I was thinking of the IS map in mw1 btw. It was the very first second time i had seen an IS map (crescent hawks inception was the first, but it was an incomplete map). Looked super messy to me then...
As it stands last time I played...
Every mech is an omni-mech; meaning you can swap out weapons all you want with no added cost or downside. (Ballistics for ballistics, energy for energy, etc), Which is anti-Battletech to me, sorry every mech made in the Innersphere is designed and built that way, no swapping out a AC10 on a CN9-A for a MG and beef up the CT MLs to a Large laser, and a bigger engine.
Read the new "clan" threads in Announcements/Command Chair. Omni will be different.
Anyone ever heard of the Yen-Lo-Wang? A customized Centurion, with the LRM system removed to upgrade the AC10 into an AC20.
Then you had several Vindicator designs that I can recall where they ripped out the SRM4 system for additional armor plating...
Then there was the Stalker that was a 70-75 ton mech, as mechanics removed some weapons to lighten the load on the old chassis, to save the mech from literally falling appart on itself.
Even in TT, you could customize your mechs. It just cost you lots of c-bills to do so, compared to Omni-tech. Omni-tech made customizing cheaper, faster, and easier. Now, instead of months of downtime to customize, you could do it in hours. This means that an omni mech could go into a mission with specific gear for that mission. A non-omni mech had to go in with whatever it had on it for the mission (usually you selected the mech best for the mission, if you had one).
Lots of customizing was being done in the Innersphere. However, most of it was done by rich people, or on Solaris. It was expensive. Then again, we all live as kings and queens with the amount of C-bills we make and have...
One way or another you already have it. If you had 25 matches when it was implemented then they gave you ~7,000,000 cbills all at once. If you started after that then you got it as a part of your first 25 matches.
One way or another you already have it. If you had 25 matches when it was implemented then they gave you ~7,000,000 cbills all at once. If you started after that then you got it as a part of your first 25 matches.
Yup. I bought my Stalker with that bonus way back in the day...
One way or another you already have it. If you had 25 matches when it was implemented then they gave you ~7,000,000 cbills all at once. If you started after that then you got it as a part of your first 25 matches.
Read the new "clan" threads in Announcements/Command Chair. Omni will be different.
Anyone ever heard of the Yen-Lo-Wang? A customized Centurion, with the LRM system removed to upgrade the AC10 into an AC20.
Then you had several Vindicator designs that I can recall where they ripped out the SRM4 system for additional armor plating...
Then there was the Stalker that was a 70-75 ton mech, as mechanics removed some weapons to lighten the load on the old chassis, to save the mech from literally falling appart on itself.
Even in TT, you could customize your mechs. It just cost you lots of c-bills to do so, compared to Omni-tech. Omni-tech made customizing cheaper, faster, and easier. Now, instead of months of downtime to customize, you could do it in hours. This means that an omni mech could go into a mission with specific gear for that mission. A non-omni mech had to go in with whatever it had on it for the mission (usually you selected the mech best for the mission, if you had one).
Lots of customizing was being done in the Innersphere. However, most of it was done by rich people, or on Solaris. It was expensive. Then again, we all live as kings and queens with the amount of C-bills we make and have...
The YLW, was a custom job, that costs millions of c-bills to do, and was done with his earnings from his time in the arenas of Solaris VII, and it wasn't done in a mechbay at some dealership or mom and pop tech shop, it was done by a factory, the mech was basically RE-built from the ground up.
The Stalker was 85tons, and the lighter version was just one the factory techs removed a few things and redesigned the mech.
The act of swapping weapons and equipment in a battlemech is something that only the clans were capable of, it wasn't impossible to get a custom mech but it had to be built that way, not refitted that way. This is why the ARC-2K was different than the ARC-2R. They are both Archers, they both are 70 tons, but one has smaller LRM racks, and large lasers and ditches the rear firing medium lasers, and is exclusively built in Kurita, while the ARC-2R is the base model that is produced damned near ANYWHERE in the Innersphere.
The WVR-6K was the Kurita version of the Wolverine, the reason for its design was the Kurita Procurement Department felt the WVR-6Rs jump jets were unreliable and troublesome, so they had the engineers remove them and fit additional heatsinks and armor on the mech along with a few other changes. These changes included dumping the AC/5 because of the lack of AC5 production in the House Kurita. The same reason for the dumping of the SHD-2Hs AC/5 for a Lords Light PPC made in the Draconis Combine. Again wasnt a field refit, or a mechwarrior preference it was HARD DESIGNED THAT WAY AT THE FACTORY IT WAS PRODUCED!
In terms most of the casual MW fans would understand, it is like ordering a 2014 Jeep Cherokee from the factory, you get a list of options, once it is delivered good luck on changing out anything on it now. You can do mostly cosmetic stuff to it now, but you want a new radio head unit, you have to take it BACK to the dealership and have them install it and reprogram the car for it. You want a V8 instead of the inline 4cylinder, well you will need a custom shop to do it, and 10-30k US Dollars to do it.
Also, what you seem to recall about the Yen-Lo-Wang is not what I recall about the Yen-Lo-Wang. Did you by chance read the Warrior trilogy, where the Yen-Lo-Wang was created? As far as I recall, it wasn't "built at the factory that way", but was bought as a used Centurion, then customized in a personal facility. It did cost a lot of c-bills to be altered though, which is why it wasn't a common occurrence (and took a while to do too). (Also, unless I am mistaken, I don't recall him fighting in the arenas till he had the Yen-Lo-Wang. Didn't he create that with his "severance" package? Or funds from the "agents under cover" account? Maybe I should re-read the warrior trilogy, just to be sure...)
He's right everyone. We should remove the ability to swap parts in the mechlab. Then we should make it so when you buy mechs for MC, you get pewter miniatures, and instead of selling them online we can sell them in specialized, physical shops. Then we should distribute paper rule books. We can then take down the servers, and instead have "hobby shops" or "basements" where we meet instead. We can replace digital mechanics with dice rolls and paper stat sheets. Replace our keyboards and mice (and steering wheels!!!) with tables and pencils. Replace our digital maps with tiny foam scenery, or at least a drawing over a hex grid.
We can call it Tabletop Battletech. And it shall be great.
Honestly OP, I don't think you paid much attention to the Battle tech video games, did you?
Replacing weapons and upgrading the mechs was not only standard, it was expected. Look at each mech in the Battletech universe video games. Every single one of them has many variants that came with different configurations.
We have those, and we can upgrade and tweak them because not a single player as of this moment is a grunt in an army being handed standard issue wargear. We actually get to customize it, and it costs an arm, a leg, and three kidneys.
It cost me double the commando's price to fully upgrade it. That's a lot of cash on a tiny light mech. I've bought engines more expensive than some heavies and assaults, specifically to upgrade a mech.
Every single mech we have is a custom job that we spent hours trying to upgrade (C-Bill gains received a big hit because re-arm and repair was removed, which was a good decision in my opinion) It takes me at least 15 wins just to get the Double Heat Sink upgrade (100K per win on average). Then I need to drop another 50 or so times in that specific mech after upgrading it, so that I can farm the XP needed to tweak it with the pilot tree. The way I see it, it was actually cheaper, and less exhausting in the lore than here.
If you want, you can run your mechs stock, just the way they came from the factory and have fun with that. I recognize that I am a merc who is farming his ass off trying to get the C-Bills to feed his family, and upgrade his mechs so he can stay in the fight longer, and survive to see said wife and kids.
Also, read up on the omni mech thread, and do not trivialize and dismiss what people are saying because it disagreed with your opinion that is at least a year old.
Poptarting is a form of fighting that some use to basically pop up and snipe someone from a distance with whatever weapons the mech has. Oftenly, a Shadow Hawk, Cataphract 3D, Victor, or Highlander would snipe from a distance with PPCs/ERPPCs, Ultra AC5s/AC5s, and AC20s. This is poptarting, and while some call it cheesy, most people know how to deal with them and chew them out like a light.
It should be added that poptarting is jumpjuet mech exclusive. Only mechs with JJs can poptart. That tactic is that they simply hide behind cover bigger than them, Jump up with their JJs while carrying high pinpoint damage weapons, and once they get a clear shot at someone they would alpha, then descend back behind cover. It makes hitting them in a stand up fight ill-advised. You best bet is either a mech with suppression weapons (AC2 or 5) to pound them down and keep them in hiding until you can flank them.
Another approach that I prefer, (being the suicidal light pilot that I am) is to send a light mech to flank them and distract them. You have no idea how annoying it is to try and line up a shot while being rocked with streaks and lasers into your back. That usually makes them turn around to try and kill the light, giving your team the reprieve they need to close the distance rapidly and kill the jumping sods.
He's right everyone. We should remove the ability to swap parts in the mechlab. Then we should make it so when you buy mechs for MC, you get pewter miniatures, and instead of selling them online we can sell them in specialized, physical shops. Then we should distribute paper rule books. We can then take down the servers, and instead have "hobby shops" or "basements" where we meet instead. We can replace digital mechanics with dice rolls and paper stat sheets. Replace our keyboards and mice (and steering wheels!!!) with tables and pencils. Replace our digital maps with tiny foam scenery, or at least a drawing over a hex grid.
We can call it Tabletop Battletech. And it shall be great.
Are you familiar with Poe's Law? If not, I suggest you look it up. There are times I truly believe that some Forumers believe that exactly.
In terms most of the casual MW fans would understand, it is like ordering a 2014 Jeep Cherokee from the factory, you get a list of options, once it is delivered good luck on changing out anything on it now. You can do mostly cosmetic stuff to it now, but you want a new radio head unit, you have to take it BACK to the dealership and have them install it and reprogram the car for it. You want a V8 instead of the inline 4cylinder, well you will need a custom shop to do it, and 10-30k US Dollars to do it.
Yeah but all of us are Dom Toretto and have the shop the tools the people and the money to do what we want to that brand new Jeep. V12 twin turbo, no problem. What next.
The economy could function more like you are describing with regards to cost depending on your faction allegiance. House Kurita pays more for AC/5 weapons and ammo, and more for non Kurita Variants.
Having no customization overall would remove half of the game. The mech lab is was 50% of the game. (lets hope its fixed soon)
Yeah but all of us are Dom Toretto and have the shop the tools the people and the money to do what we want to that brand new Jeep. V12 twin turbo, no problem. What next.
The economy could function more like you are describing with regards to cost depending on your faction allegiance. House Kurita pays more for AC/5 weapons and ammo, and more for non Kurita Variants.
Having no customization overall would remove half of the game. The mech lab is was 50% of the game. (lets hope its fixed soon)
Yeah good luck on that Gay & Bicurious.
First I have seen the size of a V12 engine and unless it is a F1 2.5L V12 it aint fitting in a Jeeps engine bay.
cSand, on 07 March 2014 - 07:10 PM, said:
He's right everyone. We should remove the ability to swap parts in the mechlab. Then we should make it so when you buy mechs for MC, you get pewter miniatures, and instead of selling them online we can sell them in specialized, physical shops. Then we should distribute paper rule books. We can then take down the servers, and instead have "hobby shops" or "basements" where we meet instead. We can replace digital mechanics with dice rolls and paper stat sheets. Replace our keyboards and mice (and steering wheels!!!) with tables and pencils. Replace our digital maps with tiny foam scenery, or at least a drawing over a hex grid.
We can call it Tabletop Battletech. And it shall be great.
You sir like turtles.
I can tell that very few of you if any ever played the best Mechwarrior/Battletech game ever, Multi-player Battletech:3025. It had great gameplay, and economy, and mechs that you couldnt customize as per the canon Battletech universe.
Sure there are dozens if not tens of dozens of variants for each mech out there, but they are all factory variants save for a few select ones. Even Jamie Wolf's ARC-2W wasn't a special to him mech, it was a variant that was built by Blackwell Industries on Outreach.
I am not saying take out customization, just remove the ability to quickly swap out parts between matches, make it cost a lot more. Right now it costs NOTHING, ZIP, NADDA! When realistically it would cost something for you to put anything on your mech that wasnt there to start with.
Also, what you seem to recall about the Yen-Lo-Wang is not what I recall about the Yen-Lo-Wang. Did you by chance read the Warrior trilogy, where the Yen-Lo-Wang was created? As far as I recall, it wasn't "built at the factory that way", but was bought as a used Centurion, then customized in a personal facility. It did cost a lot of c-bills to be altered though, which is why it wasn't a common occurrence (and took a while to do too). (Also, unless I am mistaken, I don't recall him fighting in the arenas till he had the Yen-Lo-Wang. Didn't he create that with his "severance" package? Or funds from the "agents under cover" account? Maybe I should re-read the warrior trilogy, just to be sure...)
It was a combination of what Sayyid and yourself have said.
In general the customization of a mech in tabletop rules and thusly by extension lore went as follows. Field modifications could not be done (unlike Clans who can). They could not be changed mid-operation. So once you dropped to a planet you kept going, the best you could get is repairs and rearm from a mobile field base or mech repair station; you didn't have time for anything more. At best you could hope for is unjamming the UACs. And even that often failed, meaning that if your UAC did jam you might go in for repairs and the technicians could make it unfixable until the campaign is over entirely.
Minor changes with similar weapon systems take a number of rolls. Removal of the weapon system. Attachment of the new weapon system. There were rolls for making sure the weapon is connected properly and doesn't malfunction. Rolls to connect ammo feed or energy. It was a complicated thing. The one time I tried it took me about 2 hours to play it out. What I had was "3 weeks" before the next wave of enemy forces came in.
In that time I successfully reoutfitted some weaponry on 5 out of 16 mechs. There wasn't enough crew, time, etc. to be able to do it for them all. Of them, there were 3 malfunctioning weapons, 1 non-functional weapon, 6 misaligned weapons, and of them all only 2 weapons were 'perfectly done' without some problems. A few of those weapons were done as "rushed jobs" as the time was ticking away. I never did get some of my UAC/5s unjammed.
When the invading force came, combat was certainly interesting. Mechs still damaged to some degree. Some had weapons that weren't functioning. Went to use a UAC/5 to be reminded it's broken still from the battle 3 weeks before where they failed to unjam it and made it worse. Had a PPC blow up in my face, killing the pilot. Another pilot evidently got a head injury and couldn't keep his mech's balance so he spent the fight struggling to stand and after a few failures I settled on trying to shoot while laying down.
My favorite moment though was the headshot on an enemy light mech, while firing backwards from an Atlas K. MPL to the cockpit, knocked the pilot out. I wound up kicking his mech later.
When the base was overrun, we set out the flag. Per the plot of the campaign, the Clanners told the surrendering survivors to walk. So after falling back to the next base I had two days. The Clans did their repairs fairly quickly and had a completely new set of weapons. I could barely even repair what I had. There wasn't enough ammo to spare for many of them. I spent the first 40 turns of the next fight (400 seconds) trying to get a ton of Gauss Rifle ammunition into the Atlas K before leaving the refit station. It was my choice for the VIP that the Clanners had to capture. The turrets delayed them. I had artillery bombardments, some mech mortars out there, even called in some additional orbital deployment of smaller turrets to buy what little time I could.
In the end, I got that ton of ammo in and I marched out of the repair station as the clanners began attacking it.
I was pit against 5 Stars in total, of which only 2 stars participated in any particular "wave". I had 4 lances, tanks, infantry in the first fight. In the second I was given a 5th lance, some bomber support. In both I had turrets, emplacements, etc. and objectives to defend. When forced to fall back I gained another two lances, lots more turrets, better walls, and an entire facility ripe with targets of opportunity.
The campaign went on for a few weeks in real life. It played out as a total of 2 months, most of that being time between fights to repair and the like.
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My point though was in 2 days the Clans could reoutfit every single mech with a completely different loadout. In 3 weeks which was the most time I ever really got at once, I only successfully changed out 2 guns and had a bunch of jacked up attempts. Every attempt after that was spent trying to procure the armor and ammo and before long I just didn't have the funds to even do that.
Yes, refits could be done. But they required actual mechbays and were very limited. Most usually resulted in failures or poor jobs. Chances to change one weapon to another of the same kind were higher than chances to change it for something completely different.
The removing of actuators though, I could not do. Megamek (a virtual tabletop) said that in order to do that I had to have access to a factory which I did not in that campaign. So the Yen Lo Wang would have required a factory or equipment that a normal person or even fielded military could not have in order to make the type 20 autocannon mount work. What Allard might be able to obtain, isn't something that most pilots would be able to do.
Honestly I miss repair and rearm.
Going into battle and finding a mech that started out missing an arm...and then watching it level half of your team as its glowing eyes come through the fog and after you was just terrifying.
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Koniving, on 06 March 2014 - 03:48 PM, said:
Maybe I should re-read the warrior trilogy, just to be sure...)
