17 replies to this topic

[Mautty the Bobcat]

Hopefully you all like this idea as much as I do. I've always enjoyed Mechwarrior but was tired of every mech looking exactly the same and tending to carry pretty much the same weapons. I hadn't read about this anywhere, unless I missed it, but I was thinking that adding in the concept of modular components would really make this game stand out from the rest of the Mechwarrior IP.

In all previous installments, each mech was pretty much set in its design and model where only specific weapons could be attached to each part. i.e. If your Mech had an arm that was meant for lasers you and anyone else could only mount lasers on that arm.

If you read through Battletech sourcebooks, or Mechwarrior novels, there are different variants of mechs as well as mechs that have had specific components changed to fit a role. i.e. a Buchwacker that has had its left arm replaced with a missle-system(Trial Under Fire Ch. 1), or any of the 'variants' from battletech sourcebooks/the wiki.

I believe having these options would give the game a great sense of variety between the same mechs so that not every pilot of that mech is running almost a copy of one another like it has become in Mechwarrior 4.

The ways I could see this happening are either by allowing components to be modular and interchangeable between the different weapon types with weapon room/type predetermined between part as to balance them; or by creating set mech variants with parts changed already.

Overall, the real decision would be up to the devs as I'm entirely sure that using either of these systems they could figure out how to make them work much better and easier than I could by taking 5 minutes to suggest it.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 09 February 2012 - 02:03 AM.

[DarkTreader]

Well, there's reference to Variants based on some of the Dev information, which leads a lot of us to think that variants will be allowed, but not a full MW2-4 style mechlab.

Along with that... it almost sounds like you're talking about making all mechs OnmiMechs... which would not be good.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

MW2-4 style mechlab is exactly what I'm saying should be strayed from. The ability to customize what weapons are on a mech has always been done in MW games.

My suggestion was to make mech components customizable, such as taking the ballistics arm off a Bushwacker and replacing it with a missle system (Trial Under Fire, Ch 1).

Things like this that would occur to real (fictional) mechs within the BT universe and Mechwarrior novels. I'm just tired of every mech looking/working the same exact way when using something like modular components could vary the game so much more and create a diverse (especially if this multiplayer works the way its supposed to) mech linup across the community.

[DarkTreader]

True, it might do just that... but at the same time, you'd then have to face the same kinds of things that pretty well demolish anything in the MW4 online games - you'll have some guy that packs an LBX20 in the lightest mech he can find, then run around legging Assaults because they can't lock weapons on him. Or you'll have the Gausszilla. Or the 3x(4x?)LBX20 Daishi 2-shot kill beast.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't enjoy being able to have more in the way of modular weapons and accoutrements for our 'Mechs... but at the same time, I can see that the high possibility for abuse is there. And sure, while most of us are smart, mature, handsome, upstanding individuals on this board, there are far, far more idiots and d-bags out there that would want to play the 'zomg ALPHA STRIKES ALL DAY LONG' game... and that's not fun for anyone.

[Durant Carlyle]

Are you asking for something like Armored Core or Front Mission, where arms/legs/torsos are interchangeable?

If so, then no. No way. H-E-double-hockey-stick no. I don't want to see a Marauder arm on any other 'Mech. I don't want to see chicken-walker legs on a 'Mech unless it was designed from the ground up to have them.

Most MechWarriors are actually piloting the very same 'Mechs, with the only variation coming from regional differences like the House-specific variants. Some will have installed field modification kits, if they are available for their 'Mech. Only a few famous/infamous MechWarriors actually have their 'Mechs customized beyond the official variants. Why? Because most MechWarriors don't own their own machines. They get thrown into a unit and assigned whatever the unit has available, with maybe a little consideration for what preference they have.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

Durant Carlyle, on 06 February 2012 - 06:19 PM, said:

Are you asking for something like Armored Core or Front Mission, where arms/legs/torsos are interchangeable?

If so, then no. No way. H-E-double-hockey-stick no. I don't want to see a Marauder arm on any other 'Mech. I don't want to see chicken-walker legs on a 'Mech unless it was designed from the ground up to have them.

Most MechWarriors are actually piloting the very same 'Mechs, with the only variation coming from regional differences like the House-specific variants. Some will have installed field modification kits, if they are available for their 'Mech. Only a few famous/infamous MechWarriors actually have their 'Mechs customized beyond the official variants. Why? Because most MechWarriors don't own their own machines. They get thrown into a unit and assigned whatever the unit has available, with maybe a little consideration for what preference they have.

This is actually sorta what I mean, there are already different variants within the BT/MW universe. Specifically between different regions, merc units, houses, etc. This would allow mechwarriors to pilot the same mech but still with differences.

I was not implying that ANYTHING could be placed on a mech. Obviously if you take an arm (and technically its not the whole arm usually, just the gun part) and change it from a laser to a ballistic variation, it will still be limited to what kind of weapon it can take based upon its tonnage and size of the part. You're obviously not going to be able to mount a PPC on a raven.

Besides, you can't put an LBX 20 on a light mech even in Mechwarrior 4, the limitation of tonnage does not allow this to happen plus weapons/weapon slots use size limits that, even if somehow you would've SOMEHOW been able to find the tonnage, the size of the weapon would be to large to place the LBX20 onto a light mech

Again though, I'm talking about modular components based upon the tonnage and limitations for each mech. As in my previous example, say you want to put a missile system on a bushwhacker's left arm to replace its ballistics (I think the left one is ballistics...or is it laser O.o), obviously its possible and was used before. This change of the arm to accommodate a missile system wouldn't be a huge change, but it would be limited to its tonnage, the weight of the missile system, and the ability to carry extra ammunition for said weapon.

I would be completely fine though, with allowing players to use not only the default (prime) variants, but also allow them to use house/regional variants if they are part of those areas. In question of merc units, I would imagine they were stuck with prime variants and possibly regional variants unless they were able to salvage/buy the extra variants from houses or other.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 06 February 2012 - 07:25 PM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

What you are talking about is an Omnimech which is Clan technology and won't be available for another year or so. The Bushwaker doesn't appear for a few more years yet. The dev's have said that all mechs will be available to anyone, only difference is price ie Kurita specific mechs are cheaper if you are in that House.

Edited by Nik Van Rhijn, 07 February 2012 - 04:20 AM.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 07 February 2012 - 04:19 AM, said:

What you are talking about is an Omnimech which is Clan technology and won't be available for another year or so. The Bushwaker doesn't appear for a few more years yet. The dev's have said that all mechs will be available to anyone, only difference is price ie Kurita specific mechs are cheaper if you are in that House.

Found the term I was looking for reading through a short story actually, HARDPOINTS. Being able to attach different weapons to your hardpoints, which IS applicable to the current date mechs. My missile system example is still valid for other mechs though...

Overall I'd be happy just to have variants of individual mechs available, so at least not every person in the game that has say, a Hunchback or Jenner, have the SAME EXACT one. Variants of mechs were not that rare either, it all depended on the region or house, and what role the mech was being used for.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 07 February 2012 - 04:35 AM.

[DarkTreader]

Mautty the Bobcat, on 07 February 2012 - 04:32 AM, said:

Found the term I was looking for reading through a short story actually, HARDPOINTS. Being able to attach different weapons to your hardpoints, which IS applicable to the current date mechs. My missile system example is still valid for other mechs though...

Oh. A MW4 mechlab.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

We know that at least some variants will be availble from the latest Blogs on Role Warfare.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

DarkTreader, on 07 February 2012 - 06:20 AM, said:

Oh. A MW4 mechlab.

No, a battletech mech hanger...-.-;

Besides, allowing mechs to attach different weapons to their hardpoints could be done in a much better system than MW4's 'slots'.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 07 February 2012 - 02:37 PM.

[jbone]

Certain mechs like the Caesar and the unseen phoenix hawk had modular weapon, for the Caesar it was a mech sized pistol, and the Phoenix Hawk it was a mech sized rifle and they had rules for self contained weapons systems. It also expanded those rules so pretty much anything with a hand actuator could field them. I know thats really getting beyond the scope of things but mechs got modified in the field constantly, lost a couple small lasers in an arm you got whatever they could find to jam in it's place.

Duct tape does amazing things in a pinch.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

That falls more into field repairs, but your point is valid. Losing weapons wasn't uncommon, especially if you were a pilot that ended up staying in the field with the same mech multiple times within the same mission and had MFBs supporting you. If you lost the Gauss rifle in your arm and it blew, they'd find scrap on the field to attach something new onto it, or if your mech was too f'ed up to be worth repairing over salvaging, you attempted to salvage an enemy mech if there were any less damaged than yours.

Back to the actual modifications, I'm talking about in an actual mech hanger here, where they have the ability to do extensive refits over a period of time. I'm find if I can't take an arrow system or PPC on my Owens, but having the option of changing between LRMs or SRMs, or even refitting it to use some small/medium lasers would be realistic in the BT universe. Maybe not practical, but hey, to each their own.

I don't know the extent to which mechs have been refitted and I realize that the prime (default) variant is probably the most commonly used style for the most part, but I don't want to see this game limited for the sake of balance. I want it limited for the sake of things not being part of the BT/MW universe. Ideally I would love to see this game plausibly be as open-ended as the BT/MW universe itself, but I'm not holding my breath.

[ExAstris]

I love customizability.

I love game balance.

I love uniqueness.

These three loves fight each other constantly.

With unlimited customizability, a small number of 'optimal' arrangements emerge. With perfect game balance comes extremely strict customization. Uniqueness suffers at both ends of the spectrum. I can't be unique if I can't customize my machine, and I can't be unique if options I like are useless or if its one of the 2-3 that everyone uses.

I don't pretend to have solutions to the particular balance needs of MWO as there are simply too many unknowns left about the game.

My general thought though is to allow mech loadout customization, but in a slightly more strict manner than previous mechwarrior games have done. The slot system of MW4 was a step in the right direction. Not every mech could wield any weapon combination it wanted. But we could take it further.

Perhaps we could classify weapons by steps and put a maximum number 'steps' any given mech could move. So consider the small laser, medium laser, and large laser, to all be steps of lasers. We'll say (just for the sake of having a number for the example) that a mech with a medium laser could move it up to a large (and sacrifice something else in return, downgrade another weapon of appropriate tonnage, remove armor, etc). However, a mech equipped with only small lasers could never mount a large one in their place because it would be too many steps away.

So for a concrete example that fits mechwarrior (there are surely lots of examples that don't, I'll get to those in a second), recall the Catapult. One variant of the mech has 2 LRM20's and 2 s lasers. This would be accomplished in this system by taking both the base Catapult and upgrading its LRM15's one step each, then downgrading 2 m lasers and removing the other two to make the tonnage work out properly.

This would provide much tighter weapon loadout constraints on mechs and help maintain balance so that no mech starts running around with min-max'd configs that the weapon balance wasn't designed to handle.

Further addendums to what is allowed in a 'step' could be added as well. Moving from an SRM 2/4/6 to an LRM 5/10/15 respectively. Moving from an LB20 to an AC20 or from either the AC20/LBX20 to a Gauss or from a Gauss to a PPC. s/m/l laser to s/m/l pulse laser. Etc.

Lastly, canon configurations of mechs that cannot be attained by taking this (or some similarly strict) rulset and applying it to the base variant could be simply directly implimented into the game as a base variant itself (which the Devs are already doing as their module system revealed each mech to have several variants available). Each of these variants would provide a little bit more leeway to make fine-tuning changes to your preferred loadout on your favorite machine, but would never allow you to drift into the LOLWUT territory of previous games where we find Catapults with 6 ER L lasers and no missiles.


TL;DR
I want customization and balance. A mechbay even stricter than MW4 could fit that bill.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

^This right here. You sir, get my desire about customization entirely and explained it better than I can. D=

An extra thought on the lasers. Say you want to take the LL away and replace it, you could either use a ML and use the extra towards something else (within 'step' reason) or replace it with a ML and a SL to fully use the LL's step value. This would probably be the most efficient way of modifying weapon load outs and could even use the variants provided (assuming they are) as a base point. MW4's mech lab was definitely a step in the right direction in my opinion, but it didn't balance the weapons, slots, and tonnage efficiently enough to keep mech from absorbing niche 'DPS' roles that occurred in MW4.

I'm not saying this has to be done, it is the suggestion forum after all. I know its not the perfect idea either, but the 'step' system could be used to explain the concept of say, taking out a Large Laser component from a mech's arm and replacing it with a missle system that has the same 'step' value as the LL did. Its not a perfect concept, I'd recommend looking through BT books for specific examples, the Bushwhacker's arm to a missile pod is the only one I personally know of is all. =\

Also, how do I change the topic title...? I'd like to rename it "Weapon Loadouts" instead of the garbage I used. >.<
Nvm, I got it, and that title seems even better.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 09 February 2012 - 02:03 AM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

We will hopefully find out what they are doing next month. We know that we will have a Mechlab. Personally I think that it will be very limited and may be linked to Pilot/Mech Level as well. If it was totally free customisation like MW3 or even slightly limited like 4 I can't see why we would have variants.

Edited by Nik Van Rhijn, 09 February 2012 - 02:59 AM.

[Liam]

I think customization will be something like ...

> limited weapon slots (based on variant design of the mech)
> different variants available / maybe different changeable arms or torso weapon modules allowing reconstruct all variants.
> amount of equipment slots vary depending on mech variant / modules constellation

[Outlaw Wolf]

I would say being able to fully customize your critical slots and your laser or ballistic weaponry, however slots designed to house missiles (ie. Catapult's Shoulder Launchers) Then only missiles should be allowed to be fitted there.