53 replies to this topic

[RAINMANSlayer]

I was wondering if being in a big house is helpful vs a med to smaller house. I ask because playing some pvp mmo's the larger sized faction always had a longer wait time between battle groups / war fronts, and the smaller side had pop's all of the time. Will it even matter when there is 5 houses you can join at the start?

[Dihm]

At this point, we know just about nothing about the Conquest system they're going to use. Hopefully we'll get some info on that this Wednesday with the Dev Blog.

[Warbeast]

Let's hope we get some news about this soon as the house/merc company mechanics could well be an intergral part of the game, being the difference between a short term success and something that lasts for years to come.

[Agasutin]

Next blog should clear it up, hopefully anyways... lol

[Adridos]

Join the smallest. We are the best of the best, our mechs are nice, our friends tough and we form the backbone of BT franchise.

Some notable people: Graffix - maker of sigs on this forum - Liao; Metro - the longest fan of the franchise here - Liao; Me - the most pro on the whole game - just kidding ; Kai - the best warrior of Battletech (not an actual person) - Liao; ...
If you know sarna.net, Sarna is a planet in Liao space, so it is probably made by some Liao too.
See? We are the smallest of the houses, but we are the best.


P.S: Anyone can point other people out, since I'm pretty new too and it's nice to list every important Liao here.

Edited by Adridos, 05 December 2011 - 08:22 AM.

[Threat Doc]

For my part, I think the Houses, when the game first goes live, should be even across the board. If they allow for 250 people to sign up for Davion, they would need to wait until the other Houses have that many folks, as well, and then bump it up to 500 each, etc. That will likely not be done, but would be one mechanic to allow the Houses to come out as even as possible.

[Cyttorak]

There could be several probs if the devs let faction size become unbalanced:
1) Mission Spam: if you can somehow get "ambushed" and dragged into a game regardless of your preferred mission type (like a surprise invasion of one of your faction's worlds, and someone must defend the attack), then smaller factions will be the ones getting spammed. If The State of the Inner Sphere survey is correct, then the Capellans are going to have 1/5th the number of players as the Federated Suns...so whenever Joe CC goes online, he will be getting jumped by 5x the number of FS players waiting to take a bite out of his faction. That could get old fast.
2) Scarce Resources: Since faction size is unknowable at this point, I would imagine the devs plan on making resources scalable. If not, and say for example they have given each faction a set number of factories that produce at a certain rate, etc., then if a faction grows "too large" you will have players competing for the scarce resources of one house. To use the previous example, it may be very easy for CC players to buy whatever they want, whenever they want. FS players may have to wait in line to buy just an average medium mech because there aren't enough for all FS players.
3) Cherry-picking: The best players quickly rise to the top of their faction, and everyone will know who they are. Say these players in FS form an uber-elite group like the Davion Assault Guards and use only the best players. Every other faction in the game will have a hard time fighting this group because they just don't have the depth of talent in their faction to compete evenly. This is essentially why you never see Haiti competing on an even level in the Olympics with Russia or the USA.

[Dihm]

Adridos, on 05 December 2011 - 08:21 AM, said:

Join the smallest. We are the best of the best, our mechs are nice, our friends tough and we form the backbone of BT franchise.

Some notable people: Graffix - maker of sigs on this forum - Liao; Metro - the longest fan of the franchise here - Liao; Me - the most pro on the whole game - just kidding ; Kai - the best warrior of Battletech (not an actual person) - Liao; ...
If you know sarna.net, Sarna is a planet in Liao space, so it is probably made by some Liao too.
See? We are the smallest of the houses, but we are the best.


P.S: Anyone can point other people out, since I'm pretty new too and it's nice to list every important Liao here.

Free Rasalhague Republic is smaller.

[Jacob]

If being smaller means having harder time surviving, thats fine by me i like good challenge.

[Adridos]

Dihm, on 05 December 2011 - 11:24 AM, said:

Free Rasalhague Republic is smaller.

Who cares about those 2-3 km² we have more.
At the time, you are big and we are very small.



To Jacob: Yeah, they will have hard time:

Edited by Adridos, 05 December 2011 - 01:10 PM.

[verybad]

I would like new equipment and mechs to get more expensive for MercCorps as a faction's supply lines get longer. This would model it simply, and make completely conquering a smaller faction difficult.

[Threat Doc]

verybad, that should be true for everyone.

Oh, and guys, St. Ives Compact is smaller than FRR just prior to the Clan Invasion, hehe. In fact, I'm looking forward to doing some contracts in the Chaos March, hehe.

Edited by Kay Wolf, 05 December 2011 - 02:11 PM.

[Dihm]

I always forget how much territory Cappies lost (ha ha!), too used to the 3025 map I guess.

Edited by Dihm, 06 December 2011 - 08:22 AM.

[Adridos]

Dihm, on 06 December 2011 - 08:21 AM, said:

I always forget how much territory Cappies lost (ha ha!), too used to the 3025 map I guess.

You live in the past. We have much more territory now :



P.S. I know it is not the one from the 3085, but I cannot find any map fromm that date.

[Cyote13]

Kay Wolf, on 05 December 2011 - 08:50 AM, said:

For my part, I think the Houses, when the game first goes live, should be even across the board. If they allow for 250 people to sign up for Davion, they would need to wait until the other Houses have that many folks, as well, and then bump it up to 500 each, etc. That will likely not be done, but would be one mechanic to allow the Houses to come out as even as possible.

KW the differences in size is one of the reasons the Inner-Sphere, (and periphery) is such a great place to be a Mech Jock, as you noted in your second post.

Kay Wolf, on 05 December 2011 - 02:10 PM, said:

Oh, and guys, St. Ives Compact is smaller than FRR just prior to the Clan Invasion, hehe. In fact, I'm looking forward to doing some contracts in the Chaos March, hehe.

Hopefully the conquest system will be balanced in ways that allowed Lio to survive as long as it did.

[Adridos]

Cyote13, on 06 December 2011 - 08:43 AM, said:

Hopefully the conquest system will be balanced in ways that allowed Lio to survive as long as it did.

I'd rather say: "Pray to get a balanced conquest system, where Liao can't go on raids with Kai Allard. Everyone would be screwed."

I think there will be restrictions on conquering territories too, if they want to be canon.

[Major Crash]

Q. Will you be able to pick what faction you play in MechWarrior® Online™?

A. When you first create your pilot, you are going to have to align yourself with one of the Great Houses in the BattleTech® Universe. Each house will have its benefits and drawbacks and it will be up to you to read up on the house selection menu on which house you will pledge your allegiance.
I thought the Devs were pretty clear on this initial selection process, which is no different than most of the previous releases. Wasn't it just the Lyran tab that was the only one active for your 1st mission in MW4M's?
They will have a blurb on each House for you to read and decide where to start based on House "benefits & drawbacks". This is not new and very close to canon. The descriptions will of course be reported from the Merc point of view just like in Merc Hdbk, ie something like:

FWW- Mercs find duty under House Marik unsettling but potentially profitable. Frequent coups & rebellions characterize the Leagues extreme instability. Opportunities to make money from rival factions abound, & there are plenty of riot duty missions. Decisions to back the wrong side in a local power struggle can jeopardize a unit caught by the winning side.

You can save me a wall -o-text and just read the rest on pg 26 of Merc Hdbk for those who have it, but ea House already pretty much as a Reputation among Mercs in the IS. Dracs can/will backstab alot, Capellan position not greastest militarily in IS, but usually excellent contract terms etc and on..on.

Just seems to me this is going to be a 10 sec. decision so I can get on in to Training/Lobby/MechLab or wherever they send us and your only source of info for that decision will be the snipets they provide on that start screen. Just read once provided & click one that makes sense to you.

[Cyote13]

Adridos, on 06 December 2011 - 08:52 AM, said:

I think there will be restrictions on conquering territories too, if they want to be canon.

well at least the canon starting point, if we can not change history, or at least only change it in very small ways it is going to be disappointing.

All of us want to be the reason why the St Ives compact stays independent, and the guy that stops the Clans on Luthien, or be the clanner that that does take Luthien. Ultimately we want our actions to mean something in the larger universe. Yes there is still plenty of places to do simple PvP like WoTs and such...but chalk them up to "training" exercises, but when we do the conquest fights I hope...HOPE, it means more than ok...now wait until that planet "really " got conquered.

It seems that there is a lot of real interest in players from every faction that each of them will be competitive.

[Adridos]

You're right, not having any impact on the universe would be really boring, having too much of it, however, will anger the people who like the lore. I have no idea, what are devs planning to do to not anger any of the sides.

[Cyttorak]

One bright side is that there are so many members of this forum already (and assuming all of those are going to be players) that even factions with "only" 5% of the total (CC, FRR, SIC) will have 1500 players or so. And that's assuming the total number of players stays at 30,000. The number could go way up if this game rocks and gets good reviews.
So it shouldn't be hard to find players in your faction, in your own timezone to play with.
OTOH, depending on how things are set up, it might not be the absolute numbers in a faction that count but the number relative to other factions.
I hope the devs are paying attention to this issue. I've seen other games collapse because too many players went into a single faction while leaving the others undermanned.