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[trebormills]

Community Warfare shows great potential - Attack or Defend and reshape the galaxy, earning loyalty points. I am pleased to say that starting Saturday by Sunday I did unlock all 20 pts for the challenge

My concern is that the long wait times may have already turned people off to the new mode. I have tried solo, small groups up to 6, 8, 10 , 11 and 12 mans. All numbers had issues getting drops in a timely manner but the larger the group the more successful it has been, with 10+ being best. This needs to be fixed. We gave up on a 7 man drop and sync dropped at one stage with variable success. Throw people together asap - the post on reddit helps explain some issues you are thinking of trying to help re this [why not posted on official MWO??]
http://www.reddit.co..._behavior_russ/

The next issue is the auto win due to no show - that sucks. Its realistic sure but very dull and for the 20 pt challenge really frustrating. I have 4 ish matches with a 10 to 17 pt total due to no enemies showing up. Please look at fixing this issue as its dull for the team that drops and annoying for faction that auto loses territory. Adding a defend/attack anywhere vs IS/clan for my faction would help here?

Maps - well we obviously need more and please consider drop points, choke points, gameplay modes and routes etc. Sulfur is really tough slog to get to battle and seems to love jump jets. Vault - I have been Gaussed as I dropped from my defenders dropship from someone by gates? Seems a bit harsh to be long range pinged unable to do anything about it. May need more cover for drop points. I hear there might be elevators for deployment – sounds great. Also what about take point A, B and C. You cant win without holding A and contesting C and get a cash bonus for point B etc

Drop ships for defenders zapping you on way in. Great idea but needs fixing, maybe less shooting on way in but more damage over drop point? Please look at this as losing a load of armour to a dropship by gates is annoying. Equally dropships might need a close range buff for defending vs spawn campers.
Spawn camping is annoying and a great tactic to exploit as you are helpless for a brief moment as you drop in. Dropships need to be able to clear mechs away a bit better - lots of small or medium pulse lasers? A shield to reduce dmg? One option is to have 6 spawn points and players pick which one to go to? Bear in mind dropships should be mean at close range – dont make them auto hit long range snipers however whilst trying to fix spawn camping issues

Zerg rush – it can be defeated but seems to be the best way to win. I have seen the all lights “charge till you win” tactic, the fast mediums and heavies tactic and even the assaults then fast rush with mediums and a few ecm lights. I would say its easily 70%+ win for rushers. We had a great match where we held of the rushers and won but it took 10 of us dropping together with good use of arty and focus firing to do the job. In another match we killed almost all of them but lost as 4 survived enough to kill the generator. As attackers we got down to our last mechs and rushed for win. When its close its a fun game but its likely to get old real quick. Buff generator health will help defenders but of course defenders [esp Clan] already have the advantage hence the creation of the zerg rush tactic. The Zerg rush is also unrealistic as you basically saying accept 99% casualties for the win, even if the enemy force still has 99% of its force intact. I feel this is a tricky one to fix with game mode as is, hence why you need more maps and new game modes.

A possible easy fix to Zerg rush might be to fiddle with the weight limits, currently you can run 4x raven 3ls [or similar lights at 35 tons] for example. Upping the weights by 10 tons might be worth testing?

Attack/Defend? I feel this is misnamed as an Attacker can end up defending and a defender attacking. I suggest renaming this mode – One of my Corps member suggested Garrison vs Invader which fits better. After all a Garrison force will start defending but may need to counter attack

CW interface needs a work over – it needs to provide better feedback. Numbers in queue, filled lances, multiple battles on a planet, looking for group [make it so you can turn this off]. Am I attacking or defending? Etc

Overall I am massively pleased with CW but it needs work and I hope this beta weekend has a load of metrics, comments, feedback and trail by fire to hammer it into something awesome. Keep it up - mwo has shown potential from day 1 and recently your doing great stuff.

EDIT
A great list of ideas IMO
http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__4007027

Edited by trebormills, 15 December 2014 - 07:43 AM.

[DarkCain]

I understand that this is just a barebones of what looks to be a very promising community warfare system; I think the entire premise of destroying the orbital gun to win needs to be revisited. Regardless of how I look at this, by Battletech lore/canon or my real world military experience, I see no logic for this particular mission to really exist at all. Destroying the orbital gun needs to be turned into a “capture the objectives or eliminate all of the defenders prior to a successful capture” mission.

Here is why I think so:

To start it off, the attacker’s attrition rates from zerg rushing are insane from a logistical standpoint. As a defender, I’d love to see those extremely lop sided kill ratios as it would translate into an enemy strategically exhausting their entire faction’s available martial assets after 9 to 10 planetary invasions. (I realize for CW to work in MWO, time constraints had to replace asset losses. Just leads me to my next point.)

Why waste scores of mechs destroying this orbital gun when a couple of 52’ long, armored conex trailers (or milvan depending on terminology) full of space rock can be launched from orbit at high speed safely from any distance via several angles onto this gun? Sure, the orbital gun can shoot the trailer; but that in turn causes the trailer slug to become a shotgun spread of debris (provided that the orbital gun is a railgun; otherwise, it is still one big slug inbound at high speed.) I’d just drop more than enough of those trailers onto it at once to overwhelm its rate of fire. Secondly, this gun will essentially get one shot off before getting wiped out by to counter fire or those trailers. The resulting crater from these trailers (think of those trailers as a kinetic weapon with the equivalent energy of a large atomic weapon) impacting will be half a mile to a mile wide minimally, pretty much guaranteeing a kill even with a near miss. Any defensive emplacement or mech in the vicinity of this would be taken out by the ensuing shock wave. Have a bunch of these orbital guns? Fine, I will just bring more conex trailers full of space rock. Building a mech takes time. Conex trailers can be manufactured in mass numbers quickly and cheaply by comparison.

Wiping out the orbital gun does not translate into planetary victory as there still remains a very active enemy force defending the planet. Air power can only degrade the fighting power of the enemy, not outright win. Even that last statement is suspect as mechs can shoot down fighters in Battletech board game. The only way to win is by placing boots on ground and defeating the enemy by direct means. As long as the enemy has the means, the will, and the ability to fight you, the planet is not yours (Two of those three have to be removed in order to defeat the enemy).

Clanners wouldn’t bother with the orbital gun as their preference is to wipe out the enemy guarding the weapon. They’d just destroy the weapon afterwards. The clans’ method of fighting is to engage the enemy forces directly, not go after some strategic weapon of limited use and value. Their SOP is to go wherever the enemy is and defeat them with direct fire. Alternate methods of fighting are typically frowned upon unless the enemy has proven themselves to be dishonorable. Their warrior ethos is built around conserving martial assets (the bidding system) and honor.

Inner sphere forces wouldn’t destroy the orbital gun unless no other option was available to them. The thinking would be along the lines of possibly being able capture that weapon and use it against the current owners later on down the line. Same goes for factories and other items of strategic value. With some exceptions, a mentality has been ingrained into almost every house and merc unit by the Succession Wars to avoid damaging strategic assets at all costs with the thinking that we will get them next round.

Since CW operates on time restraints versus asset losses, the strategic value of orbital gun is negligible. The possession of such an asset provides no advantage to the defender in with the current mission type. Hell, an enemy dropship (that came from orbit) is capable to deploying mechs multiple times in close proximity to the orbital gun, explain that one?