28 replies to this topic

[Chameleon257]

I would like to see a way for units to buy and build mechs with the Coffer system. Maybe make it where unit leaders could set up mechs for new people that don't have a lot of mechs to borrow out of the unit Mech Bays. That way instead of regular ordinary mechs used as trials a person in a unit can use the unit mechs. This would make more sense if you're in a unit rather than the regular trial mechs.

How this would work: A unit could start with 12 Mech bays. A unit leader would buy a chassis paint it build it just like he/she would in his own mech bay but the unit owns it. The money comes from the coffers unit players donate to.

A new person joins the unit and wants to drop in a public drop. He can borrow this mech from the unit trials to assist him in the match. While he's using this mech it is in game just like a mech in your mech bays would be so other unit members can't use it until it's out of said game.

A new person dropping in CW can use 4 of these mechs to augment a unit drop or pug drop using the unit mechs but again their locked from other unit members using them until they're out of the game.

Unit coffers can be used to buy more mech bays or if PGI wants MC to expand the number of unit mech bays.

Edited by Chameleon257, 25 February 2015 - 03:05 PM.

[GreyNovember]

And if that Mechbay MC requirement isn't enough profit, Mechs for these bays could be heavily discounted MC versions.

I'm talking 1000 MC for a Direwolf to keep in reserve for the unit. Modifications would be done in C Bills.

Reasonable, yes?

[Chameleon257]

You mean like if a hero is 2400 MC for the unit it would be cheaper?

[VinJade]

isn't a bad idea.
could also make it where players can donate a mech as well to the unit, say if someone wanted to get rid of a Commando 2D after upgrading to a Raven or some other light mech then the mech would be placed in the mech bay with whatever item/s was left on it and can be tinkered with from there.

just a thought.

[JadeTimberwolf]

I like the idea, however I wouldn't limit it to 1 player using them at a time.

[Chameleon257]

Yes I have that in the post so if one person is using the mech another unit member can't use it till the other pilot is done with it.

Also with it painted from the Unit lead it would match unit colors etc.

Edited by Chameleon257, 25 February 2015 - 09:54 PM.

[Tarogato]

JadeTimberwolf, on 25 February 2015 - 09:25 PM, said:

I like the idea, however I wouldn't limit it to 1 player using them at a time.

That creates huge problems. A large unit could just have 6-12 trial mechs and anybody could use them as much as they like. For instance, a brand new player in the game could join that unit, buy three variants of one of the Unit Trials, elite them, sell them, and now they can go back to using the Unit Trial again, now with Elite efficiencies. Now they can start Eliting their next chassis and they never have to buy their own mechbays or paint or camo. Ever.

It's just a bad idea all around. I'm not even fond of it in terms of the OP itself.

[VinJade]

why not just make them blank when it comes to skills and not allow them to be accessed and make the mech default or else cannot be used also drop the amount of C-bills & Exp by a x-percent earned.

Edited by VinJade, 26 February 2015 - 02:17 AM.

[Chameleon257]

Tarogato, on 25 February 2015 - 10:34 PM, said:

That creates huge problems. A large unit could just have 6-12 trial mechs and anybody could use them as much as they like. For instance, a brand new player in the game could join that unit, buy three variants of one of the Unit Trials, elite them, sell them, and now they can go back to using the Unit Trial again, now with Elite efficiencies. Now they can start Eliting their next chassis and they never have to buy their own mechbays or paint or camo. Ever.

It's just a bad idea all around. I'm not even fond of it in terms of the OP itself.

If you have a large unit that mech may be being used by another player in the unit during a match. Unless every mech that's in the unit bays are in this persons elites mechs as you say they'd get second or maybe third choice on unit mechs.

[Chameleon257]

VinJade, on 26 February 2015 - 02:04 AM, said:

why not just make them blank when it comes to skills and not allow them to be accessed and make the mech default or else cannot be used also drop the amount of C-bills & Exp by a x-percent earned.

Or for this matter not give exp at all since the original intent of this idea is to give new players to a unit the ability to help said units. So a unit running cw wouldn't have to have the pilot use the trial mechs but use better more specialized mechs fitted to the units preference.

[VinJade]

That works to Chameleon

[Chameleon257]

VinJade, on 26 February 2015 - 07:03 AM, said:

That works to Chameleon

They should still gain money just can't use them to run up exp. I also think people will eventually not want to run the unit mechs because they would want to run mechs more to their individual builds. The only way I can see this being a problem is for the guy that has three alts and make a unit with said alts. Just to share mechs over all accounts but still requires a monetary commitment from the coffer hence from the accounts. It wouldn't be anymore advantageous since you'd have to build the cbills up to put in the coffers so you could buy the mech and the equipment on that mech. Also extra weapons etc would be sold back and not in unit inventory so if you change a large laser out for a medium the large laser gets sold and medium laser gets bought. This would discourage changing the mech build on a whim as it would cost money to change the builds.

[SethAbercromby]

Chameleon257, on 26 February 2015 - 12:04 PM, said:

They should still gain money just can't use them to run up exp. I also think people will eventually not want to run the unit mechs because they would want to run mechs more to their individual builds. The only way I can see this being a problem is for the guy that has three alts and make a unit with said alts. Just to share mechs over all accounts but still requires a monetary commitment from the coffer hence from the accounts. It wouldn't be anymore advantageous since you'd have to build the cbills up to put in the coffers so you could buy the mech and the equipment on that mech. Also extra weapons etc would be sold back and not in unit inventory so if you change a large laser out for a medium the large laser gets sold and medium laser gets bought. This would discourage changing the mech build on a whim as it would cost money to change the builds.

Here's some food for thought, make them behave just like normal trial 'Mechs as far as efficiencies and EXP goes. If you drop in a Unit trial, it will behave like a full-basic 'Mech. Any EXP you win will be calculated (however not nessecarily with the EXP bonus due to possibly not being a (C) variant), but can only be spen if you own that 'Mech in your personal stable. This way it is still heavily encuraged to buy the 'Mech to elite the chassis and take advantage of consumables, but if you're in a bind and the 'Mech is up for grabs, I'd see no problem to have such a system implemented. Probably a great cash sink as well.

[Pheynom]

*bump

[JadeTimberwolf]

Chameleon257, on 25 February 2015 - 09:53 PM, said:

Yes I have that in the post so if one person is using the mech another unit member can't use it till the other pilot is done with it.

Also with it painted from the Unit lead it would match unit colors etc.

My point is that it isn't really an encourage-able idea with the 1 out period limit. Will explain more on my thoughts later in my post here.

Tarogato, on 25 February 2015 - 10:34 PM, said:

That creates huge problems. A large unit could just have 6-12 trial mechs and anybody could use them as much as they like. For instance, a brand new player in the game could join that unit, buy three variants of one of the Unit Trials, elite them, sell them, and now they can go back to using the Unit Trial again, now with Elite efficiencies. Now they can start Eliting their next chassis and they never have to buy their own mechbays or paint or camo. Ever.

It's just a bad idea all around. I'm not even fond of it in terms of the OP itself.

Easy counter to this is to make it to where your Elite efficiency is not usable on a Trial Mech of any kind unit or regular. Another counter is for the Unit Trials to only be usable by ranks chosen by the Unit Leader, and the Unit Leader rank is never allowed to use those Mechs.

Now what I am saying is that if you limit it to 1 out period say you have a training drop going while there is a Unit CW drop team going and the training drop cadet/trainee needs to use that Unit Trial but it is out with a cadet/trainee in the CW drop. I can understand limiting it in a Unit group to 1 or 2 people using it but outside that unit group it should really be limited that way as it become way too messy in terms of personal logistics.

SethAbercromby, on 26 February 2015 - 12:14 PM, said:

Here's some food for thought, make them behave just like normal trial 'Mechs as far as efficiencies and EXP goes. If you drop in a Unit trial, it will behave like a full-basic 'Mech. Any EXP you win will be calculated (however not nessecarily with the EXP bonus due to possibly not being a (C) variant), but can only be spen if you own that 'Mech in your personal stable. This way it is still heavily encuraged to buy the 'Mech to elite the chassis and take advantage of consumables, but if you're in a bind and the 'Mech is up for grabs, I'd see no problem to have such a system implemented. Probably a great cash sink as well.

quoted for emphasis as this pretty much works with what I was thinking of the idea.

[VinJade]

the one out thing is no different than if you use a Timber Wolf, leave the match before it is finished and cannot use it until the match is done.

that is what they mean by that.

[Chadamir Fitzkrieg]

I love it

[Ultra-Laser]

1) How big are peoples units anyway? How many newbies are you CW teams having to bring up to speed? Its pretty rare for me to hear about a unit with more then a handful of newbies who need to bring themselves and their mechs up to speed. Having a communal stable of unit designed mechs such as a unit ECM spider or a few spare God Hand DRG-1Ns could be just the thing the newbies need to pull their weight in a 12-man. As far as XP/c-bill earnings the closer it is to the current system the few headaches involved in implementing it. My own suggestion is to have the mech earn c-bills and XP at the normal rate, but ALL XP earned is added to the players GXP. Gotta help out on grinding those modules out. Note that each of these suggestions is focused on helping new players to the unit get themselves up to speed with the experienced players.

2) Unit-shared mechbay space is going to be more of an issue then c-bills I imagine. Assuming that a purely hypothetical and fictitious unit (Lets call them [phf] because why not) can muster at least one 12-man who can earn at least 100k c-bills average in a typical match, assume they play for about an hour or so for three matches, that's at least 3,500,000 a night. After a week of on and off playing [phf] could have enough c-bills between them to build a full XL/endo-steel/DHS/4xSPL and 2xFlamer mech to share while still keeping a tidy surplus for each player. Selected because [phf] players love getting in close and biting peoples legs off after they overheat in their light waves unlike you squares who only care about stuff like "winning" or "reading the patch notes on the new counter attack mode when it came out" [phf] Does this at least once in every match regardless of gametype or map. [phf] is allowed to name this new mech variant they made by supercharging a Firestarter-A as well as set the default colors. The Unit leader, [phf] only has one officer because its not worth delegating when your only one 12-man anyway, names this monstrosity the phfirestarter and sets it to the units default colors of basic orange and basic blue. Later the [phf] swells to 24 active players requiring el leader supremo to delegate a bit. After a long in intense debate (three minutes in teamspeak after ceasefire while tweaking that vital last half ton of MG ammo and head armor) El leader supremo and not-so supremo agree that the unit should make sure that the trial mech should only be available for newbies and adjust the rank permissions so that only entry-level ranked players should be allowed to use the trial phdirestarter. As many of the established players had already started work on their own personal phfirestarters this reduces demand for the one "finished" phfirestarter that any of the newbies can use while not being able to tempt the established players with piloting a fully furnished phirestarter before they've gound out the c-bills for those DHS or whatever. Later the units coffers swell thanks to an unexpectedly bountiful weekend even and they are able to buy their unit three new mechbays. They still need the c-bills to buy new phfirestarters, but now Supremo and not-so supremo can buy phfirestarters "stock" without having to re-buy and re-assemble all that equipment manually. Later still when they've ground enough to have 3/4 of those mechbays filled [phf] leadership relaxes permissions with who is allowed to use the Unit-owned Phirestarters as even if they get another trickle of new players they figure this is enough to go around. As by that point 5xflamers/TAG is the new meta so demand is also down but the phfirestartier is still "good enough" for the new guys and enough of the older players have some weird attachment to it that no one wants to go though the hassle of "updating" all the old trial phfirestartes. (which will probably have some penalty associated with changing the load outs of Unit-owned mechs)

4) I try not to let my inner BT fanboy color my opinion of MWO too much, but CW units having limited production runs of custom refits feels like just the right mix of CBT and MWO.

5) BUT MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY THEN ANY OF THAT; This is a golden opportunity for units to show of their snappy unit colors, uniform paintjobs make for a more unified unit!

[JadeTimberwolf]

VinJade, on 26 February 2015 - 08:39 PM, said:

the one out thing is no different than if you use a Timber Wolf, leave the match before it is finished and cannot use it until the match is done.

that is what they mean by that.

I can agree to that, yet the wording that is used specifically is that it applies to all members not just one. This isn't an issue for my unit, at least not yet, however I know that there are a number of units out there listed as having 60+ members and receiving a daily influx of applicants.

[s0hno]

A really good idea.
In competitive drops with randomly predefined dropdecks its sometimes hard to find pilots that own "exotic" Mechs, this would offer a valid possibility to provide certain Mechs when needed.
Also, it simply makes sense - an unit should have a stock of stuff available for its members.

I even could imagine to provide fully equipped Mechs and allow members to select their choice in the lobby before a drop. This way, the dropleader could build the setups as the units tactics requires it. Players that don't own that Mech then simply select it. In military, pilots also don't own their machines but are provided of them as needed.

Edited by s0hno, 27 February 2015 - 06:40 AM.