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Trooper60709, on 23 September 2012 - 03:10 PM, said:
You also forget to add some way of joining or ranking up. I don't want some nooby founder already a commander and us grunts staying poor, underpayed grunts who get pushed around. We need a fair system of getting leaders who have good tactics. Also, if you want this system, you need to have a planetary map, a sector map, and different maps for the same planet to have any real tactical command. Also, pirahna games need to make a salery system. some people get in slums and don't have the cash to upgrade and repair their mechs.
Cash, depending on implementation, may not be an issue. Going back to the way eve online works again, alliances in that game have resources that are used to achieve their aims. This is either material and/or isk (eve online c-bills). What this means is that the way things usually work, is that your typical alliance soldier buys a ship and outfits it. If it is taken into combat to further the goals of the alliance and lost the cost is then typically reimbursed to the pilot who lost the ship. The actual pilot therefore loses no money and only a slight amount of time that it takes to buy a new one and fit it. Reimbursement policies vary between alliances depending on their economic power - there are rich alliances that reimburse pretty much everything, and poor ones that have fairly restrictive policies.
This is what I mean by having things that matter in the strategic game. Instead of having something that generates c-bills as it were, you could instead have planets that produce mechs. Say X mechs of Y types per week. Lose a mech? House replaces it, depending on the policies of that house. Of course it's going to be fitted in whatever way the house is fitting their mechs at that production facility, but you did get it for nothing, didn't you? IMO this is one of the best ways to differentiate mercs from house units - mercs have fully owned boats that they fit in whatever fashion they want, where houses have mechs produced for them in fairly standard variants. It also allows houses to offer merc contracts - say X mechs per week employed of Y type, or Y resources. It would be a good idea IMO to not only have mechs work under this policy but anything related - say XL engine production plants, pulse laser factories, etc. And of course, if the enemy takes them away, they're now getting the output instead of you.
Bet that motivates you to defend what you have and/or take it away from them, doesn't it? It's a simple, effective, and very powerful concept. If it works like eve does you'll rapidly find that what occurs out of game can be more important than in game - spies gathering information, grand strategic planning, psi-ops to defeat enemy morale (find a goon in this game and ask them about the eye of god), thefts of strategic and tactical resources - if you can concieve of it someone will try it. While constantly wondering if new recruits are actually spais gets kinda old, overall this is a lot of fun and adds layers to the game that are hard to even predict.
It's good stuff, and I highly recommend it for MWO.
