52 replies to this topic

[Joseph Mallan]

YueFei, on 28 January 2014 - 09:30 AM, said:

I agree. I loathe the idea of tonnage limits. The NFL, *the* quintessential American sport, has no "weight limits". Teams bring the best package they think they can for a given down-and-distance. Nothing stops teams from bringing 11 players who all weigh 350+ pounds. It's just that it probably won't work for a 3rd and long. But a short-yardage, inches-to-go situation? Bring your jumbo package and dominate your opponents at the line of scrimmage.

If teams want to field 12 Assaults they should be allowed to. And depending on the mission objective, that might even be the best composition. PGI just needs to introduce more maps and missions so we see a variety of different team compositions depending on the scenario.

This is exactly the point.The mission should "influence" the composition a team brings. If the team makes a bad call, they should fail miserably! You don't bring All Assaults to a raid an you don't skimp on a planetary assault/defense!

[WarHippy]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 28 January 2014 - 09:29 AM, said:

Actually by enforcing tonnage limits what PGI is doing is simulating the economics of battletech and the rarity of assaults and heavies for which there is currently no mechanism.

Sort of, but really when the great houses actually fought as opposed to border skirmishes the big guns came out and you had entire battalions of heavies and assaults. Are you going to risk the loss of your ability to manufacture certain types of mechs by keeping your big mechs off the field? Not a chance in hell. Protecting your assets, or attempting to take someone elses assets is exactly the type of situation you are going to be willing to field those heavier mechs.
That being said, why stick to lore for this when they don't in other places? If this is lore you are ok with are you also ok with Clans being full power as they should be in lore, or are you picking and choosing to fit your needs?

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 28 January 2014 - 09:29 AM, said:

ideally we will not only have tonnage limits but class limits as well, thus enforcing no more than say 2 assaults and 2 heavies per match. Big mechs are expensive to field & maintain. right now ingame we are seeing primarily assaults because there is no economic limitations and the pay is the same regardless of class, thus the obvious choice is the take the biggest mechs with the most firepower to succeed. lack of objectives only contributes to this in skirmish mode, which has devolved into a 12v12 blobfest of whichever team brings more armour & firepower primarily.

People bring the biggest mech they can because this is nothing more than glorified deathmatch. Give us real objectives, and real roles to fill and people will bring other things. Forcing people to take the inferior tool for the job does nothing for the enjoyment of the game.
Ideally you should be able to bring whatever you damn well want.

[Felicitatem Parco]

You think there should be no reason for you to be limited to tonnage limits?

You think it's not fair that you can't have 12 Assault Mechs to defend your factory because *real combat* doesn't have tonnage limits?


Well, then, I think it would only be fair for me if I was allowed to bring 36 Light Mechs to combat your 12 Assault Mechs. Lights weigh 1/3 that of an Assault Mech, so if you get 1200 tons, then so should I.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 28 January 2014 - 09:45 AM.

[WarHippy]

Prosperity Park, on 28 January 2014 - 09:44 AM, said:

You think there should be no reason for you to be limited to tonnage limits?

You think it's not fair that you can't have 12 Assault Mechs to defend your factory because *real combat* doesn't have tonnage limits?


Well, then, I think it would only be fair for me if I was allowed to bring 36 Light Mechs to combat your 12 Assault Mechs. Lights weigh 1/3 that of an Assault Mech, so if you get 1200 tons, then so should I.

Fine with me, but don't expect us to be waiting out in the open for you.


*edit*I will also add that you are far to caught up on weight, and should be concentrating on bringing the right tool for the job. If the objective is to brawl it out, defend an objective, or overpower base defenses you are going to bring a heavier mech, if your objective is recon, or attacking a convoy you are going to bring lighter faster more maneuverable mech to complete the objective.

Edited by WarHippy, 28 January 2014 - 10:00 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Prosperity Park, on 28 January 2014 - 09:44 AM, said:

You think there should be no reason for you to be limited to tonnage limits?

You think it's not fair that you can't have 12 Assault Mechs to defend your factory because *real combat* doesn't have tonnage limits?


Well, then, I think it would only be fair for me if I was allowed to bring 36 Light Mechs to combat your 12 Assault Mechs. Lights weigh 1/3 that of an Assault Mech, so if you get 1200 tons, then so should I.

Actually I think its not fair that You cannot have 12 assaults to bring against our 6 Assaults 4 heavies a medium and a light! If the game allowed you to have 36 Lights it should also allow 36 Assaults. You get 12 Mech to try to take my factory/planet. I get 12 mechs to defend that with. What you bring is not my concern. If you out speed me, out mass me, or have better tactics I don't care. We should both be allowed to bring the 12 man force we believe will get the job done. Only one of us will be right. If they increase the number of lances each side can have fine. If you on't bring enough to take my stuff, don't let my foot actuator hit your armored behind on your way out. Better luck next time.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 January 2014 - 09:52 AM, said:

Actually I think its not fair that You cannot have 12 assaults to bring against our 6 Assaults 4 heavies a medium and a light! If the game allowed you to have 36 Lights it should also allow 36 Assaults. You get 12 Mech to try to take my factory/planet. I get 12 mechs to defend that with. What you bring is not my concern. If you out speed me, out mass me, or have better tactics I don't care. We should both be allowed to bring the 12 man force we believe will get the job done. Only one of us will be right. If they increase the number of lances each side can have fine. If you on't bring enough to take my stuff, don't let my foot actuator hit your armored behind on your way out. Better luck next time.

We're not driving Men; we're driving Vehicles. There are certain situations where heavier vehicles are better than light vehicles, and so it would be very unfair to grant unlimited tonnage to a 12-man defensive team with superior terrain features, whereas the attacking team requires speed and therefore individually-smaller vehicles. The attacking team should be granted equal resources as the defending team, and vehicle tonnage is currently a resource that must be treated separately from merely a quantity of pilots.

[Phromethius]

LOGISTICS. weight limits are in part a means to simulate logistics in a changing galactic front. I liked the suggestion of bonuses to limits based on what planet was in control and the nature of the conflict.

There just needs to be a longer term consequence for loosing a mech in combat. Especially when CW is introduced. Joseph for example ( I like to hear your feedback on things so I'm poking you for this) , if you fielded your houses 12 Assaults in one campaign/mission and lost most but not all and you managed to deter the invading "lighter" forces, your house would have difficulty replacing those assets. If another attempt was made at your planet immediately after, Should you then be able to field another 12 assaults?

I know you enjoy the fact that destruction of your mech does not mean player death, but I feel like there needs to be a resource added in, House cbills, House wealth, Merc wealth, something that adds an element of strategy to prolonged conflicts and planetary conquest. The kicker is that it should not be tied to PLAYER wealth, but more so for group activities. So that merc groups and houses that have more activity would have more territory. Smaller groups could contract out to larger groups and not feel left out etc.

[Joseph Mallan]

Prosperity Park, on 28 January 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:

We're not driving Men; we're driving Vehicles. There are certain situations where heavier vehicles are better than light vehicles, and so it would be very unfair to grant unlimited tonnage to a 12-man defensive team with superior terrain features, whereas the attacking team requires speed and therefore individually-smaller vehicles. The attacking team should be granted equal resources as the defending team, and vehicle tonnage is currently a resource that must be treated separately from merely a quantity of pilots.

So the defender sets the limit. This is starting to sound just like we are Clanners bidding!

[Accursed Richards]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 January 2014 - 09:52 AM, said:

Actually I think its not fair that You cannot have 12 assaults to bring against our 6 Assaults 4 heavies a medium and a light! If the game allowed you to have 36 Lights it should also allow 36 Assaults. You get 12 Mech to try to take my factory/planet. I get 12 mechs to defend that with. What you bring is not my concern. If you out speed me, out mass me, or have better tactics I don't care. We should both be allowed to bring the 12 man force we believe will get the job done. Only one of us will be right. If they increase the number of lances each side can have fine. If you on't bring enough to take my stuff, don't let my foot actuator hit your armored behind on your way out. Better luck next time.

The real problem is that assaults are "better" in the first place. Remember when role warfare meant that all weights would be viable and useful in a match?

[Noesis]

E C O N O M Y

[Joseph Mallan]

Accursed Richards, on 28 January 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

The real problem is that assaults are "better" in the first place. Remember when role warfare meant that all weights would be viable and useful in a match?

Talk to all the Light Lawmen pilots and how tasty my Assault Mech is. Yes I remember when an 8 man team needed Lights to scout and spot. Then PGI made it that no more than 4 players from a group could be on a team at one time! So 4-8 players were not on the same battle page.

[Corvus Antaka]

WarHippy, on 28 January 2014 - 09:42 AM, said:

Sort of, but really when the great houses actually fought as opposed to border skirmishes the big guns came out and you had entire battalions of heavies and assaults. Are you going to risk the loss of your ability to manufacture certain types of mechs by keeping your big mechs off the field? Not a chance in hell. Protecting your assets, or attempting to take someone elses assets is exactly the type of situation you are going to be willing to field those heavier mechs.
That being said, why stick to lore for this when they don't in other places? If this is lore you are ok with are you also ok with Clans being full power as they should be in lore, or are you picking and choosing to fit your needs?
People bring the biggest mech they can because this is nothing more than glorified deathmatch. Give us real objectives, and real roles to fill and people will bring other things. Forcing people to take the inferior tool for the job does nothing for the enjoyment of the game.
Ideally you should be able to bring whatever you damn well want.

I'm quite happy to see assault fests, as you state they did happen even in lore.

However, the majority of battles where fought with lighter mechs, and if you think it is ok to see "Assault fests" I equally think it should be ok for us to choose" non-assault fests, instead of forcing everyone into the biggest mechs possible.

For myself, the skill cieling on the assaults and heavies is very low and matches that contain primarily lights & heavies are actually significantly more challenging since less firepower & more speed makes for greater difficulty.

So keep your assault fests, but please stop denying those of us who want more from the game the choice to pilot something other than the current meta to feed your low skill cieling

[D Sync]

Tonnage limits are coming, gone are the days of 8v8 and 8 Atlai vs....

[Lykaon]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 January 2014 - 09:52 AM, said:

Actually I think its not fair that You cannot have 12 assaults to bring against our 6 Assaults 4 heavies a medium and a light! If the game allowed you to have 36 Lights it should also allow 36 Assaults. You get 12 Mech to try to take my factory/planet. I get 12 mechs to defend that with. What you bring is not my concern. If you out speed me, out mass me, or have better tactics I don't care. We should both be allowed to bring the 12 man force we believe will get the job done. Only one of us will be right. If they increase the number of lances each side can have fine. If you on't bring enough to take my stuff, don't let my foot actuator hit your armored behind on your way out. Better luck next time.

Except you are not taking into account one very important detail.

No limits means bring the most always.

So we can kiss goodbye any hope of seeing a combat system evolve to support role warfare since we will only need two weight classes lights (evasive enough to survive) Assaults (armored enough to last long enough to dish it out). Any other choice is a compromise.

A heavy is a compromise of slight speed increase for firepower and armor.So,why compromise take an assault mech.

A Medium mech is a compromise in speed for a bit of firepower and still not enough armor to matter.Just take the light nech,evasion trumps armor.

So we can stop screwing around and remove all mechs that weigh between 45-75 tons and while we are at it remove all mechs under 30 tons we don't use them.

So it's ...

Victors and a rare Awesome sighting
Battlemasters and Stalkers
Highlanders
Atlas

Spider
Jenner
Raven

[Roland]

Nick Makiaveli, on 26 January 2014 - 11:27 AM, said:

You asked for it, and you got it.

Skirmish.


No point in taking any thing but assaults as long as you have streaks. You launch with ANY selected,and there ya go. Given that most solo's just rush the center and shoot it out, it works almost as well in Assault and Conquest.

Played a skirmish game a few nights ago where we went up against a team of assaults with 7 lights...

At the beginning of the game, we had one dude on our team say, "We got 7 lights. We lose."

We absolutely CRUSHED them, with the guy claiming we were gonna lose being the ONLY death (he was in an assault mech, lolz).

We beat the {Scrap} out of them because, in skirmish, you aren't forced to go anywhere... so we were free to continually just swarm all over, engage, disengage, etc...

It took a long time to wear them down, but our mobility have us a huge advantage... because we actually USED our mobility to an advantage. And that is what Skirmish lets you do in a way the other modes can't match.

The biggest thing that pugs need to learn about skirmish is this:
In skirmish... YOU DO NOT NEED TO GO TO CENTER.

Seriously. Get that in your head. You are not obligated to go to any particular location on the map. You need to go to a position where you have an advantage... Not just rush to center like everyone did in assault every single game for 2 years. Hard habit to break, I know, but folks need to understand it if they are going to actually see what can happen in Skirmish.

[White Bear 84]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 26 January 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

had a match today with 12 lights and the other team had all assaults. tonnage limits can't come soon enough.

Yup. Although nothing to stop 12 lights forming up.. ..should there be a lower limit of some sort? Or a check that tries to mix the classes as much as possible/where possible to ensure a varied drop within the tonnage limit?

[Navy Sixes]

Phromethius, on 28 January 2014 - 11:06 AM, said:

LOGISTICS.
I know you enjoy the fact that destruction of your mech does not mean player death, but I feel like there needs to be a resource added in, House cbills, House wealth, Merc wealth, something that adds an element of strategy to prolonged conflicts and planetary conquest. The kicker is that it should not be tied to PLAYER wealth, but more so for group activities. So that merc groups and houses that have more activity would have more territory. Smaller groups could contract out to larger groups and not feel left out etc.

I was thinking about this myself: how to incorporate logistics and represent the relationship between attacker resources and defender resources. It's difficult, since --as pointed out-- no one can have more than a company of mechs on the field at once, and it's assumed that there will, in fact, be tonnage limits (which I support).

What I came up with was using access to our extensive (and totally and in all ways beyond canon) garages/mechlabs. Say there's a campaign for a world. Say 8 battles have to be won (divided up among the different play-modes) to take the world. That's an arbitrary number I just threw out there... doesn't matter. Defenders will have full access to their garages for the duration of the campaign. Before every match, they can chose from their mechs based on map/game mode.

The attackers have a finite number of overall mechs they can bring to the campaign, based on the number and type of dropships committed to the assault by their faction (not sure how this decision will be made). Faction players will get to pick a few mechs to take along for the campaign, the number based on their loyalty rating with the attacking faction. Higher ranked players may get to bring 5 mechs to chose from, lower ranked players may only get one.

Mercs bring their own dropships, so they get to divvy up their mechbays as they see fit. If they bring an Overlord with 36 bays, each member of their company can bring 3 mechs, or whatever they decide. If they bring a Union with 12 bays, each member of the company can only use one mech for the duration of the campaign.

Lonewolves have no dropships or faction support. They must chose one mech for the duration of the campaign, whether defending or attacking Their garage isn't within the defending territory, like the faction defenders'; it's on Solaris or something. So the defending faction will only provide for transportation of a single lonewolf mech to the contested world, whether defending or attacking... Lonewolves shouldn't be contracted to take a dropship berth in a faction's attacking force until they've gotten a pretty high loyalty rating with said faction. Garrison duty only. I feel It should suck to be a lonewolf out in the cold...

Not only will this reflect the defenders' superior logistical position by allowing them unlimited access to their mechbays, it will add a deeper level of play in that attacking players with lower loyalty will have to make smart decisions in deciding which mechs to bring and how to build them. Big name merc companies will be able to bring the kitchen sink (and charge big name prices!) while rag-tag little merc units will also have to deploy smart, as well as have a reason to save up their money for more dropships. And lonewolves, well, it's always been a hard-knock life for us. No one's doing me any favors, and I ain't askin' for any, either .

Finally, it gives our loyalty ratings a tangible in-game value beyond unlocking skins (which is cool and all, but I'd like to see it mean more).

I know it's not perfect, but how does this sound as a framework to build on?

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Joseph Mallan, on 28 January 2014 - 09:36 AM, said:

The mission should "influence" the composition a team brings.

Composition is the tip of the iceberg. In an ideal game we'd also be able to choose camo/colors before a match.

Edited by lockwoodx, 28 January 2014 - 11:35 PM.

[StaIker]

In my experience the best fights are always weight limited. Unrestricted matches lead to a race to the top, once everyone has an assault, that's all you ever see. Restricted matches create unpredictable combat, and that's where the magic happens.

This is an idea I had a while ago, that each company should be made of 3 distinct lances. Each lance is formed using a different limit, so that when brought together the company is diverse, yet still has the possibility of having all Mechs represented. It goes like this;

Lance 1: Assaults only
Lance 2: Heavies only
Lance 3: Light and Medium only

These lances are not fixed for the players, they are used only in the background by the matchmaker. So you might have a 4-man team of two assaults, a heavy and a light join a server as a lance, while the matchmaker has used their Mechs to fill slots in each weighted lance it is searching for.

The queue for each class should be visible to players so if you see 500 assaults, 200 heavies and 100 lights waiting, you can figure out for yourself the quickest route to a game. The matchmaker could have any combination of lances too, you might get 3 assault lances in one game, and none in the next, there is no limit to the combinations that could be done.

[WarHippy]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 28 January 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

I'm quite happy to see assault fests, as you state they did happen even in lore.

Yet, with tonnage limits we won't see this ever again. All tonnage limits do is restrict our options in an arbitrary way, and I don't like.

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 28 January 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

However, the majority of battles where fought with lighter mechs, and if you think it is ok to see "Assault fests" I equally think it should be ok for us to choose" non-assault fests, instead of forcing everyone into the biggest mechs possible.

I think you should be able to choose a non-assault fest as well, but instead of making the choices interesting you are advocating for people to be forced to play the way you want. If you don't want to be forced into heavier mechs then I support you, but don't do it by forcing others into mechs that they may not want to use or you are just being selfish.

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 28 January 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

For myself, the skill cieling on the assaults and heavies is very low and matches that contain primarily lights & heavies are actually significantly more challenging since less firepower & more speed makes for greater difficulty.

Fair enough, but that isn't true for everyone so please try to keep that in mind. I want for you to be able to use the mechs that you enjoy, but I don't want it to be at the expense of me being able to use the mechs that I enjoy.

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 28 January 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

So keep your assault fests, but please stop denying those of us who want more from the game the choice to pilot something other than the current meta to feed your low skill cieling

Ignoring the thinly veiled attack on my skill in game I'm not sure if I can take this seriously or not. You don't want to be denied your preferred game play style, but you are willing to deny others theirs?

Edited by WarHippy, 29 January 2014 - 08:02 AM.