5 replies to this topic

[Nesutizale]

Something that crossed my mind is, do we even need weapon skills?

It has been mentioned here and there that the weapon skills are to many, should be replaced and so on... but what got me thinking is the following.

AC = Basic version

UAC / Rotary AC = Cooldown

LBX / Hyper AC = Range (when we would finaly get standart ammo for LBX)

Light AC = less weight

With these and the different ammo types that could be used we could emulate basicly every skill in the tree.

It could be made pretty similar with Laser weapons:

Laser = Basic

Pulse = Duration

ER = Range

and so on....

Wouldn't this be much better then haveing skills for weapons?
I mean PGI wants to introduce new weapon systems anyway and giveing back these weapons the useage they where ment to have from the beginning, without makeing boating or mixed more effective over the other and give new players/mechs the same chances. It would also be 100% lorefriendly, for the people who like that.
Its win, win, win for everyone

I think there is enough material from the sourcebooks/rulebooks to fullfile every thing you desire.
Also it would give a little bit more balance since IS has so much interesting equipment.

All that is needed is that we can finaly switch ammo on the fly instead of just one kind of ammo per weapon.

Edited by Nesutizale, 16 February 2017 - 11:57 AM.

[Skribs]

I agree, to a greater degree.

Mechlab offers customization. Buying and furnishing a mech gives us a grind. Just drop skills altogether.

[soapyfrog]

This suddenly has a lot of appeal to it.

[MechaBattler]

The only weapon skills that seem really worth it are the velocity, duration, spread, and jam chance ones. I wouldn't be against them reducing them to simply those.

[Nesutizale]

And you could have all these with just buying from the right "vendor". No extra XP grind.
You can have also mixed characteristics. Have LRMs with longer range (ELRM), Pulse laser with their short duration and Artemis SRMs for less spread.

It would all be possible, lorefriendly, easy to optain, pretty easy to understand, transferable from mech and make it possible to have boats and mixed loadouts to be vaible.
Alsom, as a bonus, as IS has more choises they can become comparable to Clan equipment.
Frankly there are some things like Inferno SRMs that I will miss when playing Clan.

Overlall I see the addition of new tech as a way that could very well even the battlefield between IS and Clanmechs and "Oh wonder" would be exactly what happend in the novels/rulebooks.

So I wish with all the "we must stick to the boardgame" that PGI sometimes does, they will do the same here.

Edited by Nesutizale, 17 February 2017 - 09:21 AM.

[Nesutizale]

I have taken out the rules to see what kind of weapons the IS could field and what modules and skills could be covered by just using the existing (by rulebook) weapons. I will leave out the basic weapons as these come without any special stuff.
This list might be interesting for people who never played the boardgame before

Light Gauss -> Range
Heavy Gauss -> Damage
LB-x -> Range / Spread depending on the ammunition leaded
Light AC -> Weight reduction...thats something new as it was not covered by skill or modules
Light MG -> Range
Heavy MG -> Damage
Rotary AC -> Coodown
Ultra AC .-> Cooldown

I would like to suggest something here in regard of the UAC and RAC. Instead of beeing a good double, tribble .... clicker or just the guy using thirdparie software, how about giveing these Autocannons a different mechanic?
These ACs have a shorter cooldown over the normal AC but you build up a chance of them to jam the longer you hold the trigger.
Kinda like MASC works except that your weapon gets jammed for the rest of the game. In case of the RAC it would give you incredible firingspeed/cooldown but firing 6 shots at these cooldownrate basicly means that you certainly will jam and loose the weapon for the rest of the match!

ER-Everything -> Range
Light PPC -> less heat, less damage
Heavy PPC -> more heat, more damage
Snob-Nose PPC -> Range, even larger then ER but reduced damage over Range
Pulse-Everything -> Duration

MML -> On the fly switch between short and long range missiles. Its basicly and LRM and SRM in one. Could allow for some surprising tactics.
MRM -> Up to 40 unguided Missiles with medium range. Shoots kinda like an autocannon but with missiles. Lots of fun for little weight
Rocketlauncher -> One time fire missile launcher. Light, cheap and can give you a quick boost in burst damage. Kinda like a last resort weapon.
Streak -> You know em

Thats just the weapons the IS could bring to bear against the Clans, there is some ammo too!
For the basic AC
Armor-Piercing Ammunition -> Higher crit chance, less ammo
Precision Ammunition -> Slightly corrects its flightpath. Kinda like a missile but not as precice, less ammo
LB-X Cluster -> We know these allready

For missiles
Artemis/NARC
Falre -> Would love to see some of these for night fights
Inferno SRM -> Enemy mech gets coverd in flames. Like a flamer for range
Incendiary LRMs -> Same as the Inferno just at range
Semi-Guided LRMs -> Make more use of the TAG other units provide
Swarm LRM -> If they miss they look for the next target in 30m range. Greate to brake up these pugs that allways clumb together
Thunder LRMs -> Minefields (wouldn't recommend this. Think they would be to powerfull)

I think thats about it. You can see that MWO could offer alot of interesting stuff gameplay wise and the skillsystem could be replaced with a lot of things that are just existing weapons.

I haven't included what would be there for Clans, so if you are interested, leave a note and I will post their options too.

It was more importend to me to point out the IS equipment as the IS suffers the most of not haveing these to even the odds with Clan forces.