16 replies to this topic

[Vernius Ix]

I am hoping that Mech damage and destruction in MWO is going to be handled more on a "sim" style and less on a WoT "health bar" style of system.


I would really like to see Mechs take location specific and permanet damage in battles. If your left arm is gone, its gone for the battle. If your knee joint gets damaged and it locks up, you have trouble moving etc...

What I really do not want to see is a "Health Bar" style of system that leads to your Mech being "destroyed" when its health bar reaches zero.

Thoughts?

Edited by Vernius Ix, 22 February 2012 - 09:00 AM.

[Stormwolf]

I'd take it from the tabletop.

The mech isn't truely destroyed unless the reactor turns into a little mushroom cloud.

[Opus]

Damn, you have me stumped Vern

I dislike heath bars,

But in TT don't you have to kill the pilot, or reactor, to totally kill it .??? i don't remember

and there my answer.. thanks SW

Edited by Opus, 17 February 2012 - 01:00 PM.

[Stormwolf]

Opus, on 17 February 2012 - 01:00 PM, said:

Damn, you have me stumped Vern

I dislike heath bars,

But in TT don't you have to kill the pilot, or reactor, to totally kill it .??? i don't remember

and there my answer.. thanks SW

For clarification, you can still salvage a mech with a destroyed engine if it didn't suffer catastrophic damage.

[Sym]

No, to Hit bars!

Yes, to Hit Location!

I would like to see reactor explosions in game...but only if the engine shielding is breached as in a critical and not every time a mech does down.

I would think this would cause pilots to think twice before going toe to toe with everyone they meet.

Edited by Sym, 17 February 2012 - 01:26 PM.

[MaddMaxx]

Yes indeed. Health bars, lots of Health bars. Like these please.

[Yeach]

MaddMaxx, on 17 February 2012 - 04:52 PM, said:

Yes indeed. Health bars, lots of Health bars. Like these please.

With this reference?
Are having HTAL displays (right-hand) a valid method for showing the damage done to the mech armor?
Are we supposed to know off-hand how much armor an enemy mech has (so we can determine the red/yellow/orange/green of their armor remaining?
How do we incorporate internal critical damage?

[jbone]

Just my 2 c-blls.

No bloody Stackpoling of mechs. It is nigh impossible to cause a mech to go overload and meltdown by canon.

I think mechs should be considered down when they are "mission killed" (Gyro, pilot is dead/ejected/unconscious) loss of leg (2 for quads), engine took three crits total.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

As jbone said.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I remember the games in the Armored Core series where a Mech you build gets a certain amount of hitpoints added to its overall-health for each piece of equipment you add - for instance throwing on a fat torso would give you 5000 hitpoints but adding fast, lightweight arms would grant you little armor, like 150. And all these armor points were shared so you could continuously shoot an enemy Mech in the left fingertip and, after enogh shots, they would die and shutdown. Those weak little arms just used the torso's healthpoints to keep you alive long enough to get Fingered.

I call this kind of death scenario "Fingering" and its prevelant in many shooter games. Imagine any actiony/shooter videogame where you're playing as a human and you pickup a high-powered sniper rifle. You can kill just about any opponent with one or two shots to the pinky fingertip.

I highly doubt that MechWarrior Online will leave us all Fingered because, if they did use a fingering mechanism, it would probably be called MechAssault Online.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 19 February 2012 - 09:18 PM.

[Outlaw Wolf]

I prefer the separate health indications for each main section of the battlemech (torso's, legs, arms etc) and a mech should be destroyed only if the internal core pieces are so damaged the mech cannot continue or the core is breached.

[Morashtak]

Scenario;

Late in the game. Most of his team destroyed. Then it happens; His 'Mech has both legs blown out from underneath it. Goes face down in a deep lake with a muddy bottom. Perhaps even head down on a steep, downward slope. Pilot see's only mud and water. Attempts to stand/crawl but only succeeds in thrashing around and making his situation worse. Finally thinks "Enough" and shuts down hoping for a little mercy from the opposition.

Is this 'Mech "destroyed"?
Do you shoot it to destroy it? A defenseless opponent but still not "destroyed".

I am hoping that there is a way to yield the battlefield and save some c-bills on both sides when the battle gets too lopsided for one side or the other.

[Outlaw2]

There are several ways to "destroy" a mech even in the TT.

Destroy CT's internal structures
destroy the engine (no mushroom cloud required)
kill the pilot (several ways to kill the pilot)
destroy the gyro
blow off 3 or more limbs off (not just the legs)

Im sure im forgetting something, but those are most of them.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 18 February 2012 - 04:23 PM.

[rctechnologies]

Vernius Ix, on 17 February 2012 - 12:51 PM, said:

I am hoping that Mech damage and destruction in MWO is going to be handled more on a "sim" style and less on a WoT "health bar" style of system.


I would really like to see Mechs take location specific and permanet damage in battles. If your left arm is gone, its gone for the battle. If your knee joint gets damaged and it locks up, you have trouble moving etc...

What I really do not want to see is a "Health Bar" style of system that leads to your Mech being "destroyed" when its health bar reaches zero.

Thoughts?

Yes absolutely. THe damage readout graph needs to stay.
That way we can
1 jettison ammo if necessary,
2 if a heat sink is damaged we can lay off the energy wepons of that limb
3 know to "turn the other cheek" if one side/leg becomes too worn.
4 figue out if we don't want to get too close to a severely damaged opponent.

and several other reasons. MW3 had it perfect.

Edited by rctechnologies, 22 February 2012 - 05:39 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

I wouldn't choose any of those options.
At first BattleMechs use ablative armor -> its the same as with the HP of WoT - when you got enough hits you are dead - in TT even a man with a machine gun and tons of ammunition is able to kill a Warship - with this in mind WoT have the advantage that small caliber weapons don't deal damage.

A Mech is "destroyed" when the pilots shut down the reactor, disabled the weapon and opened the cockpit hatch.
When he does the mistake to power up again he is a pirate and has to be obliterated.
When a Mechwarrior shot on a Mech that has capitulated he is a pirate and has to be marked as such a criminal and has to be obliterated.
There are only three exceptions from this rule - you face the draconis combine, clans or pirates - it is rightful to destroy them without mercy.

A mech may shut down by security protocol (TT rule you take 2 hits into the reactor or a single hit to the gyro) - it is marked as destroyed for the battle but the pilot don't need so much repair afterwards

Edited by Karl Streiger, 22 February 2012 - 06:07 AM.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

I'm hoping for some mixed design here.

I would love to have the bar graphs for the armor, bit I always did enjoy looking at the color coded picture as well.

There's also the debate about losing arms and such when side torsos are blown off. My idea is this...

Have the weapons become useless/destroyed when the armor reaches its limit on the side torsos (the arm weapons could still be viable until the structure is destroyed, but that would take a lot less damage to do.. Once the armor is blown off, the mech's internal structure can be attacked and if destroyed, cause the 'arm' on that side to stop functioning (but not necessarily fall off, though it'd be cool if due to an ammo explosion the arm did...). Attacking the internal structure of destroyed side torso could also have the ability to detonate ammo that hasn't been jettisoned.

This also bring up the point of an Internal Structure damage readout. I would suggest that instead of bar graphs, an internal structure, color coded damage readout (like we've had with the armor for X-number of games) should also be viewable.

If the color coded armor damage display is being used instead of the bars, I would recommend a display similar to an all time favorite.

MechCommander Gold


Ignore the fact that there is damaged internal structure underneath armor on these, I used mechs I had salvaged and slightly repaired them to show the armor/internal structure damage display. The internal structure doesn't start actually getting damaged during combat until the armor has been destroyed on top of it, the armor/structure repair is just a slider bar though, no control over what does or doesn't get repaired to what extent.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 22 February 2012 - 06:24 AM.

[MaddMaxx]

Yeach, on 17 February 2012 - 09:27 PM, said:

With this reference?
Are having HTAL displays (right-hand) a valid method for showing the damage done to the mech armor?
Are we supposed to know off-hand how much armor an enemy mech has (so we can determine the red/yellow/orange/green of their armor remaining?
How do we incorporate internal critical damage?

There was mention of Modules that increase the amount of damage info provided. That might work well enough perhaps.