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[Helaton]

Summary:

• There's also really not a point to be a loyalist except if you're a big fan of that faction or you got into a good unit that is loyal to the faction.
  
• Right now, we can't really do a whole lot with our coffers.
  
• Game heavily favors Mercs over Loyalists which overall is bad for CW regardless of faction (IS before, Clan now, IS next, Clan next etc.)

So I'm going to toss some ideas around primarily with the issue of Mercs vs Loyalists with a sprinkling of other things mixed in.

1. Money vs Loyalty Points

Merc Units earn CBills, Loyalists earn Loyalty points as bonuses. Not interchangeable. Mercs get no loyalty points for assisting a faction, they can always go somewhere else at anytime like they do now.

2. Contracts

Mercs who take contracts for x period of time collect cbills based on their performance at the end of their contract.

• Breaking contracts nets the unit breaking the contract no payout at all.
  
• Longer duration of successful contract = higher profitability

** Troll disclaimer: Any values are rudimentary and suggest how it can work rather than exact values


3. Coffers

Each unit has coffers that we can't really do anything with aside from breaking contracts. For loyalists, this never happens, so this is pretty useless to Loyalists currently.

3a. Spending Coffers
A unit needs things to spend money on. Currently we have a situation where money is put into coffers and not used for anything meaningful.

3b. Unit Garrison
Allow units to build their own garrisons. A new player to a unit can receive a 'garrison mech' rather than piloting a trial mech. Mechs can't be donated to the garrison from a player's inventory, rather it uses explicitly the garrison's coffers. (Thus a garrison can never have champion/hero mechs or newly released mechs until they are available for cbills.)

• Garrison Mech Bays have incremental costs (each mech bay is more expensive than the last).
  
• Garrison Mechs have their associated costs (full price but without weapons/armor/equipment - just blame it on red tape).

Want to buy a shiny Timberwolf for the garrison as a donation? Put the 15m in the unit's coffers so an officer/x-rank can purchase it. Once a mech is assigned to an individual from the garrison, (its an empty chasis). They use their own weapons and equipment on it.


Difference: Individual users by their mechs equipped as is. Unit buy chasis only (same price, but that's the cost of garrison).

If a garrisoned mech is removed from a player, all components, weapons and armor return to the player's inventory while the Mech returns to the garrison. (Garrison assignments are meant to help new players better than trial mechs or for a unit to try new strategies that individuals aren't ready for. I.e. if you want to rush Mist Lynxes and no one can afford one at the moment, the unit can purchase and lend the chassis out.)

3c. Unit Loyalty
Having a high loyalty allows your unit to purchase faction-related mechs for the garrison at a cheaper cost.

At its simplest, it would mean that IS has cheaper IS mechs, and Clan mechs have cheaper clan mechs. At complex side, it could get as complex as each faction's specific cbill mechs and faction specific equipment would be discounted.

Mercs pay full price and then some more for everything, but they can get large cbill contract bonuses for what they do. Mercs also benefit from mixed tech in CW and in the game. They can take a clan mech and IS mech into a CW match. (Loyalists will be using their faction's mechs as is done currently.) Merc tonnage may need to be adjusted for CW drop decks because of this but it is a powerful perk. Everything is more expensive, but flexibility is paramount. Mercs will get tech slower than factions however.

Troll Disclaimer: Discounts and Cost increases do not apply to any MC related items.

4. Technology
Allow loyalists to invest in their faction's technology. Mercs can't invest in technology.

4a. Technology Investment

Loyalists can invest (based on the unit's accumulated loyalty points), in certain tiers of technology.

Die hard loyalists with a long tradition (and high loyalty point value) can invest in several tiers of technology.

A new unit can only assist in tiers that are open to their loyalty point total.

Simple Example:

Quote

Tier 1: IS ER Small Laser - 1 billion cbills & 250k unit loyalty points
Tier 2: Heavy Machine Gun - 2 billion cbills & 500k unit loyalty points
Tier 3: IS ER Medium Laser - 3 billion cbills & 1m unit loyalty points
Tier 4: PPC + Capacitor (PPC+C) - 4 billion cbills & 5m loyalty points
Tier 5: X-Pulse Laser (I know, but why not) - 10 billion cbills & 10m loyalty points

Units with high loyalty can contribute to high end tech (or lower tier tech). PGI can more or less anticipate when a particular tech will be researched and work towards developing it. Players are driving the game more so than PGI. Although PGI is controlling what's available to invest in.

4b. Technology Investment

• A new unit will have no loyalty points.
  
• Any loyalist unit that leaves that faction has all loyalty points reset to 0.

(This is important to prevent high end merc units from easily becoming loyalists for obtaining technology with their huge coffers. The idea is to make CW more stable than currently.)


4b. Releasing Technology

Example: If a clan ghost bear is investing heavily in researching the Kodiak chassis, PGI will have a good idea of what would be a good mech to release and have their modelers/designers get to work following player trends.

Obviously this would tear significantly from the timeline etc, but players/units would be investing cbills/effort in the tech they want. If it is a chassis, then PGI can follow the investment trend and release a chassis. (Here's looking at you Urbie. ) PGI could setup technology that is current to this decade to be released rather than people jumping around to 3120 etc.

Same for weapon & support systems. You can have a mech from 3058 now, but it will take a huge faction investment to get it. Faction communication also becomes important for goals.

Quote

LAMS (Laser AMS)
For 1-60 days, they get exclusive use of the new tech via MC.
For 61-120 days, mercs can buy the packs for MC, CJF can buy now for cbills.
121+ - Mercs can buy for cbills + extra cbill cost.

Example: Clan Jade Falcon researches LAMS for CJF.

Other loyalists will have to catch up on development if they find they like the technology their opponent is using. (i.e. Clan Smoke Jaguar sees what CJF has done, and accelerates LAMS tech for themselves.)

From technology, while Mercs benefit from flexibility, they will lag behind Loyalists technology-wise (unless a faction grows stale).

Having more mercs than loyalists will stagnate the game.

4c. PGI Needs some cbills too
PGI, you can microtransaction newly researched weapon systems for short time periods before releasing for cbills.

Example: 250 MC for an MRM pack for example: 2x MRM 10, 2x MRM 20, 2x MRM 40's for 2 months, then release for cbills. Mercs can buy for MC for 60 days after that, then pay regular cbills.

Make them small cheap packages so players will purchase MC or use event MC and feel happy what they have.

You get the idea. Keep the flow of new chassis and technology up to players. (Factions will try to heavily recruit for loyalist groups.) It will also take some of the guess work out of what players want.

Troll Disclaimer: Any values are rudimentary and suggest how it can work rather than exact values

5. Spending on Campaigns
Loyalists and mercs can spend money on campaigns.

5a. What is a campaign?

The death of the CW algorithm.

No Really.Units use their cbills to launch their own invasions. A single unit can try to plow into a planet, but they will be better served by multiple units banding together to attack a planet. Those multiple units can be loyalists or mercs (who are contracted to the faction).

Players pick the planet (as long as it is within the fringe of their borders), view an estimated cost to invade for that unit, and can then launch their own CW for the unit against that planet.

5b. Campaign limitations
Strategy
A clan invader does not want to create a spaghetti string of single conquests to Terra. If the connection to the faction's homeworld is cut off, no attacks can be launched from 'islands'. Only defenses.

A faction can defend any planet within their territory at no cost to them. (Costs cbills to attack, free to defend).

Why Attack at All when defending is free?
Campaigns/Invasions are the only way to earn loyalty points so it is important for factions to attack (and defend). If no one attacks, no one advances.

5c. Mercs: Enter the contract

Mercs earn extra money from campaigns through the amount that a loyalist group spends to launch a campaign. So no 'new' money is technically being generated, its the cycle of money spent ingame which may one day approach an economy (who knows).

This is where their merc contract cbills come in. For each assault on a planet, they earn a % of the amount of the campaign. All of this adds up for the merc unit and is paid to the merc unit at the end of their contract.

5d. Mercs & Loyalists: Contract Payout & Taxes

Taxes
Can't escape them...even in games. The unit leaders decide on what % of winner's cbills can go to taxes. This is typical guild/unit plunder.

• If a unit decides that 5% of their member's cbills go to the unit, it will be deducted at the end of each match and enter the unit's coffers.
  
• If a unit wants to be donation only, they can set the tax to 0%.

Contract Payout

For mercs, the tax rate also applies to the contract payout.

If a unit earns 100m cbills from a contract, and their tax/plunder rate is 20%, then 20m goes straight to the merc unit, the remaining amount is divided up among individual players. (This is the other important reason to not break a contract.)

If player x won 8 matches and player y won 2 matches, it becomes an 80/20 distribution of the rest of the contract money. (It is based on the total, and total contribution to the contract of that individual.)

If 10 players each won equal number of matches, then each player would get 8m cbills out of the 100m example above.

5e. Mercs: Invasions
Mercs can invade too. But it extremely expensive to do so. But if a merc wants their own planet/system, they can conquer 1 planet from any faction. Sometimes its just cool to have your own 'bubble' of space on a map.

• Mercs can attack any world on the map except homeworlds.
  
• Mercs can't take over homeworlds.
  
• Loyalists attacking merc worlds can earn loyalty points through it.
  
• Mercs defending their planet get 2x-4x salvage cbill bonuses.

Troll Disclaimer: Any values are rudimentary and suggest how it can work rather than exact values


Well that was fun, but longer than I thought it was going to be.

[Nightmare1]

Nuff said.