186 replies to this topic

[OneEyed Jack]

LordDante, on 07 March 2013 - 04:04 AM, said:

bring em on !

You know they have Ultra AC20s, right?

[hashinshin]

I think the general consensus irght now is Clan players want full clan tech, and IS players want Clan tech out of their game.

So the 8v12/10v12 suggestions seem to appease both audiences.

[Jay Kerensky]

One group of IS mechs should face 2 groups of Clans - wait for it......

Then the Clans should have to bid off mechs to see which group gets to fight that battle.

The losing bid group then gets batched into the next Clan vs IS match.

[Congzilla]

Let IS mechs use clan tech, problem solved.

[Belorion]

Jay Kerensky, on 07 March 2013 - 04:57 AM, said:

One group of IS mechs should face 2 groups of Clans - wait for it......

Then the Clans should have to bid off mechs to see which group gets to fight that battle.

The losing bid group then gets batched into the next Clan vs IS match.

That would have a slight chance of working in 8/12 mans, but just about 0 chance of working in pugs.

People won't sit around in their drop for 30 min while the other side decideds what mechs they are bringing.

[J0anna]

Noobzorz, on 06 March 2013 - 11:35 PM, said:

It might be sacrilege to say it, but in a case like this, I think the lore should take a backseat. Games like Dawn of War have ignored the lore when it comes to determining relative strengths of factions (i.e. Tyranid and/or Space Marines are thoroughly unstoppable and that's all there is to it), and the effect on my enjoyment of the game is negligible.

If I want to take my cataphract into a dust up with a mad cat, I think I should be able to do it without being inherently disadvantaged. Because that sounds like fun to me, and a lot less work for the balance team (who wind up effectively balancing two separate games) so that they can focus on more important stuff.

Absolutely not, this game is not just another first person shooter. IS tech is 3050 is not slightly inferior to clan tech, the best the IS has is "old before the star league fell apart". To implement some form of 'dumbed down' clan tech would take this game from reinvigorating the BT franchise to creating a new game. I for one would hate to see it.

The cataphract (which is actually 5 tons lighter than a timberwolf) should never win a one on one fight unless the clan pilot is somehow greatly inferior. Clan weapons, shoot cooler, longer, weigh less, take less slots and hit harder - they are leagues better than IS weapons in 3050 (that will change over the next 10 years). The comguards won through superior numbers and artillery (something the clans don't use). Airpower is roughly equal, though clan pilots are generally superiorly trained. For infantry, the IS can't compete at all.

You may think that balanced clan weapons are 'fair', but infact 'balanced' clan weapons are simply not BT. There are a great many of us who play this game because we love Battletech. The only way to balance the two sides is through numbers (whether you use BV, weights, elo, whatever). I for one think the OP's idea is pretty innovative.

Properly implemented, this game has almost unlimited potential. Even if we just re-create the battle of Tukayyid, CW would be amazing. If you read 'Lost Destiny" Phelan says something to the effect, "We'll have to kill 1.3 Comstar mechs just to keep us even." It's true that on the newer larger maps, the clan mechs will have a greater advantage, but on city maps that advantage is reduced. PGI has the final say, so lets see what they come up with, they're doing a pretty good job so far.

[Cairbre]

I think the major balancing point will come in refit costs. A clan player should be expected to win, and need to in order to keep their mech repaired. For that matter, Clan players should have a secondary resource- honor. Similar to ELO, they gain it for killing larger mechs, other Clanners, or multiple mechs in a match. They lose it for dying to those freebirth scum, and thus their standing in the clans decreases. I don't think they'll go for limiting the actual mechs you can use to your honor- but I would love to see the customizability of the Clan mechs limited by honor. If your neutral or unfavorable, you're stuck with stock configurations and variants. As your honor, or even better, your rank goes up, you gain a number of slots you can customize on every chassis you own.

This would actually tie in very well to the tournament idea- down the road, hold a grueling, single elimination duels for Bloodname tournaments. All Bloodnamed players would permanently get customizability of all slots, and would grant significant bonus honor to those who killed them, if they were clans. They would also lose more honor for dying ot freebirth scum without killing at least 2 enemy mechs, or one heavier mech.

This would keep customizability an option, limit the overwhelming potential of the Omnimech, and enforce the Clan experience- they would be glory hounds and hot dogs, more concerned with their honor than victory or defeat, lest they lose tonnage to the absurd number of weapons on many chassis.

[Noobzorz]

Moenrg, on 07 March 2013 - 05:11 AM, said:

Talk about "dumbing down." I for one would hate to see it.
Lots of text.

You will hate it more when the game is totally unbalanced. We don't have unit costs the way we do in TT, so asymmetric balance in that sense is incredibly difficult. Even if they do implement 3v6 battles, who is going to want to play on the team of 6, when what you're doing essentially amounts to taking control of a spot normally reserved for the AI in comp stomps like horde mode in Gears of War.

Besides, if they've gone the coolant pod direction, then it's clear they're allowing some liberties with the lore (not to mention no 360 degree radar, NARCs, etc.). The idea of remaining totally pure to the battletech franchise at the cost of gameplay is silly, and doing so without sacrificing gameplay requires not only an enormous amount of resources, but requires restrictions on how we can use the mechs we purchase. Games Workshop doesn't require that their space marines are lore realistic, and when they experimented with optional ruleset where they were, people hated it because is was totally not fun to play (against, that is; people found it extremely frustrating to throw unit after unit after unit at the powerful space marines, few though they were).

After all, in the canon the clan stuff is lighter, stronger, has more range, is harder to blow up, etc. It's just plain old strictly better, with no associated tradeoff. Even if they could balance such a thing to the point where a player using them could be expected to defeat his equal 50% of the time over the course of many matches, I, for one, would prefer to play the smaller, more elite force 100% of the time. I expect I am in the vast majority: it's a lot more fun to be the lone ranger than it is to be part of a big swarm throwing yourself at the big bads (which is generally incredibly frustrating). Taken all together, this is a neat idea, but it doesn't sound feasible to me. For that reason, I am pretty confident that they wont pursue an asymmetric approach, and I wouldn't blame them one bit.

Edited by Noobzorz, 07 March 2013 - 06:01 AM.

[Belorion]

I say go for superior clan tech. Then give the IS mechs a chance to equip it after spending gxp or winning a certain amount of battles against the clan or what not.

[General Taskeen]

4v8 or whatever, is still unbalanced, no matter how you look at it. If it were a private match setup, cool, but randomly matching a Clan Mech player against more IS Mechs is dumb. You either bring plenty of cheddar or be the better pilot. A Mech does not always make the pilot, its the other way around. Current balance is also extremely cheddar, front loaded SRMs firing all at once, for example is easily exploitable due to no ripple firing/delay between each missile.

[hashinshin]

General Taskeen, on 07 March 2013 - 06:01 AM, said:

4v8 or whatever, is still unbalanced, no matter how you look at it. If it were a private match setup, cool, but randomly matching a Clan Mech player against more IS Mechs is dumb. You either bring plenty of cheddar or be the better pilot. A Mech does not always make the pilot, its the other way around. Current balance is also extremely cheddar, front loaded SRMs firing all at once, for example is easily exploitable due to no ripple firing/delay between each missile.

what the **** is chedder?

[Symber]

Personally, I'd like to see the matches be 8v12 (or as many have said, whatever number balances things) but have some drop options. Clan vs IS at 8 vs 12, Clan vs Clan and IS vs IS as 12 vs 12. That way if you want to fight an even battle you can and if you want to destroy the other side you can.

[Sayyid]

There wont be clans for a GOOD LONG WHILE, so dont worry your little heads over them.

This game is months behind schedual, and we would be lucky to see the clans by 2014.

[Skaroth]

hashinshin, on 07 March 2013 - 06:02 AM, said:

what the **** is chedder?

cheeze builds... Raven 3L comes to mind.

[Noobzorz]

Sayyid, on 07 March 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

There wont be clans for a GOOD LONG WHILE, so dont worry your little heads over them.

This game is months behind schedual, and we would be lucky to see the clans by 2014.

Totally, and I'm not concerned. The more I think about it the more I am convinced this is never happening.

[Tombstoner]

Match maker will take care of this. clan tech will let you slaughter people for a few games and it will boost you up in ratting to where your balanced relative to your skill and the community regardless of tech. so the best IS can take down lesser skilled clan mechs. balance emerges naturally.

[Whompity]

I agree with the sentiment that IS vs Clan with lopsided numbers is a good compromise of easy to implement and closest to lore. Can always bump the $ of salvaged clan tech so that there is an additional incentive to play IS... what would a clanner want with a salvaged IS non-ER medium laser? There'd need to be some analysis done on what ratio works best, but I think it'd be fun to play either side.

[Karl Streiger]

Tombstoner, on 07 March 2013 - 06:37 AM, said:

so the best IS can take down lesser skilled clan mechs. balance emerges naturally.

but there shouldn't be lesser skilled claners.

[Hotthedd]

xRatas, on 07 March 2013 - 01:50 AM, said:

I hope tech stays pure.

If we put clan tech to IS mechs, IS tech becomes useless, and trials end up even more horribly outclassed.

I like the slow firing clan weapons, after all, they are so elite and great, they are not supposed to miss their shots anyway. So no harm done there.

Sorry, but if I have a chance to salvage a CMLas, I WILL find a way to equip it, or fire my tech crew and hire a tech that WILL equip it on my 'mech.

Mixtech is canon, and will be necessary to balance the game.

[Endgame124]

Hotthedd, on 07 March 2013 - 06:58 AM, said:

Sorry, but if I have a chance to salvage a CMLas, I WILL find a way to equip it, or fire my tech crew and hire a tech that WILL equip it on my 'mech.

Mixtech is canon, and will be necessary to balance the game.

Sure, its cannon - something like 3055 or so? So in 2018, I'm OK with mixtech. Mixtech in 3050 is like trying to plug your GeForce GTX 680 into your Pentium 100 - even if you can over come the physical slot and power problems, the rest of the system still isn't going to be able to really get value out of the 680...