14 replies to this topic

[50 50]

When Scouting was introduced we got a nice little 4v4 mission added to Faction Play with some unique features.

What was quite exciting about it was how we could build up intel for our faction to unlock features in a completely separate mission. Those being:

• Team Identification
  
• Radar Sweep
  
• Long Tom

Team Identification and Radar sweep were certainly very useful and could give your Faction a nice advantage. Long Tom, well, it caused a problem.

From my perspective there was also an issue with how the rewards were applied to the entire Faction and should have applied at a more personal or preferably, the group level. (Given FP is about groups and teamwork etc)

So what is scouting about
Scouting is about collecting the intel to gain an advantage in another battle.
Currently it is an asymmetrical mission with one team tasked with collecting the intel, the other with defending it. What this then devolves down to is a light/medium skirmish with the after thought being collecting the intel.
Works to some degree.

How would it impact the mission and play out if it was symmetrical?
That is, both teams are tasked with collecting the intel, the first team to get 11 points summons their dropship for pickup and should they survive they get to keep the intel.
It's probably not going to change the fact that the majority of players will simply go at each other like cats in a bag and go for the intel 2nd.
However, what if eliminating the enemy team without collecting the 11 intel simply ended the mission and you only got what you had collected at that point or perhaps even nothing at all as the 11 point intel objective was not met?
Can still play the mission as information denial to prevent the opposition from getting it, but would having the benefit of the intel applied to your group add that little extra weight to the objective?

The benefits of Intel
Winning a battle benefits the Faction, however it gets done. But having that intel to get the advantage in the battle is something that benefits the players and should be an incentive for the players to scout.
I want to scout and get the intel because in the next mission I want to unlock a benefit to get an advantage.
For players that love scouting, perhaps they would like to use that advantage in their next scouting mission.
For players that love Siege, perhaps they would like to scout so they can take that intel into their siege mission.

The story line approach we have at the moment tries to accomplish this with the stages of the campaign, but this approach means it is not just applied at the faction level and therefore dictated to everyone in the faction but at a story level which dictates it to anyone who cares to play FP.

Ultimately, we could benefit from the mode being a bit more open and left to player choice or have it so that the stages of the campaign apply at the group level so that individually we might need to progress from one mission to the next.
However the benefits of success in each of those missions is something that could apply to our individual group.

To talk about Long Tom briefly.
Any feature in the game that takes the combat and killing of other mechs away from the players needs to be avoided.
Long Tom should have just been a little cinematic feature at the start of the mission.
On Siege for an attacking force, it could have destroyed one or more gates or turrets.
For defenders it could have destroyed an incoming dropship causing that dropship to be delayed giving defenders more time to setup.
No mechs were destroyed in the creation of this advantage, players still have to fight it out.

This is where having the benefits of the intel would be nice at a group level and something we could accumulate then unlock when we wanted to for our group. It might benefit the team overall, but it is also a personal reward and could be a feature to be expanded on.

[LordNothing]

longtom was great when it finally got the nerfs it needed. its initial stats seemed more like modders screwing around than something balanced from a professional studio. it should have maybe been more in line with the lore long tom, that is a 30 damage aoe weapon. id have also made it dependent on active spotting of targets, your team would need to either have locks on targets or have tags and narcs in play before the lt would fire.

the cd would be arming/repositioning time (stationary arty is a dead arty), and once the cd past it would then sit idle if nothing is lit waiting for locks, or fire on whatever mechs you have lit up at the time (perhaps limited to 3 rounds and never at the same target). arty spotting should also pay out as much as direct combat in terms of bonuses, you are still killing mechs, just with an external asset (arty spotting, arty damage, etc).

i think i would also have given the opposing team a side objective that can disable the arty, like a radio tower not very deep inside the base. so a team wanting to keep the lt asset in play would need to defend that tower and commit their forces further forward.

Edited by LordNothing, 07 January 2021 - 03:20 PM.

[Hanky Spam]

Bring back Scouting! It was a nice change to the regular modes (QP/FP) and promoted coordinated team play on a small scale.

Longtom is something I would only like to see back in Incursion game mode for FP because it would promote in this mode objective gameplay and that only limited to that mode.

[LordNothing]

im all for bringing back the goodies to fp, but make them based on whats going on in qp. sum up the victories of everyone carrying a specific faction banner. then for the 2 factions involved in the conflict, which ever side has a higher number of victories in qp gets the lt and other goodies.

scouting was pretty much fun as medium skirmish, but i never liked beacon rush smoke diving. i think it might be a good idea to add a 4v4 option to solaris and get rid of scouting all together. thus you keep the best part of the mode and get rid of the worst part. and just convert my scouting decks to fp decks or mc.

Edited by LordNothing, 09 January 2021 - 05:31 PM.

[50 50]

RE: Longtom.
I would be really hesitant to bring back Longtom as it was, I just feel that would be a really bad idea.
But given the work that went into it, I would also like to see these things get used which is why using a cutscene at the start of the mission, have a voice over for it and simply destroy the gates and/or slow down a drop ship wave I feel would provide enough of an advantage for the team that has unlocked it.

Should we get new tech in the game, perhaps with a timeline jump, then maybe we could see mechs get a new Artillery Hard Point and add things like the Arrow 4 and the various mech mountable artillery pieces so it's a proper weapon system on the mechs and player controlled.
I'm sure there are good and bad points to that but something that could be discussed.

What I would like to see more is this benefit of scouting and the collection of intel points get accumulated and activated at a group level instead of right at the top at the faction level.
Put a bit more functionality into the group screen so for the players that want to scout and get the intel points, there is a spot there where we can see how much we have accumulated while we have that group active and then buttons for each of the benefits to activate the 'buff' for the next drop so it's also something that could work in any mission, not just siege.

I would be great to also have some of the other missions have an additional benefit flow back to the group screen when you win the objective.
Conquest for example. What are those resource points for? ie. What are we doing a Conquest mission for?
Siege. What is the benefit of actually disabling the orbital cannon?
Domination. If we control that radar dish, what does that do?

At the faction level all we need is the win tally. All the rulers of the houses or the Khans of the clans would care about is: "Did you win? Yes? Great, we are 1 up in the tally to win this overall campaign."
But having some features at the group level that we have some control over and adds something to the planning and drop prep builds a bit more depth for us.

As for scouting itself.
Changing scouting to a symmetrical mission where the objective for both teams is to get the intel and get out would give more weight to the objective, we could go down the path of adding in the other modes like Skirmish, Conquest and so on to the Scouting queue. See how they play out.
However, given the small population, merging scouting with the invasion queue and working on the match maker to allow variable team sizes based on the lance structure provides far more flexibility and opens up some additional options which would be better for the game in the long term.

[LordNothing]

rebranding the longtom as an arrow iv might work. but base the stats on the lore values and dont make it a nuke, if anything make it only slightly better than the arty consumables. you can even use the same code with lesser values, maybe have an incoming missile model, something you can see coming like an airstrike (if the smoke landed behind you and your team didnt call it out, you are pretty much screwed, and have an audible/hud warning). especially useful is an in-game way for the opposing team to either block or capture the asset.

[General Solo]

They should put LongTom in quick play for immersion
Given to the last pilot on the losing side
Could call it Phyric Victory Longtom, then it can stay MOAB/FOAB grade level awesomeness

Edited by General Solo, 11 January 2021 - 11:57 PM.

[50 50]

LordNothing, on 11 January 2021 - 10:40 PM, said:

rebranding the longtom as an arrow iv might work. but base the stats on the lore values and dont make it a nuke, if anything make it only slightly better than the arty consumables. you can even use the same code with lesser values, maybe have an incoming missile model, something you can see coming like an airstrike (if the smoke landed behind you and your team didnt call it out, you are pretty much screwed, and have an audible/hud warning). especially useful is an in-game way for the opposing team to either block or capture the asset.

Potentially.
If they were to go down that road and have artillery pieces that could be equipped on the mechs then it should include some new firing mechanics and that sort of thing.
As a player controlled and operated item, it's a lot easier to make adjustments to the weapon stats with things like cool downs, heat and so on.
However, the weapons are BIG.
The Inner Sphere Arrow IV takes up 15 critical spaces, 12 for Clan.
An IS mech would likely have to be customised and have something like the Arrow IV as a locked item making the mech very specialized seeing as trying to split critical spaces adds another problem.
Long Tom doesn't fit at all.
The range of the artillery weapons is also significant and possibly impractical for use on any of our existing maps.

The scaled down versions might be something that can be considered.
eg:
Thumper Cannon.

This is a bit more practical as a weapon for a mech given tonnage and critical spaces essentially being an Autocannon 5 that uses an indirect fire mechanic. Similarly the Sniper Cannon being an indirect version of the Autocannon 10.
The various Mech Mortar systems might fall into this same category and I think we would need some new mechanics/hud options to enable weapons like this to work. Might be interesting.

However, this is all of a discussion on other possible options for new weapons on the mechs.

The Long Tom as a scouting bonus that then impacted every single Siege mission for the faction that had unlocked it was too far reaching in it's application. Hence suggesting the use of it through a cut scene to provide an advantage at the start of the mission. Accompany it with a new bit of narration:
"We have destroyed the gates with our artillery"
"We have shot down incoming enemy dropships with our artillery"

That said, making the benefits from the missions more personal may be a way to encourage participation. Your lance has scouted and made the effort to gather intel, your lance gets to use it and activate it when they want.
If that transferred with the group across into a larger mission like Siege or Conquest, then it's something that a group can then add to the team for that mission. It could add a bit of a social dynamic to the team building and it could give units some drive in planning for a larger assault and getting a company (12) of players together for the missions.

That to me would add more meaning to the missions and that is also why it would be great to see different benefits from the different missions and being able to utilize them at a later drop.

[LordNothing]

i mean id love to have artillery weapons in mwo, or any new weapons or any other source of novelty. but after playing some mods in mw5, i actually think that would be a terrible idea. id set up my lance on a ridge somewhere on a warzone mission, and we would slaughter till the ammo ran out. they would die before getting inside your range. it would kill brawling as a playstyle, or any kind of close in fighting. everyone would have to wait for the arty boats to die or run out of ammo to get anything done and then fight with severely damaged mechs.

Edited by LordNothing, 12 January 2021 - 06:12 PM.

[50 50]

I'm sure there would be a whole bunch of things to consider with adding something like that.
It would likely be a decent amount of work for minimal additions to the game so from that perspective it's not a great option.
There is maybe only one or two weapons that fit into the category that mechs can actually equip within the limits in MWO and those weapons are basically variants of the existing autocannons..... which with the same range you have to wonder what was going on when they designed them and why would you bother?
Sometimes it seems that some of the stuff from FASA was only half thought through.

What are your thoughts on having the benefits from scouting applied at a group level rather than the faction level?
Should other missions convey some sort of bonus?

[Damnedtroll]

IT would be a good idea to bring back Long tom if it's a 4 shots consumable for the the company leader .

Scouting was fun tho.

Edited by Damnedtroll, 13 January 2021 - 08:08 AM.

[Ignatius Audene]

stop talking about lt. You KNOW how this will end

[Khalcruth]

Scouting is a terrible, terrible idea.

All it did was give stupidly massive advantages to the clans, every single phase, because they have an overwhelming superiority over IS in the ight and medium mech categories.

You cannot have scouting and also have balanced play.

[Cichol Balor]

i never really cared for the bonuses but I really wish scouting would be added back. It was a good change of pace and led to a much different experience than QP or FP now any time we come back my group just gets burnt out on QP in a week or two and just ignore FP as its just waiting for 30+ minutes only to get stomped by the larger group. It would also give something else for groups of 4 to do limiting their impact on QP.

[Caboose30]

Hanky Spam, on 09 January 2021 - 05:11 AM, said:

Bring back Scouting! It was a nice change to the regular modes (QP/FP) and promoted coordinated team play on a small scale.

Longtom is something I would only like to see back in Incursion game mode for FP because it would promote in this mode objective gameplay and that only limited to that mode.

Yeah, that's something I noticed when I tried FP after about four years. Where did scout matches go? If they're gone, why do we still have scout decks?