First few missions after the father's death kind of perturb me for the little things.
Snow level.
All base turrets are hooked up to a single generator, across a huge area, in a factory that's been around for over a hundred years, in a poorly defended area.
Yet later when you meet your first wingman, they set up some turrets in under 24 hours with two separate generators.
We go through all this effort to steal three crates.
There's a weapons depo complex. Instead of stealing it from this piss poorly defended base of easy pickings for a huge payday, "I won't mind if you destroy it." and it's a mandatory objective.
But then the facility is completely empty... I feel like we got fed false intel, I'm not so sure if I should trust Jensen.
Level after that.
Raiders bully the civilian population of a factory because they're throwing their weight around to steal their product. Makes sense. You're called, they don't know you've been hired yet. They're using half a dozen tanks and multiple helicopters to butcher the civilian homes for absolutely no reason, with the most convincing "you've got to help us, they're killing us, there are women and children here." Okay you're a woman so that's already old news. No one is running for their lives from this destruction. The homes are empty. And immediately after the healthbar for their homes was gone because I accomplished that objective I levelled the place and nobody cared. No men, no women, and definitely no children to be seen. Can't even tell if their homes had heating or furniture... Hard to believe seven years earlier, PGI used to do easter eggs of cruise liners shipwrecked on the shore in Frozen City, or a fully furnished living room with a 1970/1980s TV, dirty couch, pizza boxes, coffee table with magazines including PC Gamer's magazine with Mechwarrior Online on the cover page, and other details in Forest Colony, or the golf course on the roof top of River City.
So I was half expecting a Firefly scenario or the first mission of HBS BT after your mentor's death in the tutorial where the first job you do gets you double-crossed by the people you did the job for. Nothing was really adding up. Everything pointed to I was gonna get screwed over, between the woman's so calmly delivered line of women and children and we're being murdered (suspicious much?) to how they have a jamming setup that conveniently doesn't jam communications in the slightest.
So I was expecting to get double-crossed.
I was expecting the job to be a load of ****.
But then I get rid of the jamming, and the raiders are upset that I was hired.. so they throw their lives away to completely ignore me while working to destroy the facilities that provide them with all their income (when they force the people working the factory to give over huge chunks of what is produced)...meaning they are screwing over their livelihood and doing so while ignoring the only threat they have to their lives... for revenge.
Next mission.
Lets kill the raiders and obliterate their base.
Nevermind that we're a minor mercenary faction with a desperate need for a home base and here's a huge home base ready for the taking, with reasonable defenses already built and a production facility to help keep some money flow in case if my adventures sour me into debt...
There's a Spider! (Funny it's a spider; I have vibes of the bandit story I shared where the people bullied by the bandits hid a Mech Taser in a farm, disabling the Spider, popping open the cockpit and dragging the pilot out to bash his head in with a shovel and taking it to fight off their oppressors...)
But... I'm in a Centurion without mods, and I'm able to chase this running Spider, gain on it as it runs away, and overcome it.
In a Centurion at 64.8 kph I'm going FASTER than the Spider...and as such the Spider was not a challenge. I even gave it a chance because I saw a couple of approaching tanks to be a bigger threat, and it ran away and I had to chase it down again.
My next encounter with other mechs was a bit less laughable, though. In a Javelin with one leg, no arms and bad shape, dealing with a Griffin without a way to order my ally around was... difficult. For the first time I had to really think about what I was doing.
Overcame the situation by going for the Griffin's PPC. After that...he was kinda pathetic but kept trying to fight me at close range with no comprehension of how screwed he was. Shame he wasn't given the option to surrender, or the intelligence to retreat and withdraw.
And my final encounter before bed.. I forgot to reload on ammo for the Centurion because I was expecting HBS Battletech level ******** of "I own a ton of ammo, it'll get refilled after every use automatically at no charge." WRONG! (That's a good thing but I wish I was informed beforehand). Go to stomp on a tank, a Hunchback comes around the corner. My new friend is murdered within seconds. I've got no AC ammo and 2 ML at sub 180 meters against a Hunchback is suicide. Retreat! So I shoot and run backward, fall off a cliff, get stuck. Get unstuck, take out a turret and leave my enemy on top of that cliff. I go around the corner, find the target city. Awesome. Oh, I need to secure the area 'cause I'm in bad shape. Kill some turrets, kill a tank. Somehow the Hunchback went the long way around and got in front of me in so little time that I genuinely think he teleported and is now closing at sub-300 meters after coming around a magic corner for that big dude to say "Some Fries, beeper booper."
Ammo explosion, one leg, 2 lasers..no lasers... Time to abort and collect my "at least I tried" pay.
No pay.
4 million in debt.
I have three medium mechs - but the firestarter with four small pulse cannons and two machine guns just rips schtuff up!
I got the los-tech by being an ******* - best not to give it away completely on a new game.
I use the medium lasers once while closing (or to shoot helicopters), then just smash anything with the short range stuff. I'm consistently getting more everything stats than my other three goobers who follow me around to soak damage for me.
(I'm running 160/160 ton missions -- Jvn-10F, CN9-A, VND-1r, and FS9-H.
I also have a jenner D, Shadowhawk 2d, and locust 3v (for when I really only have 20 tons left to throw away)
And my final encounter before bed.. I forgot to reload on ammo for the Centurion because I was expecting HBS Battletech level ******** of "I own a ton of ammo, it'll get refilled after every use automatically at no charge." WRONG! (That's a good thing but I wish I was informed beforehand).
Actually ammo *does* get reloaded automatically in MW5.
If not then probably your ammo was damaged or destroyed during last match and need to be repaired/replaced.
I've worked with it back in 1.5 and 3, 4 isn't much different just simplified in some regards.
Mine goes a bit further than that. Though I don't have to rework the tier system so much as work around it. Rename "tier" as "Rarity", disassociate with weapon loadouts of mechs of higher "difficulty" missions if it is associated, and then use "rarity 5" as "Omg I got something I'll never find again!"
Like the Rassal Blue Beam medium laser, which is canonically extinct prior to the Clan invasion so the one or more you might have in your possession may be the last of them in the universe.
Far as the weapons themselves...
Each weapon is given a distribution of weight (not in game but in balancing pre-planning for it), based on the PPC entry of BattleTechnology in which 3 tons of the 7 tons of a specific PPC is in the weapon's on board cooling equipment (before it gets to the heatsinks; this is why PPCs generate more heat in later versions of the PPC and rules when you deactivate the field inhibitor; you're robbing this cooling equipment of the time needed to cool the weapon before the heat of it gets to your mech), with a ton in inner protective metals (damage resistance), a ton in the actual firing device and 2 tons in coils, mounting equipment and the outer barrel.
These weight distributions are then considered against the most detailed and fluffed examples from Battletech to put literal weight assignments and value to gains and losses, and then these are used to govern the variants and the limitations of their changes to keep anything from being too overpowered.
From there, if a weapon, such as the Donal PPC has a longer barrel (extended range) and a blocky power chamber (more umph), then that weight comes at the cost of other elements. As such the Donal PPC gets more umph and longer-than-normal range, but could have gotten this by sacrificing some of that cooling equipment, or some of the protective metals, etc.
Rather than straight gains, it's a tradeoff. You get something, you lose something.
Coming back to MW5's tier system being renamed to rarity, the rarer it is the more extreme these tradeoffs are, giving high rewards for high sacrifices further heightened by the risk that you might never be able to replace it.
Or I could use it to indicate economic tier, with 1 being the most economic options and 5 being the most economically unsound options.
Or I could use it to indicate the difficulty of use, given that some weapons have charge mechanics, pre-fire delays, long wait times before shots while others can fire immediately, spam fire, and are very simple to use.
Less weight in an autocannon barrel, more into the loading/firing system. Instant carbine AC for faster firing rate at the sacrifice of long-range accuracy (due to shell factoring less velocity from the loss of barrel length with the associated equation to establish velocity given the specified amount of propellant for a shell of a specific caliber. The longer it takes to reach the destination, the harder it would be to hit that target at range.)
So each weapon is given a value in what the elements weigh, then traits or effects such as recharge time (firing rate of energy weapons), cooling rate (since the weapons themselves can overheat separately from the heatsinks, replacing the cooldown bar with its own heat bar but being about the same mechanically, except how hot the weapon is would then determine risks like UAC jam rather than RNG; i.e. you have a bar that tells you exactly when you will jam and if you want to avoid it, you stop firing and let it cool or you can risk it.)
Thus, player choice, player risk, player skill is put at the forefront as opposed to RNG. For burst fire spread, it's simply going to be a factor of the recoil as it fires (shells will always go to the crosshair dot when fired, so during recoil the camera and crosshair moves away from the center you established and this is what pulls the shells away from where you were originally aiming).
From there, weapons are given traits that fit particular playstyles. Closer ranged weapons with either spammy firing mechanics favor faster-moving brawlers, while closer ranged with heavier hitting firing mechanics suit more calculated fast-moving hit and run specialists. Then there's weapons with beyond normal range, weapons that are in the middle, weapons with mechanics that work better for cover-based fighting, there are enough variations that pretty much any player could stock up on weapons dedicated to that playstyle, or combine different ones to suit the needs of the moment, across all weapon classes.
Most of it is lore based, meaning it is as lore-friendly as possible (yes, even the Shotgun-MG "Scattergun Light" is lore-based.)
Beyond the weapons with tangible lore, the next step is characteristics of the manufacturer. For example, Mydron and Imperator sound like generic automatic weapon manufacturers of ACs, both are "quality" manufacturers, both use automatic weapons, both have burst options and make some full auto ACs. But there's a difference.
In comparison, a Mydron Model B AC/10 versus an Imperator AC/10.
Cost per ton of ammo is identical for both. Cost of the weapon, repairs, etc. is also identical.
Imperator-B AC/10.
Spoiler
Shell, 90mm diameter.
Shells per ton of ammunition, 100.
Cost per shell, 60 c-bills.
Shells per reload and damage rating, 10
Firing type: burst. Burst size - 10. Firing rate: 8 shells per second.
Damage per shell, 1 against 1x armor values. (With the decimal unfriendly change: 3 to 3x armor)
Time to achieve expected rating: 1.25 seconds.
Maximum possible reload window within 5-second limit: 3.75 seconds.
Cooldown time modifier: 2 seconds. (This is the time that it would take to cool down to zero weapon heat after firing one volley.)
Actual reload time: 1.75 seconds (this is to change the cassette/magazine of ammunition to the next one in the line).
Minimum time to reach double rating: 4.25 seconds.
Minimum total time fire, reload, fire, and to finish the second reload: 6 seconds.
Leftover time in 10 second time slice: 4 (this makes for the mandatory cooldown time for overheating the weapon).
Heat per damage rating: 3.2 units.
Heat per shell: 0.32 units.
Heat modifier: 1 unit (additional heat for double firing, used to factor the risk of overheat, jam, etc.)
Total heat of double firing: 7.4 units.
Shell velocity: 1152 meters/second. (calculated automatically with an equation)
TT ranges for expected accuracy of all shells hitting one body section of a 50 ton mech:
short 120 meters, medium 300 meters, long 480 meters, extreme 630 meters.
Range until kinetic force damage can no longer affect BAR 10 armor: 1260 meters.
Range at which the shell will self-destruct with the explosive element: 1890 meters.
Time to reach TT extended 0.546875 seconds. Time to reach SD range: 1.640625 seconds.
And there's stats I'm not listing for reasons. Such as where they are sold in abundance, what the overheat risks specifically are or the specific overheat value, maximum possible repair cost, weapon cost, total ammo cost, health of the equipment, etc.
Mydron Model B AC/10
Spoiler
Shell, 80mm diameter.
Shells per ton of ammunition, 120.
Cost per shell, 50 c-bills.
Shells per reload and damage rating, 12
Firing type: auto or burst. Firing rate: 12 shells per second.
Damage per shell, 0.8333333333 against 1x armor values. (With the decimal unfriendly change, 2.5 to 3x armor)
Time to achieve expected rating: 1.0 seconds (minimum).
Maximum possible reload window within 5-second limit: 4 seconds.
Cooldown time modifier: 1.75 seconds. (This is the time that it would take to cool down to zero weapon heat after firing one volley.)
Actual reload time: 2.25 seconds (this is to change the cassette/magazine of ammunition to the next one in the line).
Minimum time to reach double rating: 4.25 seconds.
Minimum total time fire, reload, fire and to finish the second reload: 6.25 seconds.
Left over time in 10 second time slice: 3.5 seconds (this makes for the mandatory cooldown time for overheating the weapon).
Heat per damage rating: 3.0 units.
Heat per shell: 0.25 units.
Heat modifier: 0.75 unit (additional heat for double firing, used to factor the risk of overheat, jam, etc.)
Total heat of double firing: 6.75 units.
Shell velocity: 1080 meters/second. (calculated automatically with an equation)
TT ranges for expected accuracy of all shells hitting one body section of a 50 ton mech:
short 90 meters, medium 270 meters, long 450 meters, extreme 600 meters.
Range until kinetic force damage can no longer affect BAR 10 armor: 1200 meters.
Range at which the shell will self-destruct with the explosive element: 1800 meters.
Time to reach TT extended 0.5555555556 seconds. Time to reach SD range: 1.6666666667 seconds.
Spoiler
(Note, I'm aware Sarna uses 80mm for Imperator, and that the novels used 80mm for Imperator, but while looking for a difference, the Imperator SMG gave me the inspiration I needed. It also worked better for balancing a system that doesn't have overpowered calibers, as 80mm being 1 damage per shot meant AC/2s using a 90mm shell could be firing a single shot at 1.25 damage, or 2 shots at 2.5 damage, which basically would make all other AC/2s worthless, and 90mm fits better as the 1 damage mark.)
About BAR 10: [spoiler]
Barrier Armor Rating of 10. This is the value of mech armor and tank armor. Softer targets such as LAVs, VTOL, etc. will have "BAR" below 10, with infantry having a "BAR" of 1 in heavy armor and 0 for civilians if I opt to throw that in. So when a weapon's kinetic energy will no longer affect BAR 10, the potential damage from kinetic energy (the punch of the bullet) is lost. Since these two ACs use HEAP ammo, the AP factor is lost and so any damage potential left comes from the high explosive against mech and tank armor. Though it will still do full expected damage against lower BAR ratings, meaning if you land shots within the Self-destruct range of the shell, you'll still obliterate infantry forces but at that range they'll be dots of maybe 2 or 3 pixels in size. Since HEAP AC shells explode, you got an area of effect to work with.
About weapon overheat.
[spoiler]
Rather than a traditional cooldown timer, the weapon builds up heat tracked separately from the primary heat bar. It has a few points to be marked, such as the "safe" range, the "too hot" range where the weapon will stop firing unless you're in override mode, and an overheat range where the weapon can still function but once you unspecified areas within this bar your weapon could temporarily or permanently jam, the barrel could melt (disabling the weapon), or the weapon could explode. The exact things that happen depends on the weapon type.)
And these are two very similar standardized ACs in the class ten family, so imagine the very different ones such as the lore-sourced indirect-fire-capable autocannons. (Demolisher's gonna be terrifying when even indestructible objects won't stop it from firing its twin Chemjet AC/20s OVER them like a howitzer, especially since it has the largest caliber AC/20 in the entire Inner Sphere. But fear not, because you'll be able to salvage them too! Assuming you don't overkill the tanks and obliterate the goods.)
Also for fun comparison, AC/10 velocity in MWO currently: 1,100 meters per second.
Imperator B
Shell velocity: 1152 meters/second. (calculated automatically with an equation)
Mydron Model B
Shell velocity: 1080 meters/second. (calculated automatically with an equation)
For AC/20s, my models come out as quite a bit superior to MWO's in terms of velocity, but for AC/10s these come pretty close to MWO's current velocities. Though when I originally produced these two variants, their velocities were a fair bit superior to what MWO had at the time.
It's also set up so that if I tweak a modifier, the whole setup recalculates everything to give me the exact stats to fill into MW5 for the weapon and expected results. So I could change the ammo type, the caliber, the firing rate, the barrel size, the feeding mechanism, etc. and it'll fluff everything out and give me new stats. I find this to be important because rather than cherry picking stats based on personal preference, I have a series of equations determining them based on the input of the primary factors constituting the weapon and the ammunition elements (when applicable).
After the lore-fluff is exhausted, I'll fill in the rest based on what little information there is to help fill any untapped niches.
Wow, I'm humbled by your lore knowledge. My plans were very, extremely basic and modest. You... keep doing your thing.
And yep, trade-offs are always good. Since there are some manufacturers that make better products, some weapons could have slightly better stats, but should be more expensive and rare.
I'm looking forward to see what you will come up with.
Wow, I'm humbled by your lore knowledge. My plans were very, extremely basic and modest. You... keep doing your thing.
And yep, trade-offs are always good. Since there are some manufacturers that make better products, some weapons could have slightly better stats, but should be more expensive and rare.
I'm looking forward to see what you will come up with.
I did a lot of research for it, because while the basic tabletop has UACs jaming, the fluff has many references that ACs jam, that MGs generate heat (namely "prone to overheating" and jam), etc.. So it was important to find a way to make those things a reality in a believable way.
Then, there's the fact that there's an absolutely insane amount of weapons (66+ IS standard medium laser models), laser/PPC crossbreeds (Cyclops Eye Large Laser is half-PPC and has a kinetic punch).
There's autocannon shotguns called Flechette Autocannon ammo and reduced range, like a shotgun.
Meanwhile LBX is described as a flak-like cannon that deploys secondary explosive munitions which is why it has a superior range. Something like this, but instead of tungsten pellets it's little bombs.
(the shotgun description that stuck was a way to describe the 'scatter' of multiple hit locations). Its standard ammunition is 3x more expensive than AC/10 ammo, why if it is just firing regular ammo? ...because it isn't. The "shotgun" effect of Mechwarrior 2 was more due to game limitations... but it stuck.
While current to the game's timeline, there's also another kind of less common autocannon, the Flak autocannon... which is basically just another ammo really that fires flak shells (exploding in proximity to a target and launching lots of not explosive projectiles around to take down aircraft). Great for dealing with pesky VTOLs.
Mech Mortars are also in the current timeline, though they haven't been mentioned in a Mechwarrior game since Mechwarrior 1.
They actually get popular again shortly after 3040 because of the rising presence of AMS, because AMS doesn't recognize mortar shells due to a lack of propellant.
And that's not to mention the 5 or 6 types of missiles in the timeline, including Listen-Kill missiles which prototype in 3029 in Steiner space, appear in mass in 3038-3039 in Davion space, and die off before MW5 ends due to everyone having a counter-measure by then.
Speaking of counter-measures, there's an anti-laser counter-measure in use in the 3020s that when deployed reduces the damage of laser fire in a small area...
Back to missiles, even under the moniker of "standard" SRMs and LRMs there are variations, such as the ballistic LRM which soars high into the air and cuts off the thruster to free-fall with its wings guiding it on its way down; portrayed on the Catapult in a novel, this variation of standard LRM was less accurate than other ones due to lacking thrust for strong turns, but it went undetected on its way down (no alarm, no AMS reaction as it comes into range, provided it stopped its thrust before coming into detection range).
My point... is that there's so much untapped potential here that just does not get justice.
And the universe and franchise...deserves some justice for once.
Side note, on the manufacturers... Quikscell comes to mind. Cheap products, cheap unskilled labor, you're lucky if you have all the pieces to put part of your weapon together because somebody had a bad day and didn't feel like putting something in. Got a Hetzer artillery vehicle [sporting the150mm Crusher Super Heavy Cannon AC/20...with the AC/20 being both a direct-and-indirect fire artillery piece] from them? Welp, hope they installed the alternator, or the sights, or connected the fuel line... When the crew would rather keep an old vehicle than be given a new one because "at least we know the old one works", you know the company is cheap.
Though it's one of several. Bulldog Enterprises, which makes a few weapons and vehicles, is an example of a pretty "ok" manufacturer with unremarkable stuff, which uses Quikscell as a licensed business partner to help expand where they can sell their stuff.
Then on the opposite end of the spectrum, Intek which has licensed its energy weapon products to many manufacturers is known for the longest ranged and most energy efficient lasers, holding records that were only beat when another company introduced the first ER Large Laser -- which had the same range, but didn't require "twice as many shots as the average heavy laser to get the job done." [large lasers frequently get called heavy lasers in the 1980s early 90s]. People were okay with the extra heat because it meant they didn't have to stay exposed nearly as long to return fire. (Multiple-shots to get the damage rating, a pretty common theme actually.)
So yeah, plenty of diversity in quality and quirks. There's even fluff about the size of weapons, such as the Defiance A3M Large Laser being compact due to then-rare fiber-optic knowledge without loss of power output, with the point that this made the large laser small enough to fit into a cramped space in a Battlemaster's shoulder... giving us an instant lore friendly medium-slot large laser. So we'll even have weapon variants that can fit where other variants of a weapon class cannot.
My point... is that there's so much untapped potential here that just does not get justice.
And the universe and franchise...deserves some justice for once.
SO MUCH untapped potential.
BTW, PGI needed to hire you. If not as a developer, at least as a consultant.
So many real companies are just casually in Battletech, some of them founded during BAttletech's big lore push such as Diverse Optics founded in real life 1987. It specializes in laser technology.
A manufacturer in the BT universe that goes by Krupp Intersteller and Krupp Armament (something) is kinda noteworthy because all their lasers in artwork are depicted with long barrels.
In real life, Krupp is a barrel manufacturer, noteworthy for producing high quality barrels made of what the internet refers to as "Krupp Steel".
And while looking up laser bloom and methods to counter the negative effects of it as well as feasibility of the anti-laser counter -measures that take advantage of it, I found a number of research papers with one back to the 1960s where they are trying to map out laser bloom, and many dating back to the 1970s and 80s, one of which determines that the realistic range of a laser weapon powered by a nuclear reactor is about 270 meters is due to thermal bloom from the laser heating the air, causing it to burn and reducing actual damage below the expected damage of a given laser weapon. https://hal.archives...220574/document
One of the simpler ones to read.
In the 90s/2000s, we learned the trick to overcoming bloom is to not use high powered lasers meant for mass damage, but low powered sustained lasers meant to pierce very tiny areas in strategic points of a target. Thus we have real lasers today, though apparently we had real lasers as far back as in the 1960s. Its amazing what you'll discover when looking stuff up. They just weren't practical because their range was ****. One of the earliest attempts at a genuine laser weapon, a "death ray"... the range was 295 feet and significantly lost damage potential beyond that range.
I plug that into google and said feet to meters and I get...that's 89.916 meters...round that up.
Huh...
LRM min range is based on a mention in regard to the US Army's MLRS field artillery, where more than a few coincidences come up. Such as the minimum range is 180 meters, the name of the MLRS is the M-270 (270 meters), and its speed is 64 kph. Though the actual size of the missiles, to carry so many, was kept to the size of one being shoulder launched. The ballistic LRM featured in the first few novels is also based on MLRS rockets. A different novelist gave them locking mechanics.
Sound familiar?
During that search, I also found one about Lockheed Martin trying to solve atmospheric issues with using lasers while moving.
And just now, this.
Why is that important?
Lockheed Martin was founded in 1995.
Lockheed as a company and Martell brand lasers (originally designed by a guy with the name Martin) were in the Battletech universe as early as 1987...
But seriously there's so much cool stuff that makes me wish for a Mass-Effect journey in the Battletech universe on foot and in vehicles... where you can see mechs as the 'kings of the battlefield' in awe...rather than see one get stuck on a ledge.
Reading about this sinking ship just has me bummed....
Oh well back to RDR2, Rockstar managed to do a cross platform 65 hour story based game with a unlimited online game...but that is what happens when devs give a damn.
Reading about this sinking ship just has me bummed....
Oh well back to RDR2, Rockstar managed to do a cross platform 65 hour story based game with a unlimited online game...but that is what happens when devs give a damn.
PGI has what? 40 staff? Rockstar has 2000. You really can't compare the two companies.
It's pretty funny. Almost all the reviews of the game absolutely smash the poor AI.
Also, pretty much the number 1 complaint on MW5 feedback -channel on Discord is poor AI.
I'd like to say: I told you so. Because I told you so.
And the cherry on the top: they actually improved the aggressiveness of the AI, so it's slightly less awful than it was in demo. And some people said THAT was "serviceable". I'd really love to see how the chat would look like if THAT AI was in the game now...
PGI has what? 40 staff? Rockstar has 2000. You really can't compare the two companies.
Not to mention usually 6+ years building each game, with a foundation to build on each time as much of the AI code is just reused and enhanced. And a 40+ million dollar budget.
It's pretty funny. Almost all the reviews of the game absolutely smash the poor AI.
Also, pretty much the number 1 complaint on MW5 feedback -channel on Discord is poor AI.
I'd like to say: I told you so. Because I told you so.
And the cherry on the top: they actually improved the aggressiveness of the AI, so it's slightly less awful than it was in demo. And some people said THAT was "serviceable". I'd really love to see how the chat would look like if THAT AI was in the game now...
On some of the handmade levels, a few pathing scripts could help to hide the AI's issues. Some of the appearances of vehicles were done to look cool but then the areas are too cramped or the nav mesh (particularly in the abandoned power facility level [immediately after the tutorial level], is just pretty poor.
Spawns also have poorly scripted habit of requiring you to be within a certain area or range, but not actually producing the vehicles that are supposed to be in the field if you're looking where they were supposed to be. So the instant you turn around, you'll be faced with PGI's Tactical Genius.
The funny thing is they actually allowed for quite a range for them to be spawned, but you'll be well into their spawn points because you spend the entire time approaching the area while facing their spawns.
What I wanna know is how the hell the Hunchback came around the corner for the second time, after I fell off a cliff, left him far behind me, and somehow he went around a mountain side and got ahead of me by the time I skipped through the target area's buildings...
I know the good guys can teleport, the demo taught me that.
But damn it'll be frustrating if the bad guys can too.
For spawns, I'm surprised they aren't taking advantage of their vehicle dropship.
Particularly when you're trying to save the factory from the raiders... They're pissed that the civvies hired a merc. Okay, great, send in the vehicles on the dropship because we know that from whatever side of the planet they're hiding in they can't possibly drive all that way anyway.
Jackal Noble, on 12 December 2019 - 06:03 PM, said:
Where'd you get that, Wikipedia?
https://www.google.c...Q4dUDCAo&uact=5
Google search.
I see the error of my ways there after opening the wikipedia page.
Lockheed-Martin is 1995, Lockheed is 1926...
So it merged in 1995 with whatever the Martin side was.
Naturally it seems both Lockheed (before the merger) and the Lockheed in the BT universe both also manufacture planes.
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