61 replies to this topic

[Fiachdubh]

I like the way Mr. Inouye casualy slipped that in about the playtest.

Great story telling.

Edited by Fiachdubh, 27 January 2012 - 06:32 PM.

[Serpentine]

Honestly, I hope it's like Assault Tech 1: Battletech. That gives you the feeling of actually manuvering a heavy, machine of destruction.

[Helmer]

Great post. MORE like this please!

Reading it and just grinning.

[Bigamo]

humn... the scout mechs are lumbering too? i imagined that scout mechs would be realy fast.

actualy in my head i see scout mechs being super fast skill based and heavy/assault mechs being lumbering. and medium mechs being like... "call of duty"? lulz.

in my imagination:

Scouts = armored core

Medium = call of duty

Heavy/assault = world of tanks

i realy desire to play a scout mech, but just if i can use my ligh weight to actualy move and jump as a gremlin

if not i am SOO going assault lol

[Damocles]

Paul Inouye, on 27 January 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

In today's playtest I was in a Heavy.
...
My AC/20 is now empty.. I'm left with lasers

Now if this is accurate and also not a custom mech...what heavies have AC/20 and "lasers"
...
Axman
Shootist

[Helmer]

Damocles, on 28 January 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

Now if this is accurate and also not a custom mech...what heavies have AC/20 and "lasers"
...
Axman
Shootist

Good call. Unless it was a custom variant using Mechlab. Dubbed the "Troll Machine" variant from here on out

Edited by Helmer, 28 January 2012 - 05:23 AM.

[Odin]

Paul Inouye, on 27 January 2012 - 05:36 PM, said:

You ask for it... you get it..


First Gameplay Screenshot:

Spoiler

Pfft.
Thats for starters. No chance!

































































Hey you!

Tellme - please -
...is it really a screen shot in there?

[Mchawkeye]

CoffiNail, on 27 January 2012 - 06:20 PM, said:

Is not the whole website, you guys and the publisher all up here in Canada?

Yes, like being in another country is an issue for SOPA....

But that right up Paul did...sexed me up a little I'm not ashamed to admit....

Edited by Mchawkeye, 28 January 2012 - 08:03 AM.

[a rabid chihuahua]

Paul Inouye, on 27 January 2012 - 05:36 PM, said:

You ask for it... you get it..


First Gameplay Screenshot:

Spoiler

LOL , I was hoping for nightmission pictures,see you got your HUD takn out by a headshot also,must have been one hell of a battle!

[whiskey tango foxtrot]

Paul.......exellent.....this is exactly what i hoped the game would be.......salute

[Nik Van Rhijn]

With regard to the gameplay bit from Paul - odds are it was a Hunchback and he got the weight class wrong.

[Orzorn]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 28 January 2012 - 09:02 AM, said:

With regard to the gameplay bit from Paul - odds are it was a Hunchback and he got the weight class wrong.

Or he was in a Dragon that he churned through the mechlab to slap an AC-20 onto.

[Joanna Conners]

MechWarrior is about simulation combat. End of story. If that isn't what you want, you shouldn't pine for it; you should go play a different style of game.

[KingCobra]

You have to play the PC games to really see the difference in game physics and mech speeds in MW2 and expansions it was a slow plodding along Sim which is what it was meant to be games took hours to set up and play the setup part was because of the lack of communications programs like team speak.The play part could take up to 1 hour to Finnish 1 battle due to the slow mech speeds and lag.In MW3 and the one expansion pirates moon you had 10x the screen speed and model physics of MW2.Which was a real great advancement i thought mechs moved like they should slow and lumbering on turns and low speed movement then rapid when fully powered up and moving in a straight line.You had to DE throttle to slow down and turn and maneuver.Then you had MW4Vengeance and its expansion black knight and ill include MW4Mercinaries in this comment were in between MW2-MW3 as far as speeds go.In MW4 they made all the mech models from assaults to lights move on the screen at the same speed a assault at 45kph looked the same as a light going 140kph it was a real disappointment and to me a backward step from MW3.I personally would like to go back to the MW3 model where every mech model and class moved at there own speeds in relation to there mass and engines power.And also like i said make them move like MW3 did fast down the straight away but having to slow and maneuver to go in different directions and different movement actions.Another thing in MW3 i liked was the faster reverse speed and acceleration in MW4 reverse was so slow but then again backing up in MW2 was like parking a 40 foot yacht in a 20 foot wide river.

Edited by KingCobra, 28 January 2012 - 12:40 PM.

[MaddMaxx]

Bigamo, on 27 January 2012 - 07:17 PM, said:

humn... the scout mechs are lumbering too? i imagined that scout mechs would be realy fast.

actualy in my head i see scout mechs being super fast skill based and heavy/assault mechs being lumbering. and medium mechs being like... "call of duty"? lulz.

in my imagination:

Scouts = armored core

Medium = call of duty

Heavy/assault = world of tanks

i realy desire to play a scout mech, but just if i can use my ligh weight to actualy move and jump as a gremlin

if not i am SOO going assault lol

Quote

"As the scouts went ripping past me I was making my way to the front lines."

Seems self explanatory about Scout speeds.

I hope it is a new Heavy but the Dragon can be configured for an AC/20 with 2 ML's with +1T of AC ammo.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 28 January 2012 - 01:01 PM.

[Tyzh]

Ohman, I could hug you Paul.

[ice trey]

Well, 'mechs certainly aren't really there for rocketing, though the Jump Jets should be given a little more flexibility than they were given in Mechwarrior 3 and 4 ("Straight up in the air" is useful for poptarting assault 'mechs, but for most lights and mediums trying to use it to maneuver through rough terrain, it's often more trouble than it's worth), they're by no means meant to be flying like gundams or macross machines. That said, though, Lumbering is taking things a bit too far, as well. Even 100-ton machines can break into a run, and while it might not look much compared to a car going down the freeway, It's usually faster than your average residential traffic - hardly the "lumbering" that it's been depicted as in the Mechwarrior series. I think the whole image that mechs are big and sluggish were simply a biproduct of computer game code limitations, as well as the fact that those said games were often single player games that relied heavily on "Bigger is better" philosophy.

By extension, we're seeing a lot of that philosophy cropping up in the boards - people saying that 'mechs should be non-humanoid and should not have arms that serve as anything more than jointed weapons turrets. Admittedly, I'm seeing that as a cultural biproduct. While Battletech's roots are rooted in a handful of early 80s robot anime, the Japanese tend to have a different outlook on things in general. Much like the samurai's sword became his soul, other things, too, would become an extension of the wielder. What is more, in folklore, tools were believed to become sentient once they were 100 years old (See: http://en.wikipedia....iki/Tsukumogami). This is likely partially why Japanese robots are preferred to be humanoid in appearance.

Meanwhile, in the west, we have no such beliefs. Tools are things - they are not an extension of the self, nor are they sentient. As such, by and large, while there are some humanoid robots that are popular in the west (Transformers, Iron Giant), these tend to be self-aware robots, and not a vehicle. Likewise, more humanoid designs with human pilots tend to only be accepted if it comes at the cost of the human body itself, or is worn as a suit of armor (Which tends to cater more to memories of knights from centuries past). Our vehicle-robot-warmachines, however, are rarely accepted as humanoid. We tend to prefer robots that separate themselves from us. AT-AT and AT-ST walkers from Star Wars, Hercs from Earthsiege, and even some of the more popular Clan Omnimechs in Battletech forgo the humanoid outlines, the faces, and limbs. However, to the Japanese, I could imagine these to seem impersonal to the point of appearing to be mooks.

Just as an example, look at Macross, one of the most often quoted sources as the original unseen.

What were the Hero-bots? The Battroids. In Battletech, they were the Wasp, Stinger, Phoenix Hawk, and Crusader. Overall, most of these were heavily ignored.

As for the really popular designs like the Marauder, Rifleman, and Warhammer? The Marauder was the Glaug Pod - the machine of choice for a villain character, and the Rifleman and Warhammer only appeared as extras, to be forgotten to history. Heck, the only non-humanoid looking design that showed up in every series consecutively was the Destroid Monster (Inspiration for the Behemoth/Stone Rhino), and it's purpose in almost every series was to be a faceless illustration of the horrors of war as it fired "Reaction weaponry" (Read: Nukes).

What I suppose this means is that, due to our cultural beliefs, it shifts the "uncanny valley", making what would be appealing to the Japanese less so to a western audience - and vice versa.

While this information probably won't sway anyone's train of thinking, I thought it might be something interesting to consider - that your tastes are more likely shaped by your culture or upbringing, and won't always be absolute truths

Edited by ice trey, 28 January 2012 - 01:35 PM.

[Xake]

Reading the gameplay as described by Paul was awesome. I was grinning like Cheshire Cat.

[MaddMaxx]

I think many, myself included, see a 100T machine on the run as not the most graceful of beasts. Imagine a 100T Mech running 40kph and the stomping, near earth shaking impacts, each foot fall would create. Even the average man/women when running imparts absolute crazy amounts of down force when running.

A Study done shows that:

Quote

"
To answer the question, "What is the normal force on a human foot while running?"we turn to of biomechanics: the study of how the body moves.

• At the University of Oregon, G. A. Smith and J. E. Fewster did a study on the variability of the ground reaction force for slow running speeds. Nine subjects ran a series of five speeds ranging from 1.6–2.4 meters per second. The force exerted on the ground ranged from 1,038 to 1,314 newtons at a speed of 2.4 meters per second.
  
• A similar report done by the Z-Tech shoe company states that the maximum force can equal up to three-and-a-half times body weight. Therefore, a person weighing 670 newtons (150 pounds) would experience a force of up to 2300 newtons (525 pounds)."

Now multiply those forces by some 1300 (+/-) times. There is no "grace" to be had in that type of locomotion.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 28 January 2012 - 02:03 PM.

[Zervziel]

ice trey, on 28 January 2012 - 01:31 PM, said:

What were the Hero-bots? The Battroids. In Battletech, they were the Wasp, Stinger, Phoenix Hawk, and Crusader. Overall, most of these were heavily ignored.

As for the really popular designs like the Marauder, Rifleman, and Warhammer? The Marauder was the Glaug Pod - the machine of choice for a villain character, and the Rifleman and Warhammer only appeared as extras, to be forgotten to history. Heck, the only non-humanoid looking design that showed up in every series consecutively was the Destroid Monster (Inspiration for the Behemoth/Stone Rhino), and it's purpose in almost every series was to be a faceless illustration of the horrors of war as it fired "Reaction weaponry" (Read: Nukes).

While this information probably won't sway anyone's train of thinking, I thought it might be something interesting to consider - that your tastes are more likely shaped by your culture or upbringing, and won't always be absolute truths

Absolute truths, no. However the Wasp, Stinger, and Phoenix Hawk were pretty generic designs. the Marauder, the Warhammer, and the Rifleman all had their own unique designs that gave them alot of personality