In Battletech there has always been talk of how a certain house begins research and development on something, like a weapon or a piece of equipment. Then near that piece of listed equipment there's a date of when R&D started, and when that weapon or equipment was fully released to everyone. Usually the prototype date and official release date is years apart.
What are everyone's thoughts of having an R&D type of element in the game?
Access to the prototype, at least as I was thinking, was that if we are part of a house for a long period of time, we get to buy and use their prototype weapons/equipment on the field that in lore/canon a house is developing that won't be officially released to every house for years. But the only problem is that the damage, heat, reload, jam chance, etc etc (pretty much every stat) is random when using the prototype, within a certain scale (if heat will eventually be 5, it could be between 1 and 10 randomly everytime it's fired). Access to the prototype could even be incorporated into the taking of a planet or a series of planets in Faction Play so that if we are part of a certain house when we take a planet, or a series of planets, we can unlock an R&D prototype that costs a large amount of *something* (CBills, GXP, MC, HBills, etc etc).
This would sort of change how people look at Faction Play as well, and see that joining a house long term is actually a good idea, because as new weapon or equipment version or type releases get better over time the scale between two numbers focuses in on a perfect piece of equipment or weapon according to lore/canon (so if heat is currently scaled between 1 and 10 randomly, version 0.2 could be between 2 and 9).
Was also thinking that certain houses could get temperamental prototype mechs that would currently be in development (development as in PGI has already made a final release of the mech in years to come but we can use it in "prototype" form from within a certain house). We would be able to buy at our own risk as armor, weapons, engines, and slots would be randomly locked on every purchase and current weapons and equipment would be compatible on some.
This was just something I thought we could all discuss before a suggestion was made, as it's kind of controversial as prototypes are rarely talked about or defined with all equipment in lore/canon.
Thanks for your time everyone. Hoping to hear everyone's opinion.
Edited by m, 08 May 2016 - 07:47 PM.