40 replies to this topic

[RedDragon]

First of all: Please put down your torches and pitchforks. This is no attempt to take away the "full" customization some people here don't want to give up in the mech lab, but rather a try to encourage use of stock load outs.

Russ talking about the whole quirks-affair made me think. Why not use the quirk system to promote using the base configurations of a mech? Apparently Russ wants to reward certain load outs (e.g. AC 20 on a Hunchback) with positive quirks. This is in essence what I want to propose, just the other way around. So why not go a step further and set the stock load out as the best possible solution, while every change to this load out brings some negative quirks with it. So in effect you can customize the mech as you want, but doing so may bring some negative side-effects, thus players that actually use the variant as it is intended get some bonus out of it.
This could also be paired with some kind of sized hard-point system many users here want to see implemented. It would be some kind of "soft" system, allowing for full customization, but only if the hard-point sizes are considered the mech will not get any negative quirks. Let's take the infamous Gaussapult. Its hard-points were made for MGs. So you "can" fit Gauss in there, but it will give you some big negative quirks.

This system would have several positive effects, among them promoting stock configs and discouraging the use of cheese-builds.
And it's quite lore-friendly. If you heavily modify a mech, it will have some problems most likely.

The quirks could even be made "realistic", i.e. if you put a large energy weapon in a small energy slot, it will give you a negative cooling quirk. Ballistics could get longer reload times and missiles longer lock-on times for example.

I guess if the quirks are balanced the right way, this system could make stock builds viable again while still allowing full customization. But now you would be forced to actually think about putting the best weapons on a variant. This would eliminate the need to use "must-have" configs while still allowing them.

I'm interested in hearing your opinion on this.

[Dracol]

People in general don't like negatives. Better to have just positives for stock load out and leave it at that.

[FupDup]

If we're going to go far enough to penalize larger-than-stock weapons, I'd almost rather just go the full mile and use sized hardpoints that let you have a weapon up to 1-3 critical slots larger (determined on a chassis/variant basis) than what came stock there.

[Deathlike]

To the OP, while I like the overall idea... the I think people are more "receptive" to decisions that boost a particular weapon or type of weapon... instead of giving "nerfs" to certain weapons.

Consider the omnipod system... and I'm going to use the Kitfox as an example (since, I'm only familiar with that).

Here's some actual quirks (IIRC) about some of the Kitfox's omnipods:
Kitfox-C arm = -10% arm movement, -5% torso twist
non-Kitfox-S side torso = +5% torso twist
Kitfox-S either leg = -5% turn rate

You think about this list... and consider the following:
Is it still worth getting the ECM arm despite those negatives?
Is getting adding the ballistic torso (and the 1 JJ in the future) worth it?
Is turning slower a good tradeoff with the future JJ locked leg?

If you look at the stock Kitfox-S's quirk list, it kinda looks like the Victor's negative quirks... and it seems "ominous", but comparatively speaking, it isn't the case.

While I agree with the premise, it's hard to get other people to agree with it, unless they are threatened with major nerfs.

[TygerLily]

I always thought they could give AC's a similar mechanic to how LRMs behave when you put a larger launcher into a smaller tube count slot.

It could be:

MG slot
AC2 = 2 round burst, 1 dmg
AC5 = 3 round burst, 1.6dmg
LB10X = 3 round burst, 3.3 dmg per shotgun volley
AC10= 3 round burst, 3.3 dmg
AC20 = 3 round burst, 6.6 dmg

AC2 calibur
AC2 = 1 round burst, 2 dmg (duh)
AC5 = 2 round burst, 2.5 dmg
LB10X = 2 round burst, 5 dmg per shotgun volley
AC10= 3 round burst, 3.3 dmg
AC20 = 3 round burst, 6.6 dmg

AC5 calibur
AC2 = 1 round burst, 2 dmg
AC5 = 1 round burst, 5 dmg
LB10X = 2 round burst, 5 dmg per shotgun volley
AC10= 2 round burst, 5 dmg
AC20 = 3 round burst, 6.6 dmg

AC10 calibur

AC2 = 1 round burst, 2 dmg
AC5 = 1round burst, 5 dmg
LB10X = 1 shot, 10 dmg
AC10= 1 round burst, 10 dmg
AC20 = 2 round burst, 10 dmg

AC10/Gauss calibur

AC2 = 1 round burst, 2 dmg
AC5 = 1round burst, 5 dmg
AC10= 1 round burst, 10 dmg
AC20 = 2 round burst, 10 dmg

AC20 calibur
One size fits all

Considerations:
UAC...maybe UAC's added bonus is that they ignore slot calibur.

Gauss...this kind of brings up rate of fire for each shot. Since it's long distance, Gauss could be at most 2 round burst for a calibur of 2 or 5, with very little time between shots leaving the barrel. And unchanged for calibur 10 or 20.

Time between shots:
- Should they prevent the AC20 in a 5 slot (3 round burst of 6.6 dmg) from being a crazy, triple barrel UAC 5? It seems horrifying at first, but remember that they are dedicating a lot of weight to the system, only 7 shots per ton, only a range of 270 meters, the whole system is still one weapon/component...I think it would be fine.
- They could also set this to be related to the "distance from the intended calibur". So an MG slot having an AC20 in it has a slower time between each round leaving the barrel (nothing super drastic...nothing more than .5 seconds, etc.) as compared to a faster time if you are trying to get an AC20 in an 10 calibur slot.


Weapon cooldown would start when the final round leaves the barrel.

[CDLord HHGD]

I basically like your approach though I also agree with the "negative is bad" opinion too. What/how do you determine what is too far from stock?

Stock HBK-4G

VS

Optimized HBK-4G

The biggest changes is the addition of FF and ES.....

[Khobai]

The way I always thought it should work is every mech should be based on the stock loadout. And when you remove a weapon from the stock loadout you can only replace that weapon with another weapon that uses the same number of crit slots or less.

So no putting gauss in where machine guns used to be. No putting AC/20s on Jagermechs. Etc...

[RedDragon]

Khobai, on 01 October 2014 - 05:15 PM, said:

The way I always thought it should work is every mech should be based on the stock loadout. And when you remove a weapon from the stock loadout you can only replace that weapon with another weapon that uses the same number of crit slots or less.

So no putting gauss in where machine guns used to be. No putting AC/20s on Jagermechs. Etc...

Yes, this is the "traditional" approach to sized hard-points that many players would prefer. But some players don't want to give up full customization, that's why I thought about the system in the OP. It still allows customization but encourages stock builds.

[kapusta11]

No

I'd remove hardpoints altogether if it were up to me, put whatever you wan't, at least then all issues would be more apparent.

Edited by kapusta11, 02 October 2014 - 08:37 AM.

[UnsafePilot]

Customizing loadouts has always been a big part of the draw for me with this franchise.

If running stock mechs was that much fun there wouldn't be any need to try to badger people into doing it.

[Xtrekker]

I think it's a cool idea. I mean this is all taken from TT, yet the first thing we do is strip everything down and play with the same general builds that we know work better in reality. Sometimes those builds are across chassis just because that's the play style we prefer. While I'm all for customization, I can't help but feel like something was lost when taking the mech out of its intended role.

One place where I could see negative quirks making sense -- heavy ballistics in the arms. Seems this could affect torso twist due to additional structure that would be required to deal with torque from recoil.

I think it's a good direction. Too bad it won't happen.

[NextGame]

I don't understand this fascination with stock builds all of a sudden, its about the most boring thing I could possibly imagine for this game, and I can imagine some pretty boring stuff.

so lets say you do something like sized hardpoints. You would end up getting something like this from PGI:

first off, all mechs would get stripped, meaning I would have 170 mechs to re-equip ¬_¬

You have energy, ballistic and missile tiers, with sizes 1-4 generally corresponding to l/m/h/a

There would have to be a pass on each mech to decide what hardpoint sizes they get, generally based off the weapons fitted on the standard loadouts, which in turn wouldn't actually make for a better balanced game as all mechs are not created equal.

so anyway, you would end up with

energy

tier 1: up to small lasers
tier 2: up to medium lasers
tier 3: up to large lasers
tier 4: up to ppc


ballistic:

tier 1: up to ac2/mg
tier 2: up to ac5
tier 3: up to ac10
tier 4: up to ac20/gauss


missile

tier 1: up to srm2/lrm5/streak2/narc
tier 2: up to srm4/lrm10/streak4
tier 3: up to srm6/lrm15/streak6
tier 4: up to srm6/lrm20/streak6


Then you have special slots that are out of weight class, such as a tier 4 going on hunchbacks shoulders.

This makes for some extremely inflexible builds and a boring game, not to mention widening the quality gap between lights through to assault, which we would all start moaning about. Logical progression after this would be modules and an xp grind to allow you greater customisation over slot sizes on your mech, as this would be a carrot for taking premium time etc.


No thanks.

Edited by NextGame, 02 October 2014 - 09:02 AM.

[Xtrekker]

Maybe I misread it, but I didn't think he was talking about going full stock. I think he was talking about mechs fulfilling their intended purposes and discouraging meta play, yet still providing full customization options. If anything this min/max stuff is boring as hell, and encouraging variety on the field would be an improvement.

[CDLord HHGD]

There's a more simple way to size hardpoints...

Option 1
The stock equipped weapon is the largest it can go in tonnage/crits/damage. LL can house MLs and SLs but not a PPC. A PPC can house any energy.

Option 2
Based off the stock weapon, fit it into a category of Large or Small. Large hardpoints can house small weapons, but Small hardpoints cannot house large...
Small: TAG, SL, ML, MG, AC2, AC5, NARC, SRM2, SRM4, LRM5, LRM10.
Large: LL, PPC, AC10, AC20, Gauss, SRM6, LRM15, LRM20.

*includes all variant weapons like pulse, streak, er, etc.....

[CyclonerM]

I approve this idea, but i would go further and have sized hardpoints instead.

[Almond Brown]

So Modifiable Stock Mechs?

Want to ding players for adding stuff, well start with Ammo. For every ton added over and above the Stock load out, it weighs an extra .25t or reduces the payload of every extra ton of ammo by 10%. Stuff like that.

Edited by Almond Brown, 02 October 2014 - 09:22 AM.

[Blakkstar]

Wrong for multiple reasons:

1. The Battletech lore has no drawbacks to modifying mechs, nor do standard TT rules. In fact, some of the most famous and successful mechs were modifications (Yen Lo Wang).

2. It penalizes purchasing new equipment and weapons in favor of stock, taking away one of the games main c-bill sinks. PGI would never be in favor of such a system.

3. What is the overall point anyways? Forcing the player base into using identical mechs? Why? The game already penalizes boating, and with the hardpoint system it's already difficult to gain any sort of unfair advantage through swapping out weapons. This is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and limits the game for no good reason.

[Ultimax]

Russ/PGI seem to be using bonuses and incentives to do exactly what you describe.


Grant benefits to using what the mech was designed to do.



You seem to want to go in the other direction;

Punish people for not using the stock load out.


1) Bonuses and incentives are better than punishing people.
2) The Goal is IMPROVING SUB-OPTIMAL MECHS. Punishing people for how they want to play a mech, does not achieve this.
3) Most Stock mechs builds make no sense in this game, no matter how much people think they do.
4) Your definition of cheese is really just things that are optimal for the game we are playing. I want my opponents to bring something dangerous, not see some Timber Wolf with machine guns and an ER Small laser to deal with infantry in a game with no infantry.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 02 October 2014 - 09:36 AM.

[Sam Slade]

The energy weapon limits are tricky; severe restrictions here could really hurt medium mechs.

However, the idea of using the same restrictions on ACs barrel capacity as is used on missile tubes is a good one; burst fire is obviously possible and with the existing limits on gauss this could make pin point FLD a far smaller issue(unless you have gauss skills)

[Xarian]

I've always liked the idea of sized hardpoints. We have a crapton of mechs - restricting the customizability is necessary to ensure that they all have a place.

e.g: The Hunchback is kinda mediocre, but it's got this giant AC/20 hardpoint. The Shadowhawk is generally better, but its ballistic hardpoint only goes up to AC/10.