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The first is obviously undesirable, as it removes any sense that you are doing something other than moving the mech about. The second
encourages the optimization of the CONDITIONS in which hits are most likely to hit. The third allows for variety: you can take safe shots stably, or you
can take more difficult to make shots, which emphasize us as players in our ability to make them or not. Your system takes this away from players, and
presumes instead that our shots will average out to certain value of hits. It removes the competitiveness from the game in favour of position optimization,
and returns us back to the biggest I problem I have with your proposition: Are we not simply just actors in a multiplayer tabletop game that control a
single mech? Why not just play tabletop at that point?
The first isn't even on the table from me.
The difference between 2 and 3 that causes what you're concluding is left unsaid. MWO has nothing like what you HAVE described in 3;
as regards
the mech itself instead of just differently firing kinds of weapons you are directly in control of.
"Average out to a certain value of hits" - (in the overall) no. It will not. The pilot's skill with the reticule and in realtime decision making would determine
what percentage of hits are used at any given time.
Player skill and choices determines what situation your 'mech has to fire under. Human skill and decision making is supreme.
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Once again, we really don't know how battlemechs "actually" handle its weapons.
Yes, we do. Unless you'd like to tell herb beas II, the line developer, the person who's paid to determine these things by catalyst, and mike miller, the
person who works for catalyst who wrote the source that's used to describe these things, that they don't know their own job they get paid to do.
http://bg.battletech...ic,26178.0.html
http://bg.battletech...ic,29328.0.html
"While it is the MechWarrior that must indicate what is to be targeted and has to track what is to be targeted, and decides when to fire the 'Mech's
weapons (and does so by using the main weapons control stick to aim a reticule on the targeting display) it is the BattleMech that actually does, in real
time, the calculations as to where to aim it's weapons and than it is the BattleMech that must actually physically aims it's weapons at the target the
MechWarrior is indicating."
http://mwomercs.com/...y-an-education/
This is retyped from the article mentioned that controls on the topic. The rules other than the gunnery skill rolls and piloting skill rolls and (sort of) the
called shot tables ALL describe the battlemech's weapons handling abilities under any given condition.
We know how well the 'mechs in the setting can handle their lore and this is confirmed by the people that make the lore.
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This all gets at the same thing, so for simplicity I am grouping it. The problem (as previously mentioned) with conditional based systems is it does
not at all encourage the player to be accurate, it encourages the player to create the most optimal conditions for which the dice work in their favor. it is
here that, despite your insistent, the simulation absolutely fails: the player is not playing to feel like a pilot, they are playing to manipulate randomness.
This is incredibly immersion breaking and unfun, and while involving player skill entirely emphasizes strategic play (which at high level play in mwo is
incredibly important) over any ability for the player to "beat the odds", because the dice take that away.
You have left out the fact that the primary deciding condition is the player's skill and choices.
How well or poorly your 'mech can handle it's weapoons to overcome whatever is determined by what conditions you, the player decided to pull the
trigger(s) under.
Yes, even human skill with the reticule determines conditions - are you aiming for an extremitiy, and thus causing your 'mech to try and concentrate it's
shots across a smaller section of the target?
When using an advanced targeting computer, are you even
capable of keeping the reticule on the desired part of, say that fast-moving spider
you're shooting at?
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To put it another way, we can go back to our rifle example. Say we had several shooters, all competing to hit a target accurately. What your
system would do is decide automatically that all the shooters are the same,...
No. It wouldn't, and I am not going to try and prove this negative that you're posting here.
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So? Are we then forever bound to rules made for a board game when determining whether a game is allowed?
So, definitions mean nothing?
Ok, than, I say that a MW video game involves smurfs and anthony weiner and nothing even remotely "mech."
We know what defines the MW genre.
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Clearly not, or we would not have the plethora of video game titles that completely ignore the often obtuse rule sets designed not to facilitate life
accuracy but dice based gameplay.
So there can't be a definition ... because other people have ignored it? ... will the IRS go away because I ignore it?
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What you are arguing is that because the lore men say that the tabletop rules are king in determining lore accuracy (this is ridiculous, sorry), that
we must therefore always defer to such rules when constructing a game that is not a tabletop one.
A thing is not rediculous simply and only because you say it is.
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Except the mech is not itself a unified system that you press buttons into and then it carries out instructions. it is made up of a number of different
interacting systems.
Different systems that are highly unified into a system:
"Structure, Actuators, and Myomers for mobility; Armor, gyroscope; the fusion engine; the commanding cockpit; the Battle Computer for Targeting and
Tracking; and all of the other systems in the 'Mech. Given that the Neurohelmet can not function as a direct brain-machine link, the question is - what
coordinates all these systems and unifies all of their functions together into a smoothly functioning and capable armored combat unit? The DI computer."
Cray, by the way, has read the article and said that it's correct.
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For the sake of ease of use and simulation, we have simply assumed that some of those systems work without player input and work reliably,
because falling down all the time in a game is not very fun. We assume the computer can compensate for most environmental factors, because it allows
the player to be the key to success or failure regarding combat, not a minor controller of a series of dice rolls. We simplify the aiming to be to two
reticles, because attempting to control more is overwhelming and difficult. We do these things because we want a game that is fun to play while creating
a sense by which my success or failure is due to me, not due to factors out of my control. Dice ALWAYS take away control.
"we
assume." Yes, you've gotten that right. "Falling down all the time" - You don't fall down all the time. If you're playing the TT and falling down all the
time you're doing something wrong.
"Dice always take control" - false in the extreme, if you mean that the dice always render human choice pointless and secondary at best.
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Sundervine, on 22 July 2013 - 07:51 PM, said:
