84 replies to this topic

[HammerMaster]

Buys Kia Rio.
"I can't put Lexus parts in here. Eff you Kia"
Um. What?

[Koniving]

Heh. I could understand that, but sometimes you're not gonna have what you need. For example I don't see why you couldn't downgrade to a small laser or two, or say upgrade a pair of energy points to a larger energy weapon. (I even designed something like that for MWO to make more sense and restrict the hardpoint inflation nonsense that enables so much laser vomit, so I already got a system to try.)

On a side note...

Lemme read that again, okay so lower level Mlaser, higher level.. Nevermind, thought I found something interesting there but I guess I was thinking of "something on the same level" as opposed to what was actually said. Had a thought of "Welp this is a level 2 ML, and I've got a level 2 RAC/2...." But nah.

Jokes aside though, this would be the most restrictive I've seen a BT/MW game be. And it isn't one that makes as much sense as they might think, either, as brand names weren't universal... Some were made with arms in mind some with torsos (mostly projectile weapons with loading mechanisms and PPCs here), so to go "Welp its official, GM equipment blows, its all level 3. Look at this, I've got this Kali-Yama level 7 AC/2 that outperforms even the level 3 AC/20 I have..." is... face palm-worthy to say the least...prior to the possibility of seeing an arm-only AC/5 where the unique trait is that it is typically held in the mech's hand as a jettison-capable weapon... mounted in the shoulder of a Shadow Hawk.

All the more reason to overhaul it after it comes out.

(Side note: RE 2 remake, two changes I'd make.. One, the zombies only have 2 locations that they attack, the right side of your neck --and even in groups or from behind it is ONLY the right side of your neck....and your lower leg. A neck bite should be a nearly lethal experience unless they barely grab, as such I would have them go for arms and legs first. From the floor, maybe up to a nice juicy belly or hip bite....give the character a REASON to hold that gut rather than "Caution", gotta hold my side even though I just saw a nasty bite to my neck.. The other thing is have more consistency between the A and B scenario but that's a minor gripe.)

[HammerMaster]

Koniving, on 01 February 2019 - 03:50 PM, said:

Heh. I could understand that, but sometimes you're not gonna have what you need. For example I don't see why you couldn't downgrade to a small laser or two, or say upgrade a pair of energy points to a larger energy weapon. (I even designed something like that for MWO to make more sense and restrict the hardpoint inflation nonsense that enables so much laser vomit, so I already got a system to try.)

On a side note...

Lemme read that again, okay so lower level Mlaser, higher level.. Nevermind, thought I found something interesting there but I guess I was thinking of "something on the same level" as opposed to what was actually said. Had a thought of "Welp this is a level 2 ML, and I've got a level 2 RAC/2...." But nah.

Jokes aside though, this would be the most restrictive I've seen a BT/MW game be. And it isn't one that makes as much sense as they might think, either, as brand names weren't universal... Some were made with arms in mind some with torsos (mostly projectile weapons with loading mechanisms and PPCs here), so to go "Welp its official, GM equipment blows, its all level 3. Look at this, I've got this Kali-Yama level 7 AC/2 that outperforms even the level 3 AC/20 I have..." is... face palm-worthy to say the least...prior to the possibility of seeing an arm-only AC/5 where the unique trait is that it is typically held in the mech's hand as a jettison-capable weapon... mounted in the shoulder of a Shadow Hawk.

All the more reason to overhaul it after it comes out.

(Side note: RE 2 remake, two changes I'd make.. One, the zombies only have 2 locations that they attack, the right side of your neck --and even in groups or from behind it is ONLY the right side of your neck....and your lower leg. A neck bite should be a nearly lethal experience unless they barely grab, as such I would have them go for arms and legs first. From the floor, maybe up to a nice juicy belly or hip bite....give the character a REASON to hold that gut rather than "Caution", gotta hold my side even though I just saw a nasty bite to my neck.. The other thing is have more consistency between the A and B scenario but that's a minor gripe.)

I hope I'm wrong, I want it to do well. But this may be too restrictive. Even for me.
BUT! Mods may save it.
Especially if I can from top to bottom make it mirror the source material.

Edited by HammerMaster, 01 February 2019 - 04:06 PM.

[Zaccheus]

Well on the bright side they plan on having full mod support so modders should be able to fix it. The problem though as far as I can see is a lot of people aren’t going to buy it if they have to rely on mods to make it live up to basic MW game expectations. I hope they change their mind if it’s still possible for them to do so

Edited by Zaccheus, 02 February 2019 - 05:08 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

I am unsure how I feel about this. On the one side, I like the idea of essentially running mechs with their intended loadouts, tweaking the damage here and there with better quality equipment. This seem generally more appropriate to the universe and especially the time in which it takes place.

On the other hand, I am a MechWarrior fan, and I do love tweaking mech loadouts to make all sorts of Frankenmechs.

I have played many games of HBS's BattleTech with essentially stock loadouts, and I actually like doing that, however I still like the ability to fit a smaller weapon of the same type (A/C10 to an A/C5) if I can't get a 10 in the market place or for some better armor, etc...

Overall I don't think I am going to sweat the customization scheme if I can still remove weapons for additional armor (like the MGs I may not use). Also, swapping weapons out for ones with higher damage or other benefits to performance might help offset my desire to change out a weapon completely. Like many have said, we will have to get our hands on the game and see how it plays out.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Koniving, on 31 January 2019 - 08:17 PM, said:

...But first and foremost on the comment about BT modding being harder than they promised...the director of HBS's BT said that BT can be modded but very clearly in multiple question and answer streams found on YouTube stated... "Yes you can mod the game." "There will be no support given by us." And to clarify "You will have no tools supplied" (they actually kept some hidden in the game but we have to figure them out there is no documentation shared with us officially).

They never said they would make it easy for us. Just that we could. They expressly said several times they would never make any user friendly tools. Make our own. So just putting that out there.

That's mostly it.

Essentially HBS said that they wouldn't creating tools specifically for modding the game to the community because they did this in one of the Shadowrun games and it ate up way too much development time.

Despite that (or to help make up for it) they stated that they weren't going to go out of their way to hide data in the game and were going to leave everything pretty much out in the open. That is why I have actually tweaked the game's starting lance and player XP in the *.json files for a few custom Career Runs myself.

So in essence HBS is encouraging mods, just not making tools specifically to aid in it.

[MechaBattler]

If the different manufacturers are going to be treated as a crappy weapon leveling scheme. Then that's gonna suck. I was hoping they would be sidegrades, not upgrades. Where perhaps the function of the weapon is different with tweaked stats. But if it's going to be a crappy leveling scheme. That's really boring and not especially rewarding. I think I'd rather just not have any weapon swapping at that point. : /

It's the same reason The Division and all those other loot scheme games are really boring! And why I disliked the gun mod system for Fallout4. It's trivial stat upgrades. It's boring, tedious, and an entirely played out mechanic. >:I

[Koniving]

MechaBattler, on 12 February 2019 - 11:18 AM, said:

If the different manufacturers are going to be treated as a crappy weapon leveling scheme. Then that's gonna suck. I was hoping they would be sidegrades, not upgrades. Where perhaps the function of the weapon is different with tweaked stats. But if it's going to be a crappy leveling scheme. That's really boring and not especially rewarding. I think I'd rather just not have any weapon swapping at that point. : /

It's the same reason The Division and all those other loot scheme games are really boring! And why I disliked the gun mod system for Fallout4. It's trivial stat upgrades. It's boring, tedious, and an entirely played out mechanic. >:I

Well you already know I've got plans for it and ideas for balancing it out. Since weapon classes are actually generic and most importantly "loose" damage/time/heat/range expectancy classifications we know that we have wiggle room in multiple categories. Star citizen once described their missile brand system as a pentagon where each of the 5 sections have a different attribute and there is a set amount of value to spend. Say there is 15 points. So 3 points in all 5 categories is your most balanced setup. What happens if you take 2 from agility and put them into speed. Got a fast missile that can't turn. What if we take away from range and put it into damage....hey that's an srm.

I've got similar ideas with more wiggle room since instead of a pentagon I am using weight and elements that affect parameters. Now I don't have to program that into the game so long as I am using it as a rule set in how I distribute attributes. Between this and fluff to use PPCs as an example, we know that Donal brand PPCs have a couple of specific attributes. Bulky chambers and long barrels. HBS BT took this as extra damage but did this without any drawback just a flat upgrade. I would funnel extra rate into barrel length leading to longer range and power buildup which is extra damage. But I have 7 tons to work with. From Battletechnology magazine I have a general distribution of a generic PPC where almost half is in on board cooling equipment and the coils (power box). We know Donal has an unusually bulky power box so it has extra weight. And we funneled weight into the barrel length. So cooling systems is one such point. But what if we don't interpret it as more damage but instead a faster preparation and delivery of the PPC? What if it has longer range and less time between the command to fire and the actual shot, which in tabletop could be shown as reduced minimum range penalty or in Solaris 7 a shorter refire time.

In the mw5 trailer before mwo, or at least in the pre vis 2 trailer, there was a charge up in PPCs. In some stories using the Panther the Lord's Light has an iconic trait an insanely bright light in the 2 second buildup to fire (and note of 7 ton PPCs the Lord's Light in the depiction and description of the Panther showcases a reduced size PPC that was done by cutting /thinning it down and spreading elements of the weapon across the arm. It even has issues with the cables being pinched sometimes. This all ties into a spread out and reduced power box...that doesnt reduce its damage but takes longer to build up the energy to fire. It also has reduced heat generation both in the time it takes to fire (if a PPC fires instantly you feel that 10 heat all at once. If it built up gradually over 2 seconds you sunk it down to 8 by the time it fires and never see that spike. If you follow the rules for dedicated heatsink as described the Panther's PPC only generates 7 heat in the first place before applying cooling...but those 3 heatsink cant cool any other system as they are dedicated just to that weapon).

But already we have two fluff heavy weapons and can see how easily it could apply without even giving real thought. As well as at least two ways of interpreting a single weapon so if one way isn't as balanced or falls too far out of line we could try the other. So imagine when more serious thought is put in and real work is done on it.

Since economy is meant to matter I already had economic options and ideas too. For example ammo bins that dedicate space for spent shells reducing what you could bring and in exchange you can reduce reloading costs by refilling those shells as opposed to outright buying new ammunition. Coolant trucks to resupply spent coolant for ongoing missions. The little thingd that make it that much more immersive and add variety to your life...like when your tech screwed up the actuator on your shadow hawk's left arm and occasionally it locks up or fails to move quite where you want it. That's the sort of stuff I'm gonna work towards.

ideally I want to be able to take my experience and share it as a story that people want to hear what happens next. Dayz fell short in so many ways but that's how it became popular for a while. Tell a story that actually happened and people are so into it. Except I also want it to be fun to experience. DayZ was...if you had a vehicle and stuff. But then standalone robbed it all and kinda lazily did ****.

[MeiSooHaityu]

MechaBattler, on 12 February 2019 - 11:18 AM, said:

If the different manufacturers are going to be treated as a crappy weapon leveling scheme. Then that's gonna suck. I was hoping they would be sidegrades, not upgrades. Where perhaps the function of the weapon is different with tweaked stats. But if it's going to be a crappy leveling scheme. That's really boring and not especially rewarding. I think I'd rather just not have any weapon swapping at that point. : /

It's the same reason The Division and all those other loot scheme games are really boring! And why I disliked the gun mod system for Fallout4. It's trivial stat upgrades. It's boring, tedious, and an entirely played out mechanic. >:I

If they do something similar to HBS's BattleTech, it is a system that works ok for me. I like looking for the better weapons in my loot and in stores. I also like being able to decide what weapon works best for what mech and installing it appropriately.

Now this does seem to work well in BattleTech because there is different attribute improvements to each weapon depending on it's manufacturer. Some weapons improve accuracy, some apply additional stability damage, and some straight up do more damage.

If mechs in MW5:Mercs have a chance to stagger or stumble, or possibly even fall down (sounds still up in the air on the AMAs), then the stability damage to weapons would be nice. Damage always works, and as for accuracy...maybe this could be changed to be improved range or better weapon durability.

Some of these options are nice. In BattleTech, sometimes you just want to improve the damage output of a certain mech, or sometimes you want to make a mech that can apply a lot of stability damage to knock an opponent to the ground. Heck, sometimes that additional accuracy in weapons really helps the scrub pilots just hit something (really love this on an A/C20 to compensate for recoil).

If some of these ideas can be applied to MW5:Mercs (even staggering opponents with stability hampering weapons), it could add some nice value to finding these sorts of weapons.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Honestly I think one of the things that's been stifling Mechwarrior players, absolutely IS the level of customization we've been allowed to do without much real impact.

HBS Battletech at least in it's vanilla state, attempted to impress upon the players that... yeah, these huge changes you make to a mech, they take a LONG time... and from what it sounds like, MW5 is going along a similar path, where as time will pass and the like, do not be surprised if they take another page from HBS, and actually enforce downtime for repairs and refits. Because we've had it too good for too long if I'm honest.

We forget that, to even do something as "simple" as taking off a large laser and upgrading it to a PPC, the techs have to go in, route enough power feeds to the new weapon, adjust/modify the weapon housing to accept the new weapon... in the event of an ammo system, such as a missile rack, say you swap from LRM's to SRM's, you have to ensure you have proper ammo feeds from bin to weapon, that it'll accept the new ammo properly, ect. None of this stuff is easy, frankly the easiest changes that can be made, realistically on the field within the same day are: replacing a damaged weapon. moving/repairing armor values/location. That's it, and dear god, if you're attempting to upgrade your mech's standard internal's to Endo?! You're talking a potentially month long or more process as they completely REDO THE MECH SKELETON!

here in MWO, you pay a few thousand c-bills, and boom, your chassis is swapped... that's not how it really works in the Battletech universe that Mechwarrior is a part of... and we keep seeming to forget this... so I really think it's time that players deal with that fact.

And I understand, that there's a very, very large subsection of fans that just want to hop in their min/maxed robot and go blow stuff up, to that I'll say, you can still min/max your robot and go blow stuff up, now it'll just be a different type of min/maxing.

[Dale Grible]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 13 February 2019 - 03:41 AM, said:

Honestly I think one of the things that's been stifling Mechwarrior players, absolutely IS the level of customization we've been allowed to do without much real impact.

BS Battletech at least in it's vanilla state, attempted to impress upon the players that... yeah, these huge changes you make to a mech, they take a LONG time... and from what it sounds like, MW5 is going along a similar path, where as time will pass and the like, do not be surprised if they take another page from HBS, and actually enforce downtime for repairs and refits. Because we've had it too good for too long if I'm honest.

We forget that, to even do something as "simple" as taking off a large laser and upgrading it to a PPC, the techs have to go in, route enough power feeds to the new weapon, adjust/modify the weapon housing to accept the new weapon... in the event of an ammo system, such as a missile rack, say you swap from LRM's to SRM's, you have to ensure you have proper ammo feeds from bin to weapon, that it'll accept the new ammo properly, ect. None of this stuff is easy, frankly the easiest changes that can be made, realistically on the field within the same day are: replacing a damaged weapon. moving/repairing armor values/location. That's it, and dear god, if you're attempting to upgrade your mech's standard internal's to Endo?! You're talking a potentially month long or more process as they completely REDO THE MECH SKELETON!

I think we all could completely agree. It takes time to refit. Ammo reload and armor repair in the field. I'd go as far to say that leopard nor the jumpship is a "dry dock". You lose an arm off that shawk, too bad. Finish the contract without an arm or get a different mech off the leopard. Only way to get a full repair is back on outreach at a refit facility. However, maybe "refit facilities" are available with the contract you sign. Other incentives to sign certain contracts might be ammunition and travel costs paid for. IMMERSION! I second side grades on weapons.

Customization is against PvE so who cares if you min/max or want to go stock mech mode. We should be able to do either.

[Snakesh1t]

I'm hoping they change their mind on it, or release it as an option on launch....

[VitriolicViolet]

considering this is a single player game there is no rationale for their being less modification.

Reason being that literally everyone who wants to play the game with stock+ loadouts can, just dont use the full customisation options. then those who want to modify everything can.


It really doesnt make any sense to restrict customisation in a single player game. throw in the time and cost aspects from HBS's Battletech for immersion and then if you dont like full customisation just dont do it.


Its that easy, allow full customisation and those who prefer lore loadouts can just stick to those right?

[MeiSooHaityu]

VitriolicViolet, on 14 February 2019 - 01:10 AM, said:

considering this is a single player game there is no rationale for their being less modification.

There is some rationale behind it, and PGI has talked about it in their AMAs.

I am paraphrasing here, but basically they want each mech and variant to carry weight. I forget the example that they used, but it was something like...We don't want you to customize a mech to the point that the next new variant being released 10 years later has already been eclipsed by the mods you had done to the previous released variant.

Basically they want that new Endosteel variant to carry meaning because the standard structure one released previous is now older tech. If you can just put Endosteel on the previous one, it takes away the meaning of the newer variant's launch. Something like that, I am probably butchering this. PGI explains this better in their AMAs, so it is probably better to listen to that. I think NGNG posts them and Critical Rocket does good recaps of them.

Overall I get what they are trying to do. I think the sheer amount of mechs being put into the game, which is probably a lot more than any other game in the series (official anyway) is how I think they are banking on this working. The sheer amount of chassis that fall within that timeline should mean that a player should be able to get a mech for whatever there playstyle and goal is, and getting that mech is part of the fun of the game.

Is this going to work in practice...I'm not sure. I think I would have preferred a little customization similar to what HBS had done with their BattleTech. I think that would have been a bit more desirable for me anyway. It does help that there will be weapons of varying stats from different manufacturers, so that can add some customizability, if only just a bit.

In any case, that is the mindset PGI seems to have on it. We will have to see how that goes. I hope they relax the modding in the Mechlab a bit, but if they don't, I at least hope it isn't too bad to get into a mech that suits my desired playstyle without too much trouble.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 14 February 2019 - 03:57 AM.

[Grimm Shado]

I also get PGI's rationale behind limiting customization, to a degree, but I think limiting it such that your options for customizing a weapon are 1) replace machine gun with a more different machine gun, 2) drop the machine gun to increase armor (or add heatsinks?) is too restrictive.

n the December 2018 Mechcon videos they were having a rough time managing the stock 5 weapon groups on the Thunderbolt. You have a lot more reasons to want stock bracket builds because you're fighting combined arms rather than mechs only, but I have a hard time seeing LRM 15, 1 LL, 3 ML, SRM-2 and 2 MGs being a lot of fun. I'd like the option to drop the MGs and ammo to get an SRM6, or maybe an SRM4+heatsink. If the downtime and work cost were prohibitive, that would give people interesting tradeoff choices to make. I generally like MWO's hardpoint system, and I could see benefit to limiting that down some, but to me "SRM2? Only another SRM2 there bud" feels draconian to me.

I do like the idea of having strong reasons to care what variant of a chassis mech you're able to buy or salvage, and I could see that adding replay value within reason. But they've also talked in AMAs that mech salvage is expected to be a pretty rare event. If you can realistically expect to get only 8-10 total mechs in any career playthrough, that's only 4-5% of the total expected mech variants theyve stated (200-250). Having to play through 3, 5, 8+ times just trying to get to the mech variant that will do what I want doesn't sound like a fun time to me.

[MechaBattler]

I spent my free time on the weekend mostly playing Roguetech. They have more customization than even MWO has since it's further up the timeline and can mixtech.

I think I'm going to have to change my opinion. The novelty of having distinct variants is very quickly going to wear thin when you can't really change anything in a meaningful way. Customization is just so much more fun. Roguetech doesn't have a story. It's pure sandbox. If they didn't allow the level of customization that they do. Battletech would be dead for me. After I beat the campaign the sandbox was just too boring on it's own.

All the same I do look forward to at least giving it one go over. After which I hope the mod scene can shove customization back in.

[Koniving]

Grimm Shado, on 18 February 2019 - 10:10 AM, said:

n the December 2018 Mechcon videos they were having a rough time managing the stock 5 weapon groups on the Thunderbolt. You have a lot more reasons to want stock bracket builds because you're fighting combined arms rather than mechs only, but I have a hard time seeing LRM 15, 1 LL, 3 ML, SRM-2 and 2 MGs being a lot of fun. I'd like the option to drop the MGs and ammo to get an SRM6, or maybe an SRM4+heatsink. If the downtime and work cost were prohibitive, that would give people interesting tradeoff choices to make. I generally like MWO's hardpoint system, and I could see benefit to limiting that down some, but to me "SRM2? Only another SRM2 there bud" feels draconian to me.

There were two parts to that difficulty. The first part is unlike a Thunderbolt in the fluff, you cannot simultaneously track and attack two enemies at once without penalty for having to manage two aiming systems. One was automatic....once assigned it was done and done.
The second is I have yet to see where arm aiming and torso aiming is separate. Now I admit I haven't watched the video and I need to, so I'm going to go do it shortly. But given the fact that they used joysticks you'd think a second crosshair would be assigned to an onboard stick/POV thingy as even my cheap 40 dollar deal has one. If using my PS3 controller I'd assign aiming with one thing to the left stick and the other to the right, as throttle and turning can be handled with the shoulder keys.

I regularly handle 4 groups, though in truth any MW game before this only actually managed 3 groups, and in Solaris 7 it is revealed that its all any mech can handle is 3 groups and any weapons not in those groups are handled individually. I'll have to see how it handles, but really all one needs to do is drop the LRM/large laser when they get closer, it isn't that different from handling the Pretty Baby...back when MWO was far less alpha oriented.


Note the trick I did to protect my side torso in my final kill. I know it failed as someone else made the killing blow against me, I was able to prevent the enemy I was trying to kill from doing it and make the kill, while managing 4 weapon groups. Its actually a lot of fun... as long as everyone else is doing the same. Its when everyone is playing alpha warrior that the management is less fun.

Spoiler

Pretty Baby and Dragon Slayer, with Bishop Steiner.

Then again, one could simply not use that variant, or tie similar weapons together. Why not tie the 3 ML and the LL together? Or the 3 ML and the SRM? It works in MWO provided the target isn't too fast (and mechs are gonna be a lot less speed demony in MW5 mercs), don't see why it couldn't work in MW5.

There was the video where they left the dropship on foot, going toward a bar (and that's where it cut off). But I do imagine that junk yard sales for parts and potentially mechs will exist. Yes you could salvage mechs in HBS BT, but about half the time you probably had to go buy chunks of the mech from the shop to finish it. I think you'll be able to buy what you need to finish a mech. After all how would you get that brand new mech that comes out 10 years later? Certainly not gonna get it as battlefield salvage.. Can you imagine how hard it would be to find one? But since they're rolling off the factory line...

---
But yeah, for those that want it, there's mods to put it in.

The way I'd work it in would be something between past Mechwarriors, with things that will make them meaningful. However, I'm not a fan of "flat upgrades" where X is identical to W, except X is flat out superior in this element, and W was subsequently superior compared to any past version of the weapon before that. I've already given an explanation of how I'd go about it, though so I won't get into it again.

Btw under MW5 videos, one of the developers liked my comment about destruction, where I pointed out his quote about how they set destruction to the absolute minimum resistance so that things broke quickly for the trailers (and Mech Con 2018). That it is an adjustable value and trying to push through things with enough strength will resist your motion. (No mention if it'd cause damage but I would think it should depending on the materials). So buildings aren't gonna just collapse when you touch them with a machine gun as some have joked based on recent trailers/videos.

Edited by Koniving, 18 February 2019 - 12:38 PM.

[TheArisen]

Well MW5 is supposed to support mods so I'm sure a full mechlab mod will be made.

Edited by TheArisen, 20 February 2019 - 11:00 AM.

[Koniving]

TheArisen, on 20 February 2019 - 10:59 AM, said:

Well MW5 is supposed to support mods so I'm sure a full mechlab mod will be made.

The trouble is part of the reason it isn't having one to start is to avoid some of the visual obscenities of MWO. As such one should expect that with doing that will come a host of manual rework to existing models or copy/pasting retexturing mwo pieces into mw5. MW5 is using new textures and possibly reworked texture maps.

[TheLuc]

wow the customization options sounds so restrictive, its like chopping off half the game