Posted 28 September 2013 - 08:56 AM
All of the things you mention are things that have been considered at one time or another, but are not in the game for a variety of reasons. My own personal opinions on them are as follows.
Dead mechs exploding. This is commonly known as 'Stackpoling' after the battletech author who was fond of having this happen in his books, and it's pretty universally regarded as dumb. There are two main reasons for this - one realism-based, and one gameplay-based.
First, the idea that mech reactors should explode makes no sense from a physical standpoint. Just because it has the word 'nuclear' in it, or even the words 'nuclear reactor', does *not* make it a potential bomb just waiting to go off! These are nuclear *fusion* reactors, and that means a reactor breach is going to be a fizzle at best. *Fusion* reactions are not the same as the fission reactions that power modern reactors, and are inherently incapable of the sort of runaway self-sustaining reaction that would be required to make them explode.
Fissionable materials *want* to fission - they do it naturally all by themselves (radioactivity), and when concentrated into a reactor require elaborate safety features to prevent runaway reactions and the associated releases of energy and radioactivity (although it's important to note that even fission reactors are incapable of *exploding* - the worst you're going to get is a meltdown, with potential ancillary purely chemical explosive byproducts like hydrogen or steam explosions).
Fusable materials, on the other hand, have to be *forced* to fuse, and they do so *very* reluctantly. It takes the compressive gravitational force of an *entire star's* worth of mass to induce hydrogen fusion naturally, and even our best efforts here on earth can only produce fleeting instants of fusion reactions during fusion experiments or the explosion of a thermonuclear bomb. As well, fusion is an inherently self-limiting process - you have to force the fusion fuel together *extremely* tightly to cause fusion, and as soon as you do so you release energy, heat the fuel, and increase its pressure, either causing the fuel to expand and cease fusing or requiring you to further increase your confining force.
A sustained fusion reaction in a hypothetical fusion reactor is going to be an *extraordinarily* delicate process, and any physical damage to the reactor is simply going to cause the reaction to cease. Even if you literally blast the reactor in half, all you're going to get is a fairly small release of thermal energy from the relatively small amount of hot fusing plasma currently contained in the reaction chamber. Said plasma *will* likely contain enough thermal energy to superheat the air around it and cause a visible explosion that'd blow some parts off the victim and make a bang or two, but there's nowhere near enough energy there to cause the sorts of kabooms that people who advocate stackpoling reactors are envisioning, and certainly not enough to result in physical damage to nearby mechs.
The second reason why this would be bad is that exploding mechs are an incredibly horrible idea from a gameplay point of view. This was easily one of the worst parts of MW4's gameplay, in my opinion, because it resulted in the absurd situation where an almost-dead enemy mech was significantly more dangerous to you than a perfectly intact one. You ended up with the ludicrous scenario where you had to *run away* from almost-destroyed enemies in fear that they would blow up next to you. As you note, it also encourages degenerate gameplay strategies like *intentionally* setting out to commit suicide. You might miss those days, but I sure as hell don't. That's an incredibly stupid gameplay mechanic, and it should *not* be a viable tactic.
Especially given how MWO's gameplay *already* massively incentivises sniping and discourages brawling, I hardly think we ought to be adding yet *further* elements to penalize those who actually dare to try and fight up close. This also covers weapon splash damage from firing while too close to an enemy mech. In addition to making no sense from a physical standpoint (protecting from that sort of incidental damage is one of the entire *points* of putting armor on something in the first place!), it further penalizes brawlers while doing nothing to the already far too numerous and powerful snipers.
Mechs falling over. This was actually in the game at one point - mechs could knock each other over by running into each other. It was horrifically buggy and glitchy, however, as well as not especially balanced, and was removed before open beta started. It's something they have said they will reintroduce in a fixed form at some point, but they haven't talked about it in a while and there's no ETA. You won't get any arguments from me on the desirability of this feature, though - I am also looking forward to it.
Legging. This may have been in MW3, but it's not in this game, and I for one think that is a *very* good thing. It is, quite simply, an absolutely horrible mechanic from a gameplay and balance standpoint. It just makes mechs *far* too easy to kill - it'd be like our current CT coring pinpoint problem, but on steroids.
As well, it doesn't match the effects of losing a leg in the original tabletop game - a mech that lost a leg automatically fell over, but it could struggle back to its remaining foot in subsequent turns, and even drag itself around the board one hex at a time. Heck, in the tabletop even a mech with *both* legs missing wasn't out of the game and could still fire from a prone position.
I do agree in a very limited sense that it *would* be satisfying from an aesthetic point of view to be able to blow a leg off an enemy battlemech and see it go flying. However, the gameplay consequences of allowing such a thing are simply far, far too catastrophic to put it into the game.
4
. It troubles me that MWO has no "falling" feature where the mech falls over and gets back up again. I
Because "realistic" has never been a synonymous of "fun" to me. What about an ammo explosion when the mech is gone then? (if there is some, of course)
