3 replies to this topic

[a gaijin]

Widowmaker1981, on 10 November 2014 - 06:20 AM, said:

I am very annoyed by people asking PGI to utterly ruin their own game for the sake of some foolhardy obsession with making the rules of this first person, live action video game exactly match the rules of a turn based tabletop boardgame.. which incidentally was far from balanced itself.

Its ‘Mechwarrior Online’, not ‘Battletech translated Online’

Good morning!
And thank you for sharing that knowledge
All of my "BT experience" is from reading the novels (currently re-reading Warrior: En Garde by Michael Stackpole) and the MechWarrior games for PC: MW2, MW3, and the fairly disappointing MW4.

I'm very glad TT gurus such as yourself step in and inform the uninformed on the where, when, and how the rules should apply as well as when they should not.

Having played LOTS of the MW PC game and BT table-top not at all, I was always under the impression that PPCs had an about 4 second recharge and that many auto-cannons did as well.

TBH I actually would like to play a PC game that bases all of its rules on the BT TT rule set, but alongside MWO as a separate game.

Doing that would really give me a good frame of reference on the big differences between actual BattleTech and the PC game MechWarrior.

One thing I really want to see in MWO is the developers making it true to the spirit of the BattleTech universe so that when I am in game I'll be recalling scenarios from the novels or maybe from MW2 or 3.
Those two games really drew me into the BattleTech universe which lead me to buy and read about 50 of the novels.
And I have been enthralled for almost 20 years now

Cheers!

[Shlkt]

Although many on these forums like to argue that weapons only fired once every 10 seconds in the table top game, that's not really correct across all iterations of BattleTech. In the Solaris VII rules (which is another table-top mech combat game in the BattleTech universe), many of the weapons could fire more frequently than once every 10 seconds. In Solaris the turns were considered to be much shorter (i.e. 2 to 3 seconds each), and weapons like machine guns could fire every turn. Larger weapons needed multiple turns to recharge.

My only point is that the 10 second cooldown shouldn't be taken as a hard-and-fast, set-in-stone rule prescribed by the authors of the table top game. Even the table top guys abandoned it for balance reasons and to make the game more interesting in a granular one-on-one combat experience. Solaris rules feel like a closer analogue to our real time simulation anyway, at least to me.

Edited by Shlkt, 12 November 2014 - 06:44 AM.

[LauLiao]

Shlkt, on 12 November 2014 - 06:43 AM, said:

Although many on these forums like to argue that weapons only fired once every 10 seconds in the table top game, that's not really correct across all iterations of BattleTech. In the Solaris VII rules (which is another table-top mech combat game in the BattleTech universe), many of the weapons could fire more frequently than once every 10 seconds. In Solaris the turns were considered to be much shorter (i.e. 2 to 3 seconds each), and weapons like machine guns could fire every turn. Larger weapons needed multiple turns to recharge.

My only point is that the 10 second cooldown shouldn't be taken as a hard-and-fast, set-in-stone rule prescribed by the authors of the table top game. Even the table top guys abandoned it for balance reasons and to make the game more interesting in a granular one-on-one combat experience. Solaris rules feel like a closer analogue to our real time simulation anyway, at least to me.

Now I'm stretching WAY back in my memory here as I haven't even LOOKED at Solaris rules in about 25 years, but if I remember correctly, MGs were the most OP weapon in that rule set between the ROF and some weird heat rules. So while you're right in certain regards that Solaris is closer to what we have, I do not advocate that it should be the yardstick for comparison because it really was just as flawed as basic rules.

[Pht]

Shlkt, on 12 November 2014 - 06:43 AM, said:

Although many on these forums like to argue that weapons only fired once every 10 seconds in the table top game, that's not really correct across all iterations of BattleTech. In the Solaris VII rules (which is another table-top mech combat game in the BattleTech universe), many of the weapons could fire more frequently than once every 10 seconds. In Solaris the turns were considered to be much shorter (i.e. 2 to 3 seconds each), and weapons like machine guns could fire every turn. Larger weapons needed multiple turns to recharge.

My only point is that the 10 second cooldown shouldn't be taken as a hard-and-fast, set-in-stone rule prescribed by the authors of the table top game. Even the table top guys abandoned it for balance reasons and to make the game more interesting in a granular one-on-one combat experience. Solaris rules feel like a closer analogue to our real time simulation anyway, at least to me.

Amongst those interested enough to pursue these things, it's known that the recycle times for the weapons in the box sets aren't the "set in stone" actual recycle times. From the way the novels have it, I suspect the weapons can recycle possibly even faster than the solaris set has them ... varying times from weapon to weapon, most likely too. The only thing I would say that is hard and fast is that all of the weapons DO recycle in ten seconds or less.

As far as converting the "spirit" of the rules and "interpretation" - that's great and all, but really it just comes down to "what format we are coming from" and "what format we are going into." There's no need for ambiguous butt-covering words and phrases; everyone will eventually figure out your standards well enough to have a good discussion about them.

MWO took the *basic* tt game and has tried to convert it into a first-person generic shooter format with a huge slew of BT window dressings wrapped around a shooter core... pretty much what every single version of the game has done so far.

As far as I know, nobody's actually pulled off making a first-person BT(the fiction) armored combat simulator with the goal of having the 'mechs perform in combat like they do in the novels. It seems everyone hears "dice" and "random" and their brains flee and they go straight for the in the box-hidebound thinking of "must make BT based generic shooter like all others have."

There's that and the problem that the mechlabs have picked up the raw construction rules instead of trying to use the customization stuff; etc.

Let's not even discuss the problem of "director's license" that seems to be endemic these days in virtually all creative projects these days. Everyone seems to think that if they don't change at least some of the basic foundational aspects of an already established thing, that it somehow isn't "theirs."

Edited by Pht, 12 November 2014 - 06:45 PM.