4 replies to this topic

[Alistair Winter]

I wrote a very long post with intelligent and eloquent arguments (that's right), but my computer ate it, so I'll make this brief.

• I'm not talking about coolant flush. Yeah, the topic title is kind of misleading. Sorry.
  
• There are a lot of modules that are more useful, especially if you only have 2 or 3 module slots. Target decay, advanced sensor range, 360 target retention and seismic, for example.
  
• The UAV, artillery and airstrike can only be used once per match, as opposed to modules which last the entire match. You don't need an additional penalty, in the form of C-bill cost.
  
• It's primarily the fast mechs (i.e. light mechs) who are able to make full use of the UAV, artillery and airstrike. Heavy and assault mechs tend to have so much firepower that they need heatsinks or the above-mentioned modules instead.
  
• If you play a light mech with a big engine, TAG, NARC, ECM and/or BAP, you typically won't do too much damage. Maybe you'll earn 80,000 C-bills per match on average.
  
• If you bring a UAV and an artillery strike, that'll cost you 80,000 C-bills. Neither is likely to generate any kind of significant increase in income.

I'm proposing one of two things:
1) Remove the cost for UAV, air strike and artillery entirely.
2) Remove the cost for those consumables for light mechs only.

Ultimately, I think it won't make a big difference if you do 1 or 2. But regardless of what option is chosen, I think it would contribute to the role warfare that is currently non-existant and would bring some more variety to the game. Variety is good. It would also encourage more light mech pilots to play the game as scouts, instead of hunter-killers or base cappers with little or no interaction with the rest of the team engaged in a battle 1 kilometer away.

[FupDup]

The thing is, the entire purpose of consumables is to make you waste substantially more money in the long run than just buying a passive module.


Working as intended™.

[Alistair Winter]

Yeah, I know. I originally had an argument for this:

Right now, it takes 30,000 GXP to get the best kind of UAV. Even if it was free to use the UAV, you could still charge people 15 MC for using the upgraded UAV. The benefit would be that you could spend GXP on something else, or didn't have to convert XP to GXP for MC, like a lot of people are doing.

[MaddMaxx]

Quote

"I wrote a very long post with intelligent and eloquent arguments"

Ahhh man! This place could have "really" used on of those today Alistair. Bad computer, bad...

OT: Money sinks are required simply to siphon off the excess B-Bills everyone generates. Some of the stuff has crazy B-Bill costs, but if you have the C-bills, no worries right. Always more where they came from.

[Alistair Winter]

MaddMaxx, on 04 July 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

Ahhh man! This place could have "really" used on of those today Alistair. Bad computer, bad...
OT: Money sinks are required simply to siphon off the excess B-Bills everyone generates. Some of the stuff has crazy B-Bill costs, but if you have the C-bills, no worries right. Always more where they came from.

B-bills? Did someone coin a new expression today without my consent?

Anyway, I understand the concept of money sinks, microtransactions and all the other nonsense included in the Working As Intended explanation. But the point is, the game would be better without it. Right now, they have a feature that serves no purpose, because no one is using it. No one is using it because it is overpriced. Not only does that mean they wasted their time working on those features, but, more importantly, they're hurting the part of the game that most players were really excited about: role warfare. And less importantly, they're hurting the players that no one cares about, the light mech pilots

In conclusion, my option has many advantages and no disadvantages, since no one's using air strikes, UAVs or artillery at the moment anyway. If I had a penny for each time someone used the MC consumables since it was implemented, I would have seven pennies.