Trothkin! Freebirths! Quadrupeds! Lend me your ears! (you will now read this in an Ace Ventura voice) I've seen a lot of people discussing the potential problems regarding player Clan factions, the dilemma of Zellbrigen, and how it's somewhat unfeasible to rely on the Clan playerbase to police themselves. Well, last night I was thinking (no, it didn't hurt, thank you very much) about ways to deal with these complaints, because I've also noticed in those same threads, very few people coming up with suggestions that didn't involve trusting the playerbase, or only recruiting from the RP elite who'd have no real issue with playing honourably in the first place. So I thought "Why not use the game code itself to enforce the rules?" That might sound confusing at first, so allow me to elaborate. I imagine when people talk about Zellbrigen adherence, one of the things they mean, is that they're afraid (in a hypothetical 5v8 scenario) that all of the Clan players are going to immediately lock onto 1 player and blow them to pieces. Solution? Each player picks a target (I imagine this would be done under the reticule), which puts a blue overlay or skin or something over that target, which marks that target red in a similar way to all the other Star members. If we assume a uniform honour code (no per Clan differences for sake of simplicity in this example) the rear of a 'Mech is also painted red. Attacking a red zone/target accrues "dishonourable conduct" points. These points are NOT visible to player, so there's no metagaming/riding the edge of the punishment meter. On the same note, if a target you are not engaged with fires upon you, it changes from red to blue and you are allowed to fire upon it. Coming up, a (probably incomplete) list of basic Zellbrigen rules, and how I feel they could be enforced with software, and further expansions upon the dishonourable conduct and reward/punishments. Zellbrigen rules -A Warrior will never fire on a 'Mech already engaged with another opponent. This means that no double teaming or gang banging allowed. -- Already covered -A Warrior will at no time initiate physical attack, such as charging, punching, kicking, or clubbing. -- This may be irrelevant unless physical attacks are in the game. -Only in the event that a Warrior has no more weapons at his or her disposal, may the he or she engage in physical attacks. -- See above. -Fire on a retreating 'Mech -- This is a tricky one, what indicates a fleeing target? I propose that a button be allocated to signal that a unit is retreating. That entire target is then painted red, but is required to remove itself from the battlefield. If it does not move to within a certain distance of the deploy zone within a certain time limit (this will have to be generous in cases of leg/engine damage) then it may be painted blue again. Also, that target may choose to fake a retreat, pull some distance and re-engage. Upon that occurance, the target will be painted blue for all Clan players, to punish their dishonourable conduct. -Fire on a shutdown or fallen 'Mech -- While I don't know if there will be falling over in this, a shutdown target will be painted red until it powers up again, at which time it will be painted blue again and ready for combat. -Fire at the rear of a 'Mech -- Already covered, paint the rear of the target red -Target the head of a 'Mech -- This one could be tough, I would propose that non-direct fire (LRM/SRM for instance) be exempt from this, though putting a PPC through someones face will trigger the red paint and accrue dishonour points. "However, in the event that the enemy fails to follow RoE, one may return the dishonor. For example, if the enemy attacks using physicals, the Warrior may return the physical only to that enemy. In the event where the enemy as a whole act dishonorably, the commanding Clan officer may call a Grand Melee, at which point the battle field becomes a free for all--a Warrior may at this point use any means at his or her disposal to terminate the enemy." I would propose that this part of Zellbrigen be ignored. Acting 'dishonourably' is going to be a huge part of winning as the Inner Sphere, and this rule would effectively allow the 5v1 we want to avoid. Similarly, there are (to the best of my knowledge) some rules about not hiding from an opponent and always firing a weapon when they cycle. I propose those rules also be removed, as they will be too crippling in certain environments, especially urban combat. Now, on to the reward, punishment, and 'dishonour points' things I mentioned earlier. Weight based fighting I envisioned a weight vs weight based 'honour' system for the Clan team, to encourage the Clan team to test themselves. For example: 60 ton Clan 'Mech, vs 60 ton IS 'Mech. Weights are even, and with a weighting system of say 1 point per ton, this IS 'Mech would be worth 60 honour to defeat. 60 ton Clan 'Mech, vs 40 ton IS 'Mech. Weights are different, and with such a weight/tech disparity, instead of 40 points, this target is only worth 20. If the IS 'Mech in this example was under 40 tons, an even higher negative modifier would be applied. This helps to make light IS 'Mechs more viable, they are liable to be ignored as the Clan players cannot make any real character 'progression' by fighting them. 60 ton Clan 'Mech, vs 80 ton IS 'Mech. Weights are within the 20 ton 'magic area', this target is worth 80 honour. 60 ton Clan 'Mech vs 85+ ton IS 'Mech. A 1.5x modifier to honour (instead of the -2x modifier for fighting lighter) is applied here. The idea is to encourage Clan players to fight at their tonnage or above, similar to how MMORPG games handle character levelling - anything below your level starts offering drastically lower XP amounts, to encourage you to fight equal or higher level opponents. Dishonourable conduct I briefly covered a nebulous concept earlier I named "dishonourable conduct". What I mean by this is - to encourage the Clan players to play honourably, as per the Zellbrigen rules of engagement, you need to use the software to enforce this by punishing people who try to sneak a solid backshot or who "accidentally" large laser to the face their enemy. I also said that the progress bar for this dishonourable conduct should be invisible to the player, to avoid people trying to space out their offences, or keep a higher number of low value offences going to avoid punishment. This dishonourable conduct system also takes into account the hypothetical 'Mechlab. If you're rolling around in a high powered custom 'Mech, and hit that threshold for dishonourable conduct, your next mission will see you limited to a stock variant of that same chassis, or one of the same weight. Further infringements before the dishonourable conduct values decay back to a 'safe' level, will result in your character being pushed down to a lower tonnage asset. This punishes repeat or overly serious misconduct by forcing a player down the tonnage ladder, enough infringements will result in someone being stuck in a 'Mech so light that the IS players should have no issue finishing them off. Assuming no 'Mechlab, the down-tonning punishment still applies. The entire point of the dishonourable conduct system, and the tonnage based weighting system, should promote enjoyable combat for the IS team (no getting instastomped by the entire Clan team), the Clan team (rewards for playing the way the Clans 'should' - attacking targets that are actually a challenge), while punishing people who pick Clan for the tech, then decide to go stomping all over everything. Possibly add dishonour points to a massively unfair Clan vs IS 'Mech matchup (50-60 ton difference in favour of the Clan Player, but not too large as this may be unavoidable in some battles due to enemy force composition.)
Bad idea to force teams to do this. Should be left with a choice. Let each team decide. You drop with another clan or IS, you ask for Zell. They can either accept it, or say no.
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Xarg Talasko, on 20 February 2012 - 04:36 AM, said:
