23 replies to this topic

[Sims doc]

Ok, Imagin your on a decaying space-station in orbit of a planet or small moon which has a small amount of gravity enought to allow you to do small jumps between broken sections or bridges theses sections would somewhat be intact allowing for normal land-base mechs or heavyer mechs to move unhalted but there would naturally be small broken bits that would be place around for careless pilot.

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Other than that, Ideas Suggestions? Thoughts

[Slick762]

Oh, I can see the possibilities. Heat levels spiking to near shut down levels in 'unshielded' areas.

[Fiachdubh]

Love it, although surely heat would not be a problem at all.

[Slick762]

Fiachdubh, on 26 August 2012 - 03:37 AM, said:

Love it, although surely heat would not be a problem at all.

Actually, if they were able to make it realistic, heat would be a huge factor. You would have to account for huge eviromental heats shifts simply by walking out of a shaded area. Imagine a long wide corridor with a section of the ceiling missing in the middle. Any mechs crossing into the 'sunny spot' would have to deal with a huge heat spike, preventing them from using weapons until they were able to get back into 'the shade'.

[Exilyth]

Interesting idea.

Dropships of the teams would have to be docked at opposing sides of the station.

OP, do you have a certain layout in mind for the station?
Can mechs 'fall' out of the station?
Can mechs walk on the outside of the station?

[deadeye mcduck]

Battles on moons please.

[Sims doc]

Exilyth, on 26 August 2012 - 10:20 AM, said:

Interesting idea.

Dropships of the teams would have to be docked at opposing sides of the station.

OP, do you have a certain layout in mind for the station?
Can mechs 'fall' out of the station?

Dropships would be dock in undamage ports on each side of the station, From there many roots would be accessable to the player some areas that are shielded from the suns heat and others that would be unshielded and would heat your mech up, There would be other completely broken sections that smaller mechs could be able to navigate threw.

If a mech was to fall from the station this would mean death.

[Strum Wealh]

Sims doc, on 25 August 2012 - 09:54 PM, said:

Ok, Imagin your on a decaying space-station in orbit of a planet or small moon which has a small amount of gravity enought to allow you to do small jumps between broken sections or bridges theses sections would somewhat be intact allowing for normal land-base mechs or heavyer mechs to move unhalted but there would naturally be small broken bits that would be place around for careless pilot.

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Other than that, Ideas Suggestions? Thoughts

This suggestion reminds me of a segment of the the first episode of "BattleTech: The Animated Series" where the protagonists use an Axman (AXM-2N variant), a Mauler/Daboku(?), and a Wolfhound (WLF-2 variant) in space combat to defend their JumpShip and DropShip.

The Axman, being the only one of the protagonists' BattleMechs equipped with Jump Jets, is able to maneuver itself to some extent but is no match for the attacking AeroSpace Fighters.
The other two, lacking Jump Jets, are limited to floating around the ships.
Ultimately, the attack is thwarted by a friendly AeroSpace Fighter.
The episode in question can be viewed here (starting shortly before the space battle).

With regard to MWO:
Space Stations in BT/MW aren't all that big; most are either generally-cylindrical and on the order of 400-600 meters long, or spherical and on the order of 400-600 meters in diameter.
By way of comparison, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is on the order of ~333 meters long and the Burj Khalifa (currently the tallest building in the world) is on the order of ~830 meters tall.
Additionally, the stations generally aren't built to accommodate 'Mechs at all, much less doing so outside of specialized bays for them and/or AeroSpace Fighters; as such, it would be even more difficult for any 'Mech to move outside of a few small areas.

Outside of a very few specific examples (like the RH7S "Space Hound", the Shadow Hawk IIC-7, and the LAMs), 'Mechs are built for land-based combat and do not perform very well - if at all - outside of that environment.
Given that, I think it would be generally better - and probably easier on the Devs, from a workload perspective - to use a hollowed-out asteroid or low-gravity world (which, from Sarna, seems to have a lower-limit of ~0.6g for the known inhabited worlds) rather than an actual space station.

Your thoughts?

[DocBach]

A space station might be really hard to implement with the mechanics and features you described. But, I'd settle for a moon with altered gravity and that jazz.

[Fiachdubh]

Slick762, on 26 August 2012 - 04:29 AM, said:

Actually, if they were able to make it realistic, heat would be a huge factor. You would have to account for huge eviromental heats shifts simply by walking out of a shaded area. Imagine a long wide corridor with a section of the ceiling missing in the middle. Any mechs crossing into the 'sunny spot' would have to deal with a huge heat spike, preventing them from using weapons until they were able to get back into 'the shade'.

Depends how close to a sun the station is.

[Syrkres]

But that is what you are fighting over. It is an ancient relic recently found. An ancient space station of unknown origin found floating in space. Houses and Merc companies are dispatched to recovery it.

You must dispose of the other team to recovery lost booty.

Maybe this is a weekly map which you can only play once a week (because the rewards are so great) or only win once a week.

Relics aren't found every day...

[Tardstrong]

Are there gravity simulators on the space wreck?
If not jump jets could be a bad idea.
I might try a fast weightier mech, stripped of weapons, biggest engine, maxed armor and try to bump people off.

[Oggii]

Now here's where things get a bit more interesting: Weight is simply a function of gravity and mass, so in space, it's mass that counts, not weight, though I get the feeling that for our purposes it could be the same. I think for the sake of simplicity you wouldn't need TOO much variance in heat at different points, but you should probably also look at some of the unique challenges it brings. The outside of a Space Station would probably be pretty open terrain, unless you were talking about say, fighting inside the hulk. I believe one of the MW games had a few missions fought on the hull of a warship/dropship, and as I recall it pretty fun. Overall, I really dig this idea. It could be an objective based map, say, a piece of lostech somewhere on board, or an assault/defend type thing. There's a LOT you could do with this!

[Banekane]

to ad to the mystery of the lore on said station is what happened to the inhabitants and why was it falling apart and is there bonus objectives to find the clues to the mystery like a investigative side mission where you find data readings and other artifacts that tell you a small story on the station like a hidden easteregg fact for the Creators of the station

[Sims doc]

So, What your saying "Banekane" is a sort of mode were both teams are trying to recover the stations data-recorders or black-box assuming a space-station has a black-box. Instead of the normal death-match theme.

[Banekane]

exactly there is some sort of mystery both teams was contracted to receive that data and therefor the environment can be set where there is 3 up to 9 data computers around the station and the object is to collect them all but the fun and tricky part is the other team is after the data too and you need to fight each other to collect the data and in essence it will be a map and a mode all its own

[Exilyth]

Strum Wealh, on 27 August 2012 - 07:59 AM, said:

This suggestion reminds me of a segment of the the first episode of "BattleTech: The Animated Series" where the protagonists use an Axman (AXM-2N variant), a Mauler/Daboku(?), and a Wolfhound (WLF-2 variant) in space combat to defend their JumpShip and DropShip.

Reminds me of the episode 'the road to camelot' of the animated series, the one where camelot command is found.

[Tardstrong]

Do most spacefaring ships have accessways built for mechs? I think that a Captain of a ship would absolutely not want mechs strolling around his ship.
I assumed that fights were to be outside of the ship...

[Banekane]

in all fair ness the station probably could have halls sized for lights and small mediums however there could be cargo locations store rooms or as its sci fi any sized halls that could be sized for mech use maybe the builders of said station used mechs for security and had to use larger halls to support eaven a 100 ton mech anything is possible also said station could be the beginning of discovering Lostech

[Strum Wealh]

Tardstrong, on 01 September 2012 - 12:08 PM, said:

Do most spacefaring ships have accessways built for mechs? I think that a Captain of a ship would absolutely not want mechs strolling around his ship.
I assumed that fights were to be outside of the ship...

They don't, which is part of the issue I raised in my previous post.

An Overlord-class DropShip is 99 meters wide and 131.2 meters tall.
A Union-class DropShip is 81.5 meters wide and 78 meters tall.
The internal spacing of the latter is pictured below:


One of the most common classes of space station, the Bastion-class, is a sphere that is 345 meters in diameter.
The larger Crucible Station (a Capellan prison station) is a cylinder that is 400 meters in length and 450 meters in diameter.
The Olympus-class Jumpship Recharge Station is 660 meters long by 1500 meters wide (which must include the solar sail).
The Snowden-class Mining Station is 650 meters long and 300 meters wide.

The Invader-class JumpShip, one of the most common and iconic of its ilk, is 505 meters long and has a sail diameter of 1024 meters.

And, unlike the ships from Macross or particularly-large space stations like those seen in Babylon 5 (a cylinder 5 miles in length) or the colonies in Gundam (similar scale to the B5 stations), none of the above were designed to have 8-14 meter tall BattleMechs stomping around inside most internal areas.

As cool as the idea is, canon BT/MW space stations are just too small to make viable maps for BattleMech combat.