21 replies to this topic

[Rendall]

Just curious as to how many mechs a player can have. do we have drop ships we own personally where we store our mechs, and the mechs we have are limited in space according to the type of drop ship we get? How will this work? Any ideas?

[Lorebot]

I'd love to see them get really complex and realistic with Mechs and Drop Ships, Jumpships and Merc Corps/Faction Hangars, but that probably wouldn't be overly fun for most players.

I expect we'll have a 'Hangar' from which we can access a Mechlab and outfit our mechs and do repairs and evaluate salvaged gear and that before a Mission we'll need to pick a specific mech to go out with and that mech would be dropped into the fight from a drop ship along with the rest of the lance you're deploying with or already be stationed near the point you're supposed to be defending.

I doubt the hangar will have any sort of limit to the number of mechs or gear we can accumulate, though the number of mechs you can have flagged as combat ready at any given time will probably be controlled.

I'd really like to see us have access to mechs and gear through multiple sources.

1. Through the Factions in the game. They'd provide you with mechs, weapons and ammo for free or a moderate fee depending on how much they like you. More Faction rep means better gear cheaper, get your rep high enough and you'll gain access to Faction specific gear that's not available elsewhere. You would have the option of donating unneeded mechs, weapons, or ammo to your chosen faction to increase your faction standing and for a small amount of cbills.

2. Through an open Market. These would be the legal outfitters and dealers of mechs and parts sanctioned by the Factions in the game. They would supply a vast selection of mechs and gear, but there would be no discounts. They would however allow you access to gear that your faction doesn't have or isn't willing to risk on you because they don't like or trust you enough. The open Market would not have access to faction specific mechs or weapons. Because they're retailers they wouldn't purchase or trade used or salvaged mechs or weapons, they're not interested in that market.

3. Through Player trading or Black Market dealing. This would be the place you can go to get gear that's faction specific and unavailable through the open market. Or if you're short on funds and want to sell a mech, weapons, or salvage you don't need to get some extra cash you'll likely be able to get more here for it than from donating it to your faction. In that way you may be able to pick up a used mech for cheap, you may just need to make some repairs or refit some busted weapons. It would also be the place to arrange to buy back your own mech if it gets busted up in combat and someone claimed it as salvage. They may have ripped that still functional PPC off its arm, but buying it and refitting it is probably a lot cheaper than buying a new one.

[TheForce]

"Life us cheap, but battlemechs aren't."

I'd really like to see one mech per character to be in line with the Btech universe, but this is probably too hard core for the average player.

[UncleKulikov]

I want access to more than one, but not crazy amounts. Maybe 2-3 per weight class type.

And they would be stored in SPACE GARAGES.

[Lorebot]

Well, being too realistic with things removes a lot of the fun factor.

I'd love to see things work with Mechs being super expensive and stuff, but realistically we're playing a game and if you have to pay massive amounts of cash every time you lose a battle people will quickly stop playing or they'll just go out in the cheapest thing they can buy every time. Just take EVE for an example of that, the hurdles for new players are horribly steep and losing a ship is a terrible set back. I don't want to play Mechwarrior where the rule is 'Only use what you can afford to lose'.

I want to get cheaper mechs for free from my faction or merc corp and access to better stuff as I do more missions for them. If I save up a ton of cbills and want something my faction won't give me yet I want to be able to go buy that item from the market and then be super careful with it in combat so I don't lose it till my faction is willing to replace it for me.

I don't mind having a stable of mechs available to me. It makes sense as a Mercenary to have at least some choices when going on a mission. You're not going to take an Atlas to a mission in a swamp, you won't be able to move around well enough. But I don't want to have to sell my Atlas so I can hop in something lighter to get that mission done. So I want to have storage for at least a few mechs and be able to keep a small number of them ready and maintained for combat.

I'd say a storage hangar that can hold at least 10 mechs, could be more it doesn't really matter to me. Then have a Deployment Hangar where you keep the Mechs you want kept ready for use, that should hold 3-5 mechs regardless of how big your storage hangar is. Moving a mech from storage to deployment should have a cooldown depending on the weight of the mech you're moving to storage and the weight of the mech you're pulling out for deployment, I'd say 15mins per weight class. So moving a light mech into storage would take 15mins, moving a medium mech would take 30 and moving a Heavy would take 45 mins. Now if you're replacing a Light with a Heavy you're going to have to wait the 45mins to deploy that Heavy Mech, if you're replacing a Heavy with a Light mech you'll have to wait only 15mins to use the Light Mech, but you won't be able to pull that Heavy back out of storage for 45mins. And if you do pull it out as soon as the timer is up you'll have to wait the 45mins to use it again anyhow. So keeping a free slot in your Deployment Hangar would be a good idea because it would mean you only have to move 1 mech at any given time and if you move a mech and then go do some combat and come back the timer may have expired already

Edited by Lorebot, 08 November 2011 - 09:56 PM.

[benefedaykin]

^^ This. Lorebot is right on the money imo.

Very restricted number of "combat ready" mechs and a far greater number of "mech storage" spaces. Time needed to switch a mechs status.

[Corvus Antaka]

It would be ridiculously cool to actually be dropped out of a dropship and plummet towards the surface. Sit inside your mech as it powers up with some cool sound effects...the hum of the drop ship engine - your clan mantes mech and avatar staring at you across from you...then a warning sound from the dropship pilot *get ready to drop* and boom, the doors open, clamps crack open, and your plummeting through space, down through the atmosphere....right before you hit a parachute deploys, your mech rattles like crazy, and then WHAM, you hit the ground.

*drools*

Hangars would be cool, as for mech storage space, id think 12 slots minimum by default, and then you buy more with ingame currency that you earn or buy from the store.

[Maverick Howell]

I would like to see exploration of different planets and factions where they are going at one another and we can join a side for a given period of time and help take territory that actually effects the game world as we know it. we should have our own drop ships where we can store our mechs and work on them. sense we wont be walking around as people, i'm really not sure how this game will work. But i can only hope that they think big and aim high so that they will hit some where decent on the scale of what they were trying to accomplish.

[Lorebot]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 09 November 2011 - 01:31 AM, said:

It would be ridiculously cool to actually be dropped out of a dropship and plummet towards the surface. Sit inside your mech as it powers up with some cool sound effects...the hum of the drop ship engine - your clan mantes mech and avatar staring at you across from you...then a warning sound from the dropship pilot *get ready to drop* and boom, the doors open, clamps crack open, and your plummeting through space, down through the atmosphere....right before you hit a parachute deploys, your mech rattles like crazy, and then WHAM, you hit the ground.

*drools*

Hangars would be cool, as for mech storage space, id think 12 slots minimum by default, and then you buy more with ingame currency that you earn or buy from the store.

As cool as that sounds, sadly it's not how Drop Ships work in Battletech. Mechs can't survive reentry on their own and a mech without Jump Jets would never survive being dropped from a high altitude, even most with Jump Jets wouldn't land without damage. There's no Parachute system that would ever be able to slow the decent of a 100 ton object reliably as you describe it. In real life we can drop tanks out of airplanes from very low altitudes, but the parachutes need to open pretty much instantaneously or they'll tear to bits trying to slow the thing down. And while the tank slowly drifts towards the earth it's completely defenseless and quite an easy target for surface to air missiles and anti aircraft fire.

Drop Ships are named such because they actually drop through the atmosphere and land. They're giant flying fortresses bristling with guns and covered in thick armor plating meant to protect the mechs and people inside from enemy fire during the decent. Once they're on the ground the bay doors open and the mechs that are stored inside deploy. It's not quite as cool and dropping through the sky in your mech, but I'd love to see this illustrated in the game. I think it would be spectacularly cool to have the 'Mission Briefing' during the actual drop operation as a pilot already inside the cockpit of the mech. You could go through the briefing files on your HUD while watching the crews finish buttoning up your mech for combat while the whole ship rattles around you from the decent. There aren't windows so you wouldn't be able to see what was going on outside, but perhaps there could be some 'combat chatter' going on in the background. Once the Drop Ship touches down, which in a combat situation is usually a violent and jarring landing, the mechbay doors open, your bay releases the docking clamps and you deploy for combat...stepping out into the day or night of a new world ready for war in your giant metal death machine.

I vaguely remember something about Drop Pods for deploying Mechs from orbit. I could be thinking of some other game or something, but I'm pretty sure they have them in Battletech but they're rarely used because they're not very well armored, make easy targets for anti-air fire, and they're expensive because they need to be specifically for the Mech you're dropping in and they're not reusable.

[Lorebot]

Maverick Howell, on 09 November 2011 - 02:08 AM, said:

I would like to see exploration of different planets and factions where they are going at one another and we can join a side for a given period of time and help take territory that actually effects the game world as we know it. we should have our own drop ships where we can store our mechs and work on them. sense we wont be walking around as people, i'm really not sure how this game will work. But i can only hope that they think big and aim high so that they will hit some where decent on the scale of what they were trying to accomplish.

Drop Ships aren't really meant for storing mechs or performing real maintenance on them, they're basically a field tent for mech repairs and a command post for issuing orders during a battle.

What you're thinking of is a Jump Ship. Jump Ships are massive space vessels that are capable of interstellar travel. Drop Ships can't jump so they dock with a Jump Ship and get carried from planet to planet that way. Jump Ships are bigger than your average city, usually with hundreds of crew aboard and a full capability to repair and maintain a very large number of mechs and other combat craft. They usually have a large fighter bay as well so they can deploy fighter cover for the Drop Ships they carry as well as a self defense force to protect itself from other ships. If I remember correctly some Jump Ships have room for 4 or more Drop Ships to dock with them and most Drop Ships will carry an entire Lance down to a planet. That's a lot of mechs and fire power...and people to take care of it all.

I would love to see Jump Ships in the game. We as Mechwarriors would more than likely be stationed aboard one by whatever Faction or Merc Corp we're working for and taken where we're needed. Then loaded on a Drop Ship and sent into combat. If the game isn't all happening on 1 planet it makes a lot more sense to have things work that way than to treat us as if we return to some 'home planet' each time we finish a mission.

[Xhaleon]

From a purely gameplay perspective, I'd agree that four mechbays for each of the weight classes would make the most sense.

And then Piranha will charge us to hell and back to buy extra bays.

[Stormwolf]

I'd also go for four mech slots/bays.

Extras would be unlocked by paying up.

[Rendall]

I was leaning towards 8 myself, to start with. enough space for two seperate mechs of each weight class. again, to get more slots, either pay to get them through pay, or with enough C-bills, "upgrade" your space in that manner. I dislike the P2W part of F2P. I understand that the devs need to make a living, and I respect that, but dont limit people to buy special items by using real cash only, but also by using enough C-bills to pay for them instead. in that respect, make it a metric defecated ton of C-bills. but still make it possible for those of us who cant afford to send our paychecks towards the game.

Edited by Rendall, 09 November 2011 - 03:44 AM.

[Corvus Antaka]

Yeah I know Lorebot. It'd still be cool to have some kind of system that drops us into battles from space while we are sitting in the cockpit

Edited by Colonel Pada Vinson, 09 November 2011 - 12:58 PM.

[itchies]

Lorebot, on 08 November 2011 - 08:30 PM, said:

I'd love to see them get really complex and realistic with Mechs and Drop Ships, Jumpships and Merc Corps/Faction Hangars, but that probably wouldn't be overly fun for most players.

I expect we'll have a 'Hangar' from which we can access a Mechlab and outfit our mechs and do repairs and evaluate salvaged gear and that before a Mission we'll need to pick a specific mech to go out with and that mech would be dropped into the fight from a drop ship along with the rest of the lance you're deploying with or already be stationed near the point you're supposed to be defending.

I doubt the hangar will have any sort of limit to the number of mechs or gear we can accumulate, though the number of mechs you can have flagged as combat ready at any given time will probably be controlled.

I'd really like to see us have access to mechs and gear through multiple sources.

1. Through the Factions in the game. They'd provide you with mechs, weapons and ammo for free or a moderate fee depending on how much they like you. More Faction rep means better gear cheaper, get your rep high enough and you'll gain access to Faction specific gear that's not available elsewhere. You would have the option of donating unneeded mechs, weapons, or ammo to your chosen faction to increase your faction standing and for a small amount of cbills.

2. Through an open Market. These would be the legal outfitters and dealers of mechs and parts sanctioned by the Factions in the game. They would supply a vast selection of mechs and gear, but there would be no discounts. They would however allow you access to gear that your faction doesn't have or isn't willing to risk on you because they don't like or trust you enough. The open Market would not have access to faction specific mechs or weapons. Because they're retailers they wouldn't purchase or trade used or salvaged mechs or weapons, they're not interested in that market.

3. Through Player trading or Black Market dealing. This would be the place you can go to get gear that's faction specific and unavailable through the open market. Or if you're short on funds and want to sell a mech, weapons, or salvage you don't need to get some extra cash you'll likely be able to get more here for it than from donating it to your faction. In that way you may be able to pick up a used mech for cheap, you may just need to make some repairs or refit some busted weapons. It would also be the place to arrange to buy back your own mech if it gets busted up in combat and someone claimed it as salvage. They may have ripped that still functional PPC off its arm, but buying it and refitting it is probably a lot cheaper than buying a new one.

i really hate it when someone takes the words out of my mouth....

[DFDelta]

Personally I'd give each player 2 mech cocoons that are "ready for use", and one hangar bay that contains a mech thats out of commission for a certain time.
Reasons could be:
- Customizing in progress. Yes I'd take mechs out of service for RL time if you change them in the mechlab, the bigger the customisation, the longer its out.
- Getting scrapped. Disassembling the mech, giving you back the pieces of equipment you want to keep, and selling the leftovers.
- Mothballed. Basically using the hangar as a 3rd mech slot.

Additionally cocoons and hangar bays can be bought, either for a small sum of RL cash or a (very) high ammount of cbills.

Your storage space for leftover equipment should also be limited (eg, 500 tons of stuff), with the additional option to buy more space.

[guardiandashi]

lorebot not sure what universe you are quoting but its sure not battletech

in battletech there are 3 classes of space transports.
dropships these are ships from ~500 tons up to 100,000 tons they only have realspace engines and replaced "shuttles" that had a max weight of ~5000 tons they are called dropships because they drop off the jumpships and transit to the planets
there are many types of dropships civilian and military. some common military mech transport dropships are the leopard 4 mechs 2 fighters in the standard configuration. the union transports up to 12 mechs and 2 fighters and the overlord transporting up to 36 mechs and 6 fighters
a dropship with mech bays can do full maintenance on a mech extensive repairs and up to maintenance level refits.

if transported in a dropship with mech bays mechs can either be orbitally dropped, or the dropship can land on the ground and deploy them though its boarding ramps. if orbitally dropped the mech is "kicked" out of the bay in a drop cacoon which has heat shields to help the mech survive reentry without damage once in atmosphere the remaining ablative material on the cacoon is jettisoned and various parachutes slow the mech down, the mech does however use jump jets (if so equipped) or a disposable "jump pack" to slow it down so it can soft land, if performed properly the mech lands WITHOUT damage.

if the dropship does not have proper mech bays mechs can only be transported as cargo and take a lot longer to unload and load.

the other two classes of spacecraft in battletech are jumpships and warships (aka combat jumpships)

jumpships are large vessiles ranging from ~80,000 tons and 273 meters long (scout) up to the Monolith class at 355,000 tons and 750m long.and the monolith still only has a crew of 26

the combat jumpships aka warships are typically bigger than jumpships and can (under the rules) be up to 2.5 million tons altho to date the biggest canon warship is the ones the ghost bears made ~2.4 million tons

[Lorebot]

Well, it's been a while since I've looked at my Spacetech books so I don't doubt I may remember things differently, but aside from a couple mistakes I wasn't terribly off the mark with my description of things.

I don't remember Drop Ships being equipped with full mech bays, I'd thought real maintenance was done elsewhere. I also wasn't sure about the cocoon things. I thought I was remembering something else and that mechs didn't drop from orbit regularly.

I suppose I should have consulted the wiki to make sure I was remembering correctly.

[guardiandashi]

well I am sorry mabie I cam on a bit strong,

one note on the mech repairs is that the quality of the mech can degrade over time even if is repaired to full function. Think a car thats been wrecked and has a bent frame sure you can straighten it out and it will be mostly as good as new .... except there will likely be a weak spot so if it is hit in the same way, there will be likely more damage than the 1st time

the new rules (strategic ops repair refit and salvage) allow a Class E refit that requires access to a unit type factory IE mech mostly for this game to for 10% of the cost of the unit to repair its "quality" up 1 level the transport bays cannot do that

[Lorebot]

Having mechs require rebuilding after extended use and combat does make sense, but it's unlikely to happen in the game even if some of us want it too...that's a bit too 'real' for most gamers to take