Posted 01 July 2017 - 09:02 AM
So we play MWO and it is supposed to at least nominally be representing giant battles held over planets in the far future, battlefields being fought over for strategic resources, position, population, information and other reasons. These battles we are fighting in our giant mecha are destructive and resource intensive, but they are also supposed to be not only fought in these mecha. There is a whole other side to every one of these conflicts where ground force troops are moving around, vehicles are transporting things and fighting each other and lives are being lost by the scores while these giant robotic knights do battle over the ultimate possession of the battlefield.
While game assets and things like refresh rates and clutter may prevent too much additional detail being put into these maps without any appreciable effect on the battle because supposedly mobile vehicles and infantry units couldn't actually impact or damage mechs, I think they are still a necessary thing to include in objectives and in creating the versimilitude of a real battle field.
As another example, at the beginning of many matches, dropships are depositing a balanced number of enemy mechs and your team mechs onto a battle field at roughly the same time. The thing is, as is pointed out in escort mode and other situations, often one side is the defender the other the attacker. Even without defenses, having mechs stationed at an urban center or outpost should mean that side is not having dropships speeding away at start, but rather at drop start your mech powers up as normal from a line or storage shed or hangar, whereas the enemy actually ARE being dropped. This isn't done however, instead in a relatively dense area, enemy drop ships are choosing to drop their loads and then burn like hell away from the conflict zone in a "herringbone" pattern across the sky. Amazingly enough they don't crash into each other as they do this air traffic control nightmare choreography without communicating... and they also don't take pot shots at each other, despite being perfectly happy to shoot at mechs on certain modes and fire on mechs and bases when Air Control is engaged in other modes.
One thing that would bring the atmosphere home would be to have these dropships in that brief time as they streak away across the sky firing at each other, making a bit of a light show as they show that the conflict is raging somewhere other than just in the cockpits of the mega million dollar mechwarrior. Volleys of missiles and laser exchanges from those dropships would be over in a flash, not effecting processing power and game time, but would prove a useful bit of flavor. No actual damage even has to be possible from the weapons... as far as I know, dropships CANNOT be shot down, even by multiple attempts of this, but if it was done it would look cool AND serve to show outside conflict.
Additionally, while the art assets of air strikes coming in are great going along with player requested consumables, occasional passes of these coming in on the field when NOT called, would make sense - running pre-programmed strikes against other battle field targets, on a schedule and plan of those intending to win the day or knock out important parts of infrastructure. You could even have situations where on the battlefield, for the first X minutes after a game start, there are secondary non mech targets that are blue or red, letting you know that your command team wants them protected (blue) or destroyed (red). Implementing this could be like a good variant on CTF/Conquest for a points system, but also tells you that area will be a target for bombing runs from your forces aerospace fighters... and this could be helpful if you can lure enemy mechs to shelter around a target, rather than destroying it first with your own weapons fire. In this way too, select structures could be rendered destructible, without every single structure being rendered so. Again, this already is done somewhat, but these sorts of interactive ways that the larger conflict is represented in the current battlefield are sorely missing and could add to the experience even at this late date.
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FiveOClock, on 27 June 2017 - 06:20 PM, said:
