LordNothing, on 28 August 2017 - 10:30 AM, said:
there has to be diminishing returns. its also more realistic. a faction thats doing well has no incentive to pay its mercs more, if anything its going to try to cut its rates because there is no need to incentivize better performance, they are already getting the best there is. a desprate faction on the other hand will be cracking out its financial reserves in order to preserve its power base against an advancing enemy.
the winning side might pay out more on average but a very narrow spread based on performance. doing well doesnt pay that much more than doing poorly. the loosing side pays less on average but has a much wider spread. doing well pays out huge while doing poorly falls well below average. if you are a top skill player the money is on the weaker side. you can turn those battles and get paid for it. if you arent as good you can opt to play on the winning to increase your payouts over time, but you will face the units working for the underdog. if you go with the loosing side you get what you earn and fight more of your type of player on the other side.
Adding a system like this would be a great way to encourage balance and dynamic shifts. I, as one who feels CW still needs a lot of "fluff" to be fleshed out , think it would even be easily justifiable in the context of galactic atmosphere. An added variable could be the "logistical" issue that comes with expanding fronts. The farther a faction expands from their home bases, the lower the pay out as logistical causes would rise. So as to not completely halt progress and prevent the creation of a "permanent contended zone", those logistical ranges could be reduced with the time that a conquered area is held. The distance of the fight of the Logistical front to the Battlefront can be tiered so that increasing distance increases the reduced income for the invading faction.
Example: There would be a Battlefront and a Logistical front marker for both factions. The Battlefront would move in real time as planets are conquered where the Logistical front would move at a rate 2-4 times slower (i.e. 2-4 battle phases to added the newly conquered planet to the logistical front and restore full rewards). This way, Factions that advance quickly will show a reasonably realistic strain in keeping up with a faced pace advance and thus encourage fighting in different areas of the Battlefront.
On the side losing territory, the reduced "Logistical Expenditure" would allow for increasing the reward for successful defense of their territory and thus incentivize a chance to push the enemy back for extra rewards. The Logistical Front for the side losing territory can follow the same mechanics as the advancing side while creating a window in which recently lost planets can be recaptured without losing the "infrastructure" that was temporarily held by the invading force.
Obviously, multiple Battlefronts are needed for this, but allowing at least 2-4 theaters of action would allow for a much more interesting CW map, while introducing a dynamic incentives system would help give impact and meaning to the collective victories and losses beyond changing the colors of dots on the map.
Spheroid, on 28 August 2017 - 11:04 AM, said:
The fact that such obvious improvements have not been implemented as yet is rather damning proof that NO ONE is doing any active work on CW whatsoever.
They should just surrender the code into the public domain. Gamers can do a better job for free then whatever the hell they are currently doing.
We have to wait to see the full scope of what is implemented in September to see how much effort they will be putting into FP. The fact that the complete experience of this game is battles, the only way to add anything meaningful beyond "kill or assist in these ways for rewards" is to create an out of battle system that can collectively show the sum of those victories and losses as well as make those out of battle experiences interesting enough to care about. Russ said that something to the effect of incentivizing Faction Specific Mechs was doable and a good way of adding flavor to FP. It is a minor change, but significant at the same time for those who have some interest in Battletech lore and would like to see some differences between the Factions. It's a soft change, but one that could eventually influence load outs typically seen in certain factions and even potentially affect payouts based on difficulty to use certain mechs (Russ mentioned building a tier system in the process of building Solaris, so this could be a real means of determining payouts).
I think one of the issues slowing down development of FP is that not enough of the community is demanding that it be addressed and given the fluff it needs to be more engaging. There is a portion of players commenting during town halls and podcasts, but it is small in comparison to those asking for other issues to be addressed first.
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