38 replies to this topic

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

PGI could simply require that any loadout that doesn't fill every hard point is invalid. (like not having an engine)

Pros:
*Immersion
*Becomes harder to boat large weapons
*Each chassis's hardpoints would serve to semi-define a role, leading to a greater variety of mechs on the field. Everyone wants role warefare right?
*No more complaints of LRMs OP, b/c everyone that could take AMS would actually have it
*Clans regain their status as more customizable (being able to switch out hardpoints becomes very valuable)

Cons:
*Lower TTK?
*People would have to learn to use multiple weapon types
*People would have to learn heat management


Is the idea perfect? No, none ever are.

Would it solve every possible issue? Of course not

Would it be a step in the right direction to less COD, more mechwarrior? I think so.

Flame on

Edit: 4am here, so I'll have to step away now. Please try to have a coherent linear (and civil) discussion. Looking forward to the unforeseen perspectives when I can get back.

Edited by Ex Atlas Overlord, 15 July 2016 - 01:27 AM.

[iLLcapitan]

How should that help?
What would be your non-boat approach for the Grashopper 5H for example?

[Belacose]

Ex Atlas Overlord, on 14 July 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

Flame on

First off, thanks for the gracious invite! You have no idea just how much this means to me!

Now on to the meat & potatoes:

No No NO NO! Bad Bad Bad!

TTK TTLive is just fine where it already is. Quit your bitching and whining because frankly I'm getting sick of it.

Go to your room! No meat & potatoes for you! Don't make me break out the belt!

Fair has nothing to do with it.

Thanks

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

iLLcapitan, on 14 July 2016 - 11:02 PM, said:

How should that help?
What would be your non-boat approach for the Grashopper 5H for example?

Edit: Nope, it has an AMS slot, and a single missle slot....so right there you've got what is probably in the current state of the game a medium laser boat with a few large lasers thrown in turned into less of a medium laser boat, with small SRM, or small LRM, or narc launcher with AMS support for the team mates.

Rather than being just another poptart laser boat (or PPC?), it's now a brawling, jump jet capable, support mech that can also double as a scout in a pinch (assuming you fit narc), or throw a pinch of extra damage downrange when utilizing it's mobility (if you fit LRMs)

Ta. Da. Roles.

It's a great example of turning "just put pulse lasers on it" into "How do I want my choices to affect my gameplay and what I can contribute to the team".

Edited by Ex Atlas Overlord, 14 July 2016 - 11:23 PM.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

iLLcapitan, on 14 July 2016 - 11:02 PM, said:

How should that help?
What would be your non-boat approach for the Grashopper 5H for example?

Edit: Nope, it has an AMS slot, and a single missle slot....so right there you've got what is probably in the current state of the game a medium laser boat with a few large lasers thrown in turned into less of a medium laser boat, with small SRM, or small LRM, or narc launcher with AMS support for the team mates.

Rather than being just another poptart laser boat (or PPC?), it's now a brawling, jump jet capable, support mech that can also double as a scout in a pinch (assuming you fit narc), or throw a pinch of extra damage downrange when utilizing it's mobility (if you fit LRMs)

Ta. Da. Roles.

It's a great example of turning "just put pulse lasers on it" into "How do I want my choices to affect my gameplay and what I can contribute to the team".

Belacose, on 14 July 2016 - 11:07 PM, said:

TTK TTLive is just fine where it already is.

Edit: Joke went over my head

Edited by Ex Atlas Overlord, 14 July 2016 - 11:45 PM.

[SnagaDance]

You would need an ammo requirement as well, otherwise you'll see people simply loading up mg's and srm2's with no ammo.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

SnagaDance, on 14 July 2016 - 11:25 PM, said:

You would need an ammo requirement as well, otherwise you'll see people simply loading up mg's and srm2's with no ammo.

Well, the idea just occurred to me.... I haven't ironed out all the wrinkles yet

It could be as simple as requiring one ton of ammo for each "type"...

So in the griffin example above...the pilot would have to take at least one ton of AMS ammo, and one ton of some kind of missle ammo.

Players can choose to take the minimum to keep from being manhandled by the ammo requirement, but they're forced to at least carry SOMETHING.... which might incentivise them to actually use it.

Edit: In our griffin example this system would only take at the most 4.5 tons away from the mech, so the player will still have plenty of control of their mechs customization. (if they went pure minimum it would only take 3 tons...hardly a game breaker)

Edited by Ex Atlas Overlord, 14 July 2016 - 11:48 PM.

[Belacose]

Ex Atlas Overlord, on 14 July 2016 - 11:25 PM, said:

PGI disagrees

/yourpoint

Or was that a joke and it went over my head?

Can't say it was the greatest joke ever nor all that coherent, but it obviously and most certainly wasn't serious.

[Lykaon]

Ex Atlas Overlord, on 14 July 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

PGI could simply require that any loadout that doesn't fill every hard point is invalid. (like not having an engine)

Pros:
*Immersion
*Becomes harder to boat large weapons
*Each chassis's hardpoints would serve to semi-define a role, leading to a greater variety of mechs on the field. Everyone wants role warefare right?
*No more complaints of LRMs OP, b/c everyone that could take AMS would actually have it
*Clans regain their status as more customizable (being able to switch out hardpoints becomes very valuable)

Cons:
*Lower TTK?
*People would have to learn to use multiple weapon types
*People would have to learn heat management


Is the idea perfect? No, none ever are.

Would it solve every possible issue? Of course not

Would it be a step in the right direction to less COD, more mechwarrior? I think so.

Flame on

The natural progression would be a mass migration to the few chassis that have just the right hardpoints to meet the criteria of building for a massive alpha strike.

So this would make most of the chassis obsolete due to being painfully inadiquate for the optimized meta.

Also, Omnimechs would be vastly superior to battlemechs because you can use optimized pods to prevent excess hardpoints from becoming an issue. This idea heavily favors Omnimechs.

Native stock builds would need to be adjusted by reducing inflated hardpoints or else become invalid under this rule. For example a Hunchback 4G would need to lose 2 ballistic hardpoints because it's native stock build only uses one ballistic and three energy hardpoints.

Also this idea would not significantly impact TTK. The only change would be we would all be piloting similar mechs.The game would likely become very cookie cutter.


P.S. the only people who think LRMs are over powered are morons.

Edited by Lykaon, 15 July 2016 - 12:42 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Ex Atlas Overlord, on 14 July 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

PGI could simply require that any loadout that doesn't fill every hard point is invalid. (like not having an engine)

Pros:
*Immersion
*Becomes harder to boat large weapons
*Each chassis's hardpoints would serve to semi-define a role, leading to a greater variety of mechs on the field. Everyone wants role warefare right?


*No more complaints of LRMs OP, b/c everyone that could take AMS would actually have it
*Clans regain their status as more customizable (being able to switch out hardpoints becomes very valuable)

Cons:
*Lower TTK?
*People would have to learn to use multiple weapon types
*People would have to learn heat management


Is the idea perfect? No, none ever are.

Would it solve every possible issue? Of course not

Would it be a step in the right direction to less COD, more mechwarrior? I think so.

Flame on

so people would simply add a flamer or mg without ammo, I doubt this tiny amounts of "waste hardpoint filler" will change the bigger picture of loadouts on those builds wiht empty hardpoints.

it would just hurt those chassis with additional M's not able to slap some low weight dummies in.

All your idea would do is killing osme chassis with less suitable hardpoint konfigs. And any kind of decreased diversity is bad, because even more boredome in mechselection.

Edited by Lily from animove, 15 July 2016 - 01:02 AM.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

Lykaon, on 15 July 2016 - 12:41 AM, said:

The natural progression would be a mass migration to the few chassis that have just the right hardpoints to meet the criteria of building for a massive alpha strike.

Which would balancing that much easier by highlighting the few outliers to be targeted specifically rather trying to "quirk" 200+ mechs simultaneously while also trying to make each specific chassis unique via said quirks b/c allowing players to over customize has diluted the game into.... as you put it.... "cookie cutter" loadouts.

One of the benefit in doing it this way is that the roles and variety are already build into the mech, and don't need to be forced with constant quirks.

Lykaon, on 15 July 2016 - 12:41 AM, said:

Also, Omnimechs would be vastly superior to battlemechs because you can use optimized pods to prevent excess hardpoints from becoming an issue. This idea heavily favors Omnimechs.

Perhaps quirks could be completely removed from clan mechs b/c their ability to swap out hardpoints would become the massive advantage it was always supposed to be?

Lykaon, on 15 July 2016 - 12:41 AM, said:

Native stock builds would need to be adjusted by reducing inflated hardpoints or else become invalid under this rule. For example a Hunchback 4G would need to lose 2 ballistic hardpoints because it's native stock build only uses one ballistic and three energy hardpoints.

Suddenly we care about stock builds, and lore humping?

Lykaon, on 15 July 2016 - 12:41 AM, said:

Also this idea would not significantly impact TTK.

Firepower would undoubtedly be reduced across the board (more in some cases than others) but overall you're wrong here (especially with the GH2 coming soon).

Lily from animove, on 15 July 2016 - 01:00 AM, said:

so people would simply add a flamer or mg without ammo, I doubt this tiny amounts of "waste hardpoint filler" will change the bigger picture of loadouts on those builds wiht empty hardpoints.

it would just hurt those chassis with additional M's not able to slap some low weight dummies in.

All your idea would do is killing osme chassis with less suitable hardpoint konfigs. And any kind of decreased diversity is bad, because even more boredome in mechselection.

All of these have already been mentioned, please read the thread before repeating someone else's point

Edit: BTW how can you possibly interpret "require players to carry more varied loadouts" as a "decrease in diversity"?

Edited by Ex Atlas Overlord, 15 July 2016 - 01:16 AM.

[Carl Vickers]

The idea is sound in theory, but Clans break it with onmi-pods, not fair on IS.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

Carl Vickers, on 15 July 2016 - 01:15 AM, said:

The idea is sound in theory, but Clans break it with onmi-pods, not fair on IS.

It would make the clan ability to swap hard points very valuable, but they would still be affected.

In addition, PGI has already been using IS quirks to even the playing field (in some cases more successfully than others), so this is really a non-issue.... or at least not an issue that doesn't already exist.

It simply highlights the strengths and weakness of the two sides of the mechwarrior coin in an (I think) interesting way.

Edited by Ex Atlas Overlord, 15 July 2016 - 01:24 AM.

[Carl Vickers]

It would make Clan lasor barf king in the timby.

Might as well play stock mode.

I do like the idea but I dont think it is feasible in this min/maxing esports arena we now have.

Edited by Carl Vickers, 15 July 2016 - 01:44 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Love the idea - no change for me - although we need to get rid of hardpoint inflation - CN9-AH; King Crab - even if i want i can't place something different but a AC 20..... and the AC 20 is everything i ever need

[Lily from animove]

Ex Atlas Overlord, on 15 July 2016 - 01:11 AM, said:

Edit: BTW how can you possibly interpret "require players to carry more varied loadouts" as a "decrease in diversity"?

because that is what would happen, poeple use the mech that does what they want it to do best. Which means they won't use mechs inferior because they have to use pointless additional wepaons, and this is why such a change will reduce diversity. as you see all chassis disappear form beign used having pointless additional hardpoints one would have to fill with useless wepaons just to fit your new ruls but not fitting the optimised playstyle. It will simply not make them carry more loadouts as you told.

Edited by Lily from animove, 15 July 2016 - 08:16 AM.

[GreyNovember]

You want to force MGs on ravens? And the Locusts? and the Urbies?

the HBK 4G can't mount a single AC20, because it has leftover hardpoints?

If the answer is yes, then, well. Okay. I guess those mechs can go suck it.

[Pjwned]

There's a ton of different reasons why that's a really bad idea, but I'm just going to point out that the CN9-AH could no longer use an AC20 with that (extremely terrible) rule, and I'm sure there's some other similar examples.

I'm not going to get into a huge list of other reasons why it's bad, but it is bad.

Lily from animove, on 15 July 2016 - 02:27 AM, said:

because that is what woudl happen, poeople use the mech that does what they want it to do best. Which means they won't use mechs inferior because they have to use pointless additional wepaons, and this is why such a change will reduce diversity. as you see all chassis disappear form beign used having pointless additional hardpoints one would have to fill with useless wepaons just to fit your new ruls but not fitting the optimised playstyle. It will simply not make them carry more loadouts as you told.

This is another reason I was going to point out but was too lazy to write myself.

Edited by Pjwned, 15 July 2016 - 03:06 AM.

[meteorol]

One of the worst ideas i have seen in a long, long time. gz.

It would just lead to clan mechs cherry picking their pods while trying to minimize "trash" hardpoints. It would instantly kill some mechs and reduce the meta to a very few mechs that reign supreme thanks to less "trash" hardpoints.

People won't think "oh yeah, well, i guess then i will just come up with a terrible frankenbuild for this mech." They will think "screw it, i'll just never use this mech again and use something with better hardpoints". People will just fill up empty hardpoints with MGS and SL.

They will just use the very few mechs which can be played with a "good" loadout using all hardpoints, and the ones that suffer the least by equipping a few more SL/MGs. Just look at the KDK 3. Even if you had to fill every single hardpoint, people can just slap 4 sl, 1 ams and half a ton of ammo for 3 tons on it. Yeah, they probably can only carry like 1700 dmg worth of ammo when forced to do this, but it will barely affect the mech, while it would instantly send countless other mechs to the trashpile.

It would do nothing but kill diversity and mech building. The idea is so outstandingly terrible i have problems understanding how anyone could even come up with it, ever.

Sorry.

Edited by meteorol, 15 July 2016 - 03:03 AM.

[MrJeffers]

Bad idea is bad. If nothing else it invalidates about 60% of the stock IS builds, any that have hard point inflation.