Marmon Rzohr, on 28 April 2016 - 06:24 AM, said:
So where do you feel the difference comes from if it's stock mechs only ?
P.S. I'm not asking about whether it's fun or not (I understand the fun appeal perfectly, I like lots of different weapons to manage and all that myself), but in what way do you think 3025 restrictions contribute to the game being more tactically involving.
Lets say I see there two main levels of tactics involved. First the team level, other one personal managing of your mek and approaching to the opfor mek.
One of Stock game play signatures is slower Time To Kill. That alone provide much more tactics involved. In main stream Full Custom TTK was dropping progressively since closed beta. In the effect even simple hammer&anvil tactics do not work anymore as used too, anvil will fall in 20 seconds, long before hammer will come.
Longer TTK gives unit time to react to the enemy moves and vice versa, react to react and go on. With this super fast TTK the only tactic that really work is death ball, team that push harder and concentrate on one point stomp win, many time games are finished in like what? 3min no longer, I fell like I start match and the game is over before even I get to the front line, if I`m unlucky in some slower mek, game and TTK is that fast.
In Stock we discovered that longer TTK gives overall far more options in game, flank, react to flank, retreat, stand, push, making fire lines, retreat to cool off and go on. In Full Custom commander have a time to give maybe 2-3 orders other then targets and that`s it, game over, win or loss.
The other layer of tactics is personal.
Piloting your mek in Stock is more demanding for several reasons. You need to watch and preserve your heat more closely in Stock, as we got only single heat sinks. Many times you will simply not be able to continue shooting be cause of heat, that lead to other tactics layer, sometimes it is wise to hold a push to simply cool off, or ask your wing partner to cover you while you cooling off, you need to choose what weapon system use in particular case, as most Stock builds have quiet mixed armament, you simply can`t just spam alphas from everything you got as you are used to.
You need to watch and reserve your ammo, in Stock you are not going to spam LRMs or ACs as you are used to, in Stock every shot counts. And I mean EVERY.
Other layer is that you are not choosing mek, in matter of fact the mek is choosing you. As any given mek have its strong and weak points in design and by that, different and distinct playing style. You can`t fit a mek to your playing style, but the playing style TO the mek. I`m hope I am clear enough here. That is one of the strongest Stock signatures, every mek is different and offer distinct interesting game experience. In the main, people ask "what is the point of bringing new meks? this mek will add nothing to the game", like just now in Cyclops thread. That would never happen in Stock. In Stock every mek bring and offer something new to the experience.
In Stock you need to better understand you mek design, hes strong and weak points and style in which that particular mek is more effective. But what is maybe more interesting and what is almost absent completely in main, is that you need to know enemy mek as well, and play it to hes weakness. Everything counts: knowledge about enemy mek speed, armament range, armor, armor placement, even number of ammo tons and placing location.
Something other worth mentioning is that your tanking skill matter more in Stock, as no one will kill your CT in the two alphas, so with little skill you can spread far more damage, no one is capable of putting constantly more then 20 pin point damage on you.
So yeah, I think that explanation can somehow put little light on question why Stock Mode have so many fans and why we want it in. On the side of clear awesomeness of play Classic BattleTech designs from our teenage nostalgia as they were supposed to be played.
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