80 replies to this topic

[MeDammit]

Hot drops can be very influential and even decisive if used properly and only for jump capable forces that had been deliberately been kept in reserve. Attacker or defender should be able to use this tactic because where it gives you the advantage of reinforcements where and when you need them, you begin the fray with an under strength force in comparison to your opponent who elected to commit all units at once. An Atlas with a parachute? That thing would be friggin HUGE. And one LRM salvo away from useless. Jump capable mechs only. And possible leg damage even with them.

[guardian wolf]

IC: *** is that? Looks like a meteor, holly SH*T IT'S AN ATLAS. *SPLAT* Well apparently he needed a bigger parachute, oh wait, I shot that hole in it, oops.
Seriously though, what I'm seeing is somewhere along the lines of this. Before game, Lance A, volunteers for jumpin duty, and the battle begins. Commander A sees something that he could exploit by hot dropping Lance A into the fight a location unavailable by local ground troops, so he sends scout A out to mark the point for the hot drop. Scout A gets to the point and marks it for the Dropship that is carrying the hot drop mechs. Dropship A, then moves into position to drop the mechs. Now, Lance A, has a choice, they can either go in soft, and risk AA fire, or they can go in hard, and risk losing the entire lance. Since they do not have the module to properly gauge a hard drop, and they have not practiced it so they decided to go in soft. Then Lance A comes under fire from Team B's AA, and they are heavily damaged coming down. So now the Attackers have gained the position, but at a cost, and the Defenders have the advantage on numbers, along with the fact that they can also now take care of their flanks thanks to the turrets that can not only shoot mechs out of the sky, but also attack targets on the ground. hmmm.... sounds like the commander of the attackers has his hands full.

[FinnMcKool]

Vocabulary ,? anyone?
words have meaning but we dont know what they are.


(Ive been forbidden to be a distraction), consider your freedom of speech, before you lose it like me.

[Dlardrageth]

If you want to go on about vocabulary/semantics here, FinnMcKool, fine. Let's look at the darn thread title for starters. It states there quite clearly:

Quote

[...]mid battle reinforcements[...]

So that reads for me like sit 10 minutes around twiddling thumbs till being able to enter the (20 minute) battle that might have been decided by now. As one of the two options. So my statement remains - would I want that? Hell, no! Give someone else that job to sit around on his hands. Any unit commander suggesting to me to take that (stupid) reinforcement role is going to get an earful. Think it is a particular bad idea for MWO still.

See, that was all about the vocabulary/semantics used in the original post.

Edited by Dlardrageth, 03 February 2012 - 06:09 AM.

[guardian wolf]

It is a voluntary position, and the commander can call in these mid-battle reinforcement, whenever he so chooses, if the commander is reported KIA before the drop is requested, then the reinforcements will just drop at the nearest concentration of friendly forces on the map, and will take a negative effect because now they don't have any guidance coming in, along with everything else. If I didn't explain it good enough in my previous posts please tell me, and I will do so again.

Edited by guardian wolf, 03 February 2012 - 07:10 AM.

[Dragorath]

I would certainly go with "it depends". If you are in an defense position it wouldn't make sense at all.
If you are attacking a planet why not? Should be the decision of the commander. You could get some benefits if you do so like the defense troops are getting out in a few waves to defend, but your troop would be scattered. So there is the opportunity to earn your guerdon as commander. This way it can be beneficial, but also disastrous. Furthermore, the defensiv troops may not get any information where you are, of course not because you don't know either. The drop ships could be ordered down at a later time point.
Let's think about it, the defense troops are coming out to play with you and when they left their base the dropships will land in their cosy home base.
You could decide not to do a hot drop. The enemy knows more or less your starting location and all troops are completely in defense positions. Maybe the defense troops get also the information about your landing zone and are already on their way to kick your *** while you are boarding out.
If you keep this possibilities in mind a hot drop is giving both sides some points to think about their strategie and make it much more strategic.

A license for hot drops? Who said something about academy cadets? Would the be in the frontline? I don't think so. Would they be in defense, yes maybe, but no one makes hot drops as defense, so far you do not belong to relief forces. And here again, if you are in a relief force, you would be faster on the battlefield, but scattered, which is beneficial in this case? Both could be.

[Dlardrageth]

guardian wolf, on 03 February 2012 - 07:09 AM, said:

It is a voluntary position, and the commander can call in these mid-battle reinforcement, whenever he so chooses, if the commander is reported KIA before the drop is requested, then the reinforcements will just drop at the nearest concentration of friendly forces on the map, and will take a negative effect because now they don't have any guidance coming in, along with everything else. If I didn't explain it good enough in my previous posts please tell me, and I will do so again.

Oh no, I got that point. I'm just not sure it is worth the extra development effort at this point. I mean, look at it from a RoI perspective. How many players/customers would really want to sit till mid-battle for matches that last a mere 20 minutes? And basically give up half their playtime because they are "reinforcements"? I wouldn't personally. And I doubt enough others would to make it worth it for PGI to pour money into that.

Apart from some minor issues like what happens if the commander never calls up the reinforcements because he went e.g. AfK or fell asleep at keyboard. Or what happens if none of the players wants the reinforcement role but the commander insists on it? How to handle it exactly when one team is completely wiped before the mid-battle point? Do they still get reinforcements to reinforce a non-existant team?

I can to some degree see and understand the reasoning behind this, I just personally don't think it is important enough currently. Something like this might be more suitably introduced once we get an expansion that allows for full-fledged "campaign play" with multiple linked battles. And introduction of logistics elements as well. (Yes, I know, asking for much with that, but didn't say it has to come right now or even this year.)

[KuruptU4Fun]

I'm sure NOONE wants to wait as a reserve lance to wait to see if you're going to be used in a battle for 5-7-10 minutes. I'd drop playing if that was going to happen in game, I don't even want to drop in immediately to support another lance. Reason being that if I'm being called in, odds are we're already losing. I'm not going to get much salvage or XP dropping into a match that's already halfway done or worse. I would however "upon being called to defend a planet". Start a new match that would go towards the win-loss percentage of that planet in terms of which house will control it.

Edited by KuruptU4Fun, 03 February 2012 - 10:00 AM.

[MaddMaxx]

I know I shouldn't, but here it is.

Quote

"Commander A sees something that he could exploit by hot dropping Lance A into the fight a location unavailable by local ground troops, so he sends scout A out to mark the point for the hot drop. Scout A gets to the point and marks it for the Dropship"

How did the scout get to a place unavailable to other local ground troops and why after he/she did manage to get there, did he/she not come under fire from those AA batteries?

morbid curiousity made me ask, really.

[Adino]

I think the Hot Drop has to be an option. However, like some have said, it has to have limitations. AA guns, Orbital guns, air superiority and so forth. There are so many mitigating factors of when a Hot Drop would be feasible in a RL situation that I think if those factors were incorporated than HD is a good thing. Just to summarize some of the finer points:

1. I agree that a pilot needs the skill and maybe jumpjets module made for HD AND the commander has to have the skill to call it in.
2. HD mechs should be part of the intial Lance or forces. Also the dropship should be part of the usage and ton allocation when bidding for the contract. For example: if the contract is paying for up to 200 tons and you said you want to bring in a dropship, that dropship should allocate some of the tonage.
3. There should be passive interdiction and active/live interdiction. Passive would be in the intial planning phase. Did we take out their orbital guns? Do they have any AA? Do we control the air? Active/live would be a module that detects drop ships and a tareting mechanisms so that LRM and ER lasers can target that drop ships and blow it out of the sky.
4. NO RESPAWNS! However, if a pilot ejected and there was a mech with a dead pilot due to a lucky shot and the mech was still functionaly, and right next to where the other pilot's parachute landed, would that not be cool if he could climb in and pilot that mech? Assuming he had the skills.

[Steel Talon]

Most players wants:
x vs x battles where x=x
premade team vs team (faction vs faction)
freedom in team mech composition
ballanced gameplay
no respawn mechanic

Fulfilling all these things at once, is NOT possible, one or more will always be excluded by others

Edited by steel talon, 03 February 2012 - 05:33 PM.

[FinnMcKool]

OK Ive calmed down now (Taken all my meds)
I agree that this would be a cool tactic , but I agree with Dlardrageth, "who wants to sit around and wait for the commander?"
I think that many are so used to playing TT or mech commander games we only see the big picture , not the little picture of individuals, playing the mechs.




sorry Ive been forbidden to speak here.

[Roughboy]

NO respawns, ABSOLUTELY. Hey baby this ain't Hello Kitty. You die when you die, makes it real easy to tell who the winners are, and when the battle is finally over.

[Unruly Gentleman]

Alaric Wolf Kerensky, on 01 February 2012 - 04:53 PM, said:

I hope you realize 'Mechs come down fast enough in a drop already to make it risky, and hitting a hard, movable object such as a BattleMech would probably mean the end of your own machine as well. IT is likely you would crush your own legs in an attempt to do damage, and when that impact inevitably toppled your enemy to the ground, you would find your own 'Mech tipping to a rotated position 10+ meters in the air, and then crashing into the ground with whatever momentum you have left from the drop. You have now taken critical damage, with both legs mostly destroyed, and possibly your left arm embedded in the right torso. Good luck recovering while the enemy lance begins to pound the sorry heap of your wreck, in a position where it is impossible to punch-out without making your pilot a red smear upon the ground.

None of what you just said makes DFA out of a Dropship any less cool. In fact it possibly makes it more cool.

[DragonClaw]

i can see force recons units doing hotdrops befor the dropship lands. fallowed by the assault units to take the lz. then after the dropship lands the definnders units come out to play. and aaas is not a factor beeing hotdrops should be done about 500 meters for a true hotdrop. it as nothing todo with respawning. if there is respawing. it should be at the dropship(attacker) or mechhanger(definder). not at some random place on the battlefield.

[guardian wolf]

I'm not saying you have to wait five minutes, you could call it in immediately if you wanted to, but it is another tactical option when you use a command role, therefore, adding to the Attackers and Defenders, attackers get hot drops, and defenders get turrets

[Steel Talon]

This will serve well as reinforcement machanics, when battles will not be time limited, but limited by amount of victory points a faction can gain
The new arranged team will drop each X minutes to already running battle as reinforcements

Question is, prevent player from joining a queue to battle he died in?

Edited by steel talon, 04 February 2012 - 04:41 PM.

[guardian wolf]

Yes we would prevent that by forcing a cam to follow one of the surviving pilots, unless he ejected, and then he could get into one of his remaining mechs.

[Konrad]

This could be a really cool mechanic if implemented properly. Instead of looking at it as "re-spawns" if the total drop weight is not met in the first drop then the rest of that weight could be distributed against another drop.
That would mean that you couldn't just drop in 4 more Atlas's. Check out how you do drops in MC2, do something similar to that.

[Steel Talon]

some reinforcemets are needed for planet assault mode, in 12vs12 1 life mode, defenders will have huge advantage by fortified position