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I don't have ideas for modifications to specific maps but I do have several ideas for ways to modify the maps in general mostly using environmental data. Some of this has to do with changing the way weapons work as well so bear with me. Currently PGI seems to have Temperature down pat. We know when we are on a hot or cold planet. We feel the difference. However that is really the only environmental thing we ever have to worry about.Let's start with...
Gravity
So for those who don't know Gravity is usually measured in G's or 'Gravities'. All Gravity is measured against what we feel on Earth. so on earth we have 1 G. If we were somewhere that had half the gravity of earth it would be .5 G. On planets that have twice as much gravity it would be 2 G and so on. Gravity effects everything even Light. The biggest differences you would personally feel if you were on a world that has twice the gravity is you would weigh twice as much which means you have to work twice as hard to do everything. The difference is you will fall twice as fast which means a 10 foot fall on a 2G world would be the same thing as falling 20 feet on Earth.
So science lesson out of the way how can we use this information to change the dynamics of our maps.
1: Fall damage.
This is the most obvious one we can look at. Especially with fall damage being so recently added and on our minds. We now have a meter that tells us how fast we fall and we know what speed we take damage at. On worlds with more gravity we would have to thrust twice as hard to jump and we would have to take more care when falling or landing. The opposite would also be true. On Low G worlds You can jump and drop much higher.
2: Ballistics.
This is a big one and would require some recoding of how our guns currently work. I think it would be a great way to apply more skill to the game and add more variety and realism to our maps. As I mentioned earlier gravity effects everything, including bullets. In MWO we are routinely firing weapons hundreds of meters distant. Gravity will pull on that bullet. not much. It's not going to drop like a rock on a 1 G world but it would be something you, as the pilot, would have to adjust for. The farther away your target the more you have to aim over the point you want to hit. Now throw in variable Gravities. As we fight on different worlds and moons the aim adjustment is going to have to change. Also on higher G worlds the range of Ballistics would decrease and vice versa.
Missiles would likewise be effected by this. Right now when a missiles runs out of fuel it simply explodes. Instead they should start being effected by gravity, perhaps at a greater rate than ballistics, once they run out of fuel. This would allow them to get a little more oomph from their missile shots and a skilled pilot might learn to lob their missiles a little to hit a target that is just outside of his range.
Lasers would technically be effected by gravity as well. However, the amount of gravity that would be required to bend a beam of light across the distances we are talking about in MWO would be so immense that no human or battlemech would likely be able to survive.
So let's look at our current maps. 1 thing that is unlikely to change is the gravity of a world. IT would be a strange world indeed whose gravity would fluctuate. That would be a map all its own. With CW (please note I'm making educated guesses here) we might fight on a certain selection of maps based on the world we are fighting over. Those maps would have a gravity set by the world we are fighting on. So while normally something like canyon network would have a set gravity for random play in CW it would have a gravity dictated by the planet.
Weather
Here too PGI has made some attempts to ad weather to some maps. Most notably would be Frozen City and the snow storm. I am looking to expand on the concept of weather drawing inspiration from the TT rules. An old joke concerning weather is if you wait 5 minutes it'll change. Which is kinda true. Weather is always changing in the real world. IT would change on the maps as well. Dynamic weather could significantly change the way a battle is fought. Weather can be judged two ways. What is falling from the sky, and how fast the air is moving.
1: Precipitation
Lets start with simple rain and snow. a simple lazy rain might not mean much. IT might reduce visibility a little bit but we already have that in game. It makes things slick but that isn't really a big consideration until they add in some sort of knockdown mechanic. It can cool things off a little bit which could be translated into a slight cooling efficiency boost. Another thing rain could do is diffuse light. This is most often seen in Fog. a Laser in fog or heavy rain isn't going to be as effective as it would on a clear day. This could be handled 2 ways. Either reduce the range of lasers in heavy rain of fog or reduce the overall damage a laser does in such an environment.
You could technically get into more extreme weather types as well. Lightning comes to mind. While yes we are piloting around 10 meter tall lightning rods I dont think randomly getting stuck by lightning would be very fun. However a lightning flash would possible cause havoc on sensors. If you are in low light vision mode, which you may very well be in a big storm, it could temporarily blind the sensors. Not to mention fighting in a Lightning storm with thunder booming around would just feel cool
If we wanted to get even crazier you could do something with Hail. although Hail big enough to damage a battelmech would be bordering on apocalyptic level of weather. On the flip side you could do something with ash. Ash would act like a really thick fog and would reduce visibility in all current sensor modes to near nothing. Might make for an interesting fight on Terra Therma if it starts to erupt and ash blankets the area.
2: Wind
Here again we are going to be talking about how things effect weapons but first lets examine how wind might effect a Battlemech. Mechs are extremely heavy and tall. Most wind isn't going to effect them, especially since they have a means of balancing themselves using the pilots inner ear. However a wind strong enough to cause you trouble in the real world would likely give the Battlemech trouble in the Battletech world. If you get wind fast enough you would cause the battlemech some issues. One way would be to increase the odds of it falling over, again we are looking forward to mechanics currently not in game. The other way would be to cause a Jumping mech to drift in the direction of the wind. This would make jumping in a wind storm require more skill.
So let's move on to our old friend ballistics. Wind effects bullets the same way Gravity will. So in essence the way you would have to adjust your shot for gravity would also apply to even a moderate wind. For missiles I see wind being much more detrimental. Wind would blow those things off course like crazy. They would have to work harder to stay on target and would likely run out of fuel faster and be more scattered when they arrived at their target. Lasers would not be effected by wind.
Although That does bring to mind the complete absence of wind or rather. the complete absence of an atmosphere. This one would be harder to balance right but in a vacuum Nothing would slow down the kinetic velocity of a bullet and nothing will diffuse the power of a laser. in MWO map terms these devices would have unlimited range. I am a bit iffy about doing that, maybe a simple range boost would work, but I add it in an attempt to be through.
This leaves us with the overall weather effect. First we can look at the upcoming CW system and see if certain planets might have certain anomalies, for example on this world it rains ALL the time. Or this other world might rain acid. Maybe this other world has no precipitation but has high humidity creating a lot of fog in low lying areas (Think of Canyon network where all the ravines are filled with fog but the plateaus are completely clear.) Your imagination is the limit when it comes to how different worlds might behave.
Once you know that, or just assume normal earth weather for random matches, You then look into what weather would make sense for the different maps. For example. Looking at Crimson strait I could easily see Rain, Thunderstorm, Hurricane, Fog. We could have a variation of Crimson strait that is a little less equatorial. Maybe further north where we would have snow cover ans ski resorts. There we wouldn't be likely to have a hurricane or thunderstorms but snow showers and blizzards are all possible.
So in the end you are going to want to create maps two ways. first whatever map you make ill likely have a fixed climate. From there you can add in random variables that tell you what the weather will be like. So for Crimson strait maybe you have a 75% chance of it having no weather. a 10% chance of it raining. a 10% chance of it thunder storming. and a 5% chance of a severe tropical storm. You would also have the obvious Day, night, dusk cycle to contend with as well. You could also add in a small chance that that weather will change mid match. Maybe a storm will clear up or roll in.
Overall I think adding in these effects would add a lot to the experience we have playing the game even on maps we are already familiar with. It would also add a bit of a quirk to the different weapons systems that would change depending on the weather and require more skill to overcome.
Edited by ThomasMarik, 12 July 2014 - 05:27 AM.
