59 replies to this topic

[Fusea]

Actually, I don't think they are mutually exclusive. The TT rules are actually pretty well balanced. And where the TT rules don't work fit balance, think fluffy. There is alot of fluff to the game that really tells you what the spirit of the rules was, where the letter of the rules falls flat. The big things that made the previous MW games unbalanced, and that previous posters have mentioned, were the uber pinpoint accuracy of the weapons, the cycle times, and the coolant flush. These were all non-TT, non-fluff changes to the game forced by the limitations of the previous game engines, or maybe just lazy design.

Now the coolant flush I never really had a problem with. If its limited, it actually makes sense and can be a useful tool. A fixed number per of coolant flushes per mission become a resource to manage. It is also very loosely fluff supported. Every major battlefield had coolant trucks for both sides. So the idea that you have 10 or so gallons of almost completely inert, but very cold, liquid nitrogen on hand for emergencies actually fits. And since in most of the previous games, heat dissipation didn't seem to match up to cycle times, it really helped.

All the previous games had wildly different cycle times for different weapons. I never understood that. Yes, you have more missiles to load in a larger missile rack. But you also have more equippment to do the loading, that's why the rack weighs more, you get the same missiles per ton as the little rack, you can just go through them faster. Yes, a medium laser uses more energy than a small laser, but it also has more mcguffins to speed the recharge, that's why the heat ramps up faster than the damage. So why fiddle with the cycle times at all? In the TT they are fixed, and the fluff assumes that you won't be rapid firing small weapons, otherwise whats the point of the big guns? Again, resource management. you know when you pull that trigger, that you're gonna have to think of a way to fill the next few seconds.

Now someone mentioned the Machine gun as the breaker of cycle times because they either deal huge damage, or next to nothing because you didn't hold them on target long enough. I have no problem at all with that, in fact I prefer the latter of the 2 alternatives. A machine gun against a 'mech is an act of utter despiration or wishfull thinking. So discouraging people from trying to drag 15 of them into battle fits the fluff and the overall tone of the game. After all, balance can be seen as risk or cost vs reward. There isn't much invested in a machine gun (half a ton) so there shouldn't be much reward (no damage) for using one.

My biggest pet peeve however was always the pin point accuracy of all the previous games. Thankfully that does not seem to apply here. From the videos, weapons in arms track differently from the ones in the torso. I would take it a step further and add inertia to the actual arms. The cross hairs track instantly, the 7 tons of ppc on the end of your arm... does not. Which is good. The TT rules were relatively balanced because fast moving targets were hard to hit, while against slow targets you had little control over where your shots actually landed. And all the fluff confirmed that 'mechs tended to take quite a bit of killing. Basically if they had armor, you could count on hitting THAT instead of the tender squishy bits that would actully reduce it's effectiveness (read: pilot). However, if you learned the old gunslinger's art of 'taking your time in a hurry' you would fire less, but for better effect.

All of this helps balance the game away from 'twitch' Japanese games where the only thing you need to worry about are reflexes and the size of the hammer you're trying to hit them with. It would also make every thing you do feel more important. Fire as soon as the cross hairs hit the target and watch half your shots miss wildly, then sit and wait while your weapons reload. These are also the kind of touches that helps balance the game with immersion and feel, rather than the usual endless rounds of Nerfbat beatings.

TL;DR Version: Use the TT rules and the fluff and it should balance out pretty well on it's own.

[Buttlord]

stonerhino, on 07 July 2012 - 06:26 AM, said:

Hm, a game that has been balanced over 25 years now versus someone developing the computer game version making up their own rules, lets think about that for a second, shall we?

What seperates Battletech from any other game that use "mechs" such as Heavy Gear? The storyline, the artwork, but also the rules. The storyline and artwork are easily handled in the game, but even then it seems that they are working their own angle on the art. The rules on the other hand do not just keep the game organized and flowing. No, instead the rules help define how the units perform, how the weapons work, which in turn helps to develop the pace of the fight. It creates a feel to the game that is unique to Battletech.

The weapon ranges have been defined. What weapons on what units have also been put out there. What the different units are, how they move, how much armor have all been taken care of. What the developers needed to do is define how those rules that define Battletech operate in a 3 dimensional game world, which is to help express the ideas of each unit, each weapon, and each piece of gear, not to "balance" it as they feel.

There are a stack of books maybe 10 feet away from me that define the game. There are some bits and pieces in different books that modify the game's rules for the scale of combat. I know there are rules, mainly in the RPG that allowed for different weapons to be fired more then once per turn. This really leaves nothing for the developers to need to work on.

The question is why is there no reason for the game to be modified by the developers? Because its not really their creation, they are really just putting together an object that has defined parts and a set of instructions, they just need to assemble it, not put in an extra window, not to make it smaller or wider.Just assemble it so that people can play it. So those people can pay you for putting the effort into assembling it. If the rules are modified because the developers wish it for no particular reason at all then they might as well have saved themselves a lot of time and made their own mech game. The game becomes nothing more then a generic mech game with a well known label on it. A generic mech game isn't a bad thing, but trying to pass one off as a mechwarrior game is a bad thing. The problem with any mechwarrior game comes when people other then the Battletech developers start tweaking the rules. Each tweak, each bit changed moves the game from being the 3 dimensional representation of Battletech where each person represents a single unit (I'll be honest, I'd love to rip your face off with a demolisher if they add vehicles) to just some generic mecha game. When people attempt to pass off their own creation/reboot/ revisioning of something that is well known they are committing fraud.

The game, meaning Battletech, is rather balanced except for the guass rifle. All balance issues comes from messing with what is balanced. Remove the rules that balance the game and you have a different game then what most are expecting, or should I say wanting? I don't want anyone's spin on the BT universe. I want a digital gaming experience that represents the Battletech universe. Of the MW games that I have played I would say that the Virtual World game was the most honest BT sim ever. The next would be MW3, but the coolant flushing was lame, as were the infinite pulse lasers of slow doom being raked over the cockpit just so you can't see a damn thing. Unlimited modifications is part of the BT universe like it or not. Thats how you get crap like the swayback, or a thunderhawk using arty instead of a gauss rifle, catapults with ppcs and so on. Some might suggest that it removes the omnimech's advantage. The problem there is that mw games have not represented enough of a constantly flowing world to make that advantage useful.

If we were to see a MW game that was done the way that Planetside 1 and 2 are, then we could see how an omnimech would be useful hardware as people would be able to quickly change out gear while standard mechs are lucky to be repaired just as fast. It would be similar to Planetside 1's certification system where if you were to change a cert(skill) for another y ou would have to wait 6 hours. A six hour wait time for a mech to be modified into your own personal variant would be a pain, but it would represent the difference between a standard mech and the omni mech. I wish MW online was that game. I would love to see a game where players could be a pilot, a mechwarrior, a BA user, running a vehicle (with or without friends as crew) and even infantry all fighting for worlds all connected to the same universe(server) like Planetside. Maybe in 10 years we can have that game.

lol wow

Let's assume for a second that the TT game is well balanced. It still is a turn based strategy game. MWO is a real time shooter. Rules designed for one and balanced for one don't work and won't be balanced for the other.

[Bobfrombobtown]

I decided to make a spreadsheet for reference showing the DPS values and heat/Heat build up per second with both standard TT rules and the optional Solaris rules since my table plan didn't work in my previous post for this thread. Here's the link to the spreadsheet.
We get some interesting numbers from this. For example, medium lasers have an overall DPS amount equal to a PPC.

Edited by Bobfrombobtown, 07 July 2012 - 09:47 AM.

[Black Sunder]

This poll wasn't a loaded question....

[Pht]

Buck Rogers, on 06 July 2012 - 07:12 PM, said:

Converting the "1 round = 10 seconds" into real time is a big problem.

No, it's not.

Quote

For instance, in MW3 a machine gun fired quite fast. You'd burn through your 200 rounds (at 2 damage each) in a very short while. A MG boat could take down anything fairly easily. The MW3 MGs were overpowered.

In the tabletop, 200 "rounds" (if going from the fluff these should be called 'bursts' rather than singular 'rounds') would last you 200 turns, which translates to over 30 minutes of continuous real time firing, correct?

MW3 didn't carry over the TT balance; not a valid comparison. 200 rounds = 200 turns worth of ammo; "rounds" denotes how many turns you can use the weapon for, not how many singular projectiles are fired or at what rate they're fired at.

We have no idea how long you could actually continuously fire an MG for in the Lore; because we'd have to have an actual recycle time from the lore, and we don't. The actual firing part of a turn happens in an indeterminite amount of time, and the solaris box set pushed turn time down to 2.5 seconds but you could still refire all of your weapons every turn; we simply don't know the recycle times.

Quote

In MW4 they addressed this so that the MG did something like 2 damage over 10 seconds, exactly as the rules state. However, tactically, that made them fairly useless cause while in the TT you might take a MG 'pot shot' at someone in range, in a real-time game you tend to not want to hold the reticle over the enemy and pump fire into him for 10 seconds - let alone 30 continuous minutes.

MG's are supposed to be all but useless vs other armored units. They're *meant* to slag off poor bloody infantry.

As far as the recycle times on the weapons are concerned, it's easy to keep their balance when you realize that heat is what controls the recycle times in the board game. If you want a weapon to fire faster than every ten seconds, give it that much more heat; problem solved.

Buck Rogers, on 07 July 2012 - 12:18 AM, said:

NnNnnNnNnnNnnOooooooooooooo! "Respawn" dumbs down people and teaches them that dying doesn't matter.

Respawn isn't bad, nor is it anathema to Mechwarrior. What would be bad is if they forced respawn OR single life gameplay on everyone.

There are good reasons for both gameplay types. Yes, sometimes, you just want to blow stuff up repeatedly... or try some crazy tactic over and over until you perfect it.

Wraeththix Constantine, on 07 July 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

As far as the TT is concerned, it's extremely difficult to target your weapons.

Um, you mean, it's hard for the mech to get multiple weapons to all hit the exact same point... yes? and actually, if your target is immobile, the 'mech CAN get all of it's weapons to hit nearly the same point.

Quote

You're shooting at something as big as a barn, and if you even HIT the barn, that's considered good.

No. Not true at all. You have to do some really stupid stuff to not pass the to-hit mechanic, like, say, trying to beat a +8 on 2d6, which represents a VERY hard shot to make. People who routinely miss in TT games are trying to hit on modifiers that are too high.

The mechs themselves are very capable at getting weapons to hit mobile mech sized targets; they just aren't capable of getting ALL of their weapons to hit exactly one point on a mobile mech sized target.

For goodness sakes, you can take an ISLPL and have a decent chance of hitting a target 35 miles away on the horizon, if you brace up your mech's gun-arm with the LPL in it and give it about 30 seconds to chew on a firing fix.

Buttlord, on 07 July 2012 - 06:03 AM, said:

Considering the tabletop game is a unbalanced mess, this is a pretty dumb question.

Examples? Or are we expected to simply take your word for it?

Quote

Also, even if the TT were perfectly balanced, the TT is a turn base strategy game, this is a real time shooter. Converting the rules of the first to apply to the latter would just turn it into a awful mess.

Why? I mean, hard nuts and bolts "why."

Edited by Pht, 10 July 2012 - 03:01 PM.

[Pht]

CaptianNapalm, on 07 July 2012 - 07:18 AM, said:

the projectile weapons don't behave as gas expansion projectile weapons realy do, the missiles worst of all.

It's a tabletop gaming system. It's absolutely ludicrous to expect it to engage in that sort of simulation; besides which, EVERY gaming system breaks; that's just the nature of the beast.

It's more appropriate to use internal consistency as a measure of the "balance" of a gaming system, taking into context the intent for whatever individual part is being examined.

Quote

If you base your conversion on the TT game then most 8 on 8 mech fights are over in less that 2 minutes in real time with a couple shattered war machines left standing.

that would be fantastic. 20 minutes of planning, observation, trying to maneuver into place ... 10 minutes of intense combat to decide the outcome.

After playing mw4 for way too long, I'm sick and tired of "rush right at the red blips on the radar and duke it out like a bunch of midgets on meth" style gameplay.

Schtirlitz, on 07 July 2012 - 08:33 AM, said:

It is impossible to abide all table top ruled in computer pvp game.

which ones are impossible to abide by and why? Maybe just a single example?

Buttlord, on 07 July 2012 - 09:28 AM, said:

...Rules designed for one and balanced for one don't work and won't be balanced for the other.

Why?

[Bobfrombobtown]

I don't really get why people arguing about TT not being balanced when applied to a simulation game.
If the time is taken into account and everything is adjusted for cycle times so that the damage applied over a 10 second span of time is equal to the damage it should do in a single TT round then how is it so unbalanced? Is it bad because some people want all their burst damage applied to a single spot on the armor? Is it bad because people may not get their one shot OMGWTFBBQZ weapons?
Also there are rules in Table Top that cover everything from 2.5 seconds (Solaris dueling rules) worth of time to like 30 minutes (for very large group combat to speed things along). Honestly the original TT ruleset with a time frame of 10 seconds still seems the most balanced otherwise you see some craziness when you use the Solaris rules. Craziness like Medium lasers having the same DPS value as a PPC and more DPS than a Large Laser, and Machine guns going from 0.2 DPS to 0.8 DPS.

[Reoh]

Well the prime point of contention is we're using fps targeting, not rpg dice rolls. Some accomodation must be made for that and I think from the sounds of it PGI have been doing a good job there. Can't wait to get a hands on.

[Pht]

Reoh, on 11 July 2012 - 06:33 AM, said:

Well the prime point of contention is we're using fps targeting, not rpg dice rolls.

... and fps style aiming is wrong for a mechwarrior game. In fps aiming, it's the person at the computer that gets to control, very closely, the convergence of whatever weapons are fired; all weapons fired usually go exactly if not very very closely where the person puts the reticule...

and that is wrong for a mechwarrior game.

... because it is the 'mech that does the actual alignment of the weapons, it is the mech that does the calculations of where to align those weapons ... not the mechwarrior...

and mechs from the BTUniverse/lore, while being VERY capable of at least gettting most of their weapons to hit a mobile mech sized target, are NOT capable of getting multiple weapons to hit a single point of any mobile target. When this latter fator isn't simulated, the entire balance ... every last shred of it... from the parent game MUST be dumped, and you inevitably get an entirely different feel that's not mechwarrior. So far, we've gotten 4 major variants that play more like quake/ut as far as aiming and convergence goes than any decent simulation of a 'mechs ability to handle it's weapons.

The mechwarrior indicates the aim point to the 'mech; he handles the target tracking, he chooses when to shoot; all of which take a lot of skill and should not be taken out of any game claiming to be an MW game... but it's the 'mech that does the actual phyisical aiming of the weapons and calculation of where to physically align them to hit the aim point indicated by the mechwarrior.

Edited by Pht, 11 July 2012 - 08:59 AM.

[Corpsecandle]

@bobfrombobtown

That's just it, what goes into DPS?

Okay so the TT round is 10 seconds and it does damage 8 (that's per round right? I haven't played the TT so I'm going to assume for the example below, this is the case).

So what are real time mechanics of that laser firing (after trigger pull)
1) There could be a bit of a delay before the beam projects (power build/surge)
2) There's time ON target (this in theory only applies to lasers, but could arguably be applied to the double shot autocannon)
4) Weapon Cycle
Heat is applied at SOME point in here

Okay, now how do those actions get implemented over 10 seconds? Let's start out really poorly
Step 1: 0 Sec
Step 2: 0 Sec
Heat is applied
Step 3: 10 sec

Hmm play testing indicates that...well...combat is REALLY boring because most of the time your weapons can't be fired, not to mention lasers are WAY too powerful now (from what I understand this led to the alpha strike problem in previous titles)

Attempt 2
Step 1: 0 Sec
Step 2: 5 Sec
Heat is applied
Step 3: 5 sec

Wow, that's a really long time to keep the beam on the target. NO ONE is able to apply all their beam damage to their target; everyone is using Missiles or projectiles instead. In addition heat management is getting a little wonky since it just spikes up after the laser finishes firing.

Attempt 3
Step 1: 0 Sec
Heat starts
Step 2: 3 Sec
Heat ends
Step 3: 7 sec

Hey now we’re doing better, but combat still feels a little slow due to weapon cycle times and lasers still feel a little too powerful….

Attempt 4
Step 1: .25 Sec
Heat starts
Step 2: 2.5 Sec
Heat ends
Step 3: 7.25 sec

Attempt 5
Attempt 6
Etc…

In short TT games are inherently arbitrary…they leave the minutia of what goes on in a turn or round up to the people throwing the dice. An FPS can’t do that, it HAS to take the little things into account and they ALL affect gameplay. That’s where the deviation comes in, and heaven forbid that they can’t get over the fact that 10 seconds feel REALLY slow in in realtime. A slow game is a boring game, and boring game bombs. At that only alternative that they’re left with is to shorten the time of the arbitrary 10 seconds in the game and that’s its own can of worms with weapon balance and damage values and.....mutter muttter

Edited by Corpsecandle, 11 July 2012 - 09:03 AM.

[Corpsecandle]

Pht, on 11 July 2012 - 08:57 AM, said:

... and fps style aiming is wrong for a mechwarrior game. In fps aiming, it's the person at the computer that gets to control, very closely, the convergence of whatever weapons are fired; all weapons fired usually go exactly if not very very closely where the person puts the reticule... and that is wrong for a mechwarrior game. ... because it is the 'mech that does the actual alignment of the weapons, it is the mech that does the calculations of where to align those weapons ... not the mechwarrior... and mechs from the BTUniverse/lore, while being VERY capable of at least gettting most of their weapons to hit a mobile mech sized target, are NOT capable of getting multiple weapons to hit a single point of any mobile target. When this latter fator isn't simulated, the entire balance ... every last shred of it... from the parent game MUST be dumped, and you inevitably get an entirely different feel that's not mechwarrior. So far, we've gotten 4 major variants that play more like quake/ut as far as aiming and convergence goes than any decent simulation of a 'mechs ability to handle it's weapons. The mechwarrior indicates the aim point to the 'mech; he handles the target tracking, he chooses when to shoot; all of which take a lot of skill and should not be taken out of any game claiming to be an MW game... but it's the 'mech that does the actual phyisical aiming of the weapons and calculation of where to physically align them to hit the aim point indicated by the mechwarrior.

Hmm, I didn't realize that. So essentially the pilot is just a driver and a target point designater? I'd question probable player retention if this mechanic were put in place. This would give the illusion that pilot skill is nearly irrelevant (I recognize your point that it's probably a shift in the type of skill that would make a "good" pilot) and would therefore create RNG backlash. Games were players think that their skills aren't being properly recognized don't last that long. In short, it's just not as fun to a larger audience.

[Murku]

seems a bit of a silly poll but ok

Have loved TT battletech (from original boxed set) but this is a PC game, so balance wins (doh)

[Reoh]

@Pht, I agree it's not TT canon wise for targeting but that's the way mechwarrior pc games are. With the problems you mention as a given, some counter-balance measures are in place to maintain overall game balance (ie, double armor for example).

[Pht]

Corpsecandle, on 11 July 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:

Hmm, I didn't realize that. So essentially the pilot is just a driver and a target point designater?

You've said it in what has to be the most absolutely crude and condensed form I have ever seen it ... but essentially, yes; that's the most starkly basic description.

Quote

I'd question probable player retention if this mechanic were put in place.

Just because people come at a game with the wrong expectations doesn't mean they're going to leave it when they find it different than they expected.

MW isn't an FPS; it's a first person armored combat sim; which, quite frankly, is far more fun and cool than a bare FPS...

Quote

This would give the illusion that pilot skill is nearly irrelevant

An illusion is exactly what it would be. It takes MORE skill to pilot a 'mech than it does to "run and gun." Instead of directly controlling a gun (or a few guns) you're ... what a shocker... piloting an armored combat unit.

People expecting to be able to have close or direct control over convergence in an MW game are doing the equivalent of wanting to have their in game avatar in a tank game physically rotate the turret of a tank and physically control it's barrel.

It's truly that ludicrious.

Quote

Games were players think that their skills aren't being properly recognized don't last that long. In short, it's just not as fun to a larger audience.

There's no "removing skill" about it. You get to control EVERYTHING that you get to control in an FPS style game, with the single exception that instead of directly controlling convergence, you have to control it indirectly (and you can, and that takes more skill, and doesn't require nonsense gameplay) AND you have to be able to pilot the unit on top of it.

Saying that having an MW game actually ... simulate the battlemech's ability to crunch the numbers and align it's weapons removes player skill from the equation is hilariously wrong.

Reoh, on 12 July 2012 - 06:16 AM, said:

@Pht, I agree it's not TT canon wise...

It's not in line with the BTUniverse/lore AND the tt. Mechwarriors in the lore don't even get to control convergence like is possible in the previous MW games. Heck, I don't even think morgan kell gets to do that in the novels.

Quote

...for targeting but that's the way mechwarrior pc games are.

And they're wrong. Should we continue with something that's wrong just because that's the way it's always been done?

Quote

With the problems you mention as a given, some counter-balance measures are in place to maintain overall game balance (ie, double armor for example).

Double armor won't fix it. It requires an entirely new system of rules[i][b]. When you pull any part of a coherent system out, the entire system falls.

Edited by Pht, 13 July 2012 - 05:18 PM.

[Gray Carlyle]

as much as I like the tabletop game, game balance weighs more, imho.

[Khorloch]

I would rather play a balanced game.

[Fusea]

The more information the devs make avaliable, the more it seems as if they are looking at the ways the TT is balanced to draw inspiration for balancing the pc game. http://mwomercs.com/...age-day-in-beta actually sound like the battle reports and btech novels. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling and hope for the future.

[Elendil]

I'm afraid I don't see the point in this poll...

It's like asking if you think World of Warcraft should be balanced with Warcraft II... They're just not the same thing at all.
At this point it's too late for anyone's opinion to really matter on either subject, and now we have people arguing that Grunts are totally balanced with Deathknights because Deathknights cost so much more gold to make and build so much more slowly and take more of your population, even though those mechanics don't apply to World of Warcraft in the slightest.

But incase nobody followed my analogy there on its trip through the woods and over that stream and past that little cottage, I think the Devs should stick with the existing content as much as possible, because not to would be a slap in the face of the longtime fans and would quite possibly ruin the entire game.
BUT, they should never EVER choose adherance over balance, that would ruin the game even faster.

[Graphite]

See my signature for what the devs have already said/decided on this issue.

IMHO they've made the perfect decision: stick to the official rules as much as possible, but make changes if necessary.

[Bobfrombobtown]

Corpsecandle, on 11 July 2012 - 09:01 AM, said:

@bobfrombobtown

That's just it, what goes into DPS?

Okay so the TT round is 10 seconds and it does damage 8 (that's per round right? I haven't played the TT so I'm going to assume for the example below, this is the case).

So what are real time mechanics of that laser firing (after trigger pull)
1) There could be a bit of a delay before the beam projects (power build/surge)
2) There's time ON target (this in theory only applies to lasers, but could arguably be applied to the double shot autocannon)
4) Weapon Cycle
Heat is applied at SOME point in here

Okay, now how do those actions get implemented over 10 seconds? Let's start out really poorly
Step 1: 0 Sec
Step 2: 0 Sec
Heat is applied
Step 3: 10 sec

Hmm play testing indicates that...well...combat is REALLY boring because most of the time your weapons can't be fired, not to mention lasers are WAY too powerful now (from what I understand this led to the alpha strike problem in previous titles)

Attempt 2
Step 1: 0 Sec
Step 2: 5 Sec
Heat is applied
Step 3: 5 sec

Wow, that's a really long time to keep the beam on the target. NO ONE is able to apply all their beam damage to their target; everyone is using Missiles or projectiles instead. In addition heat management is getting a little wonky since it just spikes up after the laser finishes firing.

Attempt 3
Step 1: 0 Sec
Heat starts
Step 2: 3 Sec
Heat ends
Step 3: 7 sec

Hey now we’re doing better, but combat still feels a little slow due to weapon cycle times and lasers still feel a little too powerful….

Attempt 4
Step 1: .25 Sec
Heat starts
Step 2: 2.5 Sec
Heat ends
Step 3: 7.25 sec

Attempt 5
Attempt 6
Etc…

In short TT games are inherently arbitrary…they leave the minutia of what goes on in a turn or round up to the people throwing the dice. An FPS can’t do that, it HAS to take the little things into account and they ALL affect gameplay. That’s where the deviation comes in, and heaven forbid that they can’t get over the fact that 10 seconds feel REALLY slow in in realtime. A slow game is a boring game, and boring game bombs. At that only alternative that they’re left with is to shorten the time of the arbitrary 10 seconds in the game and that’s its own can of worms with weapon balance and damage values and.....mutter muttter

Well, the actual gameplay sequence is the folllowing:
Initiative: who saw who first.
Moevement: person who lost initiative goes first here.
Reaction: Torso twisting happens here to try to keep targets in sight for the person who lost initiative.
Weapons phase: You shoot stuff here.
Physical phase: chances are this will never be relevant, but this is where you guys try to punch each other.
Heat phase: heat is applied here since movement, weapons fire, and physical attacks all generate heat and this needs to be taken into account.
End: 12. Players whose MechWarriors lost consciousness in
a previous turn now roll to see if consciousness is regained.
13. Players roll to see if any fires now on the mapsheet
will spread to other hexes; if so, they spread immediately.
14. Steps 1 through 13 are repeated until only one
team's units are left in control of the board. The team with the
last surviving unit left on the board is the winner. If the last
units from each team are destroyed simultaneously, the
game is a draw.
Short version, garbage collect, and make sure no one is dead or still knocked out. Oh and check player affected environmental things have changed.
That's the sequence overall. In regular TT that's 10 seconds. In Solaris dueling rules, that's 2.5 seconds.
Luckily for you guys initiative and reaction phases are pretty irrelevant as they both happen simultaneously with the movement phase. The weapon phase really does come next as once you see each other you start firing off weapons. Heat phase is more or less simultaneous with your weapon phase(heat dissipation happens once heat builds up even a little bit) and physical is pretty much irrelevant as well. The only thing left is end phase, but we ignore this since unless you're dead it's also irrelevant.

Reoh, on 12 July 2012 - 06:16 AM, said:

@Pht, I agree it's not TT canon wise for targeting but that's the way mechwarrior pc games are. With the problems you mention as a given, some counter-balance measures are in place to maintain overall game balance (ie, double armor for example).

double armor is more of a half *** attempt at balance designed to help players of lower skill survive longer so they don't cry and leave the game.

Elendil, on 13 July 2012 - 06:12 PM, said:

I'm afraid I don't see the point in this poll...

It's like asking if you think World of Warcraft should be balanced with Warcraft II... They're just not the same thing at all.
At this point it's too late for anyone's opinion to really matter on either subject, and now we have people arguing that Grunts are totally balanced with Deathknights because Deathknights cost so much more gold to make and build so much more slowly and take more of your population, even though those mechanics don't apply to World of Warcraft in the slightest.

But incase nobody followed my analogy there on its trip through the woods and over that stream and past that little cottage, I think the Devs should stick with the existing content as much as possible, because not to would be a slap in the face of the longtime fans and would quite possibly ruin the entire game.
BUT, they should never EVER choose adherance over balance, that would ruin the game even faster.

I would never advocate adherence to rules over balance. However I will make an argument for how TT is NOT imbalanced. All previous versions of the MW game franchise have, in fact, been imbalanced. One way or another. Some incarnations favored ballistic weapons to a ridiculous extent. Some favored energy weapons. Some favored strange tactics that were caused by ignorance of the construction rules and should never have been present to begin with.