202 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

Quote

I've suggested elsewhere to decouple AC/missiles from Ghost Heat and make rearm the punitive balance on it

rearm costs arnt a good way of balancing weapons though. Because some people have hundreds of millions if not billions of cbils. and that kindve balancing simply has no effect on them.

the only reason to have rearm/repair costs would be as an immersive element. And the way to make it an immersive element is to have the player run their own merc corporation like MW2 mercenaries did. Youd have to pay to rearm/repair, youd have to hire pilots/technicians, and youd randomly get salvage at the end of each match which you could choose to either use or sell. But it would have to be done in a way that no matter what you always have a positive flow of cbills.

[RockmachinE]

I think there is too much attention on TT and the game is suffering because of it.

Way too many TT purists (analists). People who simply do not realize you can't transplant a random die hex table top pen and paper game into a computer game and keep it fun. This is an action simulation computer game and needs to make certain adjustments because of it. Same thing with computer D&D games. Literally none follow D&D rules 1:1 because it would simply not be viable to do so and would not be fun.

Honestly I can't fathom what paradigm someone has to operate under to believe a computer and table top game can be reconciled 1:1. I can't believe when I read what some people write. If you want that, then just make an identical turn based virtual table top game and call it a day. It will never work in an FPS action simulation setting. How can some of you guys even start thinking this is beyond me.

CORE RULE IGNORE [redacted].

Edited by Marvyn Dodgers, 05 October 2014 - 05:17 AM.
Language

[Whatzituyah]

Just because a game is based on something doesn't mean it should follow it 1:1 it just means the game was inspired from it or something. So table top shouldn't really count towards a game translated into real time because we are not rolling dice big difference!

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Prosperity Park, on 04 October 2014 - 10:55 AM, said:

Yup. I'm sad because I think BattleTech is holding the MechWarrior franchise back from being as cool as it should be.

You play other Mechy Stompy games, and they have lots of cool features, and so does this game. However, the features of this game are limited to a build-set from a Table Top game that's not being dynamically-expanded for the current application. For instance, we have these weapons called "AC/10" and they deal 10 damage. Wow, what a super-original naming system.

If I were a soldier in the field, and was told that my weapon was an AC/10, I would ask something like "Does that mean it's a 10mm?"

And the response would be "No, it deals 10 damage."

"What do you mean, 'It deals 10 damage' ? What is 'a' damage?"

"Don't ask questions, Soldier, you will accept that it deals 10 damage and you will like it!"

And that's the Lore this game is based on - a Universe where that conversation actually happens.

Actually not quite right.

The conversation would be more in regards to "Well the Crusher SH Cannon by Ceres Metals Industry's is capable of removing just over a ton of armor from a hard target per trigger pull."

The Crusher SH Cannon by Ceres Metals Industry's, is an AC20 design devloped by Ceres.
In Game Mechanics, 1 ton of armor translates to 16 points of armor.
Thus an AC20 removes over 1 ton of armor per trigger pull.

"A Damage" is never referenced in lore. It IS referenced as a gameplay mechanic that "All Class 20 Auto Cannons do 20 points of damage on the record sheet."

Which is a completely different discussion than from an In Universe perspective.

Yes, the game is limited to the lore, because they choose a property.

Let's say they made a game based on Harry Potter, but gave you an AK47 as the main player and told you to go mow down wizards. That would be fairly lore breaking. And while it would "Appeal" to the average gamer out there, it completely craps on the lore of Harry Potter.

If you don't like battletech, you're in the wrong place. If Mechwarrior hasn't given you an appreciation for Battletech, then it's a failing with you, as a player, not with the system itself. You just don't like it, which is fine. but don't complain that "The lore is holding it back." when the "Lore" is the entire point of it all.

[Impyrium]

BattleTech is the reason this game exists and the reason it has such a passionate fanbase. You'll find many of the people here play this game because it's based on the original BattleTech. As soon as you remove that, it's just another mech game- nothing unique about it.

I'm perfectly fine with adapting mechanics as to better suit a physical play environment, but I really don't agree with how people want to ditch BattleTech. I really don't see how 'corerule ignore' is going to fix anything either- this game really hasn't followed BattleTech that closely bar the most obvious features.

[KuroNyra]

phalanx, on 04 October 2014 - 11:36 AM, said:

Basically this.



Also this.

I honestly think that very few of MWO's new players are unfamiliar with both Battletech AND Mechwarrior. Right now the lore explanations are mostly being provided by the playerbase(that's us).Hopefully, further explanations will be provided by the time we really get into Community Warfare.

This might be an opportunity for more player submitted content that can add "flavor" to this game.

I discovered the Battletech franchise with MW:O.
Yet it wasn't with the game I understood the lore.

[Roadbeer]

Khobai, on 04 October 2014 - 02:17 PM, said:

rearm costs arnt a good way of balancing weapons though. Because some people have hundreds of millions if not billions of cbils. and that kindve balancing simply has no effect on them.

Still better than arbitrary voodoo maths, at least there would be reason behind it.
As far as the super rich, they wouldn't be pissing it away on ammo for long, and the golden ammo crowd in other games are pretty far and few between, I can't see people ponying up cash to be able to spam 1800 LRMs, well, not enough of them that it would be an issue.

Like I said, it's not an optimal idea, but it makes a damn sight more sense than crossing ones fingers while waving a chickenbone over a mana bar to see if you can fire a weapon or not without shutting down.

Edited by Roadbeer, 04 October 2014 - 03:29 PM.

[RockmachinE]

You do not give a single argument of how table top mechanics can be realistically transplanted into an fps action simulation computer game and reconciled 1:1. You just show examples of things that were done differently.

Do we really need to define how a tabletop game... played with dice...on a board...with 2 players...that have several mechs...with pen and paper...and dozens of other factors... is different then someone sitting in front of a screen with a mouse piloting a single mech in a semi-twitch tactical 3D world evnironment.

Does your mind not compute the dramatic differences between those two mediums and the compromises that need to be met to make them fun and playable? I suppose not.

I...

... give up.

This community baffles me completely.

Edited by Louis Brofist, 04 October 2014 - 03:33 PM.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Louis Brofist, on 04 October 2014 - 03:31 PM, said:

You do not give a single argument of how table top mechanics can be realistically transplanted into an fps action simulation computer game and reconciled 1:1. You just show examples of things that were done differently.

Do we really need to define how a tabletop game... played with dice...on a board...with 2 players...that have several mechs...with pen and paper...and dozens of other factors... is different then someone sitting in front of a screen with a mouse piloting a single mech in a semi-twitch tactical 3D world evnironment.

Does your mind not compute the dramatic differences between those two mediums and the compromises that need to be met to make them fun and playable? I suppose not.

I...

... give up.

This community baffles me completely.

what are you even arguing here...

The discussion on this page is about LORE breaking MWO [or not breaking it], not mechanics...

please stay on topic.

[Koniving]

Prosperity Park, on 04 October 2014 - 10:55 AM, said:

Yup. I'm sad because I think BattleTech is holding the MechWarrior franchise back from being as cool as it should be.

You play other Mechy Stompy games, and they have lots of cool features, and so does this game. However, the features of this game are limited to a build-set from a Table Top game that's not being dynamically-expanded for the current application. For instance, we have these weapons called "AC/10" and they deal 10 damage. Wow, what a super-original naming system.

If I were a soldier in the field, and was told that my weapon was an AC/10, I would ask something like "Does that mean it's a 10mm?"

And the response would be "No, it deals 10 damage."

"What do you mean, 'It deals 10 damage' ? What is 'a' damage?"

"Don't ask questions, Soldier, you will accept that it deals 10 damage and you will like it!"

And that's the Lore this game is based on - a Universe where that conversation actually happens.

I mean, there is no immersion whatsoever when the weapons of the game are literally named after the number of "points" they deal. There is no such thing as "damage points" in war, so the weapons should not be named after the damage points they inflict. That is just CHEESY!

Also, the limited number of weapon systems in the game based on the Year of the Lore is something that should only be implemented in a game that's designed for pre-existing BattleTech fans. If this game is really being marketed to non-BattleTech fans in an effort to expand the playerbase, then we should not be adhering to the Lore's technology limitations. A non-BattleTech fan has 0 appreciation for the "reason" why the Inner Sphere forces have no LBX-AC/5 or UAC/10s. Zero appreciation at all, and it's harming the game.

Why would you enforce rules like that if their only existence is to create a situation where the game gets more exciting by waiting 10 years for additional content? We don't need to wait 10 years for additional content. I'm sure you can find ways to make the game more exciting over the course of the next ten years other than by slowly releasing additional IS Tech that's not around until 3060.

__________________

What I am saying is... basically... MekTek had it right when they made their own non-cannon weapons systems. The canon of BattleTech is only as holy as the Developers intention to make this game specifically for pre-existing BattleTech fans, and not to market it to a greater audience.

We need better names for equipment. "Large Laser" Oh, how impressive, tell me how large it is...

You'll find that it is not so much the lore that is holding the game back. It is the lack of lore being used in favor of vague resemblance to the tabletop ruleset.

A class 10 autocannon simply meant that it had a rating of 10 units of damage against standard armor within an allotted amount of time whether it is 10 seconds or 4 seconds.

This of course ranged from the 6 shot 120mm AC/10 (3 shot for an AC/5 and 12 for an AC/20), to the 8 shot 100mm AC/10 (4 shot AC/5, 16 shot AC/20), to the 80mm 20 shot AC/10 (4 shot AC/2, 10 shot AC/5, AC/20s are not made this size) and beyond. The Pontiac 50 is a 50 shot AC/10 at 30mm. Blackjacks use two AC/2 variants. The common one is the Whirlwind-L AC/2 which is a 30mm 10 shot automatic chainfed weapon. The uncommon one is a nameless variant that Stackpole wrote to be 40mm at 8 shots which was a burst-fired cassette weapon (churning its shots out much faster like the Clan mechs do in MWO, but with a lengthy reload time between them).

The Atlas K's large lasers fire twice in 10 seconds, generating 4 damage and 6 heat, allowing it to only spike 50% when firing two of them at once rather than 50% for one as it would otherwise do with the 30 threshold.

The Mydron Concussor Gauss Rifle is actually a rapid fire 15 shot "needler" gun. But it's outside of our timeline. The Imperator Dragon's Fire is not dissimilar.

Various PPCs have different charge times and heatspike amounts, as well as wider and narrower fields of effect.

The typical medium laser fires 4 to 5 times in 10 seconds. That same 4 to 5 shots generates 5 units of damage in said 10 seconds.

An AC/2 requiring 10 shots as mentioned earlier? Only 0.2 damage per shot. The 80mm Armstrong J11 of the Shadowhawk? 10 shots at 0.5 damage per shot; burst fire. The Rifleman's own 80mm is automatic however. Automatic is supposedly better for range but the damage is spread out over time. It also gives better firing control. Burst fire relies on cassettes, so while the rounds are pumped out rapidly in comparison to automatic, the reload times leave the mech unable to fire the weapon for long periods of time.

It's not the lore that is limiting us. It's the summaries of tabletop.

To mention it... The rotary AC/5 is rated to do up to destroy up to 30 units of armor within 10 seconds.

The AC/2 in MWO deals 28 damage in 10 seconds. Something's a bit wrong here...

Edited by Koniving, 04 October 2014 - 03:51 PM.

[That Dawg]

INNER SPHERE MECH






CLAN MECH





PROBLEM?

[SaltBeef]

I am glad they changed some things running around with only 12 armor on my light mechs legs would seriously suck booaallls!!

Some other approaches not so much,.... Ghost heat, charging mechanic, could have found other ways and kept it fun.

[Macksheen]

If you want more contextual-immersion ... tt would be a ton of work, but I'd love to see named equipment instead of the generic "AC/5".

Like, for instance:

Armstrong J11
GM Whirlwind
Mydron C

These I just ganked off Sarna here: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon/5

What would be even cooler (and again, much more work) is if one model was the "base" and the others had offsetting quirks. Maybe the Armstrong is base, but maybe the GM fires faster but generates more heat.

Again, much more work. They'd all be AC5-type items, but could be fun. Probably far more work than it would ever be worth, so I don't even consider this a serious request. It'd still be neat.

[RockmachinE]

Flash Frame, on 04 October 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

what are you even arguing here...

The discussion on this page is about LORE breaking MWO [or not breaking it], not mechanics...

please stay on topic.

Guess I just want someone to argue with, anything will do. But you are right. It was off topic so I'll pick up my toys and leave this sandbox. So you in another topic.

Edited by Louis Brofist, 04 October 2014 - 03:57 PM.

[Aresye]

This is a "Battletech" game. It's based on a series of games, based on a series of novels, based on a board game. With that said, there's certain elements that don't transfer over well to a realtime shooter, most notably when concerning penalties and multipliers.

Now, for things like heat scale, weapon specs, etc, those are designed to be balanced within the board game, and don't lose their balance simply because it's now realtime.

MechWarrior isn't just about mechs. It's about the universe, the politics, and the lore. That's why so many people want to see Community Warfare, because up until now it's been nothing other than an arena style shooter with mechs.

Don't like the TT or the lore? Well, there's plenty of mech games out there. What you're essentially suggesting is that a Star Wars game should ignore lightsabers and adopt rail-guns, because then it would be more like other shooters.

[Mercules]

Prosperity Park, on 04 October 2014 - 10:55 AM, said:

Yup. I'm sad because I think BattleTech is holding the MechWarrior franchise back from being as cool as it should be.

You play other Mechy Stompy games, and they have lots of cool features, and so does this game. However, the features of this game are limited to a build-set from a Table Top game that's not being dynamically-expanded for the current application. For instance, we have these weapons called "AC/10" and they deal 10 damage. Wow, what a super-original naming system.

If I were a soldier in the field, and was told that my weapon was an AC/10, I would ask something like "Does that mean it's a 10mm?"

And the response would be "No, it deals 10 damage."

"What do you mean, 'It deals 10 damage' ? What is 'a' damage?"

"Don't ask questions, Soldier, you will accept that it deals 10 damage and you will like it!"

And that's the Lore this game is based on - a Universe where that conversation actually happens.

Apparently you haven't looked into the lore. For example from Sarna:

Quote

[color=#000000]The [/color]Dragon[color=#000000]s primary weapons are an Imperator-A [/color]Autocannon/5[color=#000000] and Telos DecaCluster [/color]LRM-10[color=#000000] launcher, giving it respectable long-range damage capabilities as it charges forward.[/color]

AC5 is a weapon class. It's like "50-cal", "Automatic Rifle - AR", "Heavy Machine Gun - HMG", "Squad Automatic Weapon - SAW", or "Designated Marksman Rifle - DMR". These are real life designations for weapon classes similar in nature to "Autocannon 5".

[Mercules]

Lefty Lucy, on 04 October 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

The game followed BT rules much more closely early in development, and it was terrible.

The game hasn't followed BT rules EVER. It follows BT rules like a College bar has $.50 Jack and Cokes where they put Coke in a glass and wave a bottle of Jack Daniels over it.

[Noth]

Roadbeer, on 04 October 2014 - 03:28 PM, said:

Still better than arbitrary voodoo maths, at least there would be reason behind it.
As far as the super rich, they wouldn't be pissing it away on ammo for long, and the golden ammo crowd in other games are pretty far and few between, I can't see people ponying up cash to be able to spam 1800 LRMs, well, not enough of them that it would be an issue.

Completely and utterly false. The only way that would be the case is if they cost so much, that new players and underperforming players would not be able to afford any amount of missile use and we'd see what we saw before, almost exclusive use of energy weapons except. It did nothing to actually balance out any of the weapons and only harmed the new players. It acted as a strict barrier to playing what you want (something that was not desired by the devs)

[terrycloth]

I thought it was based on the number of tons of ammo it expended every X seconds? An AC/20 expended 20% of a ton of ammo with every trigger pull.

[Burktross]

I too think you over emphasize importance of naming conventions. I moreso look at it an AC"10" is its weapon size in some unknown unit, which for either coincidence, gameplay, or simplicity, does 10 damage. Small, medium, and large lasers are relative naming scales to denote relative power to other weapons in its class. Who cares? Names are names, incredibly minor.

I do however think too much adhesion to standard battletech isn't a good thing. We shoudnt try to be gyundum 12 year old long blonde hair planetary sized warriors, but a bit of new can't hurt. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should step in that direction even slightly.)
Especially when you realize mechwarrior hasn't exactly been that hot of a game... adding in new content that fits in universe and makes sense doesn't hurt.

As for damage values? Those of course can't be nearly as conservative. BT was a board game. MW is an Real Time Walking Tank Sim. Things will need to change for balance.
(Not saying everything that has changed is a peachy improvement, but there needs to be room for it)

Edited by Burktross, 04 October 2014 - 04:41 PM.