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Howsit chaps,
So I sat thinking the other night as to how I would implement CW and make a persistent world in Mechwarrior Online if I was a gizzallionaire and had to buy out PGI
So my idea goes something like this :
When a player joins a faction, they start off on the respective factions home planet. They would earn cbills by completing assignments on their home planet. Assignments could be : scouting an enemy AI base, killing x number of AI mechs, escorting a VIP mech to a location. Throughout this "beginning stage", the player is assigned a mech of each weight class, in order for the new player to get a feel for what mech weight they most feel comfortable in. They will gain XP for the respective mech, and at the end of the "training", they will get to choose what mech they would want to continue in. From there on, CW would open up to them completely, being able to join a unit, being able to invade planets (not recommended on your own!) The player will be assigned a small drop ship, which would only allow mech usage of 1.
As the player progresses, they will be able to buy more mechs and bigger personal drop ships. All mechs purchased would be stored in the home base, and the player would have to go back to their own base in order to swap out a mech. If they have enough cbills, they can buy a bigger personal dropship, which would allow the player to house more mechs onboard and cut the down the need to go back to the home planet in order to swap out mechs.
The player could choose to stay on their own, either by doing assignments on other planets or competing in "hot drops" (more on this later), or by joining a unit and playing as a team, taking over planets and gaining mech factory bonuses. They would also have access to the units dropship, which acts as a mobile homebase (explained later).
In my version of CW, there will be a time wait of being able to travel from planet to planet. It could be 5 minutes, or 30 minutes. That could be adjusted to what "feels right".
We all know the current IS map in it's current state. There are a finite number of planets within this map. Each planet is then divided into a number of zones. Some zones will have cities in, other zones might be barren and bare, other zones could be a mountain range, whatever. In order to achieve this, we would have to scrap the current map system, and rely on procedurally generated generated maps, to achieve that no two zones are identical. Maybe similar in places, but no zone would be identical. The home planets are not capturable at all. As the number of players increase, so would the amount of zones on a given planet.
Hot Drops :
So in order to make the game feel like you are actually in a living, breathing and persistent universe, I came up with the idea of Hot Drops. Hot drops would only alert the player if something is happening in a, lets say 100km radius around the players current location. ( I don't know the lore, and what the distance between planets are, but you would get the gist of it.)
Lets say for example, a player is on the edge between 2 different factions (Kurita and Steiner), and the player, let's call him Bob, is aligned to the Steiner faction. The Kurita faction players are attempting to take over a city on a Steiner planet, and this planet falls into Bobs radius of affect (ROA from here on out). Bob knows that if he has to fly to the planet with his own drop ship, the city might fall and Kurita could capture the city(zone). Bob knows that the flight would take 10 minutes to get there.
But Bob also knows, that all cities on the planets have mechs that can be defended with. These mechs would be a finite amount, pre-loaded with Steiner camo and lore friendly weapon loadouts. So Bob can instead Hot Drop into a random defense mech, and defend the city.
Other players that might have been in the area and been alerted in their ROA, would be able to do the same thing, if their dropships were too far out. If they were to make it in time, they could drop with their chosen mechs on their personal dropship.
Other Kurita units that might of been in the same area, and been alerted on their ROA, could also have opted to drop in and join the attack with their mechs (if they were close enough). If they were too far out but alerted, they could choose to fly in and join when they can.
Now, another player, lets call him John, is a Lonewolf or apart of FRR, is also in the area. John, because he's not aligned to Steiner or Kurita, has the choice of ignoring the battle, or choose to join either the attackers, or the defenders. If John chooses to defend, and the defenders manage to repel the attack, he would be awarded with a cbill bonus, and earn faction points with Steiner and lose points with Kurita. If he chose to join the attackers, he would gain Kurita, and lose Steiner points.
Unit dropships:
Unit drops would only be accessible to those players who are apart of a unit. The unit dropship can only be moved by the leader of the unit, or to players who have permissions to do so. (The unit leader would give permission within the factions tab).
The unit dropship is unique, as it acts as a mobile homebase. The unit dropship would have a bigger ROA. The player would be alerted to all battles within the unit drops ROA as well as his own personal dropship. The unit dropship is different, the players apart of that unit would be able to immediately drop to any battle within the ROA, there is no distance that would need to be travelled in order to get closer to the planet. After all, the unit dropship is going to cost millions of cbills and has faster mech drop deployment.
Units would be allowed to ally with each other, they can only choose up to 5 other units to ally with. In the event of the last zone being attacked on a planet (the unit is part of the faction that's about to lose the planet), the allied units are able to drop on their allied unit dropships as if they were their own.
Attacking units and their allies would be able to do the same, calling in reinforcements as it were.
Again though, the unit dropship and allied unit dropships would only be alerted if a battle is happening while in their ROA, and allies are only able to use your dropship, if you are about to either defend or attack the last zone on the planet.
What if you don't want to fight that much?
You could also add things like, scavenging for salvage. Maybe the player doesn't want to take part in battles early. The player could drop into barren zones on a planet, scouting the map for salvage which they could sell for cbills, or if they lucky, find some lostech.
They could also maybe find blueprints for a super mech, and then they would need to find the mech parts, the legs, the head, torso etc in order to build the mech.
There's plenty of other ideas, that you could add.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Well that's me for now, let me know what you guys think.
So I sat thinking the other night as to how I would implement CW and make a persistent world in Mechwarrior Online if I was a gizzallionaire and had to buy out PGI
So my idea goes something like this :
When a player joins a faction, they start off on the respective factions home planet. They would earn cbills by completing assignments on their home planet. Assignments could be : scouting an enemy AI base, killing x number of AI mechs, escorting a VIP mech to a location. Throughout this "beginning stage", the player is assigned a mech of each weight class, in order for the new player to get a feel for what mech weight they most feel comfortable in. They will gain XP for the respective mech, and at the end of the "training", they will get to choose what mech they would want to continue in. From there on, CW would open up to them completely, being able to join a unit, being able to invade planets (not recommended on your own!) The player will be assigned a small drop ship, which would only allow mech usage of 1.
As the player progresses, they will be able to buy more mechs and bigger personal drop ships. All mechs purchased would be stored in the home base, and the player would have to go back to their own base in order to swap out a mech. If they have enough cbills, they can buy a bigger personal dropship, which would allow the player to house more mechs onboard and cut the down the need to go back to the home planet in order to swap out mechs.
The player could choose to stay on their own, either by doing assignments on other planets or competing in "hot drops" (more on this later), or by joining a unit and playing as a team, taking over planets and gaining mech factory bonuses. They would also have access to the units dropship, which acts as a mobile homebase (explained later).
In my version of CW, there will be a time wait of being able to travel from planet to planet. It could be 5 minutes, or 30 minutes. That could be adjusted to what "feels right".
We all know the current IS map in it's current state. There are a finite number of planets within this map. Each planet is then divided into a number of zones. Some zones will have cities in, other zones might be barren and bare, other zones could be a mountain range, whatever. In order to achieve this, we would have to scrap the current map system, and rely on procedurally generated generated maps, to achieve that no two zones are identical. Maybe similar in places, but no zone would be identical. The home planets are not capturable at all. As the number of players increase, so would the amount of zones on a given planet.
Hot Drops :
So in order to make the game feel like you are actually in a living, breathing and persistent universe, I came up with the idea of Hot Drops. Hot drops would only alert the player if something is happening in a, lets say 100km radius around the players current location. ( I don't know the lore, and what the distance between planets are, but you would get the gist of it.)
Lets say for example, a player is on the edge between 2 different factions (Kurita and Steiner), and the player, let's call him Bob, is aligned to the Steiner faction. The Kurita faction players are attempting to take over a city on a Steiner planet, and this planet falls into Bobs radius of affect (ROA from here on out). Bob knows that if he has to fly to the planet with his own drop ship, the city might fall and Kurita could capture the city(zone). Bob knows that the flight would take 10 minutes to get there.
But Bob also knows, that all cities on the planets have mechs that can be defended with. These mechs would be a finite amount, pre-loaded with Steiner camo and lore friendly weapon loadouts. So Bob can instead Hot Drop into a random defense mech, and defend the city.
Other players that might have been in the area and been alerted in their ROA, would be able to do the same thing, if their dropships were too far out. If they were to make it in time, they could drop with their chosen mechs on their personal dropship.
Other Kurita units that might of been in the same area, and been alerted on their ROA, could also have opted to drop in and join the attack with their mechs (if they were close enough). If they were too far out but alerted, they could choose to fly in and join when they can.
Now, another player, lets call him John, is a Lonewolf or apart of FRR, is also in the area. John, because he's not aligned to Steiner or Kurita, has the choice of ignoring the battle, or choose to join either the attackers, or the defenders. If John chooses to defend, and the defenders manage to repel the attack, he would be awarded with a cbill bonus, and earn faction points with Steiner and lose points with Kurita. If he chose to join the attackers, he would gain Kurita, and lose Steiner points.
Unit dropships:
Unit drops would only be accessible to those players who are apart of a unit. The unit dropship can only be moved by the leader of the unit, or to players who have permissions to do so. (The unit leader would give permission within the factions tab).
The unit dropship is unique, as it acts as a mobile homebase. The unit dropship would have a bigger ROA. The player would be alerted to all battles within the unit drops ROA as well as his own personal dropship. The unit dropship is different, the players apart of that unit would be able to immediately drop to any battle within the ROA, there is no distance that would need to be travelled in order to get closer to the planet. After all, the unit dropship is going to cost millions of cbills and has faster mech drop deployment.
Units would be allowed to ally with each other, they can only choose up to 5 other units to ally with. In the event of the last zone being attacked on a planet (the unit is part of the faction that's about to lose the planet), the allied units are able to drop on their allied unit dropships as if they were their own.
Attacking units and their allies would be able to do the same, calling in reinforcements as it were.
Again though, the unit dropship and allied unit dropships would only be alerted if a battle is happening while in their ROA, and allies are only able to use your dropship, if you are about to either defend or attack the last zone on the planet.
What if you don't want to fight that much?
You could also add things like, scavenging for salvage. Maybe the player doesn't want to take part in battles early. The player could drop into barren zones on a planet, scouting the map for salvage which they could sell for cbills, or if they lucky, find some lostech.
They could also maybe find blueprints for a super mech, and then they would need to find the mech parts, the legs, the head, torso etc in order to build the mech.
There's plenty of other ideas, that you could add.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Well that's me for now, let me know what you guys think.
Edited by Kuga ZA, 14 September 2014 - 12:19 PM.
