156 replies to this topic

[Jahooley]

what would be salvaged? if nothing is lost in the battle how can you salvage anything? without losing anything, salvage would just be a never ending stream of randomly generated items being pumped into the game and would completely devalue the whole system.

[Red Beard]

MaddMaxx, on 16 February 2012 - 11:34 AM, said:

That was for a SP Game with Campaign to be called MW5. It is so far gone now as to be totally bogus info. You feel that article is still relevant?

My thoughts are summarized in the final sentence of my post.

That article also gives the reader a good look into what the devs have thought about over the last several years. Whether or not any of those features make it in to the game, who knows. But it is nice to get a broad scope of the things that the devs were considering.

Edited by Red Beard, 16 February 2012 - 12:04 PM.

[Namwons]

Jahooley, on 16 February 2012 - 11:51 AM, said:

what would be salvaged? if nothing is lost in the battle how can you salvage anything? without losing anything, salvage would just be a never ending stream of randomly generated items being pumped into the game and would completely devalue the whole system.

i believe if you blow your mech up, you do not get your whole mech back. you get your empty chassis back which you have to pay for repairs like all your weapons, mods, maybe ammor tonnage as well needs to be rebought and refitted.

Edited by Namwons, 16 February 2012 - 12:03 PM.

[Big Willie]

Namwons, on 16 February 2012 - 10:31 AM, said:

If theres no salvage in game, its going to be a shame, especially for us lonewolves and solaris combatants. they did say you could customise any mech into any role and that means mech lab and full customs.

Actually that statement refers to what Pilot skills you select and what modules you unlock, purchase, and load.
Specifically they suggest that a catapult could be outfitted with scout role modules, thereby customizing it to that role.

The almost explicitly stated that there would be no mechlab, when the said that purchasing epic teir mech chassis skills would require purchasing all the lower teir upgrades for all the variants of that chassis. When they suggest that there are variants and they are of limited number that leads me to believe that customization will be limited to Modules.

[Sprouticus]

I posted on salvage yesterday in the dev Q&A comments.

Short verison, the team has a limited budget (time/money) and needs the most bang for their buck. A real salvage structure might be doable but hoe much would it really add to the game. Think in MMORPG terms, how exciting is the auciton house? Not very. Sure you might get a rare weapon or armor or be able to buy rare items, but that is a LOT of investment for not much gain.

Not to mention clans/houses/mercs would all handle things differnetly. And balancing the entire system would be a huge PITA and you might very well end up making money a non factor if inflation occurs too rapidly.

Much better to start with a very simple economic system based soley upon C-Bills. Its easier to setup, easier to manage, and easier for players to understand.

If you start simple, you can add things later like a place to buy special weapons (house refit depot, clan weapons depot, merc unground arms dealers. You set the cost and allow for refits using bought weapons. Then you take it one step farther and maybe give some perks for salvage. Last step is an auciton house/clearing house for parts.

They can introduce that over a matter of months or years without damaging the game, without runing the econoomy, and without having to worry about it at launch.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Sprouticus, on 16 February 2012 - 12:19 PM, said:

I posted on salvage yesterday in the dev Q&A comments.

Short verison, the team has a limited budget (time/money) and needs the most bang for their buck. A real salvage structure might be doable but hoe much would it really add to the game. Think in MMORPG terms, how exciting is the auciton house? Not very. Sure you might get a rare weapon or armor or be able to buy rare items, but that is a LOT of investment for not much gain.

Not to mention clans/houses/mercs would all handle things differnetly. And balancing the entire system would be a huge PITA and you might very well end up making money a non factor if inflation occurs too rapidly.

Much better to start with a very simple economic system based soley upon C-Bills. Its easier to setup, easier to manage, and easier for players to understand.

If you start simple, you can add things later like a place to buy special weapons (house refit depot, clan weapons depot, merc unground arms dealers. You set the cost and allow for refits using bought weapons. Then you take it one step farther and maybe give some perks for salvage. Last step is an auciton house/clearing house for parts.

They can introduce that over a matter of months or years without damaging the game, without runing the econoomy, and without having to worry about it at launch.

Well some of us do love to play the AH for fun and profit!!

But your point is well taken, by me at least.

[Omigir]

Red Beard, on 16 February 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

My thoughts are summarized in the final sentence of my post.

That article also gives the reader a good look into what the devs have thought about over the last several years. Whether or not any of those features make it in to the game, who knows. But it is nice to get a broad scope of the things that the devs were considering.

it was just Mechwarrior no 5 attached <3

[KaiserSoze]

The winning team gets a report of the loosing teams mechs/ at random there components are therefore salvagable or un-salvagable and their you get the salvage. For example:

Archer
1 LRM20 operational
1 LRM20 destroyed
1 medium laser Damaged = you have to pay credits to fix
3 medium laser destroyed
1 ton of armour usable

What do you think?

Edited by KaiserSoze, 16 February 2012 - 01:11 PM.

[Halfinax]

Big Willie, on 16 February 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

The almost explicitly stated that there would be no mechlab, when the said that purchasing epic teir mech chassis skills would require purchasing all the lower teir upgrades for all the variants of that chassis. When they suggest that there are variants and they are of limited number that leads me to believe that customization will be limited to Modules.

Actually they said exactly this:

Quote

Can 'Mechs be customized to change their roles (beyond merely modules and pilot skills)? –Ghost

[PAUL] The main driving force behind roles is the modules and pilot skills you choose to focus in. You’re never going to make an Atlas run as fast as a Jenner but you can lighten the loadout of it for extra armor for example. This would allow the Atlas to play more to a defensive role but again, it’s mainly about modules/skills.

Which rather implicitly suggests there will be a MechLab level of customization, but that doesn't tell us how much we can customize the chassis. A bit later in the QnA they talk about variants possibly having different engines and what not so I'm gathering that you will be able to customize weapon loadouts, and armor in the MechLab, but not the internal structure.

[JebusGeist]

I figure, just because you can't lose a mech doesn't mean you can't lose weapons.
A default mech should have a default weapon loadout (plenty of cannon loadouts to choose from as default), and if you field that mech unchanged and get destroyed, you lose nothing.
If you field the same mech with a custom weapon loadout tho, there should be a chance to salvage on the non-default weapons thats based on how much damage was done to whichever body part the hard point is connected to (blow off an arm and render it a 0% chance to salvage on the weapons mounted to its hard points).
Really, i don't see how its possible to have no salvage at all. Without the chance to lose that expensive clan weaponry I invested in, c-bills will quickly become meaningless to me, once I have a cache of my favorite weapons and my favorite mechs from each weight class, I won't have any real need for c-bills anymore. Besides, MMOs need currency drains, any mmo that lacks a decent constant drain on currency experiences a massive inflation in its first year of operation.

Edited by JebusGeist, 16 February 2012 - 01:18 PM.

[Nick Makiaveli]

KaiserSoze, on 16 February 2012 - 01:07 PM, said:

The winning team gets a report of the loosing teams mechs/ at random there components are therefore salvagable or un-salvagable and their you get the salvage. For example:

Archer
1 LRM20 operational
1 LRM20 destroyed
1 medium laser Damaged = you have to pay credits to fix
3 medium laser destroyed
1 ton of armour usable

What do you think?

This would require that we have a inventory of weapons etc. That hasn't been confirmed as far as I know. They said that our mechs would be returned to a minimum state and that to fully repair it would cost c-bills. Also that you could take a partially damaged mech into combat. Nothing was said about buying a new weapon or using one you had stored as a replacement. The comment was simply pay to repair.

Since they've said for a long time it would be a minimally viable product at launch, I expect we will get a cash equivalent for our "salvage" after the battle at best.

[Felix Dante]

My guess is the program will calculate possible "Battle Salvage" and simply convert it to a C-Bill amount bonus at the end of each battle with extra bonuses based on certain objectives.

[guardiandashi]

Halfinax, on 16 February 2012 - 01:12 PM, said:

Actually they said exactly this:


Which rather implicitly suggests there will be a MechLab level of customization, but that doesn't tell us how much we can customize the chassis. A bit later in the QnA they talk about variants possibly having different engines and what not so I'm gathering that you will be able to customize weapon loadouts, and armor in the MechLab, but not the internal structure.

which you can read aone of several ways .

1 there is going to be a mw2/3 (aka battletech constructions and refit rules based) mechlab
2 there is going to be a number of "base chassis" with "limited" modifications allowed
3 there are going to be a number of "chassis" available each with a specific configuration

now where it said you could go for a plus armor minus weapons atlas config that is an "interesting" thing to hear because the base atlas is @ armor max (304/307 ) of max armor with standard armor, the only realistic way to "up armor" an atlas would be to switch to hardened armor, install a "shield" or similar (note this is a physical shield not an energy shield other than the "blueshield" system battletech doesn't do energy shields)

up gunned mechs have to come up with the mass for the new weapons somewhere ... like I had a cusom BLR-2G battlemaster varient that disgarded the 2 mg's ammo, and the srm6 plus ammo to free up the 7 tons to mount a second ppc, ... yes it doubled the long range firepower but actually reduces (significantly) the short to medium ranged firepower.

[Doolie]

I like the idea that what you shoot off of someone, you get to potentially keep if you hold the battlefield at the end of the battle. You take the arm off of a mech, it's your salvage as long as it was salvageable, and not completely mangled. The player that lost it, of course, has to pay to repair his mech.

Doesn't work so well when you just damage someone, as it probably doesn't fall off. But then again, think of salvage as a bonus to the contract you are working under. If you get something, great. If not, you're still getting paid.

-D

[Slyck]

So my thought through this thread is this. If there is no salvage, what happens when the Clans arrive; is all clan tech suddenly available in the store or will IS pilots have not access to Clan tech at all.

[Hawk Pryde]

Salvage wouldn't really be difficult to do. If you make standard chasis available on what ever market system you have. Then in that same market make available weapons, sensors, Reactors, Heatsinks, Weapons, Armor, Appendages, anything that could be modified on a mech chasis. As we know from the classic Battletech combat system the damage to a mech starts on the outside and works in until the mech is disabled or destroyed. So if this system is basically the same here then it shouls not be too difficult to determine what is salvagable from a disabled mech. Now any unit who had a salvage truck and had control of the battlefield could come and salvage what remained on a disabled mech even its chasis. They could then sell it off or spend c-bills repairing it and replacing destroyed parts. Salvage is way too important a game component of Battletech and Mechwarrior to be left out.

[El Loco]

I would love to see salvage of any sort in the game, but I don't think that it'll be implemented. Most likely, as many have stated already, we will have a system, where everything salvageable will be transformed into a C-bill bonus based on your performance (i.e. what salvage you "created"). This way "assists" will result in a share on the salvage C-bills. If you were able to salvage entire chassis, we soon would be flooded with 'Mechs, plus the devs would cut deep into their own profits... and we don't want that to happen (honestly!).

[Hugg E Bear]

I didn't read all the way through the thread so forgive me if this has been said already, but I think you have 2 main factors here:

A) Salvage is pretty much a must, or the core gamers/loyalists are gonna scoot pretty fast. Not a nice prospect for any game, much less MMO.

The single-player/previous online models do not apply to an MMO, insofar as salvage is concerned; if they did, as aptly stated, people would just be SOL or overstuffed in a matter of days. Thus current salvage models cannot apply to this game.

I'd posit a theory (from my loosely-based economics point of view) that salvage WILL exist...and you can use it right away for repairs, etc. But all that junk takes up space, right? And your garage or whatever is only so big...so you'll have to "sell" it eventually. And get less for it than you would expect, to keep the game more balanced (the bank has infinite money; it's only finite when it applies to players). This is really the only throttle-able model that I can envision...it could even be better, where, "Uh-oh, that blown off arm won't fit *my* mech, but maybe I can trade and keep the ammo", etc. I didn't put too much thought into this but I read through enough enlightening posts where this, to me at least, makes the most sense and keeps with the traditional spirit of MMO's...i.e., "All animals are created equal, some are just more equal than others. Unless those others have credit cards to purchase more stuff from the infinitely-supplied 'bank'."

Just my thoughts...sorry if they don't make a lot of sense.

[Thom Frankfurt]

In one of the old rule books the only way a mech could be totally destroyed was by an artillary round which took out the entire center torso internal structure. Otherwise there was always something to salvage off the mech.

If I take my Vindicator out into the field and accidently stumble into an Atlas and get, well, dead. What happens? is my toon/character/mechwarrior is now dispossessed? If so what do I do till I get a new mech? Do I have another Vindy just laying around? And the Atlas pilot (******?) what's does he do when he has 20+ mechs laying around.? Sell them and keep on living his Lyran ways?

But what if I loose my mech, but my team wins the match? Do I get my mech back as it was on the field or factory new, it is a vindy afterall.

I dunno. There needs to be balance. I'm pretty sure the developers are going to be fair, but I'm interested in seeing how they do this.

Edited by Thom Frankfurt, 16 February 2012 - 04:01 PM.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Thom Frankfurt, on 16 February 2012 - 03:39 PM, said:

In one of the old rule books the only way a mech could be totally destroyed was by an artillary round which took out the entire center torso internal structure. Otherwise there was always something to salvage off the mech.

If I take my Vindicator out into the field and accidently stumble into an Atlas and get, well, dead. What happens? is my toon/character/mechwarrior is now dispossessed? If so what do I do till I get a new mech? Do I have another Vindy just laying around? And the Atlas pilot (******?) what's does he do when he has 20+ mechs laying around.? Sell them and keep on living his Lyran ways?

But what if I loose my mech, but my team wins the match? Do I get my mech back as it was on the field or factory new, it is a vindy afterall.

I dunnot. There needs to be balance. I'm pretty sure the developers are going to be fair, but I'm interested in seeing how they do this.

They've already said your mech cannot be destroyed completely. Once the battle is over it will be restored to minimum condition then you have to pay to have it fully repaired.

That said. To all the people who are saying Salvage or Bust!! Think on this. The game is about blowing mechs up, not building them from parts. So if they abstract it at launch, IE you just get paid X amount as a bonus for blowing up mechs etc, then I think most of us will deal.

I think many of you are forgetting that salvage would require them to put in a inventory system, all the parts a separate items, a way to buy and sell and not just to NPCs but to each other etc. OR they can just launch the damn game with a repair with cash system that can still be viable once they add all that other stuff in. The goal is to launch this summer ya know....