20 replies to this topic

[9erRed]

Greetings all,

There are a few missions that have indicated repair bays that the player can access.
- Are there any usable repair bays on the missions to kill the target or destroy areas?

I have seen tall buildings with pulsing vertical bars in the middle of the sides, (doors?) within Enemy bases. Are they just fluff and art work or something that can be used?

- I ask as there was that early mission to recover "stores" hidden in buildings that were also showing pulsing bars on the sides.
- Is there anything within a located mission base that can interacted with? I haven't seen anything yet. Anyone find something usable? That the Leopard hasn't told you about before or during the mission.

You would think that with all those buildings guarded and walled there would be something that can be "liberated" for a different purpose. Repurposing "stuff" is quite a common Armoured or Calvary pastime during operations. Just saying!

9erRed
Aim True and Run Cool

[LordNothing]

i only ever seen the one.

[Dan Nashe]

As far as I can tell they are almost unused mechanics. Probably something that was planned but there wasn't time.

There are the ones in the tutorial.
There is one repair bay on like the very first mission.
There is a mention of some kind of generators, but they don't feature in the game, although people have reported seeing them, it's always easier and faster to just kill the turrets.
The very last mission features two repair bays. They are a major plot point and mentioned repeatedly during the mission, and marked on the map when you get close.
The 4th to last mission features something you can select after the enemies are destroyed. Like the repair bay in the last mission, E causes something to pop up with a prize in it. You have to complete it to finish the mission.

But as far as I can tell, no one else has ever found any loot in any of those containers or any other repair bays in random or campaign missions. I certainly haven't seen any.

I can kind of see why, I like the idea of repair bays in warzone missions, but then they have to make the missions even harder and longer and you will have to use them to get the same money. I'm not sure that would be fun in a random warzone mission or other missions. The ones I thought were too long (high level raids, defense, warzone) would be worse if you added 2 waves and a repair bay. Not to mention the AI (any lancemate?) can't use repair bays, which makes the fights with repair bays even more gimmicky. Maybe a warzone option where they are ONLY activated after the final wave. That might be okay because waves after the final wave always feel completely optional (and a waste of time) to me. So they would be a neat feature for those who want to see how far they can last in warzone (like one unlocks every 5+N waves, where N is the number of repair bays unlocked. But ONLY if they did not unlock until after the final wave.

I also wouldn't mind a little more time before the bonus waves that would come with an intentional pause to let you use a repair bay. I find myself just getting long-range mechs and camping where I know the dropship will spawn. I freaking hate that the bonus waves always land right on my path after the final wave if I am out of position.

Since in every mission the waves are finite except warzone (where you control the base and can game the system by leaving a unit up) and almost infinite in demolition (they are actually finite, I think?) might get tedious if you had to kill all the enemies and then go around looting all the containers. Although as long as you could shoot them open without destroying the contents, it might not be too bad. But still, it could feel like a tedious clean up procedure to have to go around and loot all the boxes after killing the enemies.

It might be neat in demolition missions. But it would have to be an infinite enemy type situation to avoid it just being a chore. (If you can kill all the enemies and then loot, they should just give you the darn loot at the end of the mission and not make me walk around in my atlas opening every darn box).

And maybe they tried it and after play testing no one liked it, rather than just being a "we ran out of time" situation.

[Vellron2005]

9erRed, on 03 February 2020 - 03:47 PM, said:

Greetings all,

There are a few missions that have indicated repair bays that the player can access.
- Are there any usable repair bays on the missions to kill the target or destroy areas?

I have seen tall buildings with pulsing vertical bars in the middle of the sides, (doors?) within Enemy bases. Are they just fluff and art work or something that can be used?

- I ask as there was that early mission to recover "stores" hidden in buildings that were also showing pulsing bars on the sides.
- Is there anything within a located mission base that can interacted with? I haven't seen anything yet. Anyone find something usable? That the Leopard hasn't told you about before or during the mission.

You would think that with all those buildings guarded and walled there would be something that can be "liberated" for a different purpose. Repurposing "stuff" is quite a common Armoured or Calvary pastime during operations. Just saying!

9erRed
Aim True and Run Cool

I've finished the game and am now on my second play through.

I've only seen usable mech bays on two missions, both of the campaign type. (I will not spoil you by telling you witch missions)

Yet, the mech bay models show up on most bases, especially when you play demolition missions. You can never use them. Sadly.

It is a massively under-used mechanic, something I hope modders will fix.

I mean, you can't really be like "im in your base, fixing my mech, with your stuff", but at least when you're defending, it should be viable..

Edited by Vellron2005, 04 February 2020 - 02:09 AM.

[Mumuharra]

Yes, it is really a tricky feature to program a button or menue to order your lancemates to use the repair bay.
But it would force the developers to think about some real mission design.
So don't expect to much from them.
Mission design is none of their strength.

[ACH75]

1) Repair Bays and existing mechanics not used enough

2) No Union Dropships

2) No mech startup sequence cockpit auto-camera during launch like it was on MWO

3) No external startup effects like hot air ventilation like it was on the shadow hawk trailer

4) No dropship extraction cinematic with mechs getting onboard through the doors

The lack of those things dramatically reduce the immersion feel...

[Aidan Crenshaw]

While it's sad that the assets used in the tutorial are not exploited further in the campaign or general gameplay, I've never found that repair bays do much for the whole immersion thing and rather add to the arcade aspect of any MW/BT game. I mean, it takes days or weeks of labour to repair and replace damaged mech components, unless you find a magic house somewhere that does the job in mere seconds?

[Nesutizale]

It would be indeed quite strange if you can have an instant repair during a mission with an automated system but it takes days, sometimes weeks to repair a mech even in an industrial HUB.

[Vellron2005]

Yes, mechbay insta-repairs are kinda wonky immersion-wise. I always imagined them as super-expensive robotic nano-repair machines, with on-site resources ready.

Typical repairs might not actually last long.. getting the required resources does. And note that from what we can see, Fahad does it all himself - no extra help, except those robotic arms..

Edited by Vellron2005, 05 February 2020 - 02:54 AM.

[Nesutizale]

I think you could get away with the automated repair bays if you say that in about 30-60min they just slap on some armor plates to fix the biggest holes but leave everything else as is.

As for Fahad, wasn't there a line that he needs some help? Anyway the hangar in general is just to empty. Even a small merc unit like we have would most likely need more people.

[Hawk_eye]

Nesutizale, on 05 February 2020 - 07:29 AM, said:

As for Fahad, wasn't there a line that he needs some help? Anyway the hangar in general is just to empty. Even a small merc unit like we have would most likely need more people.

Agreed.
Back in the old days of lore, usually a single tech was assigned to each mech with a MasterTech overseeing the whole show and helping out with crucial/difficult repairs - and a whole team of AsTechs was assigned to each tech, so, at a minimum, I'd expect to see perhaps 4 to 6 people working on each mech.

[Five by Five]

I only saw usable repair bays in the first and last missions. The repair bays break the mechanics of the game. Armor repairs that take a couple days and cost c-bills in your hanger are free and take 20 seconds in a repair bay? Makes you wonder what your techs spend all their time doing doesn't it?

[ACH75]

Repair Bays aren't Lostech so more efficent repair tools ? anyway they do not full repair your mech unless it's lightly damaged.

The player mech took the most fire if it plays "the tip of the spear" but i noticed that IA tend to almost equally

damage your mech on every location so repair bays should be very usefull in complex and long missions and should be

placed after some level section and not accessible while engaging

[Nesutizale]

What could be interesting for the multi mission - missions would be that as part of the missions you have to protect those repairbays on the field so you can repair between missions. Should you loose them you can't repair.

That would make the mission much more interesting as well as giveing you an option to do some field repairs.

[Dave Forsey]

I was reluctant to use in-mission repairs for exactly the reasons outlined above.

At one point we thought about only using them to partially repair armour, the conceit being the application of a fast-hardening spray epoxy that had no penetration resistance (back when we thought we might do that).

[Vellron2005]

Dave Forsey, on 05 February 2020 - 05:16 PM, said:

I was reluctant to use in-mission repairs for exactly the reasons outlined above.

At one point we thought about only using them to partially repair armour, the conceit being the application of a fast-hardening spray epoxy that had no penetration resistance (back when we thought we might do that).

You can implement mech repair bays on defense missions no problem. The rationale behind them could be that they use the fast-hardening epoxy you mentioned - but make it so that it does not repair the mech fully. It repairs one "color" of armor, so for instance, if your armor is red, it goes back to yellow and if you have no armor on a component, you get red armor.

It does not reattach lost limbs or repair destroyed weapons. Also, it can only re-arm 1/2 ton of ammo for each ammo type.

That would be much more believable.

Naturally, let us send our lancemates to such mech repair bays..

[Aidan Crenshaw]

and make their use/availbility cost CBills or negotiable.

[Nesutizale]

Sending lancemates to repair would be nice indeed.
As for the cost of such repairs. Could that be linked to the battle damage cost thing (forgot the name, the third option you can negotiate) so that this would make more sense to negotiate?

[Five by Five]

Repair bays to reload ammo, that I can see, maybe restore 5 or 10 points of armor. But if those are the only uses, then they are barely worthwhile. I'd rather have more friendly defensive turrets (or other units) rather than repair bays.

[Nesutizale]

Maybe missions where you can have some tanks as reinforcement could also be nice. Maybe also in the form of a lance that you can order to a certain position.