261 replies to this topic

[Frostiken]

Kazzamo, on 10 June 2012 - 03:16 PM, said:

I've played several. And I never spend a dime on the majority of them. The point isn't will someone spend real money on it. And honestly even then that doesn't do much. People will still gladly throw out money just for the way something looks. "Ooo I like the look of that new mech... it has pretty much the same hard points as my current one but it looks better so I'll get that one." then all the visual fluff they can sell.

I used to believe that by way of TF2, but T:A tells a different story. They have two item packs out with four skins, and you almost never see the custom skins. Their latest item pack completely skipped the skins altogether, so I think the 'pay money to look nice' thing doesn't pay out as much as they'd hoped.

[GHQCommander]

Xantars, on 10 June 2012 - 09:21 AM, said:

SLAPS DOWN A BIG VETO STAMP ...... Nope I dont like it Wait till you get into game before you start making you wild *** guesses about what you think there is and what you want Please...

Played beta have you?

I agree. This thread is one for a year ago for speculation and voting

OR

Present individual ideas when we actually find that the existing game, nearly finished, has problems. For all you know what the devs have added work far better than anything you have written if it be your opinion or not.

I do like some of your ideas Be ready to present them at the right time, take votes and do it quickly in response to what you sense is a flaw.

[Roland]

Frostiken, on 10 June 2012 - 03:08 PM, said:

Fair enough, that would work. Ideally though I think there should be a little wiggle allowing parts to be scaled up, but not by much. I suppose a combination of the hardpoint criticals limit, and a hardpoint weapons limit would be enough to lock a 'space' into a mech body cavity - not too big, but not too small.

You are correct though, that's what I foresee is something absurd like a single MG being able to be replaced with a Heavy Gauss simply because it's on the left torso, and you carved out enough space elsewhere for it. A change like that utterly betrays the nature of the mech's original design.

See? We have achieved peaceful understanding of each other. Huzzah for the forum!

I agree as well, that perhaps making the slots a little bit "stretchy" or something would be nice.. So, while you couldn't replace the machine gun with a Gauss Rifle, maybe you could put something as big as an AC 5 in there. Maybe.

Frostiken, on 10 June 2012 - 03:08 PM, said:

My objection to a totally cost-free mechlab is not only the absurdity in allowing you to simply 'float' parts between mechs, but I think it would encourage too much min/maxing and encourage people to constantly be changing mech setups at the drop of a hat.

Based on my experience, what you're trying to avoid here really isn't a bad thing. "Min-maxxing" is a pretty key part of battletech.... and indeed, of every tabletop game ever. Just in slightly different incarnations.

The reality is, allowing folks to tweak their mechs all they want doesn't ruin the game. It makes the game better. It's FUN. Allowing folks to adjust their mechs to match the environment, or even better, to match what they think you are going to be bringing against them.. that's a great aspect of the metagame that mechwarrior games have had over other game series.

I understand your desire to keep the generalist mechs, but I think you're trying to tie peoples' hands without really having to.

Based on my own previous experience in MW4.. We would tend to always bring a lance of mixed range, despite most other lances going with a mountain of long range ERLL based mechs.

We were exceptionally effective, because once we got close, we were doing far better damage than they were. And yet, we never made the mistake of not bringing ANY ranged weapons. Everyone had to bring at least one ranged weapon to poke with, because you never wanted to be in a situation where you couldn't do some damage at whatever range you were at.

The reality is, while many foks assumed the more "generalist" mech was weaker, in was in fact stronger if paired with good movement. So you don't really need to try and force it on folks... because, in the long run, it will be proven out on the field. Flexibility always leads to strength, if you know how to use it correctly.

[Frostiken]

FlakAttack, on 10 June 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

You're the one throwing a fit... but to clarify, people have posted, repeatedly, that hardpoints + crits + weight is the solution. We all know this. What people don't want to hear about are your dumb and arbitrary costs and timings associated with using the MechLab.

???

Crits are nowhere near as limiting as you're claiming. "Crits" in this case still allows you to put a Heavy Gauss rifle on the Catapult K2, simply because it has a machine gun. I don't know off the top of my head where it's mounted, but if it's in the left torso, according to the TT mechlab rules, all you'd have to do is a bit of housecleaning and split the crits with the arm and you have a HGauss Catapult.

[Frostiken]

GHQCommander, on 10 June 2012 - 03:19 PM, said:

Played beta have you?

I agree. This thread is one for a year ago for speculation and voting

OR

Present individual ideas when we actually find that the existing game, nearly finished, has problems. For all you know what the devs have added work far better than anything you have written if it be your opinion or not.

I do like some of your ideas Be ready to present them at the right time, take votes and do it quickly in response to what you sense is a flaw.

To be honest, this isn't something I want to be right about. I really don't want to see Hunchbacks disturbingly lacking their autocannons and simply throwing bolts of lightning like a pint-sized Awesome, Catapult K2s suddenly blasting people with LB-20Xs magically squeezed into a space that used to fit only a tiny machine gun, and Ravens with LRM-20s haphazardly bolted on top.

Not without getting the proper mech and a close enough variant that mounts that kind of gear. What's the point of the Hollander II when you can just shove an HGauss into any mech with a single side-torso mounted machine gun?

Edited by Frostiken, 10 June 2012 - 03:25 PM.

[phelancracken]

Sigh,

I just love it when you just focus on crits and don't include in the equation the tonnage of the weapons. The video mentions both Crits and TONNAGE. I too have watched that video. Crits and TONNAGE. Not to mention, Heavy Gauss? Oh rich. That's not available for about 10 years.

[FlakAttack]

Frostiken, on 10 June 2012 - 03:20 PM, said:

???

Crits are nowhere near as limiting as you're claiming. "Crits" in this case still allows you to put a Heavy Gauss rifle on the Catapult K2, simply because it has a machine gun. I don't know off the top of my head where it's mounted, but if it's in the left torso, according to the TT mechlab rules, all you'd have to do is a bit of housecleaning and split the crits with the arm and you have a HGauss Catapult.

From what I know so far, MWO mechlab doesn't split crits that way. I'd be extremely surprised if it did.

[Frostiken]

FlakAttack, on 10 June 2012 - 03:24 PM, said:

From what I know so far, MWO mechlab doesn't split crits that way. I'd be extremely surprised if it did.

Splitting crits is necessary for some mechs with arm-mounted ballistics though, so it'll have to be in in some capacity, methinks.

[Roland]

phelancracken, on 10 June 2012 - 03:23 PM, said:

Sigh,

I just love it when you just focus on crits and don't include in the equation the tonnage of the weapons. The video mentions both Crits and TONNAGE. I too have watched that video. Crits and TONNAGE. Not to mention, Heavy Gauss? Oh rich. That's not available for about 10 years.

Heavy Gauss is just meant as an example.

Crits and Tonnage don't really get the job done on their own.

For instance, suppose you have some mech who is, generally, designed to use energy weapons and missiles, but happens to have a machine gun or two.

If all you care about is crits and tonnage, then that mech could strip all of his energy and missiles down, and possibly load up AC20's, despite it being totally "out of character" for that chassis.

Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem with implementing sized hardpoints like MW4 did. It added flexibility, but avoided the "gun bag" scenario seen in MW3.

[goon]

.

Edited by Helmer, 11 June 2012 - 05:34 AM.
Edited insulting post that contributes nothing.

[BuSH]

goon, on 10 June 2012 - 03:28 PM, said:

.

LOL.....hilarious and spot on.

Edited by Helmer, 11 June 2012 - 05:35 AM.
Edited insulting post that contributes nothing.

[Frostiken]

Roland, on 10 June 2012 - 03:28 PM, said:

Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem with implementing sized hardpoints like MW4 did. It added flexibility, but avoided the "gun bag" scenario seen in MW3.

Because they somehow forget that that was in MW4 and will automatically equate that with "YOU WANT TO REMOVE THE MECHLAB LOL *** NOOB **** YOU"

See also - Goon's post.

Report button is getting quite a bit of exercise in this thread.

Let's also consider how, if we ever get visible mechlab changes, you'd have to limit the weapons simply to control how ridiculous stupid some mechs would look with completely limitless slot abuse. The Hunchback's arm barely even looks capable of fitting three PPCs or any other suitably large energy weapon.

Edited by Frostiken, 10 June 2012 - 03:33 PM.

[phelancracken]

Oppi, on 10 June 2012 - 03:14 PM, said:

Clan Omnis use "slots" to fit in modular built weapons they just have to "plug in" and press "go". Inner Sphere weapons lack that modular design, so they don't fit into the Clan Mechs' slots. Simple as that.



And how does this matter in any possible way ? All he was saying is : With the mechlab as it is revealed so far, you could most likely build many variants of a given Mech by just modifying the "standard" variant, and you could most likely take one mech of a given tonnage, strip it of everything and rebuild it to mirror the exact (or very near exact) loadout of another mech of the same tonnage. These two combined eliminate close to every benefit of owning multiple mechs of a given size, which will cost PGI money and cost the game a huge portion of its possible diversity.




True, but with the information given so far, it's much more likely that he is correct than that he's not.

So your saying that the IS can't back engineer weapons? Or that the clans couldn't fit clan weapons into captured IS mechs? Ummm, keep going...I have played a Warhammer6R(C) and an Atlas 7D(C). Both of them are captured mechs refitted with clan tech. As for the modular design, um, your saying you can't modify and rig the weapon to work in an IS mech?

My point still stands on the mech lab. We saw PART of what it does. Not all. The devil is in the details. That last little bit the devs haven't either shown or fully decided on is what's going to make mechlab really work.

[Frostiken]

phelancracken, on 10 June 2012 - 03:33 PM, said:

So your saying that the IS can't back engineer weapons? Or that the clans couldn't fit clan weapons into captured IS mechs? Ummm, keep going...I have played a Warhammer6R© and an Atlas 7D©. Both of them are captured mechs refitted with clan tech. As for the modular design, um, your saying you can't modify and rig the weapon to work in an IS mech?

You can fit anything into anything if you break the rules. The rules clearly state that omniweapons are hard-mounted in omnipods and are thus completely incompatible with non-Omni technology, and vice versa, with no option to strip the weapon from the pod. If you blow up a Timberwolf and steal its arm with an ER large and medium laser, unless you have an omnimech of your own to slot them in to, it'd be like trying to get your DVD drive to read a ZIP disk.

Also, certain Inner Sphere tech exists to balance inferior IS mechs against superior Clan technology and mechs. For example, MRMs. The Inner Sphere lacks direct-firing LRMs, so they have MRMs which belch out tremendous amounts of damage. An MRM-30/30 Catapult up close can completely ruin your day (especially in Mechwarrior where damage is concentrated). Being able to slot IS tech into Clantech mechs would just break balance.

Edited by Frostiken, 10 June 2012 - 03:41 PM.

[Knights0fNi]

I think some hard boundaries in the mechlab would be a good thing, too much customization leaves a lot of room for people to find some game breaking build, but customization is a fun and important part of the game. The key will be in the balance between customization and preserving the game experience. I will be waiting till I play to pass judgment, but I fully expect to see an early patch that ratchets down some options as people find ways to break the game early on.

I personally think it would be interesting and fun to only be able to select from the variants that exist, and have no mechlab or an extremely limited one. However, I am pretty sure that most players do not agree with me there, and it would not be good for the game in terms of keeping players. If mechlab has enough restrictions it should work just fine.

[LackofCertainty]

First off, I'm sad to see that the worst of the community is rearing it's ugly head. Someone's suggesting an idea (a bit prematurely, but we don't have anything else to talk about so whatever) and it's met with a lot of ugly words/harsh language. Shame on you guys. Frostiken's entitled to his opinions.

Frostiken, on 10 June 2012 - 03:10 PM, said:

...
- Go to 1:23.

Small laser in the CT, with 3 energy slots there.

I'm flabbergasted by this honestly. It made me dig up my 3025 TRO and check, and the hunchback 4g does have the SL mounted in the head according to that. Heck, in all the gameplay videos they show the hunchback's red SL beam coming from above the cockpit even. I wonder if this is an oversight by PGI?

Quote

Fair enough. Now ask yourself, given those options, how many people - real people, not the BT fans that make up this forum - would actually spend real money just for that? Not many I wager. The CPLT-K2 and the CPLT-C1 are two massively different applications of the same platform. They even made a special model just for the K2. Since the medium lasers are in the side torsos of the CPLT-C1, you can easily cram PPCs in there too, and fill up the rest with the heatsinks. If you get away with it, you can then take all the armor out of the ears and leave them empty.

You have just made a more-indestructible CPLT-K2 without spending a dime on the K2 variant. I foresee a thread on the forums with specifically this kind of stuff. Yeah, you can't make a super energy boat like you might be able to with the K2 itself (with energy hardpoints all over), but it seems to me you can get away with 'good enough'. Certainly enough to save you 9 million CBills that the K2 would cost (or something along those lines).

1.This only happens if you don't take my 4th point into account. Please read through the full post before replying.
2. I would personally still want a CPLT-K2 because I want to play around with the combo of balistics + energy slots. Yes, if hardslots aren't restricted at all, then most people would slap in ppc's and ignore the K2, but this goes back to us both agreeing that hardslots should be somewhat limited as well. (at least as far as upsizing goes)

Quote

I guess you can make that argument, but it's sort of an invalid one because it doesn't really imply any solutions. That could happen with penalties associated with constant swapping out of parts, but at the same time, with the ability to freely swap them in and out, people can min/max munchkin their mechs that much more effectively.

I can say the exact same for your idea here though. Your suggestion doesn't stop boating or min/maxing in the slightest, it just punishes people for experimenting. If people are min/maxing, they don't need to do a bunch of modification. All they need to do is plan out the "perfect" mech and then make it. (or more likely go online and look up the perfect mech and then make it) So your idea only really affects the people who want to tinker while being completely ineffective against what you say it's there to stop.

Munchkins don't build their character/mech by experimenting with a chassis over and over, they build it by getting out all their reference materials and looking through them till they find a theoretically breakable mechanic. My DnD group has a powerbuilder in it, and he doesn't come up with characters by playing games with them and then tweaking, he comes up with a build by checking the math on it till he finds the highest possible numbers and synergies.

To sum it up, a delay/increasing cost on Mechlab wouldn't hurt powerbuilders; it would only hurt tinkerers/experimenters like myself.

[Frostiken]

Yep, as I mentioned I did enjoy MWLL for its lack of mechlab and huge variety of mechs and variants. Almost every weapon got used in every match this way, and it really encouraged you to experiment. While a mechlab would require you to make a conscious decision to make a goofy build, with the MWLL variants that you picked base on your wallet, you could easily go 'oh what the hell, let's try the Cougar C' and get something totally different.

[phelancracken]

ROTFLMFAO!! If your playing TT Tourny yeah. Roleplaying, GM is the rules master. Just like the older rules where people where arguing that Level 3 rules and tech isn't legal. It's legal, at level 3. Level 2 tech and rules are Tournament legal. Ingenuity is the mother of all invention.

Page 92 of the BMRr. Clan/ Inner Sphere incompatibility: For any attempt to use a clan equivalent to replace an Inner Sphere one (or vice versa), add an +4 modifier to reflect the basic incompatibilty of the two technologies. Not impossible, just very hard.

LackofCertainty

Frost is entitled to his opinion just as much as everyone else is. No more, no less.

Edited by phelancracken, 10 June 2012 - 03:50 PM.

[Murphy7]

phelancracken, on 10 June 2012 - 03:33 PM, said:

So your saying that the IS can't back engineer weapons? Or that the clans couldn't fit clan weapons into captured IS mechs? Ummm, keep going...I have played a Warhammer6R(C) and an Atlas 7D(C). Both of them are captured mechs refitted with clan tech. As for the modular design, um, your saying you can't modify and rig the weapon to work in an IS mech?

My point still stands on the mech lab. We saw PART of what it does. Not all. The devil is in the details. That last little bit the devs haven't either shown or fully decided on is what's going to make mechlab really work.

There were rules to allow it, but functionally most players I have encountered dispensed with those and just built their designs along the guidelines that if HM Pro allows it, it must be cool.

Many people would have their custom merc outfit, with lovely tales of their homegrown campaigns and how rationally it made sense that they had the cream of both clan and IS tech in their designs.

And I very much understand where Frostliken is coming from, using a TT lens to it.

Costs for performing refits provides another, valuable money sink along with repairs and purchases.

Going from chassis to specific variant chassis puts another layer on the acquisition and customization aspects of the game - limits can be freeing and lead to creativity.

But the most TT like reason that is similar to this is wysiwyg - a chassis profile starts identifying the possibilities for you, weapons fired will give you an even clearer idea of what you are facing. As someone who is annoyed by proxies on the tabletop ( No, I don't think your unpainted Commando is a reasonable stand in for your Daishi refitted with a Heavy Gauss and two Rotary AC5s), there is an admirable rationality to Frostliken's suggestions.

[Warfeli]

This is obviously a sensitive topic for many players. Firstly, he does not propose to remove the Mechlab, so all the militancy and blind patriotism for the Mechlab is unwarranted. Relax.

I also think that the Mechlab as it is now will not make variants completely useless, however I do understand the point some of the canoners are making: due to more open (and free) customization, there is no real incentive to buy some/most canon variants which makes them near useless. I am not entirely convinced this will be as bad as you guys say, and I think it will be a question of balance (in terms of game-play and economy) so it's in the best interests of PGI to make variants (non-omni) VIABLE. So far, the only advantage to factory variants I can see is that they will probably be a 'package deal' kind of thing, meaning it will be cheaper to purchase and maintain the Mechs along with the packaged weapons due to mass production (as opposed to custom modifications which can't benefit from mass production.)

As for the free willy-nilly customization thing, I am an engineer at heart, and literally can't stop tinkering with stuff till it matches my vision of perfection, so it's hard for me to agree with removing this freedom. HOWEVER, it *does* make sense that when you do want to finalize a new build or Mech variant (I.E. ready for deployment) it should cost a reasonable amount of CBills to 'commit' those changes. That is one compromise I am willing to make, however I don't think this change will actually help with the variant-uselessness issue.

Ultimately the root cause of the problem is not really the Mechlab, but rather the issue is with the factory variants themselves. They should have something that is intrinsically unique/advantageous to each variant that is essentially impossible to achieve via customization alone rather than crippling functionality & freedom in the Mechlab.

Edited by Warfeli, 10 June 2012 - 04:12 PM.