6 replies to this topic

[Fluffy Kitten]

i poked about in the forums to see if the was suggested, but i have to admit i did not spend much time looking as i have to go to work shortly.

i was thinking of having a battlemode where a large team fights another.
perhaps for a planet, or a campaign of some kind.

the group could be any type of group that the storyline can make sense of. House battalion, merc company, etc.

the concept is the group (say a merc group) gets a pile of members together to fight a large scale set of battles over a preset time, (5 days, 5 battles all starting at 5PM PST / 1 day 20 battles starting at noon / etc)

the leader(s) of said group have a finite amount of stowage on their jump ship.
so they have 60 mech bays, (could be a tonnage limit or a class limit, like 24 heavies/ 24 meds/ 24 lights, etc)
stowage is 60,000 tonnes of stowage.
stowage is a list of stuff that will be used to rearm a mech, repair a mech.

in RL how it would work is this:
12 people per jumpship
before launching the ship each player would put fourth what mechs they were taking. and each player would put forth their equipment/ammo they were taking.

the mech each person put forth is something they will be only allowed to pilot.
the equipment would be pooled, and everyone could use based on the commanders decision.

unused equipment/ammo gets returned to the player after the campaign is done, based on the % of that type of equipment consumed.

if the scenario was 5 battles a day for 5 days at 5, then it would be logical that mechs damaged could be repaired for the next days battle, or if it was a major amount of damage, then it may take a few days to fix. so you would have to bring a second mech out of your mech bay to play the next battle.
reloading could be done very quickly,
so by day 5, your team could be quite moth eaten if your team was not that great!

it would create a bit of tactics and strategy in the beginning, and require some coordination for loadout.
it may even open the door for cannibalization of destroyed mechs to patch together a working mech at day 5!


anyways, off to work.
i could go on with the model a bit more, but i have to go

any thoughts?

[Aidan Malchor]

When I seen this I thought maybe it was about a map where the fight takes place on the outside of a jumpship(s) which I think would be pretty cool. Jump jet mechs would have to be careful not to go careening off into open space, heat would be less of an issue, and ballistics and missles would likely cause some mech movement in opposite direction of fire. It would likely bit a fair bit of work to code those mechanics into a certain type of map but would be interesting.

Your idea sounds fun as well though.

[Spleenslitta]

That sounds brilliant. Would be a pain to make certain everyone shows up on time though....
I suppose both sides could put forth the number of players that will participate each day. And rather than have a timelimit the battles only stop once one side runs out of resources or surrender.
Let's say it goes somewhat like this-

Day 1- 5x 12vs12 battles.
Day 2- 3x 12vs12 + 2x 4vs4
Day 3- No battles. Everybody is busy with real life. Extra repairs are done to the mechs.
Day 4- 2x 12vs12 3x 4vs4
Day 5- 5x 12vs12
Day 6- Everybody is online. 12vs12 till they can only have mechs enough for smaller battles or maybe only one on one duels.

[Fluffy Kitten]

i was thinking of having more players on the roll than actually in battle.
so perhaps 16 players, but only 12 battle at a time.
or 12 on the roll and 8 in battle.
having 125% on board would help sort out attrition as well. well make it a little less anyways.

also a 5 day or less battle would be a bit easier to sort out since a monday to friday thing would be a bit more easy to manage more than a tuesday to sunday, since most everyone has a similar day cycle on their work weeks.

but on the flip side having a weekend battle wher it is over a day or so may be easy too, perhaps not as many battles, say 12 battles, that way it would last three or so hours?
all in all the semantics could be fine tuned, the base is still there to think about.

[Fluffy Kitten]

could even open the doors for larger groups to kit out their jumpships with some additional bonuses. (increased repair speed, increased stowage, increased mech bays, faster jumps, i dunno.
upgrades would be rank triggered by house reputation?
something that makes it community driven?
hell even buying jump ships may be bought by a pool of FP (or faction points) so some smaller planets could be fought using smaller jumpships or smaller campaigns. but larger ones require larger volume of mechs, thus bigger jumpships?

i dunno?

Edited by Fluffy Kitten, 22 June 2012 - 08:24 AM.

[Masterofm]

http://mwomercs.com/.../16275-warzone/

Similar to what you suggested.

The problem that bugs me is the fact that people will be bound to what mech they can and can't use. Also that it comes down to one person to doll out the mech parts. That means either quite a few people get the shaft, or there just simply won't be enough good weapons to go around for the person's play style. If players only have one mech and one life then the battles might be shorter then realized. Most mech battles are pretty vicious and brutal.

I think in the end things would be decided pretty quickly with a bunch of dead mechs on one side and not so many dead mechs on the other. Assuming it wasn't basically the entire team one vs. team two then the team that survives repairs and whoever survived that bout would just have all their mechs repaired as much as possible and have a massive leg up against the other players the next time they duke it out.

[Fluffy Kitten]

masterofm, there would not be one person to dol out parts at all, it would be pooled, each player would bring parts that hey need for theri mechs, but it would be a shared pool of parts.

but understand that it is a battle over time, and lets say 12 players participate in thier side, each player brings 4-5 mechs per campaign, hence the 60 or so perdropship. so after a battle you may have to get another mech, or just repair (from the pool of parts) a few bits and pieces.

why this would be tactical is for a few reasons:
your team would probably bring only a handful of mech types, thus allowing less parts needed per campaign. (like how real warfare actually works, having a greater variaty means a logistical nightmare)
mech and player types would be chosen based on a players skill and how well they do in it.
just plain old attrition will probably not get you far.
and if there are 4/5 battles a day, or best of three or whatever, your commander needs to think of disengaugement tactics as much as engagement tactics.
i know lots of people would probably not like this, but given how most people just put the throttle down and head for the enemy and shoot till you fall. that mentality just does not work against co-ordinated teams. choosing how you loose is just as important as choosing how you win is, when faced with limited resources.

also a campaign where nobody wins, just means prolonged fighting, another week or however the durations sit, is very much a reality. just like warfare is. among an equal opponent warfare does drag out.

consuming resources in a war is also a good way to balance overall global warfare.
duration campaigns is also a good way to balance out the player base. so having a few groups of crack teams just hopping form one planetary engagment to the next over almost immediate timetables means that if you have a faction of crack players, you can wipe another faction quite rapidly.
i dunno, it depends on the mechanics of it all but WoT had to tone down the rules of engagment due to clan padding, because it is easily exploited to have the global map being battled over by a few hundred people.
anyways i did not want to bring up WoT to be a comparison, but it kind of just snuck in there. lol as a how not to do things i guess. .

Edited by Fluffy Kitten, 22 June 2012 - 10:47 AM.