121 replies to this topic

[YueFei]

Make maps larger and feature multiple objectives. Realistically, the infrastructure that supports a military force covers an area much larger than that military force can defend the entirety of. If you *did* try to spread all of your forces to cover the entire area, you'd be spread way too thin to reasonably defend any of it. Thus, you'd need scouts to find out the balance of the enemy's strength, and which way it is going, so that you can get into position to defend against it.

Imagine that you have 3 bases that need to be defended, and the 3 bases are reasonably far apart, and the map is somewhat large. Each base provides some kind of benefit. For example, 1 base is an airfield, and gives access to airstrikes and artillery strikes. Another base is a munitions depot and lets you re-arm, etc. You drop nothing but 12 Assault mechs. You decide to split up into groups of 4 and defend all 3 at the same time.

The enemy sends scouts forward, who report in that you've got 3 lances of 4 split up on the 3 bases. Your team has no scouts so you're blind. The enemy then uses superior mobility to gather all 12 to hit 1 base. It might be a mixture of Lights, Mediums, Heavies, and Assaults, but it's still 12 on 4. By the time the 4 guys under attack can report it, it's too late for the other 8 to make it there in time to help, they are too slow.

If the defenders split into two groups of 6, you can still do the same thing. Except you destroy 1 base unopposed first (and I do mean *destroy*, not "capture" by standing in a square). Then you engage 1 group of 6. Hell, you don't have to kill those 6, just put pressure on them while also shooting up their base. Those 6 defenders are under time pressure to kill all 12 of you before you can destroy their base with concentrated fire. Once you've destroyed a 2nd base, you win (destroying 2 out of 3 bases counts as a victory). Even if you only have 3 or 4 mechs left standing, and somehow by a miracle the defenders still have all 12 mechs left, you still win.

If the defenders try to deathball it up all on 1 base, the attackers can take out the other 2 bases for the victory (2 out of 3 bases destroyed).

On the flip side, if the attackers drop nothing but 12 Assault mechs, just make sure the map is large enough so that the defenders have plenty of opportunity to scout, and drop artillery and airstrikes on them multiple times. And when a defending mech is damaged, it can return to base for re-arm / repairs (of some limited fashion). Eventually those 12 slow Assault mechs will get attrited down by artillery and airstrikes and hit-and-run, and the defenders should be able to win. So for the attackers it's better if they have a screening element of lights and mediums and faster heavies, to push around the enemy lights and mediums and prevent them from getting close enough to easily drop artillery strikes and airstrikes one after another. Hell, you can make it more interesting by having the attacking force able to call in supply convoys and self-propelled artillery pieces (which they'd need to escort).

I mean, there are alot of possibilities here, that stuff is just back-of-the-envelope brainstorming. I'd be very disappointed if PGI can't come up with something way better, more fun and engaging, and that makes all weight classes desirable to have.

[Khobai]

Quote

The one thing that I REALLY REALLY think that limits the options for Scouting is that,

What limits scouting is that the risk isnt worth the reward. For scouting to be a worthwhile role any information you discover has to outweigh the risk of dying to obtain it.

1) deathballing makes scouting pointless and too risky. Because its very easy to locate a deathball of mechs and too risky to go near it. Gamemodes need to force teams to split up more to get away from deathballing.

2) information needs to be more valuable. The way you make information more valuable is by making it harder to obtain. Theres a couple ways to do this like proper implementation of sensor warfare and and overall nerf to the sensor/detection ability of heavies/assaults to make them more dependent on lights/mediums.

3) We need a new gamemode that gives every weight class something to do. Like having heavies/assaults attack/defend a stationary objective as the primary win condition while lights/mediums capture resource nodes as the secondary win condition. The tertiary win condition would be destroying all enemy mechs.

4) maps need to be way bigger. the bigger the maps are the more scouting to find the enemy becomes relevant.

5) lights/mediums need better tools for scouting. For example, Narc has great potential to be the swiss army knife of these lighter classes. NARC could be given multiple types of ammo and have tremendous utility for scouting/disruption of the enemy. NARC could have homing beacons, ECM beacons, explosive/haywire beacons, nemesis beacons (makes enemy missiles retarget enemy mechs), etc...

6) Fundamental change to how sensors work. Detecting enemy mechs and sharing information with allies is currently way too easy and it completely eliminates the need for scouting and tactical sharing of information.

The way sensors should work is that each mech should have a network range and mechs should only be able to share sensor information with other allied mechs if their network ranges intersect. I've created a diagram below to illustrate this concept.

In the first example, A is the only mech that can see 1 directly, but because D's network range intersects with A's it allows D to also see 1. B and C cannot see anything.

In the second example, D acts as a bridge, conveying the sensor information from A to B which in turn also allows C to see 1.





So how does this help Light/Medium mechs? Well for one we can assume they have much better sensors/communication equipment than heavies/assaults. So their sensor and network ranges would be much larger. A Light mech like the Raven could have a network range 4 times larger than an Assault mech, which means a Raven would be one of the best information sharers to have on your team.

Edited by Khobai, 26 October 2013 - 01:03 PM.