Sorry for a new edit; but added a bunch of stuff.
Nesutizale, on 04 August 2019 - 09:43 AM, said:
I would turn the system upside down. We are in an age of decaying technologie where everything just gets worse, so finding the one component that is still working to its original specs is what you want.
This would be backed up by the lore. What we see in the rulebooks for 3025 are the allready worsend variants on the original StarLeague versions with some tech even beeing lost.
So when you salvage a weapon that is allready 50 years old and has gone through some battles I don't aspect it to be at its original stats but it has some quirk that you can't / hardly fix anymore.
While I completely agree, there's two things standing in the way of that.
"OMG why did you nerf this?"
And
"Factories are still producing weapons."
So while some are old or no longer in production, others are. As such more of a degrading system might work better and the limitations of your repair crew/supplies can factor into how much it recovers. Unfortunately that runs into a third problem... even more programming knowledge required than I actually have to introduce a system that likely isn't in the game.
As such I'm just reflecting these in "versions" of a weapon. Older, used versions are likely in a poorer state than fresh-off-the-factory items, but economically much more affordable / free. As such weapons stolen from bandits, pirates, etc. are probably going to be **** (unless they happened upon a good stash) while something from a high end unit is going to be factory fresh and/or exceptionally maintained.
Generally, lower grade versions of a weapon will have one or several flaws such as being fragile, longer delay between activation and actual firing, tendency to jam or overheat easier, etc.
Edit: Forgot to mention, since weapons are broken down to rated stats per unit of time [5 seconds max to achieve damage, 5 additional seconds for cooldown, with ACs following the rapid fire rule of being able to get a second rating without the 5 second cooldown at the risk of overheating {the weapon itself} which could lead to jamming or exploding]. So the AC and laser weapons already are doing decimal points of damage per individual shot.
Edit 2: One could also tie performance modifiers to the weapon's health, but as simply repairing the health of the weapon or equipment back to full would bring the performance back up to the high end... it sort of defeats the concept of "this weapon's over 300 years old and though it has done well enough and it's been through thousands of repairs, it just isn't quite up to the job anymore. Time to shell out for a brand new one."
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It would be kinda like this:
StarLeague -> The losttech like ER-Lasers, UACs and stuff. The things you will hardly ever find.
3025 Rulebook values -> Fresh from the assembly line of the big companys. Very expansive but without quirks.
Second Hand market -> Lowered values but still close to 3025 rulebook
Salvaged weapons -> They have lowered values from the 3025 rulebook and a quirk or two. Like haveing a bigger recoil then usual or allways aims a bit to the left.
Makes sense, but keep in mind Star League salvage is ancient.
(Edit: I already have a few extinct nearly extinct weapons on my list. Rassal Blue Beam is one such laser, it literally becomes completely extinct in 3049 according to the Master Unit List [because it is exclusive to one mech that becomes completely extinct as well]... which means it becomes extinct at the end of MW5's primary story...which in turn means that as the player you might wield one of the last ones in existence. Also have the devious plan of giving it to an ACE since PGI has already stated we could encounter a hero [he wasn't specific but I suspect it would be the Bounty Hunter as the way he said it means he thinks the encounter will be really cool, any other encounter is 'herp-derp there's a hero', but the bounty hunter means it doesn't matter where you run, what you do, "the bounty hunter" will find you and he will try to kill you]. If an Ace (hero) has it, then there's a higher end AI behind the target and more importantly, if said Ace is moving around you'd have to find him to get the weapon. That is similar to Battlezone VR/PC's adversaries, where the adversary can move around the map like you. Any "snuck in" old Star League tech is gonna be done the same way, maybe one or two instances in the universe and hopefully moving around like yourself.)
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When looking at how decayed a weapon is make sure that its never falling below another weapon so an AC5 dosn't become an heavy AC2. Normaly that could happen very well but most likely you would just sell it for its material value then trying to keep that...but its a game so lets keep it in the boundaries between the AC2 and AC5.
Makes sense, but if anything falls below the rating its related to a flaw or issue for its version, and not for the weapon simply being incapable of achieving it. (Example, a medium laser that's got a flawed cooling jacket is going to be prone to overheating before achieving the full 5 damage if the weapon is rushed into doing it, requiring the pilot to ease off the trigger a little longer than normal to get that full rated damage).
For those that are design related, it would have some sort of compensation. For example (and lack of an actual name at the moment) a weapon modified to be compatible with a recycling bin would be sacrificing potential ammo volume in order to have space to start collecting spent shells. The return, of course, is significantly reduced rearm prices for that weapon.
Edited in screenshot.
"X" company turns its weakness of a supply shortage into an advantage and decides to make an economic-and-ecosystem-friendly autocannon that stores its spent shells rather than ejects them; allowing shells to be refilled and reused at a fraction of the cost. (The shells are proprietary; ensuring that they will frequently get returning business.)
Or for a combat-only compensation example (although this isn't related to falling short of its rating "because it can't do it" but because of a lot of recoil making it incredibly difficult), the Crusher Super Heavy Cannon (AC/20) is a
150mm autocannon that delivers a burst of 10 hyper-velocity shells (at 2 damage each) per trigger pull. Its one of the few outright stated details in BT. Between being on the higher ends of ACs (the typical high for AC/5 and AC/10 is 120mm) and outright stated to jam its shells out in an insanely fast amount of time, there's a lot of recoil and spread beyond the 270 meter range. This is despite the fact that the
Hetzer which carries this
AC/20 is described as an "Artillery" unit.. and its AC/20 described as an burst-firing 150mm artillery cannon. As such, while the spread would be absolutely abysmal.. the Crusher Super Heavy would be capable of indirect fire.
(Shorthand: Wild spread beyond 270 meters would leave significant accuracy issues and thus reduce your damage output to a specific target, but a good max range [as long as you don't care about accuracy] and an ability to extend that range even more or fire over walls due to the fact that it's really an artillery cannon! Ideal for dealing damage to a wide area of ground or air forces?)
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Company quirks and values could be a general theme beside that. Still you should make sure that a given weapon never becomes better or worse then another one.
Naturally. However, if everything is completely on par, the only reason for preference is simply preference. As such I have some that might seem superior to other variations and could be within exceptional hands. For example the Chemjet Gun (AC/20) given its unique nature is, in its most basic concept, something of a grenade launcher in which how far it goes can be determined by how long you charge it, and how accurate is based on how well you calculate an arc that you cannot see. As such the gun despite how few projectiles are necessary to net damage has an exceptional damage potential to compensate for an immense skill ceiling. (Think Heavy Gauss compared to regular Gauss, but it fires like a dumbfired LRM-5, now imagine how hard it would be to hit anyone).
But to go into company examples:
One I have is the Maxwell DT from Maxwell Manufacturing Inc. The actual laser has little details about it, but I've found that companies producing laser pistols and laser rifles that do have lore and info behind them are often similar, creating a theme, I'm basing on the
Maxwell Laser Rifle.. Now when comparing Laser Rifle brands to medium lasers via a ratio calculator using the base Laser Rifle stats and Medium Laser stats as a 1 to 1 ratio, most make that ratio with tiny tradeoffs. Magna's lasers hit a wider area and can hit potentially hit several targets at once at an increase in accuracy without a sacrifice in damage but suffers a steep sacrifice of range. Intek's lasers fire weaker beams but get an accuracy bonus without loss of range due to higher firing frequency. Then there's the Maxwell P-10 Laser Rifle which sacrifices a tiny bit of range (and it doesn't state this but it suffers accuracy), but in turn has "superior armor penetration." When ratio-calculated into a medium laser Maxwell's laser would pump out 8.35 damage. Bit excessive, so I tuned that down a bit. I've taken the reduced accuracy to be less of a "fires off in a random direction" to more of a "harder to deliver damage because the beam lasts longer." After all, lasers either use high intensity to evaporate something (but if the beam lasts longer than a few miliseconds most of the energy will be wasted) or low-intensity to cut into something (which needs to remain on target for a few seconds at least).
So the tradeoff conceptualized is a 1-second beam (comparatively most lasers are using 0.1 to 0.3 second beams with multiple shots required), in which a place must be hit for 0.5 seconds (to achieve 2 damage) and missed for no longer than 0.2 seconds at a time (or else the timer resets) in order to prime the laser's second phase which can deliver 1 damage per 0.1 seconds. (So you must keep on target in the same spot for half a minimum of 0.8 seconds to get 5 damage, or 1 full second to get 7 damage. Be mindful that the plan is to subdivide hitboxes into subsections, so lower-right torso, mid-right torso, upper right torso, etc to make it even more difficult.)
Makes it powerful, but difficult to harness that power as an enemy that's actively spreading your damage would render the Maxwell DT one of the worst medium lasers in the game instead of one of the best.
(Edit: Second concept is to give it a long pre-firing delay [0.5 seconds] and allow it to do up to 1 damage per 0.1 seconds and overheat-cutoff at 0.5 seconds of sustained laser, but you could do a couple of shorter duration shots spread out a bit to get that superior damage as another skill-based idea).
(Edit: Included the source, as well as examples of numerous other company laser concepts derived from the laser rifles.)
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Players would start with salvage grade weapons and mechs and work their way up.
Of course (within reason). Depends entirely on how the game starts you out. As I recall,
you are left with a legacy. The question is what that comes with. If they outright say you have new or well-maintained stuff (that might degrade quickly because you're initially broke) then it'd be hard to flip around and show you an inventory of trash at the very start.
Since economics are a thing, it is also possible to be so run-down in space money or so far removed from factories producing good equipment that accepting lower grade equipment can be a survival tactic. Battletech is all about attrition (the depletion of resources). For high end equipment, traveling to areas where they are produced is pretty much a necessity, that or taking on a well equipped faction force associated with the equipment you want. High end equipment is a comodity. Some factories will flat out refuse to sell it to just anyone, requiring a license from the faction associated with it. Others will be more than happy to let you buy them, but refuse to deliver (you gotta get your sorry *** over to them). And some things you'll only get by taking. Where these places are among the most guarded, the most dangerous places against things quite well equipped.
So, as is an ongoing theme for my modding, risk versus reward. Want the good ****? The risk is strong but so is the reward good. Want the really, really good ****? Risk and odds are against you, but the reward's gonna tip the scales if you're skilled enough to wield them. Or one can accept a temporary life of mediocrity and safety in order to survive in the face of poverty. Not everything has to be about going up, life has ups and downs. Some of the most interesting points in games is when you lose it all and have to face stronger adversaries with your hands tied behind your back. Since MW5 is meant to do this dynamically with your finances and choices, I enjoy the thought of "it could happen to me" or "better save these for a rainy day."
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Oh another point I might add....time. Specificly the time you need for refits. Omnimechs where such a big thing because the low amount of time it takes to refit them. Something that was completly missing from MWO.
Worse yet Omnimechs, the most easly to modify mechs ever where punished with lots of fixed slots.
Back in the days when I was still playing the boardgame our group quickly realised that the min/max-ing that the rulebook for constructions allowed destroyed much of the gameplay and campaigns.
Introducing a much strikter houserule made things much better. Sure you couldn't go out with the ultimate mech anymore but overall the experiance was better. Sadly MWO never realised that in some way. MW4 or was it 3, idea of haveing specific slots so a ballistic could only be exchanged for a ballistic was good allready.
MW5 pretty much has an "AC/5 can only be one of a dozen AC/5". I myself was actually going to open it up to a sized-slot soft-point. Similar to what's already established in battletech if you peer at Sarna.net and its entries for MRM and Mech Mortar, it'll tell you that they are designed to be easily swapped with SRM-# and LRM-#, that's a remnant of a BT softpoint system that was officially developed but didn't catch on outside of BattleTechnology issue which has an incomplete list for a proposed "campaign customization" ruleset in which similar sized items are rewarded with less time and risk to complete while vastly different sized setups requiring "duct tape and backwards ingenuity" would be punished with higher risk of failure (resulting in more time necessary to complete the task) or flaws due to mistakes or issues that come up with, say, trying to duct-tape a PPC on top of a Locust without realizing something like the engine can't handle pumping out the necessary energy fast enough. Another flaw idea is not being able to funnel a way for ammunition to get to a place not meant for it, requiring the weapon to have an exposed external ammo feed.
The size aspect is simple enough, breaking each mech's slots up into internal and external spots of various sizes. If internal, it is completely protected by the armor. If partially external, any slots outside of the allotted internal space will be exposed and susceptible to damage if the region it is in is damaged. It will also visually and mechanically (hit detection) expand that section. Debating on allowing completely external equipment or locking them out as just supplements to internal equipment that's too big to fit. Either way the idea is to reflect the size of the machine and its internal space.
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What I would like to see, expanding that system a bit, would be something like an energy system.
Instead of only beeing able to switch around ballistics vs ballistic you would have ports that could support weapons that use a max level of energy. So you can slot in any weapon that dosn't use more energy then this specific amount or in case of ammunition based weapons, there has to be either room to place ammo in the same location or there has to be a supply way to that location from where you want to store your ammo.
Front Mission has a system where the body determines the power supply and the legs determine the weight, and you have to balance the two. In this case what you're describing is potentially the engine or the mech itself sets the power limit.
I've thought of an energy-consumption concept. Its more closely tied to Mechwarrior-style "alpha strikes" (group fire) than as a limitation for customization. This is why my energy weapons have listed per-rating power consumption. I've noticed a trend about engines in some cases, for example Magna engines are really common in mechs with multiple PPCs or a Gauss Rifle accompanied by lasers. Since I plan for lots of variation including engine brand variation.. its a thought.
As I've mentioned above the last quote, though, I already conjured up my own expansion of customization based on a mixture of Mechwarrior RPG, that pair of pages from BattleTechnology introducing the concept, and general campaign customization rules (as demonstrated in Megamek HQ).
Edited by Koniving, 15 August 2019 - 11:51 AM.
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