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The goal of this post is to give suggestions/thoughts/fantasies on how to make the Mechwarrior Online game more simulation aspects of what I think piloting a multi-ton bipedal war machine would be like. NOTE: THESE ARE MY OPINIONS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT WORK FOR THIS GAME.
In this post (practically a novel) I go over my thoughts/ideas on the following subjects:
- Targeting
- LOS-Targeting
- Movement
- Heat
- ECM
- Missiles
TARGETING
This is where I suggest the targeting reticle becomes a visual identifier of all the penalties against you. Currently we have a small circle to show where your Mech’s arms are pointing and a cross to show where your torso is pointing. I am assuming that the current implementation has the center of both targeting items be the point that a ray trace happens from the weapon.
Instead of using the exact center of those reticle to be the point that the shot will go, make it a RANDOM POINT within the reticles. The reticles now contain the point that your shot will go which might not be the center of it.
This might not seem like much of a difference with the size of the current circle, but say you start incurring penalties from movement, heat, etc... then the size of the reticle increases making it harder to hit things unless they are closer.
Personally, I would make the base diameter of the reticles be based off the short range of the weapons in the current activated group. For weapons not in the active group they would be greyed out instead of gold. You would end up with a bunch of circles that would move together when aiming like normal and grow together as penalties start incurring.
LOS-TARGETING
Currently in MWO if an ally sees an enemy then I can target that enemy and start locking on with missiles. Doesn’t this seem like it is taking away from when/if C3 comes out and is supposed to do the whole target sharing? What I would like to see is that you only get the little red triangle over an enemy that you can either see or that is TAG/NARCed. If an ally sees enemies but you don’t then some audio indication is fine, showing up on the minimap/battlemap is fine (as if the spotter is calling out movements), and maybe even a number popping up by the spotter showing how many mechs he has spotted would be good.
Picture a light mech scout racing ahead on River Colony. He goes water and crouches behind some rock formations as his slower lance mates move out from the base. The scout LOS spots 3 enemy mediums and gets the the red arrows over them. His lance mates hear the sound of enemy mechs coming into sight (from the scout) and see that the scout mechs blue triangle is sporting the number 3 by it so that they know he has spotted 3 unique mechs. This number should basically follow the tracking decay (2 seconds) so that if they are coming in and out of view the 3 won’t be flashing to tons of different numbers fast.
I think I would even be ok with the arrows showing where enemies are but the biggest thing is to give the C3 a place to live and be usefull.
MOVEMENT
Enemy movement is in, the faster they move the harder the are to hit which corresponds well to the Battletech rules and makes sense.
Now how do you make it harder for yourself to hit because of your own movement? To represent the penalties for walking and running for hitting an enemy, use those penalties as increases to the size of the targeting reticle. This is where I would let the developers try out different ways for it to effect the reticles, either increasing the radius of the circle by a set amount per penalty or making it a percentage increase. In my imagination, I would see mechs moving at top speed to get into position and then slowing down to get more accurate shots off.
Now to break away from classic Battletech rules, I would personally like to see three speed zones. From standing still to some unknown speed would show up green on the speed bar and would incur no penalty. From this slow moving speed to the walking/cruising speed would show up as yellow and incur a minor aiming penalty. From the cruising speed to max speed would be considered running and incur a larger aiming penalty. The speed indication bar should have lines marking the points at which the penalties start being applied so that way you know where you are going to set the speed and for what purpose.
Personally I would like to see what would happen (gameplay wise) if, while you hold down a turn your speed would automatically start decreasing until it hits the “green” sub walking zone. This one is just a quick “what if” though.
HEAT
There is a heat scale that goes up a little while you run and a bunch more when you start shooting. But lets add in the real fun stuff. Right now it seems like a 0-100% heat scale where when you hit 100% your mech auto shuts down which you can override. Lets get some more technical stuff in with heat management.
Lets keep the look of the heat scale but mark it off like the proposed speed scale. Mark the different points where your system will try and shut down your mech which is numerous up until the very top which then you can’t help but to shut down. Give penalties to speed when your mech is too hot so you can’t move as fast. For heat shutdowns give a 2 second warning so that players have time to actually hit override before being shut down. As the heat scale creeps up past the different levels randomly check every few seconds to see if ammo starts cooking off, make people WANT to have and use C.A.S.E.
With heat working as thus, make it a REAL detriment to actually shutting down in the middle of a fight by increasing the length of time it takes to boot up the mech. This will also make the “quick ignition” skill more useful.
ECM
This has been a huge debate on the forums so I thought I would throw in my 2 cents, take it or leave it, these are just ideas....
The Battletech rules say ECM does make a bubble of jamming capabilities out to 180 meters (6 hexes). What those rules state that ECM does is disrupt Artemis IV, Active Probes, NARC, and C3.
I would essentially make it act the same way in MWO. A bubble around the ECM machine would be created with a 180 meter radius. If an opposing mech with BAP which would normally be able to detect mechs to a longer range has an ECM mech in that extra range, it would instead get a signal that it is being jammed but would still detect mechs in the standard sensor range (800 m?). I would also reduce the range that normal sensors pick up the ECM bubbled mechs (400 m? maybe) but no jamming notification.
Once a mech has been picked up that is under the effect of an ECM bubble it should be able to be targeted as normal, even with LRMs. The ECM would block Artemis IV so that LRM spreads won’t gain the benefit from the tightening that Artemis IV provides.
For NARC, the missile launch of the NARC itself should not be affected by ECM. Once it attaches though, the signal it radiates out will be nullified by the ECM bubble, but if that NARC beacon leaves the bubble it will work as intended.
TAG should work normally in all cases.
This system will still allow ECM equipped mechs to be able to “sneak” around by nullifying the extra BAP range and reducing the standard probe range but it would not make a bubble of non-targeting.
MISSILES
Why is a flight of LRMs so scarry? If it is currently coming from a single LRM20 launcher that is up to 36 (20 x 1.8) points of damage seeking you out. For Light mechs this is just a matter of getting battered to all kingdom come or getting behind an object (preferably not a team-mate for their sake) and letting the missiles impact there.
This is a bit more tricky of a system to balance out. LRMs are a support weapon used from the back field to lob clustered death at distant enemies, sure, but they shouldn’t be 100% accurate or as easily negated by taking the 3-5 second travel time to step behind a building.
Not all missiles are guided. Like putting in a Artemis IV system, LRMs need Semi-guided missiles to be able to utilize the effects of the system along with NARC and TAG systems. If regular LRM missiles are used then it should be a basic indirect fire attack at an enemy with maybe a little seeking but very little.
The indirect fire requires a spotter as normal but is even harder to hit. Not only are you taking into account that the firing mech may be moving, or that the target may be moving, or that the firing mech has no LOS to the target, but also the spotter may be moving and have difficult terrain (woods) to spot through to direct the shot. I am thinking that if you don’t have LOS then all those salvos cruising over hills and buildings should be hard to hit an enemy. Also, don’t forget to include range into the factor of being able to hit. If a target was out in the open standing still, and a spotter was watching him standing still, and a firing mech with LRMS is at Long Range standing still there should only be about a 25% chance to hit... and if a hit does occur, there is a random amount of missiles that will actually impact.
I think this is the hardest area for making any suggestions, but the first thing that comes to mind is to have missiles travel a bit faster. Second, make LRMs have subgroups of missiles that do the weaving like SRMs (this might already be there, it is hard to tell what is going on in those clouds of flying death) so that there are chances for lots to if if their groups are tight at the time of impact or chances for only a few to hit if the groups are spread at the time of impact.
