21 replies to this topic

[Gateway to the next life]

One thing I've always been confused about regarding Mech Games (and Mechwarrior is not exception) is the insistence on having hands on the robots and yet having no apparent way of using them in the game. Many first person shooter type games have an option where you can fight with your hands in some way if you don't have a gun, or use your hands to hold a blade weapon. One thing I love about some of the Anime shows with mechs is the serious damage that is often possible with hand-to-hand combat between mechs, and have often longed for such an option when at REALLY close range (i.e. city fighting) in Mechwarrior. I mean, if an enemy is right in front of me and I have no option but to let my Atlas’s PPCs recharge isn't that a little ridiculous? I should be able to take one of those huge arms and just squash the guy. I hope at some point an installment of Mechwarrior (maybe this one?) could have such an option (other than just ramming mechs that is).

[KitLightning]

Ask yourself how often would you end up in a situation where Hand-to-Hand could be used as an effective means of combat? Then ask yourself how much animation would have to be made just for that very rare instance of a Hand-to-Hand encounter?

Its not just setting up the arms/hands to be rigged for animated purpose nor just having the hands able to collide with other player driven assets in the game with a damage inflicted as the result. Not to say what happens if and when you successfully dealt damage to an opponent by the means of your hands, what would happen to you and the hands actuators? Are you dealt damage too and are you up for having the actuators in the hand and arm ruined in the process?

Most importantly, is it worth the developments time to assure that such a niche is present in the game, I'd say its as low a priority as possibly can be. imho it could be Backlogged into eternity.

[Jost]

KitLightning, on 04 June 2012 - 05:42 AM, said:

Ask yourself how often would you end up in a situation where Hand-to-Hand could be used as an effective means of combat? Then ask yourself how much animation would have to be made just for that very rare instance of a Hand-to-Hand encounter?

Its not just setting up the arms/hands to be rigged for animated purpose nor just having the hands able to collide with other player driven assets in the game with a damage inflicted as the result. Not to say what happens if and when you successfully dealt damage to an opponent by the means of your hands, what would happen to you and the hands actuators? Are you dealt damage too and are you up for having the actuators in the hand and arm ruined in the process?

Whether tabletop rules have any relevance in this discussion is uncertain, but it's worth pointing this out:

Melee strikes (both punch and kick) are a definite part of the tabletop game. Your question about damage inflicted is addressed there. And incidentally, it's not a "niche" rule on the tabletop...nearly every game I've ever played has included one or more kick or punch attacks. That may be a consequence of the type of players I play with most often, who generally like to close.

And yes, I know the devs have said no melee for now. I'm fine with that. I'm just replying to the specific questions in KitLightning's post.

[Polymorphyne]

This question has really been done to death

The hands on a battlemech are part of the design of that battlemech- the designs are all firmly established, time honoured things, and removing the hands would conflict with those designs severely.

Also, hands have a variety of uses that go beyond melee combat (and are actually more important than melee combat).

A hand has alot of utility.
-It can clear debris (either out of the mechs way, or off a mech that has collapsed under debris)
-It can do all of the basic field engineering stuff you would normally need a forklift or a crane or a bulldozer to do.
-It provides insurance against falling (in that a hand can reach out and brace against the fall or stabilize the mech)
-Once fallen, it provides a mechanism to better enable the mech to get back up. (You try getting up after a fall without using your hands, its not easy and definatly not within a 100 ton humanoid machines range of motion)
- It provides the mech with the capacity to lift and carry various things, ranging from supplies, loot or even the escape pods of friendly mechs
- It provides something to put in front of a mechs cockpit to try and block that damn hatchetman from ramming its own melee weapon into your face.

[KitLightning]

That Melee attacks may be common in tabletop matches is more due to the nature of that particular type of game and that the players eventually will have moved their 'Mechs close enough for such attacks to happen or as you said that they may have a fetish for such (sorry for rewording you a bit, but I felt oddly compelled to add the fetish part). Sadly there are some elements from the tabletop that will never transfer well into a multiplayer environment of a CBT game, Melee attacks falls under that since it involves both animation, physics and damage multipliers to be written for this sort of attacks specifically.

[Adridos]

There's no use for them in the game, but the design itself has it's purpose. Either carry all the loot with them, or....

Edited by Adridos, 04 June 2012 - 07:03 AM.

[Adrienne Vorton]

hm to be honest i don´t really need it...if they implement it, okay, fine...if not...i never missed it in any PC game...

[BlackMoore]

non-issue. Have never worried about it in any other MW or BattleTech game. If it gets added, cool. If not, whatever.

[Rodney28021]

Hands are not going to be used in this game at launch. But maybe some time in the future, they might be. Hands are more important in TT and RP games.

[Team Leader]

The hands are there so the mechs can lift weights and become stronger, obviously.

[Masterofm]

Jost, on 04 June 2012 - 06:21 AM, said:

Whether tabletop rules have any relevance in this discussion is uncertain, but it's worth pointing this out:

Melee strikes (both punch and kick) are a definite part of the tabletop game. Your question about damage inflicted is addressed there. And incidentally, it's not a "niche" rule on the tabletop...nearly every game I've ever played has included one or more kick or punch attacks. That may be a consequence of the type of players I play with most often, who generally like to close.

I hope your tabletops were better then mine since a player tried to see if he could use his mech's hand to rip a tree from the ground and throw it at another mech.....

The game has it as a purpose, but generally in any shooter type of game melee generally looks extremely clunky especially considering that mechs are already clunky enough it might make people look like overstuffed kids with mittens batting at each other.

[Rodney28021]

Jost, on 04 June 2012 - 06:21 AM, said:

Whether tabletop rules have any relevance in this discussion is uncertain, but it's worth pointing this out:

Melee strikes (both punch and kick) are a definite part of the tabletop game. Your question about damage inflicted is addressed there. And incidentally, it's not a "niche" rule on the tabletop...nearly every game I've ever played has included one or more kick or punch attacks. That may be a consequence of the type of players I play with most often, who generally like to close.

And yes, I know the devs have said no melee for now. I'm fine with that. I'm just replying to the specific questions in KitLightning's post.

Also Hands on mechs would be important in Mechwarrior PnP RolePlaying game.
But currently, functional hands on mechs are window dressing in MWO.

[Jost]

Masterofm, on 04 June 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

I hope your tabletops were better then mine since a player tried to see if he could use his mech's hand to rip a tree from the ground and throw it at another mech.....

The game has it as a purpose, but generally in any shooter type of game melee generally looks extremely clunky especially considering that mechs are already clunky enough it might make people look like overstuffed kids with mittens batting at each other.

No tree-throwing. We did briefly discuss whether we wanted to adopt rules about picking up an arm from a downed mech and using that as a club, though, but that was during a break for beer and ice cream.

I can't agree that melee needs to look clunky in a shooter. I've seen this handled in several shooters fairly well: halo, black ops among them: attacker launches a single attack, which either works or misses.

In BT TT rules, it's not really melee combat... it's melee strikes: attacker throws a kick, or one or two punches, which either hit or miss. Defender doesn't have to do anything.

But again, the devs have said no melee for the initial release, and I'm fine with it... just continuing to respond to a question from earlier.

[Jaxwen]

Masterofm, on 04 June 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

The game has it as a purpose, but generally in any shooter type of game melee generally looks extremely clunky especially considering that mechs are already clunky enough it might make people look like overstuffed kids with mittens batting at each other.

On the contrary, as an example, some of the mech tales (especially with Solaris games) convey a melding of pilot and mech to that of a human martial artist. Not clunky at all....

[Lazer Blazer]

If they use the hands for melee than everybody will be doing mech kung-foo. boring!

[Deathz Jester]

Brings about another question.

Why does the Battlemaster's Handheld weapon generate any heat for the mech?

its holding it, and if you say "well its connected to the mech" then why didn't they just attach it to an arm?

so technically it has one weapon thats generating no heat....

[Adridos]

Iron Harlequin, on 09 June 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

Brings about another question.

Why does the Battlemaster's Handheld weapon generate any heat for the mech?

its holding it, and if you say "well its connected to the mech" then why didn't they just attach it to an arm?

so technically it has one weapon thats generating no heat....

Anime design brought to a game without thinking of the details. But the real Battlemaster has it attached to the arm.

[KageRyuu]

Iron Harlequin, on 09 June 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

Brings about another question.

Why does the Battlemaster's Handheld weapon generate any heat for the mech?

its holding it, and if you say "well its connected to the mech" then why didn't they just attach it to an arm?

so technically it has one weapon thats generating no heat....

Not to mention the Battlemaster is one of the Unseen and thus will likely not be seen in game.

There are however TT rules for Hand Weapons, and they do not cause heat for the Mech, however they still take up weight and are individually armored and carry their own ammo supply that cannot be supplemented with on mech stores and visa versa.

In general though, the Devs do want to make a MechWarrior game as close to the TT as they can possibly make it for a FPS, but hopefully they'll include melee, as well as Hand Weapons down the road with Hand Weapons much further down the road than melee and other uses for hands of course.

[Rodney28021]

KageRyuu, on 10 June 2012 - 02:01 AM, said:

Not to mention the Battlemaster is one of the Unseen and thus will likely not be seen in game.

There are however TT rules for Hand Weapons, and they do not cause heat for the Mech, however they still take up weight and are individually armored and carry their own ammo supply that cannot be supplemented with on mech stores and visa versa.

In general though, the Devs do want to make a MechWarrior game as close to the TT as they can possibly make it for a FPS, but hopefully they'll include melee, as well as Hand Weapons down the road with Hand Weapons much further down the road than melee and other uses for hands of course.

Hand Weapons Should say HandHeld Weapons located in TRO Prototypes the AXM-6T and QK-8P on the timeline after 3090
might be some tech b4 that period in some the other sourcebooks but not b4 3075 i would say.

[Rodney28021]

Iron Harlequin, on 09 June 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

Brings about another question.

Why does the Battlemaster's Handheld weapon generate any heat for the mech?

its holding it, and if you say "well its connected to the mech" then why didn't they just attach it to an arm?

so technically it has one weapon thats generating no heat....

The TT Battlemaster arm mounted PPC always generated heat. Maybe your GM might had different rules.