5 replies to this topic

[Blue Hymn]

Had an idea, so thought I would throw it out and see how the community would feel about it.
In our two current modes of gameplay, Assault and Conquest, we're usually fighting each other at pristine conditions, and then killing each other either by destroying all mechs, capturing the enemy base, or capping the most resources.

I'm pretty sure that, with the amount of time we put into this, the return investment on Cbills is rather...small, and trying to get enough Cbills to pay for the next upgrade, buying a new engine, or weapons+equipment for use on our current mech is a very time-consuming process.

Then I had a sudden idea for a new game mode called Survival. In this mode, you're still doing either Assault or Conquest (until Devs introduce some new game modes or missions for us), and there are some slight rules enforced while playing this mode.

• The objective is to complete your mission, either by destroying all enemy mechs, or capping/capturing enemy base/resource(s).
  
• If you win the match, you are advanced to the next match. You have the option to repair or refit your mech to a certain degree, but the choice is limited with heavy tradeoffs.
  
• The intermission between matches is at most 1 minute, so choose wisely. Ballistic mechs will have to make the choice either to resupply their ammo/weapons, or refit their armor. Energy mechs will either have to repair their armor, or replace double heatsinks and/or energy weapons. Missile mechs fall the same criteria, so on and so forth.
  
• You cannot change your mech between matches during survival mode, so choice in mech is important when you start survival mode.
  
• Everytime you win, you get an additional multiplier to the amount of Cbills or XP. You can't have both. It must be either Cbills or XP. Win 1 match = x.5 multiplier, win your second match = 2x multiplier, something like that.
  
• You can continue on the play, but defeat means losing all that you have currently acquired.
  
• Defeat means when your mech is destroyed. Those who have their mechs destroyed forfeit their current multiplier and get the most basic default on earnings in Cbill or Xp.

This is just a rough idea, and can be changed further in detail. What does the community think about this?

[Training Instructor]

The only problem I see with this is that it would be a sniper/lrm/coward fest.

[FinsT]

Yep, it would be. And even worse, it also would be a premades' heaven. 12 guys in teamspeak, rolling with a team _designed_ to survive.

End result: survival mode would probably become dominated by teams like "everyone hides except max speed cicada ECM scouts, and whenever someone is spotted by a scout - there are up to 500 LRM missiles flying towards him every ~5 seconds". Yep, ~500 every 4 seconds, not a typo - assault class LRM boat can easily carry ~65 LRMs, 8 boats x 65 = 520 missiles... This can drop pretty much anything in just one huge gigantic "hit" (assuming same missile lock time for all 8 boats and good team coordination), since at 1.1 damage per missile, if they all hit, it's 572 damage.

[Blue Hymn]

Then at least this thread can discuss the potential problems, and possible solutions to the idea.

EDIT: Okay, didn't see the following post after the sniperfest comment. Dx

So if there are issues with lrm coordination via premades, then let's add an additional rule to the survival mode that affects ammo. Say this premade focuses heavily on missiles. They win the first match. Let's say every match after that they can only resupply up 2 tons of ammo at most, at the expense of the damage they received prior being carried over to the next match. Also, armor repair is flat-rate, which means lighter mechs get more of their armor repaired to a certain degree compared to heavies or assaults.

The focus, I hope, is to get survival mode more close to Lore than the current meta is, give us an alternate means to acquire more Cbills/Xps, and add more challenge to the gameplay until the Devs can put more game modes in. Ballistics and missiles are strong, but pilots don't get to have that option of resupply everytime, so they have to make a choice: Focus on repairing your mech, or significantly increase the chance of running out of ammo the more matches you partake in Survival mode. Energy mechs could operate much longer without supply compared to Ballistic/missile mechs, so this would also - hopefully - reflect its capability in modes such as this.

Also - if you are destroyed, you lose any multiplier you have, which means no bonus for you, per se.

Edited by Blue Hymn, 19 October 2013 - 12:32 AM.

[FinsT]

Yes and no about additional rules.

Yes, 2 tons ammo max per match would solve LRM-boating problem.

No, it's not any good solution, because of the following reasons:
- it'd ruin ballistics much, as well as other missiles. Degrading the mode to mainly laser-fest (with a tint of PPCs and flamers). Not good;
- the main problem with survival mode has its root in the mode itself - and in particular, the very reward which would motivate people to create "ultimately effective" premades. You see, premades going efficient LRM-boating is not the only _method_ to turn the game into a practically guaranteed win against practically any PuG. There are other ways. If it's about lasers, then it'd take good strategic judgement coupled by excellent maps' knowledge for the leader of the premade; but if he got it, then he can do the following: load most of the team with ER large lasers (4 per each mech), rest heatsinks, and, using his maps' knowledge, he'd simply keep the whole team in open terrain all the time, with all fire sectors distributed among lances, and simple rule: anyone sees friendly lasers shooting a visible target, - he joins and adds his own laser fire to the same target. As a result, anything which pops its head out - gets dozen+ ER large lasers on it pretty much continuously. Which means everything except most agile lights will be killed in like 3-4 seconds or even less, - and lights in not much longer. The usual counter to this sort of tactic - which is to annihilate anything which is in wide open terrain with LRMs, - won't work, because we just rendered LRMs unusable with our rule. Cockpit shake, which drops laser fire accuracy dramatically, and is produced by missiles' and ballistics' hits, - is also outta the game. The rest of the team being scouts who report enemy movements, giving 8+ ERLRs hitters time to position to kill, and here again, we get a premade which is able to win vs any PuG nearly 100% of the time.

Therefore, i think that removing rewards (any rewards) for surviving (as a team or personally just as well) - is the only possible way to implement survival mode to achieve other goals you mention - more lore, and simply different approach to longevity of mech builds. But how to motivate players to participate in a game mode which has additional - and serious, - restrictions, then? Without some sort of reward, it's close to impossible.

That's how the whole thing gets into a deadend, as far as i can see...

But no matter that, still, i thank you for posting your idea. May be it'd evolve into something a bit diffrent which can actually be implemented? And discussion is good in any case. Cheers!

Edited by FinsT, 19 October 2013 - 02:15 AM.

[DI3T3R]

I once proposed something similar. I dubbed it "Campaign-Mode".

If you survive a match, you get an automatic partial repair and partial ammo-refill. You start your next match with a partially damaged Mech.
With each match, your Mech deteriorates more and more, but at the same time the rewards per match would escalate.
Dead team-members would be replaced by new ones.