7 replies to this topic

[Carlos Vinson]

Ready to say good by to my lone wolf status, so the question is, which to join.

I am an old veteran of the TT game so am very familiar with the Great Houses, Major Merc Units & The Clans. What I am looking for is what are the Pluses and Minuses of joining a House army Merc unit or a Clan.
Do you need to use Clan Mechs if you join a Clan? Is it considered Bad Form to jump from (say) a House Army to a Merc unit..and the reverse?

I thank you in advance.


PS: What in the heck is a Ping? Is it good...bad or simply what it is to have a large or small ping number? I have a small ping number...should I have ping envy?

[Redshift2k5]

Low ping is better. Ping is latency; how long it takes for your data to go from you to the server. high ping means it takes longer before a command you input to be received by the server and longer for the server's decision to get back to you. The higher the ping, the less in sync with the server you are.

Hiring is kept to the faction sections of the forum, and especially out of the new player help ( We don't want to see people using the help forum as a recruitment forum, it would get in the way of all that helping!). There is a longstanding thread for posting your availability to join a group known at the Hiring Hall or you can browse the Clan, IS faction, or merc corp sub forums.

There are no hard rules for clan mechs or inner sphere mechs (so far, community warfare may change that) so whether you use clan or IS mechs is not relevant right now. I play in a unit based on IS mercs, but currently we're free to play a mix of IS and Clan tech.

Edited by Redshift2k5, 24 August 2014 - 04:14 PM.

[Ertur]

"Ping" comes from the Navy: SONAR works by sending out loud sounds underwater in pulses. One pulse out and back is called a ping. In the old days it actually sounded like the sound "ping" which is why.

In IT, the term came to mean a packet of data sent to and from an address using ICMP (internet contol message protocol), it's a troubleshooting/diagnostic tool to confirm connectivity and to see how long communication takes; but it doesn't carry application data.

In online gaming it means how long it takes for your system to talk to the servers.

Factions don't mean much yet.

[DivineEvil]

There's not much a definition on what unit, whether it is IS or Clan, faction or independent, would require you to use any mech. That's solely defined by that's unit regulations and game-play direction. Whether to join one with IS/Clan separation, Faction regulations or lore emphasis is up to you. Vast majority of units are completely open to your driving tastes and mech availability and there's unofficial leagues that present various rules regarding mechs. You can always ask and find what's fits you the most.

Ping is a measure of a delay between you and the server in milliseconds. A ping of 1000 is a whole second delay between sending a packet of data and recieving server's confirmation on that packet. Usually a ping below 200 is considered insignificant to real-time performance, while ping above 500 is regarded as dangerously unstable and in some cases you can be automatically disconnected around such a value in order to maintain server stability.

Edited by DivineEvil, 24 August 2014 - 11:15 PM.

[LauLiao]

Here's the (very) rough information I have gleaned about factions and CW (Disclaimer: I cannot confirm the veracity of any of this info. I could be completely wrong).

There will be a few major divisions:

1) Player run units: I believe the Devs generally consider these to be "Merc" units even though they have the option of working exclusively for one Faction. These units are run by a play created heirachy and will have their own group "coffers" and will be able to choose which "contracts" and "missions" to take on, as well as what Factions they will work for.

2) Faction Units: These units will generally be "run" by the Devs and are generally considered to be House/Faction/Clan standing armies. These will allow players to fight for one or possibly more factions, but there will not be any player oversight, coffers, etc. You will probably be told when and where to fight, what "missions" you must complete, etc.

3) Lone Wolves: For players who do not want to involve themselves in any kind of orginization and are just concerned with dropping into battle once in a while.

From what I have gathered, Player run units and lone wolves will be able to fight for any (or all) the major factions should they so choose, and can acquire loyalty points for as many factions as they like (even though we don't know exactly how these loyalty points will work). I'm unclear on if members of "house" units will be able to gain loyalty with multiple factions or if they will be restricted to their chosen faction.

As far as jumping from unit to unit, well that's going to come down to the players within those units. If units here work anything like guilds/clans in other games, this practice, especially if habitual, is generally frowned upon. However, with us having so little info about how CW will ACTUALLY work, I imagine most groups right now are going to be a lot more liberal on this.

As I think was mentioned already, indicators seem to point to clan mechs only being usable by clan factions and vice-versa.

[Please don't jump down my throat if any of this information is incomplete/incorrect. I welcome any corrections anyone can offer to this info. This is just what I gleaned/assumed from a 2-year-old powerpoint presentation]

[Dawnstealer]

I really wanted to join the Periphery Bandits, but lacking that option, I'm going for option #2, which was Steiner. Still not sure which unit I want to join up. I'm a member of the Black Sheep, but most of those guys don't drop anymore (or have joined other units).

[Koniving]

Right now, we don't know what the advantages and disadvantages will be.
We know that Units (Mercs, House, Clans) will supposedly be much more involved than simply being part of a House (and/or Clan maybe), and Lone Wolf will give you a bit more freedom without the support.

Though again we have no idea how it will go, as each time it's been proposed to us everything changed.

This was the last proposition.


My own version, combining everything ever said by PGI about Community Warfare and upcoming game features was slapped together in a single and very long post which describes a scenario with taking a planet, using dropships to deploy mechs, building garrisons, etc., is in the signature link on the left.

[Carlos Vinson]

Once again Thanks to all.