8 replies to this topic

[HammerSwarm]

Alpine Cloudy/snowy - Reduces visibility, forces heat vision use, makes people move around more to where the fight is to make sure they aren't just passing the enemy like ships in the night.

Rational for this: Mountain tops of extreme height like mount everest are often shrouded in clouds because of their extreme height. If the height is lower for alpine it's just a snow storm.


Tourmaline Nights. I haven't noticed if tourmaline has any moons, I don't spend that much time stairing up when I play mech warrior, but you could make it very dark, and very cold. The tactical change here are the light conditions and the heat.

Rational for this: Deserts get cold at night, and planets without moons are very dark at night. Tourmaline seems to have a thin atmosphere, Hence the irrationally high daytime heat. This would rapidly cool at night leaving some very hot rocks and cold sands on heat vision, and low light for night vision functionality.


Caustic Valley - Hot - This is a dream for me where this map is even hotter. Heating up your mech when you fire weapons and making overheating a serious issue. That would change the tactics because you couldn't just take the high ground and boat. Because the caldera would be the center of the heat. Making the high ground even more risk reward.

Rational - The same underground pressure that makes caustic valley erupt with gases could increase in pressure and heat and from time to time release more/hotter gasses.


Forest Colony Sunrise - Spring Has overcome forest colony and the winter snows have begun melting and making their mark on the terrain. Stream is up, Runnoffs have washed out the passes, and the cave has flooded making moving through it more difficult. Also the time of day for the fight puts the sun out over the water making fighting downhill some what difficult because of the brightness.

Rational - adds another season, and adds a lighting effect not currently in use, sunrise/glare. Snow would exist behind the hills as it takes longer for snow to melt the less it is hit by direct sun throughout the day. Snow + More Streams, + Sunlight + Flooded Cave.


That's 4 additional maps that add something new without requiring a whole heck of a lot of work. I assume the assets to add snow/fog/and move the sun around as well as changing the variables such as heat aren't that hard to change. Forest colony sunrise being the only exception that would require some retexturing to make it look as though snow was melting in some areas and adding more water to the cave.

Edited by HammerSwarm, 22 July 2013 - 06:26 AM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Could these count as feature suggestions?

Either way, I hope these ideas get forwarded.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Alpine Peaks: Gets lost in the couch cusions never to be seen again (like loose change). Disapears from map rotation .

Ok, overall I like the OPs ideas. I actually think a reduced visibility Alpine MIGHT help, but on Assault game mode, I think it will lead to a big increase in base cap racing (when teams can't find each other).

Still, some variety never hurts.

[Voivode]

Alpine peaks blizzard. Hampers visibility and limits the effective usable range of heat vision. Totally change the way the map plays.

[SmithMPBT]

Voivode, on 23 July 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

Alpine peaks blizzard. Hampers visibility and limits the effective usable range of heat vision. Totally change the way the map plays.

Won't teams just group tighter to maintain LOS and grouped fire? That will mean even less chance of contact with baddies.

[HammerSwarm]

SmithMPBT, on 23 July 2013 - 08:32 AM, said:

Won't teams just group tighter to maintain LOS and grouped fire? That will mean even less chance of contact with baddies.

The way I see it it will do a couple of things, because sensors still work, it will make firing large alphas at long distances even harder. which is good. Grouping up to take advantage of ECM, moving in and out of cover to prevent target info gathering accurate counting of the soon to be 12 mechs.

What this will do in assault is force people to DEFEND. On assault you know where your enemies have to end up, you can win in 2 ways, by outright elimination or by capping. With ECM cover in a Blizzard you could hide a few hundred meters off your cap on alpine and no one would ever know. A raven wanders into cap and you wipe that raven out.

Is there a chance that if your whole team sells out to go on the attack that you might get back capped and lose? Yep. That's the nature of the game mode. Currently because of the extreme sight lines there is little subterfuge about where your team is and what they are doing. A blizzard would change all of this.

Here are the 3 ways it could play out...
Team Alpha-Strike moves as a group, and team Beta Base Defenders sits at home. As the scouts and fast movers from team Alpha-Strike move around they don't find much of anything because they aren't looking 400m up the cliff and the powered down mechs aren't creating enough heat for it to be seen from very far out. Team Alpha Strike orders a Raven to step on the base and take a look to see if they can turn their foes. As the raven steps on the base team Beta Base Defenders power up and roll down the hill with thunderous fire and wipe out the Alpha's scout, Now down a man, team alpha has a choice, to cover their base because they could be capped, or continue forward. They continue forward and the Beta Base Defenders wipe them out from a superior fire position.

In their next match team Alpha-Strike run into the Delta Decievers moving as a group the Alphas see a blip moving past them in the storm and send 2 mediums to investigate, that blip turned out to be 11 mechs hiding behind a cliff to cover their heat signature, under ECM to disguise their numbers. The mediums are dispatched with nary a scratch to team Double D. The Alphas chooses to press on even though that blip has been scouting their numbers. The Deltas send a scout to stand on the Alpha's base forcing the Alphas into a choice, send the scouts and book it back to their base without knowing what is there, and possibly getting gunned down one at a time as they make it into range, or press forward. They choose forward knowing that they are close. The Decievers are laying in wait, the trap has been set and is waiting to be sprung, as the Alphas pass a cliff the decievers hot white gun boats begin to unload as it was just too late to see them on heat vision.

Meanwhile Epsilon's Evaders are battling the Kappa Kap Kontrollers, The Evaders, leave a small contingent of slow moving Assaults to defend, the Kappas do not, As the Kappas battle the assaults who are just buying time and sitting on their cap. They fight valiantly and their allies in the evaders cap out the Kappas.

You could of course have a game ending where no shots are fired in a cap race but that plan loses if one team just plans ahead.

The changes I am proposing I think would improve alpine, at least when I drop into alpine in my AC 20 or medium laser hunches having snow to give me cover would be better than nothing.

Edited by HammerSwarm, 24 July 2013 - 07:47 AM.

[SmithMPBT]

Sounds reasonable, and easy enough to implement. Atleast it will give the mechs without rows of ppc/gauss a fighting chance. PGI does know Alpine is torture for most people right? Its the equivalent of Malinovka in WoT.

[Team Leader]

Good ideas

[Booran]

Dynamic weather/fog like in frozen city. Probably the easiest to add to other maps due to it already been implemented. But I reckon there would be a fair amount of testing to get the dynamic done right.

Also, would be nice with different time of day for maps, with their own effects like low mist around rivers in forest colony and canyon..