413 replies to this topic

[Outlaw2]

Black Sunder, on 12 February 2012 - 07:50 AM, said:

Since you asked. With info war being a more prevalent part of the game no one is going to waltz infront of you leady to be killed if you are spotted before hand behind your hiding spot. Once that is accomplished then the lance can then encircle you or more likely begin LRM bombardment of your location. Thats only one scenario out of many but the good mechwarrior will be cautious and analyze the situation and work with his unit before engaging.

As far as the advantages of boating, you also give up alot of things in return of for those few singular advantages in what you hope is a single shot kill at your desired engagement distance. This may work for some things but more often than not you're going to be putting your lance at a disadvantage by not having a more balanced loadout. And what happens on those desert maps? Do you take your laser boat there too? Fire a few lasers and shut down over and over? Environment will paly a significant factor.

Sorry but NONE of what you just described will prevent boating. You seem to be under the impression that only laser boat snipers count as boating. After playing MW4 for 8 years, I've seen them come in all shapes and sizes. Missile, Gauss, Streak, LBX , RAC, UAC..and more. "Balanced loadouts" will fall to teams with boats of various roles. Boating is naturally more efficient. You need to implement arbitrary penalties/bonuses if you want balanced loadouts to be viable. Elegant and natural solutions will never come to rescue us from boating, because boating is the natural and elegant way to build/design mechs.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 15 February 2012 - 01:55 AM.

[Kael Tropheus]

Which is why any customization should be minor upgrades to systems, not full scale weapons replacements and such. I dont think anyone wants to send their mech away to the factory for 6 months to a year at a cost of literally millions of C-Bills to have a weapon changed out. The hundreds of varients out there should satisfy anyone. Thankfully from what I have read, it seems this is the direction the devs are going in at this time. No need to unbalance things at launch at least.

[TheRulesLawyer]

=Outlaw=, on 15 February 2012 - 01:53 AM, said:

. "Balanced loadouts" will fall to teams with boats of various roles. Boating is naturally more efficient. You need to implement arbitrary penalties/bonuses if you want balanced loadouts to be viable. Elegant and natural solutions will never come to rescue us from boating, because boating is the natural and elegant way to build/design mechs.

That's not quite true. Its the solution so long as we're dealing with only mechs. Put in infantry, vehicles and aerospace and you'll need to have a more balanced load out or risk getting torn up by the wrong sort of unit.

[Maurice]

mw4 is cool for customizing i would like that

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Kael Tropheus, on 15 February 2012 - 04:09 AM, said:

Which is why any customization should be minor upgrades to systems, not full scale weapons replacements and such. I dont think anyone wants to send their mech away to the factory for 6 months to a year at a cost of literally millions of C-Bills to have a weapon changed out. The hundreds of varients out there should satisfy anyone. Thankfully from what I have read, it seems this is the direction the devs are going in at this time. No need to unbalance things at launch at least.

This - otherwise balancing becomes impossible.

[Omigir]

From the Devblogs, I would serosly have to say that they are weighing the Pros and Cons still. It almost seems like they are on the fence about how much they will let us customize as in previous interviews with various game focused media, they mention being able to customize everything down to the nitty gritty, yet in the blogs they love to mention variants and what difrent variants will be able to proved (usualy offhandedly to give flavor tot he topic and meat of what they are discussing like in todays laitest blog update).

*shrugs*

[Outlaw2]

TheRulesLawyer, on 15 February 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

That's not quite true. Its the solution so long as we're dealing with only mechs. Put in infantry, vehicles and aerospace and you'll need to have a more balanced load out or risk getting torn up by the wrong sort of unit.

Not really. MWLL has shown that boating is still king, even with combined arms. Those tanks that can boat are lethal. IF you could take those loadouts on mechs, you'd never need to take a tank. Actually the only reason you would still need tanks is to counter aero since mechs can't look up high enough....though that has nothing to do with the loadout.
Best thing to do would to just specialize each mech/tank/aero to a specific role and have them boat a weapon for that role. It really wouldn't be any different than whats been done before. Balanced loadouts are gimped in a team versus team environment.

[MaddMaxx]

Quote

"Balanced load outs are gimped in a team versus team environment."

So if everyone is driving balanced load outs that is Gimped? Please explain that thought....

[TheRulesLawyer]

=Outlaw=, on 15 February 2012 - 01:16 PM, said:

Not really. MWLL has shown that boating is still king, even with combined arms. Those tanks that can boat are lethal. IF you could take those loadouts on mechs, you'd never need to take a tank. Actually the only reason you would still need tanks is to counter aero since mechs can't look up high enough....though that has nothing to do with the loadout.
Best thing to do would to just specialize each mech/tank/aero to a specific role and have them boat a weapon for that role. It really wouldn't be any different than whats been done before. Balanced loadouts are gimped in a team versus team environment.

Sounds more like MWLL hasn't got the balance right to me. Aero should tear up mechs that went for short range gear. Infantry should be a problem for mechs that went for only big guns. Refits are tough and expensive has to be part of it as well. If you don't know what situation you'll be dropped into and can't pick the best tool for the job all the time you'll be better off with a more flexible loadout.

[Felix Dante]

Yeach, on 14 February 2012 - 09:37 PM, said:

Perhaps you were looking for this thread
http://mwomercs.com/...-more-detailed/

Nope, I posted exactly where and what I wanted to post.
My meaning, in the end, is that the specific poll here is too limited, nor does it make much sense with basic Cannon.
The whole reason Omni-Mechs were invented was so you could customize a mech layout for a specific mission,

The inner sphere eventually invents their own Omnis, and this should be reflected in how we are able to switch out
weapons systems from the start.

[DRevD]

TheRulesLawyer, on 15 February 2012 - 03:02 PM, said:

Sounds more like MWLL hasn't got the balance right to me. Aero should tear up mechs that went for short range gear. Infantry should be a problem for mechs that went for only big guns. Refits are tough and expensive has to be part of it as well. If you don't know what situation you'll be dropped into and can't pick the best tool for the job all the time you'll be better off with a more flexible loadout.

You are not thinking about this with a team in mind. If you want to deal with aeros, someone boats good anti-aero weapons. You want some close range, have someone else boat a close range weapon. If infantry ever become something you really have to worry about, then have a mech boat anti-infantry weapons. In a team, specialization via boating wins every time. You have a strategy in mind, specialization is the way to go. Bringing mixed loadouts leads to reactionary tactics, which don't win versus good teams

Even in a pub match where you are kinda solo, boating is better since you can dictate your playstyle...instead of being forceed to react in a mixed loadout. Thats not even mentioning how inefficient it is trying to shoot with weapons that all have different recycle times, targeting methods and/or travel time.

Edited by DRevD, 15 February 2012 - 07:00 PM.

[Pht]

Kael Tropheus, on 15 February 2012 - 04:09 AM, said:

Which is why any customization should be minor upgrades to systems, not full scale weapons replacements and such. I dont think anyone wants to send their mech away to the factory for 6 months to a year at a cost of literally millions of C-Bills to have a weapon changed out. The hundreds of varients out there should satisfy anyone. Thankfully from what I have read, it seems this is the direction the devs are going in at this time. No need to unbalance things at launch at least.

You don't have to send a 'Mech to the factory to swap weapons. That can be done in a normal maintenance hanger, like those on most military drop ships, in around a month or less.

As far as the variants being satisfying ... yes and no. When you spend enough time in a 'Mech you begin to see the little annoying things with its loadout that could be rectified by swapping weapons.

As far as boating is concerned - boating itself is not a problem. There are even "boats" in the lore - in fact, virtually every omnimech built can boat, and should be able to. The real problem is when boating becomes the "only" tactic that works, due to other factors.

Energy boats a problem? ... um, use the heatscale to balance them; it already exists... and DON'T make energy weapons "sticky" or do "hitscan" - hit whatever's under the reticule when you pull the trigger. They have to have "on" time to do their battlefield rated damage; they do slash a bit.

Ballistic boats a problem? ... did you implement the ammo explosions? Are they heavy and bulky? Is the amount of ammo you can carry a real concern? Ditto on missile weapons.

[jbone]

Here is my 2 c-bills.

If you are lucky and have a butt-load of salvage lying around and have the techs who are bored enough to do it (Say your in transit from one system to another which takes weeks even for one jump). You can strip down a war hammer to it's chassis and make it a missile boat with all those LRM packs you have sitting around, it's going to take a lot of time... Now our lucky aloof clan mechwarriors have the benefit of omnimechs where they just slap on whatever variants they have or just grab the omni pods and reconfigure how they want and slap them onto the mech (it's a lot faster).

Yes its costly, but if you got the time, money, and gear, feel free to do what you want, it's your mech. You don't have to send off your mech to the factory, most likely depending on your design the factory that built your mech hasn't existed for over 150 years, the Inner Sphere nearly blew itself into the stone age, IS Mech techs are the ultimate redneck mechanics... And never ask where they got the parts to fix your mech.

[Pht]

jbone, on 15 February 2012 - 07:42 PM, said:

Here is my 2 c-bills.

If you are lucky and have a butt-load of salvage lying around and have the techs who are bored enough to do it (Say your in transit from one system to another which takes weeks even for one jump). You can strip down a war hammer to it's chassis and make it a missile boat with all those LRM packs you have sitting around, it's going to take a lot of time...

It's not just a matter of mounting the weapons, getting the ammo feeds working, and all that jazz. There's also the programming to be accounted for; and that is one of the most complex and hard things in the BTU to do (just ask clovis holstein! ). Besides which, even under the strat ops custimization setup, you'd take a quality level degradation for this kind of rebuild.

At a certain point you leave the world of customizing and enter the world of engineering; and most techs don't have engineering skills, let alone the skills needed for a full refit.

Is it possible to render a 'mech into a walking bag of guns in the BTU lore? Yes. Of course, you have to be a solaris tech wizard, the kell hounds, a major house or clan unit, or the beneficiary of author fiat. Giving players that kind of latitude is not a good thing in a video game format, where there's no GM standing over your shoulder to say "NO" and "BECAUSE I SAID SO" to keep things in line.

[Destin Foroda]

I know this is going to be very unpopular, but honestly I hope they throw extensive customization right out of the bloody door. I want to see a battletech/mechwarrior game that goes back to the old way of doing things: Your mech is your weapon, not the vehcle you strap your loadout onto (until Omni-mechs show up anyways). I want to see that Hunchback crest over the hill when I'm trying to scout and realize "Oh ****, that thing has an AC20 and it's gonna tear me up unless I run away!" I want the heavy hitting, iconic weaponry of the pre-clan 3050 mechs to be terrible weapons that only certain mechs have so that you know when you see your enemy that he is bringing hell with him. The ability to just randomly slot in and out anything you wish completely kills the feel of mech chassis being tried and true machines, and completely kills the incentive to stick with a mech and level it up long enough to unlock the 4 other chassis it might have.. or to actually unlock the ability to do a degree of customization.

I'd rather mechs be like tanks in any game that has them: Equiped with a main array of weaponry that can slowly be modded, improved and altered with time and dedication to the machine.

[Arnold Carns]

Cyttorak, on 05 December 2011 - 11:04 AM, said:

1) MW2&3 had customization according to canon build rules up to a point. Those games left out the fact that (according to Strategic Operations, page 188) there are different levels of refit.

The reason for this might be, when MechWarrior 2 and 3 have been developed, "Strategic Operations" hasn't even been written than thought of!

The only way to restrict abuse of construction rules, which would be abused anyways sooner or later (more sooner than later), would be NO MechLab at all. We already had those alltime-crater-camping-LGauss-hopfeasts and I doubt that anyone will have that again.
M$ did MechWarrior a bad job for double-tweaking and -downdumbing the chassis that it was completely impossible to build certain official variants of certain 'Mechs! Just because soo many people complained about theese nasty "Laser-Boats" of MW3 they tweaked down the Medium Weapon class AND restricted the amount of weapons to be mounted by their ridiculous and overrestrictive Hardpoint-System!!
When threre will be ClanMechs someday, I want the "Loki" or "Thor" to be like they're commonly known for years and no FUBARed expression of an overdruged mind!

There are plenty of official variants to chose from, and while the MWO dev's work close together with the guys from CGL they could build up some more for every chassis, maybe some "MWO-Exclusives" which could then become official, too.

Edited by Arnold Carns, 16 February 2012 - 03:56 AM.

[William Greene]

Definately going to go with 2/3. Yeah it took so much hard work in the novels to truly customize a mech like that, But it also lets you adapt and fight in a way that fits your playing style. Besides, isn't that the purpose of many of the early Omnimechs to begin with? "If it'll fit in the hardpoint, bolt it on."? Besides. Being limited to ridiculously weak weapons in a light mech if you get cornered isn't quite right. I want something more powerful than a pack of SRM 5's and a machine gun if I'm going to set foot outside of a safe area. Then again, this comes from all my time going "GUYS, THE ENEMY TEAM IS USING NOTHING BUT MAX'D DAISHI'S AGAIN" :< I don't support overloading your mech with enough weapons it one hit kills everything but has to cool down after each shot. But I DO want to be able to put my own swing on my own mech. If there's no customization on that level, why bother? They just need a good mediation.

[Polymorphyne]

The mech xp tech tree example show mech variants as unlockable- that would mean that weapons would not be customisable at all, as all a mech variant is is the same mech but with a different set of weapons (and sometimes different armour/heat sinks/electronics/etc)
I personally would prefer it that way anyway- the MW4 system allows you to put 4 or 5 lasers inside a single arm laser somehow, and it treats all mechs as if they are omnimechs.

You will still get customisation/personalisation this way anyway- the mechs are getting module slots, and what modules are available is linked to what pilot role skills you have.

Edited by Longsword, 16 February 2012 - 06:10 AM.

[Destin Foroda]

Longsword, on 16 February 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:

The MW4 system allows you to put 4 or 5 lasers inside a single arm laser somehow, and it treats all mechs as if they are omnimechs.

Couldn't have said it better myself. This is exactly what I hope is avoided.

[TheRulesLawyer]

DRevD, on 15 February 2012 - 06:50 PM, said:

You are not thinking about this with a team in mind. If you want to deal with aeros, someone boats good anti-aero weapons. You want some close range, have someone else boat a close range weapon. If infantry ever become something you really have to worry about, then have a mech boat anti-infantry weapons. In a team, specialization via boating wins every time. You have a strategy in mind, specialization is the way to go. Bringing mixed loadouts leads to reactionary tactics, which don't win versus good teams

Even in a pub match where you are kinda solo, boating is better since you can dictate your playstyle...instead of being forceed to react in a mixed loadout. Thats not even mentioning how inefficient it is trying to shoot with weapons that all have different recycle times, targeting methods and/or travel time.

I understand the team aspect of it. However if you don't know that there is aero ahead of time, bringing an aero specific mech means you might be fighting at a disadvantage. Same with dealing with infantry. Also you aren't supposed to have an infinite hanger full of special purpose mechs to chose from. You're thinking on a strictly tactical level and assuming you have intel and unlimited resources. If you think operationally and strategically the mixed loadouts make more sense.