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Previous mechwarrior piloting games, all the way back to Mechwarrior 1, has been your basic first person shooter set up. you have a reticle around what is basically a 'dot'. place the dot on the target, fire, and you hit what the dot covers. place it over a arm and you hit the arm. over a leg and you hit the leg. and so on.
but this approach does not match the setting of the battletech universe. obviously the board game, with it's dice, tables and 3ed person omniscient player view established the basic feel of the universe, with weapons aimed at the target hitting randomly over the target.
but many have argued, the boardgame isn't a piloting sim, so a new approach has to be taken. very true, but the previous mechwarrior sims took the universe too far the other direction, making mechs ultra-accurate snipers.
is there a point between these two styles that forms a happy medium? a style that retains the randomness of the boardgame but the simulator feel of the mechwarrior games?
in fact there is. the Battletech/mechwarrior novels, which are the medium that established the setting and the main reason the setting has been so popular.
This is an except from Ghostwar, by Michel Stackpole, part of the Finale battle. the novel is set in the 3130's, so this represents units using technology a century in advance of MWO's timeframe. Mike Stackpole is the writer who wrote the Warrior trilogy, the clan invasion trilogy, and almost a half dozen other novels that form the backbone of the battletech universe. in effect, how he wrote his novels defines how mech piloting was supposed to be in the setting.
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"As ordered, lead." The command made sense, as the Militia troops were the only innocents in the battle. I dropped the gold crosshairs on the Black Hawk , got a pulsing dot in the heart of them to indicate a lock, then tightened up on two triggers. Ghost rocked back and down as forty missiles arced skyward, then converged on the ’Mech. Waves of heat washed over me, and watching the damage done sent a chill through me.
The missiles sowed fire all over and around the Black Hawk , pulverizing armor. It fell in a ferro-ceramic blizzard around the ’Mech’s feet, in some cases sloughing off in whole sheets. The humanoid engine of war wavered for a moment as the smoke cleared. The pilot fought to keep the machine in balance, but the sudden loss of tons of armor and the battering it had taken left him unable to control it. It pitched forward, smashing down on a knee and then its hands.
Though clearly surprised by Isabel Siwek’s treachery, Catford reacted swiftly and brutally. He spun his Jupiter with an agility I’d not expected and extended both of his ’Mech’s arms toward Siwek’s Ryoken II . The pair of PPCs mounted on the left forearm crackled with artificial lightning. Their jagged cerulean beams slashed the squat ’Mech. One seared an ugly scar up through the left side of the body while the other danced lightning over the cockpit itself. Melting armor gushed in a torrent down to the ground, where it bubbled and smoked.
The quartet of autocannons on the Jupiter ’s left forearm likewise proved terrifyingly efficient. Two chewed their way into the armor on the left arm and right thigh, leaving stippled trails of granulated armor behind. The other two, however, blasted into the cockpit, obliterating the canopy. Whether it was the hail of glass ripping her to shreds, or the heavy slugs pulping her human remains, Isabel Siwek died as ugly as the treachery she’d been a party to.
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the Bolded lines are for emphasis. sadly i do not have electronic forms of the Warrior Trilogy or the clan invasion trilogy, which are closer in technology to MWO, but their depiction of mech combat is identical in style.
in the battletech universe, piloting is very much like the mechwarrior simulator games. throttle, aiming reticle, and so on. Mechwarrior 3's ability to aim the weapons seperate from unit movement is standard in the novels, but not really required to match the feel.
what is required to match the feel is randomized hit locations. in the novels, even if your aiming for a specific spot, your likely to hit anywhere on the target. even mechs with clan targeting computers find it difficult to obtain sniper type accuracy, instead merely obtaining lesser shot spread. in the novels, the closer you are the more likely you are ot hit where you are aiming, while firing at targets farther away results in a wider spread of damage over the target.
the "cone of fire" system, where your shots are randomized in an area around your reticle, matches this feel. by having this area larger against targets towards the end of the weapons range, and smaller against targets close to you, you are able to match the feel of the novels, while also solving issues prevelant in previous mechwarrior games such as cripling the target with pinpoint shots to the legs at long range. such tactics become extremely difficult to pull off intentionally. the ability of the player to aim is still important, because a poorly aimed shot is less likely to fall within the cone of fire. but a cone of fire allows more inexperianced players a chance to learn, instead of being headshoted right off the bat by those with better aiming skills.
Edited by mithril coyote, 17 November 2011 - 02:33 PM.
