137 replies to this topic

[Davison]

Mechwarrior Horse, on 08 September 2012 - 02:55 AM, said:

I was actually thinking along the same lines. Clans are meant to be socialist anyway, they mostly barter and warriors are just assigned what they need for their mech.

Not sure if honour would work as straight currency (e.g prestige points in say, panzer general) or just be a general level- if you are "exalted", you get access to better gear. If you are "unblooded" you get basic gear. If you become "dezgra" you'll get the castoffs.
Suppose you could work it like the ratings in elite,0 points was "harmless", going up through ranks to "elite", i.e precisely how many honour points you have really doesnt matter, just the general level with better stuff available at milestones.

I think this could also serve to enforce zellbrigen.
Steal a kill? thats - honour at the end of the match.
Gang up on one mech? -honour.
Defeat an atlas in a dasher? BIG honour.
Swat a jenner in a daishi? well, that not very impressive is it?

And so on. I have to admit that even after reading the jade falcon trilogy i'm not 100% sure how zell works. Is zell satisfied with unit vs unit bidding and solo duels are just a bonus? can't see how TAG and semiguided lrms/ arrow 4 fit in otherwise.

As a quick explanation, Zellbringen is one on one dueling. Highly ritualized by the Clans as a means to not waste warriors and machines in the same way the Inner Sphere does. Basically, you pick an opponent, challenge them, and stick to him or her until one of you goes down. Nobody helps you. You dont interfere with anyone else. Arrow IV and even LRM heavy fire support fits are both highly uncommon and frowned upon by the Clans, so supporting fire has little place in Clan style warfare... Now... This wont really work well Clan vs IS... Since the IS will mass their fire and start into one mech at a time. Hence, the numbers I offered, one star versus two lances should be about right firepower wise. Heck, thinking about it, I'd divide up inter-Clan and Clan vs Inner Sphere warfare a bit more. Clan style fighting and Trials would predominate the Clan players home space, while its more of an anything goes attitude vs. the Inner Sphere. For clarification, when it became clear that the IS would not follow zelbringen, the Clans mostly dispatched with it during the invasion when fighting most of the House troops.

That said, the idea behind the split currency would probably need to be more dynamic than C-bills, taking into account weight of you and your opponent, weather they are Clan or IS, and weather or not anyone else makes major contributions to downing them. Mistakes happen, and I'm not one for penalizing someone for some stray shots, but laying into another of your fellow Clansmens targets repeatedly should devalue that kill greatly, if it gives any Glory at all.

Edited by Davison, 08 September 2012 - 05:48 AM.

[buttmonkey]

i suspect people love the clans so much for their mechs and tech, not for their new world order style of living.

[Badgerpants]

for me it's the mech's and the tech, pure and simple, great looking stompy death machines and ultra high (in universe) tech weapons. heck the Clan Er Medium laser puts the standard Large laser to shame, same range, slightly less damage for just over half as much heat! then you get the Heavy Lasers, Pew Pew Goodness! Well time to stop drooling and move on.

[mouzerius]

A.K.A i want only mechs with whitch i can win every fight because i have the best of the best stuff even if i am not the best pilot of the game.....

[El Bandito]

I prefer to be a Merc than a Clanner but I would swap my Atlas for a Timberwolf in a heartbeat even if I am losing on 25 tons.

Mmm, Timberwolf...

Edited by El Bandito, 08 September 2012 - 08:33 AM.

[lonewolfsx]

I'm a clanner myself but I'm not a big Timberwolf fan (probably a rare one). Back in MW2 I always sided with Jade Falcon and disliked the warden philosophy of Wolf (at the time).

Let's face it, eventually everyone with any amount of c-bills will be using mostly clan tech, even if on an I.S. chassis a bit down the road, just like mechwarrior games in the past. They've already decided that it's 3049 right now (so the Clans are already invading the periphery... people seem to forget that.), and an invasion-era game is by far the best time in the BT universe (in my opinion) especially for a large-scale faction oriented game like this. Even if clan tech is expensive to buy (I don't see how they'd do it through salvage since that's not how the salvage system works in this game), the player base will happily play 10 or 20 rounds in their IS mechs, even losses, to afford their preferred clan mech.

We should have servers where some battles are IS-only vs IS-only though. It always bugged me in MW3 how the Clans used IS mechs in the beginning (owens, strider..) and in MW4 how the little backwater planet militia apparently had a bunch of Mad Dogs stockpiled away... that's just not realistic.

I wish they'd had a better game plan for rolling out the clans... or maybe they do and haven't told us yet.

Edited by lonewolfsx, 08 September 2012 - 10:25 AM.

[verybad]

Faeron Wolf, on 16 August 2012 - 12:56 PM, said:

Better than the corrupt feudal economic slavery the Inner Sphere finds itself in..

Umm, no. Clan warriors often outright ****** lower caste people...with few if any concequences. The Clans are far more similiar to slavery using than the IS.

The Clans are inhuman psychopaths created by the at least a bit (stark raving insane) nutty son of Aleksandr' Kerensky, Nicholas. Their culture is based on dominance, their economy is communism, and their cultural goal "to conquer the IS, recapture terra, and reform the Star League is doomed to fail.


Clanz R teh Fail!! !

(They do have cool toys though)

[Ometochtli]

I think were all forgetting something importing in this discussion... how the timeline applies to the game. Personal Its already getting old staying in heavy cover and just waiting for your team to open up with gauss riffles. I cant even imagine how badly this is going to degenerate with streak LRM 20's, or ER PPC'S. Then again with optical magnification....why would we play any other way?
Whats sad to me about all this is that with all this rich history the developers managed to capture the military doctrine of the battletech universe(whether that be intentionally or not). The problem with that is its completely missing the elements of infantry, armor, and air, so what they got was a reflection of doctrine alright...one missing 3/4 of the elements that allowed the inner sphere to fight the way it did.
What Im curious about is if....no, when the clan are introduced. Whats going to be the incentive to playing the inner Sphere? they are so technologically advanced in comparison to the innersphere that on an even playing field skill wise IS players have virtually no chance, the advantage in damage lower weight and heat generation is simply too great. Having played the table top for years, Ive found that to even the playing field the IS forces have to have a 20-30% weight advantage to level the playing field.
So anyway this last paragraph is more how I feel then fact.....So what worries me about all this is the simple fact that the biggest advantage comes in the extra range in clan weapons. Thinking about the current meta (even though the variety of gameplay is limited due to the stage of development the game is currently in) Its extremely hard for me to imagine it changing at all. And its sad for me since I find the current meta....boring. I wish I was the only one that felt this way too, cause I really want this game to be good. But Im the last of the 5 people I know that either got beta keys or a founders pack that is still playing. And honestly Im not compelled in anyway to play at all until there is something, anything added to gameplay. Just disappointed, but very hopeful.

[Tarnish]

Incunabulum, on 16 August 2012 - 12:39 PM, said:

...who the heck can have a ****** for a society with a rigid class system that eschews scientific and technological advance...

Conservative Americans.

[DirePhoenix]

Hayden, on 16 August 2012 - 12:53 PM, said:

As a guy firmly stuck in 3025, I think the dev team is missing the boat by starting the game so close to the clan invasion. They could have easily spent a year or two in the 3025-3049 era, which has the advantage of being much easier to balance than the mess after 3050. The clans are too popular not to include, but I think by chomping at the bit for clans so early the community misses out on some of the most easily balanced elements of BT canon. I suspect the timeline will only go forward from the release date, and so I and others like me can kiss off the 4th Succession War, War of 3039, and the numerous other small scale conflicts taking place in this time frame.

I actually think that the original setting of the MechWarrior reboot (that morphed into MWO) would have worked out best. Set the game in 3015. Middle of the 3rd Succession War. No wacky Clan Tech to balance out. Just 5 Great Houses battling it out in the Inner Sphere. A period in time that the lore hasn't covered much more than "The Inner Sphere is at war" would've given us a game setting that would've been OUR game, not re-hashing a script that has been read a million times already and beaten into the ground. As long as all 5 Houses remain standing, we'd be free to draw our own borders wherever we want for at least 10 years of game time.

Everyone already knows the story of the Clan Invasion. Unless they change the story so that the Clans don't invade in 3050 or they allow us to just throw away everything that happened in 3050 and write our own lore, we're basically riding on a set of train rails here. And as it stands now, the House/faction aspect of the game is going to be pointless since the Clan Invasion is going to be starting at right about the time this game supposedly launches (technically the invasion has already started but they won't start actually be entering DC, FRR, and FedCom space until first quarter next year), and then all the Houses magically decide to drop their grievances and join forces against a common unstoppable foe like some sort of ridiculous children's cartoon (oh wait)...

[Corsair114]

From a marketing and advertising standpoint, starting right before the Clan Invasion is the level-best strategy they could have taken. It lets them launch the game, get a little ways through the rocky startup part where they're bug-killing and getting everything up and running and hammered out before putting out a big patch that smashes a large number of bugs and adds Clan 'Mechs and tech to the game. This then lets them put out a large promotion with the Mad Cat (Timber Wolf for you clanners) plastered all over the front to reel-in people who have hazy memories of MechWarrior's most widely known 'mech.

[Deathz Jester]

Jost, on 16 August 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

It's not the possibility of conflict. It's the OP tech and the imaginary superiority. Most often, clans are preferred by people with (justifiably) low self esteem.

This

+ 9,001

Edited by Iron Harlequin, 08 September 2012 - 05:16 PM.

[Shylock]

Star Ace, on 16 August 2012 - 03:40 PM, said:

What I do not understand is how clan tech can be implemented without seriously unbalancing the game, because most powergamers won't adhere to any sort of honor code, Zellbrigen or otherwise. Some players only play to win, and will get whatever advantage they can to do so (the IS mentality with the Clan firepower). I cannot imagine most Clan opponents not ganging up on IS Mechs with superior Tech. It makes sense in the tabletop game, since things can be balanced, but in a game where a few members of the population care about power more than the lore, I wonder how will this finally play out.

Note that I am not saying clans are bad, or their 'Mechs "suck", whatever. I of course don't like their eugenics stuff, but I do like some of the Mechs. I just don't see people role-playing the clans; they will probably powerplay instead.

Hope the above doesn't come offensive, as I am sure some people in here would love to roleplay their favorite clan faction when finally available.

I suspect that the earliest phases of the clan invasions will not be played out by Gamers- including the fringe planets subject to the original invasions. I imagine there will be Comstar traffic reporting the early phases, and we will be able to play clans at the same time Clan technology is released for the IS pilots. In this way, the Clan culture fans can get those factions, and the star systems in question would be added to the game. IS guys can use the clan tech on our chassis- and as much as I love the Vulture/MadDog and the Summoner, I would try to stay the course of the RP and use IS chassis. Love me some Clan Elemental action though...

This is a hypothesis of course, but it makes sense to me- hope I expressed it well enough that the points came through.

[Jmb]

Frankly, I hope they add some unappealing aspects to Clan Mechs, like costing more to maintain, limited access to their weapons, etc., etc.
As for the whole 'honor' BS, that only applies if you are a vat grown Trueborn. Anyone else, no matter how skilled or how capable, is nothing more than a Freebirth. They even stack the odds against Freebirths in their trial of position to be granted the rank of Mechwarrior. Highest rank of the Freebirth is only Star Commander (think Lance leader), and they rarely, if ever, go into battle against other clans or any other opponent that could give them 'glory', and even then it is rare for them to be in anything but Second-line mechs.
They also have a great deal of politics both inside and outside their clan, between the castes and other such things, so they aren't so honorable there. The invasion of the Inner Sphere is more of a race for Terra, where the clan that conquers Terra first gets all the power of the clans, as ilClan. Wardens, like the early Wolves, wish to protect the Sphere from within an without, while Crusaders, like the Jaguars and later Vlad's Wolves, wish to conquer all the Sphere and make all bow down to them.
If there is one thing that hasn't changed it is that 'Nobility and Honor' is usually a false cloak to justify war.

[buttmonkey]

well there will be new IS tech also as the clans arrive. i read on the forums somewhere that mechs like the hatchetman and bushwacker (one of my favs) will be released the same time as the clan tech. i know, the clan tech is still superior but at least some IS stuff should come as well

[Hades Trooper]

Hayden, on 07 September 2012 - 11:10 PM, said:

And I want you to have your Summoner and Behemoth, too. But the thing about a timeline is that I doubt it will ever go in reverse. As in, once the clans arrive, they and their technology will be in-game for the duration. Which is fine. But before that, I kind of hope we get a bit more of the pre-clan, pre-lost tech gameplay. Then we can move on.

well i'm sorry the IS v IS is boring. From the feedback and threads so many people want the clans , i'm sorry to say your so much in the minority that your outta luck.

almost every IS mech sucks, every clan mech is better when comparing weight classes. Yes there will be some who cry power gamer but i don't give a rats arse. My summoner is awesome, and i want it now. and so do soo many others than your just gonna have to deal with it and stop moaning like a headshotted pilot about targetting computer's being unfair.

Should we all sit around in the dark ages just because a few people think it was the good times, when almost everyone else thinks 3049 is just when things are getting interesting.

If you like the dark ages so much then i'd suggest go play Mechwarrior 4 some more and live in those days

[Hayden]

Hades Trooper, on 09 September 2012 - 09:12 PM, said:

well i'm sorry the IS v IS is boring. From the feedback and threads so many people want the clans , i'm sorry to say your so much in the minority that your outta luck.

almost every IS mech sucks, every clan mech is better when comparing weight classes. Yes there will be some who cry power gamer but i don't give a rats arse. My summoner is awesome, and i want it now. and so do soo many others than your just gonna have to deal with it and stop moaning like a headshotted pilot about targetting computer's being unfair.

Should we all sit around in the dark ages just because a few people think it was the good times, when almost everyone else thinks 3049 is just when things are getting interesting.

If you like the dark ages so much then i'd suggest go play Mechwarrior 4 some more and live in those days

Well, this is a bit more backhanded than I'd have hoped for. My point was pretty simply: the clans should be in, and given the timing the clans will be in. But I also was hoping for a bit of an earlier start than 3050. I take no issue with the game progressing, and I certainly don't want to stop you or anyone else (myself included) from being able to experience playing with/against the clans. I think you misunderstood my tone.

Anyway, I don't have a use for MW4.

[Snowcaller]

Removing the comment.
Two wrongs don't make a right.

SC

Edited by Snowcaller, 11 September 2012 - 09:07 AM.