D-DC could reign hell upon a map if they let it be unleashed. But in 'historic' mode, only the Raven is equipped with ECM, BAP, NARC, TAG an SRM-6 and 2 medium lasers. It's NOT designed to knock out any mech on the field. It's a SCOUT, and it would make a fantastic scout even in 'historic' mode with it's stock loadout. In 'fantastic' mode, it would still be 'fantastical.' Role warfare would be essential as no mech type could do it all.

Understand this, trollmasters of the forum. I'm not trying to push fantastic over historic or vice versa. I cringe when I think of giving up my speedster Awesome and wicked-fast Jenner to play in 'historic' mode. At the same time, I would be reassured to know that I wouldn't be facing splatcats, Atlases with blanket cloaking devices and invincible Raven 3L's. Even IF or WHEN they 'fix' the imbalances, new ones will crop up and be exploited. That exploitation is much more limited in 'historic' mode using stock only mechs.

Epilogue:
If I COULD argue for a change to be made immediately to my above proposal I would like to customize ONE mech at least with some minor weapon or armor changes representing the fictional mech that my fictional hero was most famous for piloting. This appeals to the role-play part of me. But even then, I fear, I'd be breaking what I'm trying to build here with this suggestion. Then again, think of the glory of winning with what you are given rather than what you WANT.