655 replies to this topic

[Nik Van Rhijn]

@Ceefood - we already know there will be a Mechlab of some sorts. What we don't know are the details. I am all for customisation. I just don't think you should be able to build a completely new mech from scratch in 30 secs.

[Pht]

FACEman Peck, on 28 December 2011 - 05:10 PM, said:

You my friend, Pht, have WAY too much time on your hands. First off, going through the whole 15 page forum, second, going through the whole 15 page forum and "correcting" 4 people? Seriously man?

Um ... you care about what I bother to post on ... why?

[FACEman Peck]

It just made me laugh man.

[Pht]

FACEman Peck, on 28 December 2011 - 05:34 PM, said:

It just made me laugh man.

Heh.

You must have missed my second line of my sig, too.

[FACEman Peck]

I notice everything, just didn't mention it.

[Flawless]

I would like to see a set of known variations of each mech for selection and a limited ability to edit the weaponry. It would be great to see armor upgrades, engine modifications, and tech upgrades appropriate to each specific mech.

Edited by Flawless, 28 December 2011 - 08:28 PM.

[ToWcH]

I've played alot of mech games but i will not claim to know anything about BT/MW. Untill i sinced up here i never knew how passionate people where are this things. I know how people are passionate about something they love, and hate changes (Me for one), but we must all remember that the game is not being made for for just BT/MW Hardestcore fans but also NORMAL people. yes i said it, BT/MW fans are not normal, with all this canon, year 3048, planets, house of this, house of that, clan invasion....*JESUS CHRIST* i am aready getting deranged, but i wouldn't be here is i didn't like it .

Now, my honest and open to changes opinions on customisations and repairs. Concerning customisations, my understandering is that this will only be weapon changes (please bear with me, i dont know any of these weapons or there names well). am pretty sure that we all want the general build of the mech untouched.....i would like see a jenner or an atlas and know what is even from a distance and some unholy collabo, and thats should be left to comtemplate is what that mech is packing and how to approach.

It becomes redundant (in my opinion) say for example WARHAMMERS on carry 2x ppc's and 1x LRM. so if he open up on me with the two ppc's i know he only has an LRM left, thats boring, i'd prefer i dont know whats under the hood. Make for a better fight. Just like in DIRTY HARRY, you dont know if his revovler is a 6 or 5 shot...then the question is are you willing to fin out?
To close this in reference to customisation, let there be limited customisation, FOR EXAMPLE, do you want a barage of unguided missiles that deal 5% damage or do you want a single guided missle that deals 2.5% damage. Do you want a pulser laser cannon with laser heatup time than a single pulse laser cannon with greater damage....stuffs like. And i also say limited so as they can be visually represented, dont want a generic mech that has weapon fire coming out from unknown location...if i shot your am off containing a ppc i'd like to take that as a ppc loss and not have ppc shots coming out of your head. *THEY CANT MAKE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL WEAPONS ON ALL MECHS*. *CERTAIN MECHS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO CARRY CERTAIN WEAPONS*

As for the time it takes for repair and customisation. so as to even try to please every camp i suggest, that a *QUICK REPAIR* of max 75% fix should be allowed so as player can return to battle, call it a patchup . For *FULL REPAIR* of 100% fix players sould be made to wait (for alloted time, ill leave it to those who know), GOOD TIME TO HAVE A SPARE MECH.
For the time it takes to customise a mech, i suggest that buying after buying a customisation (say a new LRM or whatever you guys buy ) it should be unvailable for a certain amount of time (as stated before time required to replace an engine or weapon i will leave to you guys). the unavialability of the of called upgrade/install will simulate time it take to for installation, that way people can still battle with their favorite mech untill the time allocated is elasped then equiping should be instant. a little addition would be that your mech has to be at a 100% condition before equipping can take place.

These are my toughts on these issues...
I usually dont post comments and when i do its no more than a sentence long.
I hope you all will take the length of my post as a visually representation of how pumped i am for this game.

Tochi

Edited by ToWcH, 28 December 2011 - 09:33 PM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

@ ToWcH - customisation consists of changing possibly any of the components that make up a mech. The weapons themselves however are fixed ie a Medium laser does 5 damage for 3 heat at up to 270m, weighs 1 ton and takes up 1 critical space. None of these parameters can be changed by the user, only the dev's. It can be confusing for a newcomer but I'm sure you will get used to it. You might find it useful to go to http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page. There are pages of backgrounfd info there. Or you can always ask here. We don't usually bite

Edited by Nik Van Rhijn, 30 December 2011 - 10:39 AM.

[Kristov Kerensky]

ToWcH, on 28 December 2011 - 09:32 PM, said:

*THEY CANT MAKE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL WEAPONS ON ALL MECHS*. *CERTAIN MECHS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO CARRY CERTAIN WEAPONS*

Visually changing the Mech to show the weapons it actually carries..being done right now by the guys making the MWLL mod using another version of the CryTek engine, which is what MWO will use, so that's not really true

As to what weapons a Mech may or not may carry..
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Catapult

Yeah..about that..

[Dlardrageth]

ToWcH, on 28 December 2011 - 09:32 PM, said:

I've played alot of mech games but i will not claim to know anything about BT/MW. Untill i sinced up here i never knew how passionate people where are this things. I know how people are passionate about something they love, and hate changes (Me for one), but we must all remember that the game is not being made for for just BT/MW Hardestcore fans but also NORMAL people. yes i said it, BT/MW fans are not normal, with all this canon, year 3048, planets, house of this, house of that, clan invasion....*JESUS CHRIST* i am aready getting deranged, but i wouldn't be here is i didn't like it .[...]

Just like you wrote it, we must all be deranged. In particular for not wanting unlimited customization.

Nothing to see here, move on, please, just some deranged people discussing stuff that seems completely irrelevant to the rest of the world...

[Junkkmann]

It sounds like MWO is going to be follow cannon to start off. So I imagine that to start, there will be only stock mechs with some of the major variants available with loyalty points and the lab will only allow removal of weapons/heatsinks for additional armor or downgrade of existing weapons to smaller bretheren.
Then as the time-line progresses and we become better with our mechs and the clan invasion happens we will see a broadening of use in the mech lab as clan tech becomes available.
If you read the old mech loadout books they are full of descriptions of why other weapons didnt work or mount on a particular chassis.

Edited by Junkkmann, 29 December 2011 - 02:58 PM.

[Zulu Cobra]

I think mechlab should be like the Hardcore Exp for MW4 Mercs. It would have 4 or 5 pre made variants with different range levels, armor , and speed, and absolutely no "frankenmechs"!

[Kristov Kerensky]

Zulu Cobra, on 29 December 2011 - 03:05 PM, said:

I think mechlab should be like the Hardcore Exp for MW4 Mercs. It would have 4 or 5 pre made variants with different range levels, armor , and speed, and absolutely no "frankenmechs"!

Frankenmechs won't be an issue for a bit, since they are composed of a mix of IS and Clan Tech, so no worries there Zulu.

Now, if you mean being able to change the loadout of a Mech so that it no longer fits what YOU think it should be..I'm afraid you'll just have to deal with disappointment, since even the stock variants of the IS Mechs of the time frame MWO is starting in don't even begin to fit the concepts you have of them. See my link above to the Catapult and it's variants..and that's just ONE of the many Mechs with a long list of known variants for the time frame.

[Pht]

ToWcH, on 28 December 2011 - 09:32 PM, said:

*THEY CANT MAKE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL WEAPONS ON ALL MECHS*. *CERTAIN MECHS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO CARRY CERTAIN WEAPONS*

Actually, this aestetics problem has been known about by this community for years, devs and players alike. All they have to do in the 3d engine is find a way to make the game render whatever appropriate type of port/barrel/ports on a given 'mech when whatever type of weapon is mounted in a location.

So if you mount an AC on the side torso of a 'mech that was carrying missiles there, it would tell the 3d engine to render the "base 3d chassis" with an ac port in that torso location, instead of the missile port.

[ToWcH]

Pht, on 29 December 2011 - 04:38 PM, said:

Actually, this aestetics problem has been known about by this community for years, devs and players alike. All they have to do in the 3d engine is find a way to make the game render whatever appropriate type of port/barrel/ports on a given 'mech when whatever type of weapon is mounted in a location.

So if you mount an AC on the side torso of a 'mech that was carrying missiles there, it would tell the 3d engine to render the "base 3d chassis" with an ac port in that torso location, instead of the missile port.

Good to know..

[Kristov Kerensky]

I can't find the actual vids atm, but there's some out there where the MWLL teams shows how changing the weapons on a Mech changes the physical appearance to match, really nice work..from a team working on a free mod for a game engine that wasn't Mech related in the first place The folks at MekTek did the same thing with one of their Mech related mods..A1T or something, changing the weapons altered the physical appearance of the Mech.

We know PGI reads these forums..we know they've heard us..we'll see how well they listened when MWO is released

[Yggr]

IMO purchasing a stock mech is a proper thing to do, but even in the table top versions mechs could be modified, make the mod process not only tonnage based but money based, you want the bigger engine you have to buy it and have the tonnage available to install it. Make non standard mods more expensive like; changing armor types, internal structure, engines, etc. If you take for example a Wolverine Marik variant and change it to a Kurita variant that would be less costly because its done with factory parts, but adding a AC20 would be a major modification as the mech was never designed to have one. My dream would be to see all the mechs available to play.

[Pht]

Well, straight from the horse's mouth on the internals stuff:

cray said:

Different weapon models (even of the same class, like two different models of medium lasers) require different mounts (on BattleMechs; OmniMechs are mercifully more generic about weapon mounts).

Different BattleMechs also take different approaches. One 'Mech may built an entire limb around a given model of weapon that is fixed directly to the structure (like the Panther's PPC), while another may mount the weapon on an independent mount (like a Shadowhawk-K's shoulder PPC mount).

This is why BattleMechs tend to require some degree of juryrigging to mount different models of the same weapon class - there's always some customization involved particular to the specific BattleMech and weapon combination.

[Gorteck]

Personally I want to be able to go to the mech dealership and buy my mech. Perhaps as the game moves along and I, for whatever reason, wish to put different weapons on my mech, I would like to be able to do that. However I understand that there are a great many people who wish to build their mech from scratch; for them that is fun and I think they should be able to due that. I fail to see how that could unbalance the game. To begin with it is going to talk a LONG time to get it in play. It has to be designed and that person/s must be paid. Next you must make a clay model, then there is the testing and more testing- more time and more money. Then a factory needs to be found to make the mech. Then there is live testing and still more time, because sure as God made little green apples there are going to be glitches that need to be addressed, then and only then can the designer say "look what I made". I think the game can legitimately say that it will be years before clan tech gets to the IS also I think it is safe to presume that the 'pilots' of the mechs would not want to drive stupid stuff. I could even see that there might be a server that is just for the stupid and the silly, I can think of a assault mech that is cannon and is armed with 7 small lasers and has a top speed of 50mph, that could be the poster child. For me though I want simple and easy, for that the local mech dealership will do.

[Pinkamena Pie]

The way I'd approach the customisation issue is as follows:

- You can buy mechs as their standard varients.
- You can refit mechs from one standard varient to another.
- You can make modifications using a standard varient as a baseline, but each such modification causes cumulative drawbacks to the mech.

Ultimately, players will have the freedom to create whatever monstrousities they feel like, but they won't have quite the same efficiency as they would if they were built as a standard varient. This would also mean that minor personalisation would only have a small (probably insignificant) effect on the mech's effectiveness, but a full rebuild would not become overpowering.