60 replies to this topic

[jbone]

I'd like to see mech physical combat. Mr. Atlas likes to play football with the Spider. And of course, The Davion Heavy Guards star player, the aptly named Axemaster, Babe Ruth.

Battletech has had, for over 25 years, melee combat as part of it's core rules, yes it's a pain to code, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it because it's hard.

Because ripping out a scout mechs gyro because he decide to play fast and close with you makes the reward even that much more sweet.

*grabs the arm on the ground* Was that your arm I blew off?? Quit hitting yourself *Crunch* quit hitting yourself *Whack*!

Edited by jbone, 07 February 2012 - 12:23 AM.

[BerserX]

jbone, on 07 February 2012 - 12:21 AM, said:

I'd like to see mech physical combat. Mr. Atlas likes to play football with the Spider. And of course, The Davion Heavy Guards star player, the aptly named Axemaster, Babe Ruth.

Battletech has had, for over 25 years, melee combat as part of it's core rules, yes it's a pain to code, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it because it's hard.

Because ripping out a scout mechs gyro because he decide to play fast and close with you makes the reward even that much more sweet.

*grabs the arm on the ground* Was that your arm I blew off?? Quit hitting yourself *Crunch* quit hitting yourself *Whack*!

Man, that would be AWESOME - no literally. LOL

I took to ramming 'mechs in MW4: Mercs. It didn't do much, but I was desperate for some more "thrill to the kill." I got pretty good at figuring out the hidden "physics" to ramming guys... sorta' - it actually got boring... The only efficient way to beat a 'mech to death, previously, was to pull "death from above" - which meant getting ripped to pieces when their reactor went...

Bummer...

Melee should be involved in MWO - especially if they include any 'mechs with melee weapons (axes, clubs, fists, swords, etc.).

*Whack* Ouch! - stop! *Whack* Uncle, uncle! *Crunch*

[Outlaw2]

Im sure there are many technical difficulties in implementing melee attacks. Im going guess that a big one has to do with animations.

You don't want mechs to look stiff like rock'em sock'em robots as they punch. However, implementing smooth animations comes with its own problems. It could interfere with the visual aliment of weapons pointing towards the players reticule. Otherwise weapons fire will look odd and out of sync.

Imagine if we had an ultra smooth and natural looking animation for the Atlas. The atlas's arms will need to pull forward immediately into place when its arm mounted lasers are fired, or it will look like the laser is coming from somewhere other than the weapon itself. The atlas's gait would also need to instantly change into a stiffer gait in order to allow the arms/torsos to point forward at the players reticle, but the quick animation transition will look odd.

Watch at the Atlas from the 3015 trailer again. The atlas doesn't look as stiff as in past MW games. In order to pull that off they had to keep the atlas's arms down in a more natural position.... which of course would make it impossible to shoot the arm mounted lasers without jerky transition animations.

As a posssible solution, I would give all mechs two different animation modes. One would be a "fire-mode" where mechs walking animations are similar to past MW games. The other is a "melee-mode" where mechs movement animations are more natural looking (resembling the BT art and fiction) and less stiff then they look in games (which is needed due to alignment of mounted weapons to the players reticule). Melee-mode would allow for melee attack animations that are natural looking (non-sockem,rockem robots), however firing ranged weapons is not possible. Players can switch from one mode to the other at will, with perhaps a small inter-mode animation before the mode switch is complete. Melee-mode could also allow players to travel at speeds a small percentage faster (say 5%) than what they could in fire-mode (since the more natural gait allows faster movement). Just enough to give melee-mode an advantage (even if melee is not the mechs role) and give players an interesting decision of either faster movement or faster fire response to enemy units.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 07 February 2012 - 07:26 PM.

[Logan Solo Sinclair]

If I can assassinate a Spartan as a Spartan in Reach, then the time has come for me to be able to rip a pilot out of his cockpit with my 'mechs shiny fist, or Elemental claw if he is dumb enough to get close to me... Battletech PC gaming will forever be incomplete to me without this....
Not to say the game cannot be good without this, I will just always be searching for this until I get it.

Until then I'll just keep dreamin'...

[Pht]

Really?

I had no idea you felt that way, AK!

[FACEman Peck]

Getting close enough to enemy 'Mechs that you can chuck rocks at them makes me nervous. If this game is going to be like MW4 Mercs in the aspect of that the reactor goes nuclear for every 'Mech? It could serve as some sort of domino effect, you killing the one 'Mech that kills you that kills an enemy that kills your friend and so on. Yeah... I don't think so.

[Kenyon Burguess]

physical attacks have a long happy history in BT. i look forward to bumping enemies off the top of buildings and hills and hopefully planting a fist in someones pit. i wouldnt worry about reactor shielding failing every time faceman. thats from the previous games who thought more "flash" made for a better game. proper BT is mechs getting hacked apart into pieces and the auto shutdown is supposed to kick in when the reactor shielding begins to take damage. usually pilots also auto-eject before it becomes an issue. not sure how MWO is gonna handle their mechs going down but i have faith it will be better than previous incarnations of the universe.

[Outlaw2]

Aegis Kleais™, on 07 February 2012 - 04:39 PM, said:

The adage that "You shouldn't NOT do something just because its hard" is as cogent as "You shouldn't do something just because you can."

Though it's been discussed in depth to date, I'm of the belief that I'd prefer a less "Rock'em Sock'em" Mechwarrior.

I follow that up with a "You shouldn't avoid doing something just because its never been done before"

FACEman Peck, on 07 February 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

Getting close enough to enemy 'Mechs that you can chuck rocks at them makes me nervous. If this game is going to be like MW4 Mercs in the aspect of that the reactor goes nuclear for every 'Mech? It could serve as some sort of domino effect, you killing the one 'Mech that kills you that kills an enemy that kills your friend and so on. Yeah... I don't think so.

As geist pointed out. Mechs rarely goes nuclear from being destroyed in BT. There are many ways to get "destroyed" in BT that don't even involve the reactor.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 07 February 2012 - 07:02 PM.

[ExAstris]

I would very much like to see melee combat.

The technical implimentation is of course the largest hurdle.

The best solution I can think of is to impliment basic melee attacks for mechs with the appropriate weaponry (punches, axe swings) that just do base damage to the target. It would probably be too much work to impliment grappling and throwing as every mech would need to have grab points and every grabbing mech would need to have animations to get to them on every other mech. So that level of interaction requires seriously smart AI (you just could never animate all those, especially given different angles of attack) that would only get use from mech-on-mech grapple contests. I would like to see generic forward melee attacks with damage based on weapon type and point of contact.

[jbone]

In battletech you can't fire the weapon in the limb your doing a physical attack with, plus yes it would throw your reticle off with the weapons in the arms because your taking the arm completely off aim. That answers the throwing off weapon aims form that arm in particular.

Just because it's going to be complicated doesn't mean it should be avoided, it should be a challenge to be met, and overcome.

[flyingdebris]

just a little story i wanted to share, has no bearing on MWO's development, but i thought it was interesting and related to the topic at hand.

last August's Indy gencon I was playing at one of the Catalyst Game Labs Battletech tables. We were playing by Grinder rules so, every mech for itself, and every death levels you up to a bigger mech until you die in an assault, whereby you are back to light mechs again.

anyway

at a certain point i got myself a shiny red Axman, and i was eager as a kid in a candy store to smack someone with it's axe.
I spent somewhere like an hour over the course of i don't know how many turns trying to maneuver close enough to a target on the humongous map. Made extra difficult because i often kept losing initiative just as i'd get near, or someone else would kill them just before i could get close.

So I finally am close enough to an blue and green painted Grand Dragon where i can probably get him next turn. We are both standing like 10 elevations up along a cliff.

He attacks, hits right arm, penetrates armor, confirmed critical hit, axe

I flat out gave the table a pound and dropped a few four letter words. considering i had gotten the axman only after spending like 2 hours with a hatchetman, unable to hit anything with that hatchet.

Grand Dragon was gonna pay
I then did the next best thing. DFA
sucessful, WAM massive damage
it knocks the Dragon off the cliff due to displacement, falls the 10 levels, CRASH more massive damage
he's fallen, hurt but miraculously still alive.
next turn
DFA him again from the top of the cliff, onto the downed grand dragon's back
MEGA WAM more massive damage
somehow the grand dragon is able to get up, surviving all of the abuse
somehow i miss with everything else
he manages to run off
i spend the next couple turns chasing after it trying to finish it off
someone else kills him
i get shot through my rear armor by a newcomer and my ac20 ammo cooks off


such is battletech

Edited by flyingdebris, 07 February 2012 - 09:06 PM.

[Outlaw2]

Well FD, I think your story showed that chasing other mechs all by yourself with a melee focused mech in a big map is not a sound strategy : - P

Edited by =Outlaw=, 07 February 2012 - 09:17 PM.

[jbone]

Urban combat is perfect for melee mechs, round the corner and the last thing you see is the business end of said axemaster's namesake coming down on your dome.

[KageRyuu]

jbone, on 07 February 2012 - 09:31 PM, said:

Urban combat is perfect for melee mechs, round the corner and the last thing you see is the business end of said axemaster's namesake coming down on your dome.

Indeed.

Though to be fair, table top BattleTech was never conducive to melee combat given the fact that it had alternating initiative and seperate movement phases, which meant you could very well wind up with no one in range, on the other hand CBT:RPG (Classic BattleTech:RPG), MechWarrior's Guide to Solaris VII, Roleplaying 'Mech Combat Rules were a god send. I could quite literally run/sprint the enemy down and hack them to bits each and every time. Because there's nothing quite like a 5 ton hatchet combined with TSM, that's a 5 ton hatchet wielded by a 75 ton mech with Triple Strength Myomer for you laymen, which meant you did 30 whopping damage in melee, enough to strip 3.75 tons of standard armor off a single location, which was usually enough to take every last point of armor off, if not destroy or otherwise severely damage the internal structure.

All for 5 tons, and 11 crits respectively. Pretty much on par with the weight+crit/damage ratio of the unholy Small Laser, x10.

Except of course for a 7 ton hatchet wielded by a 100 ton mech with TSM, Can anyone say better than 2 AC20s any day?

Edited by KageRyuu, 08 February 2012 - 04:16 AM.

[jbone]

KageRyuu, on 08 February 2012 - 04:14 AM, said:

Indeed.

Though to be fair, table top BattleTech was never conducive to melee combat given the fact that it had alternating initiative and seperate movement phases, which meant you could very well wind up with no one in range, on the other hand CBT:RPG (Classic BattleTech:RPG), MechWarrior's Guide to Solaris VII, Roleplaying 'Mech Combat Rules were a god send.

While the RPG rules were nice they had a tenancy to become broken, yes they fixed it but 80 ton mechs with TSM wielding a mace in a double handed blow could make warships go "Oh Crap". And you are right the old initiative system never did well for one on one for mechs. But in lance games it was all about tactical use, yes not having initiative made it a lot harder to get into knife range where you can put your axe/sword to good use, but that's half the fun of it.

However, my point is the fact that Melee/brawling should be included in the game, not only is it a central theme to canon (There are over 15 mechs with melee weapons some with some pretty interesting pilots, heck there is even a clan totem mech with claws, even though the clans find melee combat dishonorable, yet another reason I favor it so much), it is a tactic that is ext remely useful, and adds a new level to tactics to the video games.



Now I think someone is about to get a severe beating in about 3 seconds.

[Aegis Kleais]

Man...I cannot unsee my "Rock'em Sock'em BattleMechs" analogy now....

<sarcasm>Great job, me.</sarcasm>

[Phades]

Implementation of melee has been achieved in other games, however none that I can think of broke the damage units down into sections like battle tech. So, scale and precision end up being the two "hard" parts of the actual implementation.

I am confident it is not outside their ability to pull off, should they choose to go that route and their first baby steps into this realm would be collision detection between mechs which should be a base feature of the game since we (collectively) would (i hope) the game stops mechs from moving through each other and other solid objects.

[Conjure]

I think this pic says it all http://img.photobuck...unch800x600.jpg

Booya! I want to do that!

Think of how melee works in Halo, Battlefield, and COD. It Could be a finishing move dependent on a mech rating.
It could also tear off a limb or disable weapon system. Cause over heating.

Edited by Conjure, 08 February 2012 - 07:11 PM.

[Logan Solo Sinclair]

Conjure, on 08 February 2012 - 07:05 PM, said:

I think this pic says it all http://img.photobuck...unch800x600.jpg

Booya! I want to do that!

Think of how melee works in Halo, Battlefield, and COD. It Could be a finishing move dependent on a mech rating.
It could also tear off a limb or disable weapon system. Cause over heating.

/\ My exact point. This is what I think I would like to see tried, but I am sure not everyone's tastes will mesh up...

[jbone]

On a side note... In halo and other fun games like that (yes yes yes I am bringing up FPS'es) When you perform a melee attack you can't fire weapons, until you bring back up your weapon to bear. ) Just a suggestion to my desire to crunch in cockpits with a first or an axe, or ya know there can be only.