19 replies to this topic

[VYCanis]

Lets assume you aren't afraid of a little ammo explosion ruining your day, wish to ride out your mech to the bitter end, and think parachutes are for losers.

One thing that i think hasn't really been explored in the MW games is actually allowing the player to experience their mech being disabled. Usually, anything that kills your mech just kinda causes your view to switch to 3rd person to see your ride keel over dead and/or blow up.
What if that wasn't the case. Just as the 2009 trailer showed the pilot having animations for scrambling for the eject lever, what if there were nifty animations for other causes of mech death.

For example, lets say your mech gets its center torso cored out. If your cockpit is still intact and there is no ammo to cookoff, and there is no mandatory stackpole effect, why not give the pilot the benefit of the doubt and let him witness all of their displays blink out, their HUD disappear, and the mech suddenly become however many tons of suddenly very inert metal, having them vainly stuggle with controls until the mech finally hits the ground, where the screen blacks out.

Or lets say there is an out of control ammo explosion in progress that the game knows will gut your mech from one side to the other. Aside from the mech shaking like crazy, you can show the pilot vainly trying to use the ammo dump button or the eject lever, but its too late, it's broke. At the last second a split second of light and flames fill the cockpit.

Headshots could be an instant red tinged blackout as you are snuffed out.

and maybe a few permutations of the above. All of them no more than a few seconds long.

[KingCobra]

In the novel books there were many times this happened and the pilot ejected and ran for cover to fight another day.If we get character creation and will be able to roam around MWO in your toon i dont know the old eject animations were to stupid becouse your pod came out of the mech and thats it show over.We all can only hope that PGI goes into more detail on everything even ejecting.

[pcunite]

Another poster, I think it was Kay Wolf, suggested that to avoid respawnings ... PGI could allow for ejecting (if you catch it just right, if not do as you've suggested) and by the seat of your pants make it back to a station of some sort where there might be one or two extra mechs on hand. Then you could continue to play. But yeah ... make it so that things matter and ejecting is scaring and does not always work.

[Holmes]

I didn't read any of this, but I want to be able to turn my X52 onto the "red" mode, and hit the eject button. Come on.

[Brenden]

Headshot = instant death. The 'mech remains intact, but depending on how it was shot and with, it could just stay there, standing ominously with it's pilot dead as a testament too him/her or fall in the direction of the moving round. I.E. Hit in the back, falls foward, falls backward etc. etc.

[pcunite]

Brenden, on 17 December 2011 - 05:11 PM, said:

Headshot = instant death. The 'mech remains intact, but depending on how it was shot and with, it could just stay there, standing ominously with it's pilot dead as a testament too him/her or fall in the direction of the moving round. I.E. Hit in the back, falls foward, falls backward etc. etc.

Ha! Yeah ...

[Soltenius Drake]

I was thinking about this a little myself, what if you ended up being the spot on target of several high end gause rifle mechs who fired on you simultaneously? Wouldn't that be instant core overload? You (and anyone within close quarters) should be utterly obliterated by a instant core meltdown.

Such a setting would be a dynamic that would produce a worthy battle tactic to target a mech in the middle of a group for destruction and launch a coordinated attack do critically hurt or obliterate a whole squad. This would also produce a more careful approach to formations and how squads group together.

I to think that the game should be able to discern the cause of death not only for graphical display but for game play reasons as well.

Edited by Soltenius Drake, 18 December 2011 - 02:35 AM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Core meltdown doesn't happen except as a deliberate overide of all the safeties etc.

Edited by Nik Van Rhijn, 18 December 2011 - 03:54 AM.

[Soltenius Drake]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 18 December 2011 - 03:53 AM, said:

Core meltdown doesn't happen except as a deliberate overide of all the safeties etc.

Thank you, I have read a little on the game but am new to the dynamics of the MechWarrior Universe.

[VYCanis]

even if they are present, you do not want core meltdowns to be something that can be easily reproduced outside of pure random chance.

Because if you do, there will be groups of players out there that will build strategies and tactics that revolve around making other players stackpole, and that is going to get abused so bad

Edited by VYCanis, 18 December 2011 - 09:42 AM.

[Soltenius Drake]

VYCanis, on 18 December 2011 - 09:41 AM, said:

even if they are present, you do not want core meltdowns to be something that can be easily reproduced outside of pure random chance.

Because if you do, there will be groups of players out there that will build strategies and tactics that revolve around making other players stackpole, and that is going to get abused so bad

You are probably right, so I would not want this to by any means be an easy feat. Maybe this tactic would have a hard time being implemented in a way that has balance and would bring a honest sense of skill rather then a cheat tactic. If they could create relative difficulty and risk to balance out the tactical reward then I would like to see it implemented. If not then of course I do not want to invite idea's that will make the game terrible.

[CeeKay Boques]

What if a truck was dispatched while your mech was down? When it got there you could get patched up... This truck is slow and destructible.

Edit: You can buy these trucks.

Edited by Technoviking, 19 December 2011 - 01:48 AM.

[VYCanis]

trucks could be problematic if your mech got downed on a plateau, or rooftop, or mountain, or among piles of broken terrain

Maybe a salvage lifter VTOL with the same capability? or both?

[Xhaleon]

VYCanis, on 19 December 2011 - 01:53 AM, said:

trucks could be problematic if your mech got downed on a plateau, or rooftop, or mountain, or among piles of broken terrain

Maybe a salvage lifter VTOL with the same capability? or both?

Salvage industrialmech, piloted by a real person. I remember... I'll throw in a free screen-wash for you too. Only 20,000 C-Bills per deployment, please.

*Rates changed due to inflation.

Edited by Xhaleon, 19 December 2011 - 03:44 AM.

[Omigir]

Even if you cant wander around on your toon or avatar, an ejection is not undoable. First person perspective, most people arms look the same. After you parashoot down or maybe it fades to black. No need to have you try and run off a multy mile large battlefeild like in the books.

[pied]

VYCanis has some nice ideas here, but I'm more than certain the devs have already thought of some of these things since they (claim to be) are fans of MechWarrior (BattleTech too?)

As to the somewhat off-topic direction the thread has gone about repairing mechs...

Novel side of me thinks:

Repairing a BattleMech to working status in-field, or being able to run back to a base after ejecting to grab another ready-to-go Mech would be a step in the wrong direction. Repairs and replacing of armor require big heavy machinery and entire crews and a load of time. And while some Mechs seem cheap when compared to other mechs, they are all expensive, so a merc band or house having spare unmanned mecs would have to have extremely deep pockets, and would be far more likely to hire a pilot to use it rather than have it sitting around collecting dust.

Gamer side of me thinks:

Being able to hop into another mech after having your first one blown up detracts from the lance vs lance, squad vs squad style combat that I can only assume we'll be seeing. A match would never end in that case, or the side that has more spare mechs on hand would be the victor.

[Rhinehart]

I would like to see some system that, win or lose encourages a pilot to return their mech mostly intact for repair or refit. One of the first online games I ever played was a world war two flight sim and it was frustrating to me to see many players flying around until they died or parachuting or deliberately crashing when the fuel ran out (They often flew with extremely light fuel loads to enhance maneuverability which meant they didn't have fuel to return to base if they wanted to.) The only penalty for this was that a pilot recieved double score for any kills or targets destroyed if they actually landed intact at a friendly base.

For myself I always attempted to get back to base win or lose because I thought if that was me in a real airplane then I absolutely want to live to fight again another day. Not to mention I thought it would be embarassing to be a simulator Ace pilot that didn't know how to land the plane because they had never bothered to do it before.

Can we please have some mechanism in game that actually encourages a tactitcal withdrawl when it is a good idea to preserve pilots and equipment for future battles?

Edited by Rhinehart, 20 December 2011 - 08:09 PM.

[Phatt]

VYCanis, on 18 December 2011 - 09:41 AM, said:

even if they are present, you do not want core meltdowns to be something that can be easily reproduced outside of pure random chance.

Because if you do, there will be groups of players out there that will build strategies and tactics that revolve around making other players stackpole, and that is going to get abused so bad

This was a fairly common tactic on the open servers back in the MW4 and MWM days, except people when they had ran out of ammo or their weapons had been destroyed they would charge into the enemy and deliberately eject which would cause a melt down. Ejection should not cause a melt down, you should just be ejected and the mech should only melt down if it was going to anyway. Their were also stupid griefers who would sneak up behind their team mates and deliberately suicide just for kicks.

I can remember one time at mechcamp my team was practicing jump jet tactics in shadowcats, there were cats jumping around all over the place when I executed a perfect Death From Above (DFA) on one of the other cats. The cat I landed on went boom, my cat went boom and then three other cats that were within the blast radius also went boom.

I think thats would you would officialy calll a "Clusterf#(k"

[Semyon Drakon]

Given that the games initial missions are probably going to be about a half hour long at most until the bugs get ironed out, I think people are spending too much time worrying about jumping out of one mech and racing off to get into another. Wouldn't happen in canon, shouldn't happen in game.

Don't want to have to do it? Simple, train hard, work with your lance/company mates and don't get dead.

If you should get unluckily cored out in the first 5 minutes by the long range PPC shot from hell well, that's bad luck, try using cover next time.

I know it sounds harsh but I prefer realism in my mech sims, as far as 50 foot giant robots with lasers can be.

Semyon

[Dlardrageth]

The whole "optional core meltdown" scenario should just be tied to some in-game prerequisites. Thus not ruling it out completely but making it not a "every other battle" option.

Just tie it to a certain experience level of the pilot, then add another treshold by making it a skill you have to actually purchase (With real money perhaps?). And ofc step up the repair costs on any Mech you used for this radically (maybe even more than 100% chassis price?). After all, you not only have a complete loss of that Mech, you also might have to pay for lasting environmental damage impact (Haha, yeah, no joke though!).

So in the end it could happen, but it should still be rather rare. As it means you will have to throw out a suitcase of C-bills out of the next window. Thus we could keep a modicum of realism and not making it a too prominent/easy manoeuvre.