94 replies to this topic

[Rei Fukai]

Maybe another type of price for clan tech? Something that is not only c-bills, but c-bills + exp.points, or maybe some other points you earn during fighting. Maybe some "point" you can buy for XP, or a medal for completing some minor tasks during combat. So 1 or more "medal" gives access to clan weapon, 5 or more points to mech, etc. And salvage can be implemented in access to "salvage shop" after every battle with random equipment and mechs available for those points.
Some sort of balance can be done by very high repearing costs, so to fight in clan mech you should stay alive or farm on IS mech or with IS weaponry. In adv videos of MWO there is a line about medium mechs that they are the majority, so I can only assume that profitable mechs will be light and medium, heavy will be 0/0, and assault could even have negative income. It's f2p, not free, anyway we will be paying for premium.

[Wolftrap]

I'd take a Hunchback or Highlander as a clan pilot....I'd just let techs play with it for a while and get a IIC version out of it....2 Ultra AC/20s can really hurt.

[RedHellion]

According to canon, the only Clan units which used IS 'mechs were the "Solahma" units of older warriors who were too old for front-line deployment, and whose only purpose was to die a glorious death on the battlefield as diversions or in support of front-line units (or as auxiliary garrisons).
I think after prolonged engagements Clan pilots might have piloted IS 'mechs if their own was too shot up to be recovered and there were no replacements, but I can't recall any specific instances.

My view right now is that I'd rather have Clan 'mechs be unavailable for salvage due to either their advanced tech or being taken immediately to R&D facilities. Maybe after players have destroyed a few hundred or thousand of a certain Clan 'mech, R&D comes up with the appropriate IS model which can then be bought in the lab. Same thing for weaponry.

[Liberty]

Making Clan Tech salvage not available to Houses at the start of the Clan Invasion makes sense. I mean.... The R&D of each respective House is going to want to know how those Clan goodies tick and I can't see a soldier keeping his hands on one. However, Mercs are another story. They are hired on contract and sometimes even hired out of desperation. A House really isn't going to be able to keep salvage from a Merc especially when they can have their own Dropships and be worlds away. Hefty bribe might talk em out of giving it up but I doubt any Merc worth his salt is going to want to give up a prize like that. Sure... it might take a hell of a lot to get it workin again but Mercs are a stubborn bunch. Either way, its not just Clan Mechs that I feel should be salvaged. I think if you headshot a couple of Atlas mechs then you should at least get a discount in purchasing one since you would have been able to pick one off the battlefield. I don't think the its a PvP game or its Online Sim holds much argument. You could still have salvage and not unbalance the game or even have agreed upon duels for pink slips. I think the real reason that some are against salvage is that they don't like customized mechs and prefer only stock variants.Stock mechs make it easier to predict what weapons they will have and what tactics they will use. I personally like how variants and customs can spice things up. The other reason people might not want salvage is because they want to keep the edge by keeping that technology for themselves. Afraid of your precious Clan Omni Mech meeting a IS mech of equal tonnage with clan weaponry? You should be. IS are tricky little Freebirths. That being said I do think the tech should be hard to come by and maybe even extremely expensive to refit into IS Mechs. Hard and expensive but not impossible.

[Ciypherr]

My god it will be a Eve/ Diablo loot system dont let them do it nooooo! lol

[Liberty]

Hmm.... Yeah.... Now that you mention Diablo. You do remind me that this is a Free to Play model. I want Salvage and Captured Mechs but I prefer to earn it. Given a Free to Play model it wouldn't surprise me if the money talks. Shell out fifty real dollars and you get a Madcat. Meh. I can't say I wouldn't buy it since I bought the Founders but I'd still prefer to earn it in order to acquire it. Paying real life money shouldn't be the only way to get stuff. If Founders Mechs could have been captured I probably wouldn't have bought it. Would have been more interesting to unlock the chassis by head shotting one. Maybe they can implement something where you have to unlock certain tech and chassis and then you are able to purchase it on the market. I dunno. I'm not sure what to expect with the Free to Play model especially when the Clans arrive. You may even have to pay money to play as the Clans.

[Qayos]

I'm against it, and truthfully the whole "taking stuff from the defeated" usually is a bad business premise. Nobody likes losing their marbles to the big guys.

What might be cool if there was a Dev event "when the clans come" that lets you win a Clan mech from the event. But you should never be able to take stuff from other players.

[Liberty]

I've seen this comment repeated. The whole I don't want to lose my stuff argument so I hate salvage. The truth of the matter is that no one has to lose anything. The loser gets a beat up mech back in his hanger which would of happened anyways according to the Devs. The winner could also have a chance to receive a duplicate beat up chassis in their inventory. Not every time mind you. Just that if you killed a class of mech type so many times you have a rare chance of that chassis or a piece of equipment from that chassis appearing in your inventory. The loser doesn't have to lose a thing. I also feel that its not unbalancing because you can make it a rare occurence and that you have to have killed many of those types of mechs to even have a chance. Better that than having players always buying the best equipment with real money to mount in their mechs. Likely there will be a little of that anyways due to a Free to Play model but I hope its not the only way.

I would also like an option for duels for pink slips. Not something mandatory but optional that people can do for fun. Warrior vs Warror to prove their mettle. The duel option could only be used if you have an extra mech of course.

[Darklor]

What about extra research points into the branch(s) (mech/weapon) of the destroyed mech(s) as way to simulate salvage? As I assume that it follows a research system similar to WoT. (At least that is what I assume, because of the things seen and heard.)

[Schtirlitz]

Liberty, on 28 June 2012 - 05:33 AM, said:

Warrior vs Warror to prove their mettle. The duel option could only be used if you have an extra mech of course.

This can be implemented as a type of fight on Solaris.
I'd like it.

[Skibat]

woudl be prett nice instead of capturing mechs, you can salvage parts etc to sell and whatnot and increase your income.

Becuase in world of tanks its kind of go in and kill people until you die, with very little reward in playing smart

[Lorchan]

Salvage would open up a very large bag of worms. Our Battle Tech campaign had over on hundred members in the 80"s and salvage rules and tracking caused the most problems and the most arguments. What happened when two or more people damaged a mech, what happened when two different units damaged a mech, who actually controlled the firld of battle, The mech was down but not out, they ignored the mission and just tried to gather salvage, everyone ganged up on my unit to get the salvage even my ally...
So many problems that one player each game night was responsible for assigning salvage and arbitateing the arguments over it. Please do not do that to this game. Salvage in PVE might be an option, but let's keep MWO about the fun and excitment of competition, not who gets the scraps.

Didn't House units control the salvage in canon and Mercs just get paid for it? Not a fair advantage for Mercs and Lone Wolves.

Edited by Lorchan, 28 June 2012 - 06:26 AM.

[Wolftrap]

In the books the only mercs that got salvage rights(part of contracts they signed) were Wolf Dragoon's and Kell Hounds. All the other mercs had contracts to turn in salvaged material or not get paid for the contract and they would be breaking contract etc......perfect example Mechwarrior 2 Merc after clans arrive you get missions to take down clan patrols for alot of money but no salvage rights. And the best example is the DC mission were you are sent to steal a Kodiak mech from Clan Ghost Bear and pilot to Combine Dropship...at last second you get option to destory dropship and "handlers" and run thru a guantlet of enemies to reach your dropship instead....that stops all Combine contracts until the end of the game mission if I remember right.

[Prussian Havoc]

Wolftrap, on 28 June 2012 - 07:13 AM, said:

In the books the only mercs that got salvage rights(part of contracts they signed) were Wolf Dragoon's and Kell Hounds. All the other mercs had contracts to turn in salvaged material or not get paid for the contract and they would be breaking contract etc......

Another good reason to pick House Steiner from the start! (...thanks Son of the Dragon!)

[Theibault]

I would be happy if you get the "knowledge" of weapons systems and mechs you destroy to build in your mech lab. That way, no one actually loses their mech, but lets say a year from now you kill a Clan mech, you can build one yourself in the mech lab. Kind of like finding an old SL cache (which there should be some strewn around the universe for players to find!).

[RedHellion]

I still prefer the idea of a battle for pink slips or standard salvage rules. Lorchan, if you read the post I made a page or so ago you'll see that I already made some suggestions based on in-match point ranking for who would get first dibs on salvage from the match. Not to mention that once community warfare goes live a lot of the battles in the Inner Sphere will consist of merc groups taking on contracts and House units fighting over planets, so since there will only really be 2 sides to any of those matches it eliminates the cross-unit squabbling over salvage rights.

Having semi-random 'loot' drops of broken chassis' for the winners does not fit anywhere in the BT universe and is an annoying mechanic best reserved for standard dungeon-crawlers. There has to be some kind of win-loss to balance things out in the game world, even if this kind of playing for keeps is reserved for a separate match type or special "high-priority" contracts and battles for important planets in the community warfare section.

Edited by RedHellion, 28 June 2012 - 09:09 AM.

[StriplingWarrior]

As I read through this, I see that most posting here are in favor of some kind of salvage mechanic. I do like the reasons Panzerbunny pointed out that front line house units would not be putting captured mechs straight into service without at least some refit. I would like to add to that one word "logistics", refit, rearm and repair require more people than the fighting force. Ammo aside, since LRM is LRM for the most part, scrounging up actuators, myomers and computers to replace in your captured Hatamoto-Chi for your Steiner scout lance is impractical.

For a Merc unit. Especially a small one it would not any more of a problem than usual since they would probably be scrounging for everything and would put whatever they had into service if it was better than what other POS they had. Large Merc units however would be using the salvage as a dump for spare parts. Again, front like units would not be getting salvage apart from likely replacement weapon systems.

The salvage mechanic is simply a way that the great houses(or hiring factions) limit their monitary exposure. Salvage was a form of payment that does not affect them in the slightest really, since it is not in any way a sure thing, they dont have to fly out and get the stuff, bring it home, or pay the Merc unit nearly as much. This is especially true when intel(which is frequently wrong) mistakes a company size unit for 2 scout lances with no other support, or that there would be heavy resistance and there is a commando present. In addition to that if the purpose of the contract is to aquire new equipment then they just lower the salvage percentage or whatever and raise the pay a bit. easy cheesy

TL:DR
I like the idea of salvage
Salvage is not very practical for the way we have been told the game is going to work-several reasons.
I like the RPG possibilities of this game. Therefore : I would like to see a "hard core" or some other type of mode where salvage plays a large part, possibly in the (sorry for using the term)"Clan Wars" setting when it is introduced.

[MightyRando]

It will be a different spin not having salvage, but I have to agree that I would hate to lose my founder mechs right away.

[RedHellion]

MightyRando, on 28 June 2012 - 10:09 AM, said:

It will be a different spin not having salvage, but I have to agree that I would hate to lose my founder mechs right away.

Founders 'mechs should not be able to be lost to salvage; instead they would be returned to the player at the end of the battle win or lose, possibly with a base chassis for that 'mech remaining in the salvage pool.

[buckaroo]

It's really very simple.

Clan tech, and certain high-end lostech, is first available from Co-Op PvE (something similar to WoW's dungeons or EVE-Online's complexes - a high tier player can solo a low-tier dungeon, or a group of them can do a high-tier dungeon.) Higher Tier = > better level of salvage. This will also allow guilds/clans to practice coordination if their usual rival aren't available.

So let's say I solo a low-level PvE scenario and get a Clan ER LL. Cool, I'll mount it on my Atlas.

Now, I take it into a PvP match, and while I'm plinking n00bs at 800m, a Hunchback walks up behind me and AC/20s my arm off. Woe is me.

Now I have to do that PvE scenario again, because with my laser destroyed, all I can get through normal repair channels is the IS LL I used to have.

Not sure whether it'd be better for those things to be trade-able between players (ingame economy), or if there should be a cool-down timer (like in Star Trek Online) for certain dungeons.

But since it's a moot point until the Clans get here in 2013, they have time to think about it an implement something.

Yes, I really, really want there to be PvE content.

Edited by buckaroo, 28 June 2012 - 10:20 AM.