103 replies to this topic

[Stormwolf]

I'd personally prefer BatteArmors and Infantry to be AI.

The Mechwarrior could give them commands.

It should be allowed for each Mechwarrior to bring a BA/infantry unit with them as a reinforcement for their mech.
The only limitation here would be that the reinforcement forces would count towards BV/Tonnage/whatever in the match setup.

Example:
A Clan player with a Firemoth could have a Elemental point attached to his/her mech. That player would be able to race towards enemy units and tell the Elemental point to disengage and attack a enemy while he/she attacks another.

Battlearmor or infantry would take up one slot in the mechbay for each player.


In the lore we often see this sort of support, it would be nice to implement it in MWO.

Edited by Stormwolf, 23 November 2011 - 03:50 AM.

[Nakir]

i like Battle Armor....but we must think that MWO 'll be not as MWLL.

[Adridos]

Battle armor is good. If they add it after release, I will be fine with it. But I prefer to go solely mechs in the first month of game.

Edited by Adridos, 23 November 2011 - 05:00 AM.

[VoxeL]

Battle armor must die.

[verybad]

Perhaps as some PvE once the clans arrive. They shouldn't be available for players to use however as alone they're simply not capable of taking on a mech, tough as they are for infantry level units. If a player can use one and command 4 bots in their star, then maybe.

[Larry Headrick]

only as pve not as a pilotable vehicle. These are the reasons machine guns are on mechs in the first place to take out infantry. Even battlesuited infantry.

Instructor: "Okay class whats our moto"
MechWarrior Class "no plan survives contact with the enemy"
Instructor: "Who are we?"
MechWarrior Class "THE ENEMY!!!"

Edited by Larry Headrick, 22 December 2011 - 08:08 AM.

[Dihm]

CaveMan, on 22 November 2011 - 10:05 PM, said:

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! To hell with hacking, the fear of being swarmed by a Point of Elementals is that they're going to shred your leg actuators and then one of them is going to bodily rip you from your cockpit and disembowel you with that hydraulic claw!

This. IF it is ever implemented, it should be a commander ability to call in Elemental support. AI controlled point goes after the designated mech until 3 of the 5 are destroyed, then they go into forced withdrawal. Should never be player controlled.

Conversely, IS commanders should be able to call in anti-mech infantry which acts the same way (but there's more and much more squishy). Or call in infantry that they can place in buildings on urban matches that attack any mech that comes near till the building is destroyed. Sort of a mobile, weak turret.

The ability to call in support should be limited, or cause a loss of c-bills for mission completion or something. Say, you can only call in 1-2 units of infantry/toads a match, and you have to pay a c-bill penalty for however many are killed/destroyed.

Edited by Dihm, 22 December 2011 - 08:32 AM.

[Karyudo ds]

Stormwolf, on 23 November 2011 - 03:49 AM, said:

I'd personally prefer BatteArmors and Infantry to be AI.

The Mechwarrior could give them commands.

It should be allowed for each Mechwarrior to bring a BA/infantry unit with them as a reinforcement for their mech.
The only limitation here would be that the reinforcement forces would count towards BV/Tonnage/whatever in the match setup.

In the lore we often see this sort of support, it would be nice to implement it in MWO.

Well if we went by the ton then you could take an Atlas while I took a Commando and 80 platoons/BA's as back up. A point value system might work better here but I would agree it would be great to have units like these on the field even if only as commendable AI or even just AI.

The "Mechwarrior" games just give me this feeling that in the future we will all have somehow evolved into big mechs and that's end of that. (There were vehicles but those were usually so worthless anyway)

[Milltio]

{cw} roy, on 31 October 2011 - 01:00 PM, said:

Please, no mech hacking either. That sounds so gimmicky. The MA games were all terrible, too.

Amen to that, if they actually had to assualt a mech they should have to plant explosives or climb all the way to the cockpit and shoot the poor frightened Mechwarrior to death, none of this high-tech neurohacking crap, and being able to take the mech after that? yeah try piloting a mech without a comand console.

[Lima Zulu]

No. Really no. It's not combined arms game, and it will be too hard for heavies to get rid of few toads without support units. Even in MW:LL, which IS combined arms game, you can see might flushes of FUUUUUU every time when BA ejects from mech's cocpit. And it's deserved. So let it be mech combat game only, without tanks, BA, ASF, spacemarines, ponies and all other things.
Especially while BAs aren't common in IS armed forces before Clan Invasion.

[Omigir]

To ad to Lima Zulu

The big problem with BA, is YOU CANT PILOT A MECH IN BA. so if you drop in BA, that is what your in till you die, or the match ends. In all honesty, at that point, you are better off in an URBANMECH, and anybody who knows me, knows that is a low blow coming from me. Also its a 12 on 12 match, do you really want to give up 5 possible mechs to put together a point which = 1 battlemech? :C hmm, fishy. Also, Mechwarrior didnt pilot anything accept for Battlemechs, Tankers didnt drive anything accept for tanks, aerospace fighters didn't pilot anything accept aerospace fighters and elementals didn't pilot anything accept for BA. Its a stretch even with a reboot to have a bunch of warriors that go through multiple decades (thats how long it would take to learn everything) of training to be able to pilot every kind of vehicle in the known universe.

So take your pick, you only get to taught to drive 1 kind of war machine and that ends up being your career, Infantry, Tanker, Aerospace fighter pilot, battle armor, or battlemech. You can only choose one~

Edited by Omigir, 07 February 2012 - 02:02 AM.

[Grithis]

Battle armor would be nigh impossible to drop into a mech game. Individually, the armor is useless, and the squad concept is a whole new can of worms. Getting 12 people to work together will be hard enough! If 4 or 5 (depending on Clan or IS) people are put in in place of one mech, those numbers will mount fast!

There is always the option of one player with 3 or 4 AI armors under his command. Let's face it, though, AI sucks in every game! At some point, it's GOING to do something stupid and get you killed! At our current programming capabilities, Artificial Intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

[Xak Crow]

For now, lets just leave the BA out of it and see where it goes. Lets not start making wish lists about what we want in the game just yet and see what we have available.

Although, BA would be nice in some cases and a very good asset to have at your disposal.

[Kael Tropheus]

Hell yeah! They were greatly responsible for the clan's success as the IS never even thought of them. We have a looooong time until the IS gets its hands on any suits though so devs have some time to put them in place. It wouldnt be clans without Elementals hopping around. Besides if the game makes it to 3055, quite a few mechs were designed with anti-elemental work in mind.

It wouldnt be hard to add them to the game. Essentially a tiny battlemech with easy to add weapons. I dont know about the whole squad thing. The hardest part would be getting players to form points.

A point btw is five suits of BA, while a mech is one point by itself. So in a company vs binary or trinary fight you would have 12 vs 14 guys or vs 19 guys, but five would be in armor possibly hitching a ride on the omnimechs.

Edited by Kael Tropheus, 07 February 2012 - 04:04 AM.

[Star Ranger]

I think that this new twist down the line could be fun and nerve racking depending on what they let you do with it

Edited by Star Ranger, 07 February 2012 - 04:08 AM.

[VYCanis]

what if infantry options were like, one of the branches for commander modules. Having one allows you to call in an npc transport vtol to drop off some basic mixed bag npc infantry that attempt to secure an area to the best of their ability. An infantry group could contain a buncha' riflemen with SRM wielding troops mixed in. If any are still alive later, using the ability again can recall the transport vtol to pick them up and relocate them elsewhere.

next down the branch you could have stuff like jump or motorized (hoverbikes/dirtbikes/quad atvs etc) infantry, which would be more mobile and not require transport for most relocation, and be more survivable in wide open areas.

and farther down you can call in actual battle armor

each module in use though should involve actual hiring costs for said forces

Probably would be a little too out there for like, initial release, but, there really should be some small targets to shoot at. It keeps certain boaty tendencies curtailed (oh god, the PBIs are destroying my missileboat/gaussboat/heathog!!!!111), and it would definitely give a point of reference of scale

i mean i would imagine having a couple hardened buildings infested with npc infantry launching infernos and plinking away at anything that gets close would be a rather nasty surprise if the enemy doesn't prioritize them and lets them keep on shooting. Suddenly taking mgs or flamers doesn't seem like a waste of tonnage

Edited by VYCanis, 07 February 2012 - 04:16 AM.

[Kael Tropheus]

They as in battle armor would not be in the initial release as battle armor doesnt make an appearance until the clans invade. They were one of the huge advantages the clans held over the IS until they figured out a counter. The clans had a number of advantages mostly technical as its debatable whether their society itself slowed them down:

Reconfigurable battlemechs - you never know what you are going to face and they adapt for every mission like it was nothing.

Reconfigurable battlearmor- IS never faced battle armor before, before this infantry was usually discounted by IS mech pilots and were mainly used for holding ground and urban combat. Battlearmor could be configured with Streak missiles and small laser or machine gun. I think later versions could have small pulse lasers. Needless to say they made a huge psychological impact on the IS that faced them and were a major part of the clan war machine.

Warships: Unlike the IS, the clans used warships aggressively and didnt see anything really wrong with orbital bombardment. They didnt use it liberally as it went against their honor code. The entire IS maybe had enough warships to count on one hand and those were in horrible disrepair. Orbital bombardment was out of the question without warships as only naval weaponry, not dropship weaponry had the capability to do it, what are you going to do launch LRM20s at the atmosphere so they spread out over multiple kilometers?

Destructive power- Clan weapons were faaar more powerful than the IS versions. Even their PPCs had 50% more destructive power than the IS counterparts.

I am not sure how clans are going to be implemented unless either the 10 points vs 12 mechs is implemented or more IS is allowed to play. 12 on 12 clan vs IS is going to be a slaughter for the IS as numbers is the only thing the IS really has going for it.

[Mechteric]

It could be interesting to see calling in a star of AI elementals as a commander type ability once the clans invade, perhaps since clans wouldn't be the type to use artillery so they get that instead. Like the attack dogs from Call of Duty World at War only they don't kill you in one hit

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 07 February 2012 - 06:23 AM.

[Ranger207]

We already have a battle armor: the Jenner!

Ugh, this FedCom thing is making me too much or a Lyran...

[Pinkamena Pie]

I'd like to see BA when we get to appropriate points in the timeline, but I think they would work best as NPC units that coomanders can give orders to, along with infantry and vehicles.

I actually think that these could be used as a balancing device. If you allocate a BV to all the mechs in the battle, maybe even have the BV being specific to the pilots depending on their previous performance, you can start matching up apposing teams a lot better than you might be able to with tonnage. If one team has a lower BV than the enemy, they can be granted a number of additional infantry/BA to even things up.