30 replies to this topic

[Thrall]

An idea I had through talking with some lancemates. (pasted)

[14:21] <Thall> The idea of Merc Corps are guilds is very true, but all Merc Corps require members, that also means you should have the ability to hire on more lancemates. In other words - Any player who is/not part of a House but not a guild should have the option of placing their identity up for grabs. Which would allow the guild leader/high ranking officers in the guild to be able to recruit these new lancemates for more missions.


I was thinking of how players who want to join Merc Corps, but do not exactly know others would be able to send their identity into a Merc Net Roster - so to speak and be able to be recruited by leaders/ranking officers that are in Merc Corps seeking members.

Of course the idea would be horrible if there was no records available to recruiters on just who they were going to try and send an invite to. So I was also thinking of weekly resets and permanant information on certain subjects.

K/D Ratio (weekly reset) - Logged in hours per day (weekly reset) - over all K/D since start (No reset) - Most favored world/system (Attacker/Defender) (Weekly Reset and a no reset as well for if the player was in another system for a very long time and only recently switched to a new system earlier in the week) - affiliations (what house/faction they are in) - Most common enemy, and so on.

Basic information can be seen by all and then there would also be advanced information that is optional for players to view.

Of course this would also be a good way for Merc Leaders to fire/boot players from their corps.

A player that has been removed from a Merc Corp would have a note attached to their profile by the Merc Corp leader that removed him/her - This note would be limited characters written by the leader stating why this player was removed. "Team Killer" "Verbal Harrassment" and so on. Of course these notes should be reset monthly as it would not be fair to anyone to have a permanant mark for all players to see. (But maybe for staff only? Not getting into that...)

I'm not sure if this last part I am about to mention would be a good idea or not, so please do not take it serious unless it something that was only optional perhaps.

Saleries. - All Lances have pilots, all pilots require an income, a salery that comes out of the Merc Corps funding (weekly) and can be adjusted by the leader (or a player authorized to handle financials)

Of course there is plenty of pros and cons to it.

One benefit to this would be any player on a losing streak and lacks funding can acquire his or her salery by the end of the week to get a jump start and make purchases to dominate the field.

A somewhat downside would be all members of this merc corp would end up sacrificing some of their C-Bills to the Merc Corps treasury after every win/loss.

And of course players who are excelling on the field can request a raise in the rosters. (There would be a cap on just how much there can be in a salery of course.) A pending order that any "authorized" merc corp player can handle whenever seen.

This idea can really teach some players how to manage a Merc Corp beyond just recruitment and blasting away at other players, beyond financial distribution, it can also benefit the group by being able to purchase in game upgrades, mechs, weapons, and in some cases motivates the players to continue playing as much as they can to reap rewards later... that and be able to stay in the merc corp and not be removed for inactivity...

There is more pro's and cons than what I have mentioned above. I only stated some of the more obvious benefits and consequence.

Thank you for your time in reading everything and take care. (May add more later)

Edited by Thrall, 26 March 2012 - 02:17 PM.

[Ezekial Karn]

If you start counting K/D ratio then you end up changing the game to something silly like what is in Call of Duty on Xbox. While COD is a decent arcade style game for Xbox that is not what battletech should be. The mercinary unit idea is pretty nifty and should be there in some aspect which is what I am hoping for. Instead of K/D ratio I would consider Kill ratio only and potentially mission success percentage but for a mercinary unit which would and could affect the hiring price of the unit as a whole.

[Glory in the Highest]

Ezekial Karn, on 26 March 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

If you start counting K/D ratio then you end up changing the game to something silly like what is in Call of Duty on Xbox.

I think most of us want KDR ... I think that is very much what Mercenaries would do in BattleTech. And after all, this is a video game, and people like KDRs in video games.

Edited by Glory, 26 March 2012 - 02:28 PM.

[Thrall]

Ezekial Karn, on 26 March 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

If you start counting K/D ratio then you end up changing the game to something silly like what is in Call of Duty on Xbox. While COD is a decent arcade style game for Xbox that is not what battletech should be. The mercinary unit idea is pretty nifty and should be there in some aspect which is what I am hoping for. Instead of K/D ratio I would consider Kill ratio only and potentially mission success percentage but for a mercinary unit which would and could affect the hiring price of the unit as a whole.

The community consists of players of every kind. You have players who focus solely on the objective(s) of the game, others focus on killing the enemy, and others try to do both in a more or less situation. There are going to be Merc Corps who simply do not care for objective games and would rather be in Deathmatches over anything else. There will be Merc Corps who want to play objective games and prefer strategies over random killing sprees.

My point is, K/D Ratio matters to many players and some players use it as motivation to do their best, just to stay in the positive. Merc Corps or guilds in general always use K/D as a means to recruit players. I wouldn't want to recruit some guy with a K/D of 50/200. The statistics I suggested all relate to just what type of player you are and gives you the opportunity to be recruited by Merc Corps.

Edited by Thrall, 26 March 2012 - 02:45 PM.

[Ezekial Karn]

Glory, on 26 March 2012 - 02:24 PM, said:

I think most of us want KDR ... I think that is very much what Mercenaries would do in BattleTech. And after all, this is a video game, and people like KDRs in video games.

Mercs would count Kills not deaths because if they die thats it they are dead.. Loosing a mech is an embarrasement to anyone in the Battletech universe you dont brag about it only about your kills, and missions complete. Lets say that guy with a 50/200 K/D ratio completed successfully every mission he took and managed to build up a great amount of money. K/D then means nothing. Personally if he had a great mission complete ratio I would take him over his K/D ratio because it means he knows how to win and win money. K/D ratio only promotes campers and other bs that is all over games like COD.

Edited by Ezekial Karn, 26 March 2012 - 03:21 PM.

[Threat Doc]

If not KDR, what other system could be placed to gauge the rating of a MechWarrior? Are Green, Regular, Veteran, Elite to be restricted to tonnage taken down, or to the number of successful missions, or a points-based system. If it's going to be a points-based system, and if better hits garner higher points, I could agree to that. As a Unit Commander, KRB (kill-ratio baseline) has been invaluable in aiding to determine who is able to do what, what quality of MechWarrior they are; so, if KDR/KRB is to be replaced, what would you guys like to see?

Ezekial, I think I agree with you, that mission completion would be more important. If a MechWarrior loses their first machine and, as was said about the limited respawn from the DropShip combat, they go back for another 'Mech, that makes the completion that much more difficult to reach for them; once they're out of machines, they're done... if they finish the mission in their first machine, it's a completion, but if it takes their second, third, etc. machine before the mission is complete, what sort of penalty to their completion percentage would there be? Or, would the completions be based on points, and their points are diminished for each machine they lose in the fight?

See, KDR is important, but could it be retooled to a better system? I'm listening, y'all, give it your best?!

[Meth0s]

You can debate the particulars of how it would work, and what stats would be measured/displayed (maybe up to the pilot). But I agree with the intent of the OP. I think it would be great if lonewolves, or others, could hire themselves out in some way. I think it would be neat if pilots got a salary from their merc corps, if their corp was earning in-game credits from winning, holding planets, etc. This would be a very neat feature, as really good lone wolves, could then offer their services for a high salary. Also, a small merc corp, could offer to play as a lance to fill out another merc corp, in a company versus company battle.

[Thrall]

Anyway... at the bottom of my initial post, I wrote about players automatically donating a percentage of their C-Bills into the Merc Corps treasury. I made a similiar post back in November related to merc company donations.

Thrall, on 28 November 2011 - 12:58 PM, said:

Merc Company's - you are able to "donate" more of less everything that you have into the Company that you have either created or joined, however, you have to purchase all the features first. Such as larger hangers, surplus in storage space overall, contracts if that is implemented, a "vault" so to speak to increase the amount of donations the company can recieve, and so on. (maybe larger shuttles to haul up to two-three lances as well?)- This is a VERY expensive investment, but in doing so you have one bad*** Merc Company at your disposal.

The idea would be that all the money that is accumulated in the companies treasury by your Merc Corps pilots in every battle they partake in, can be invested into build a much larger company to have mechs/weapons in reserved, shuttle to save C-Bills on transportation for your Lances, and so on.

Edited by Thrall, 26 March 2012 - 04:17 PM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

If you are a Scout and spend most of your time in mission doing your job, then you may not have a high KDR., but could have a highXP rating for completing in mission objectives. It seems that XP MXP and LP could well go towards showing how they did. Same for someone whose job is indirect fire support. They may well have softened up a lot of mechs without getting the final kill. This of course mainly applies to members of houses. How such a system is applied to Lone Wolves I don't think anyone knows at the moment. To be honest I think the best system would be for Merc Corps to 1) interview prospective members, 2) have probationary membership available, 3) have access to a training area where they could put any candidate through their paces, or at least have access to the scores from such a system.
In fact I would like to see such an area and it's scores part of everyones record. You should also have the chance to go back in again to improve them.
As a hypothetical, say I was acting as guard (in a Hunchback) for the 3 Catapults of the fire support lance. If the rest of the team was good I could go through several matches without having to deal with any intruders. Yet I've done my assigned duty.

[Threat Doc]

Nik, you bring up some excellent points.

So, KDR/KRB is out; that makes sense. As far as I can tell, that means that MechWarrior Quality (G, R, V, E) would have to be determined based on observation rather than tonnage. Perhaps it could go on a role-by-role basis... where you have the MechWarrior Quality for each role, and then an overall Quality based on the average of those four along with time-in-service, actual logged time in the seat of a 'Mech, any 'Mech.

So, say it takes 25 hours cockpit time before a pilot goes from Green to Regular, 50 from Regular to Veteran, and then 100 to go from Veteran to Elite; however, your individual ratings for Scout, Defense, Assault, and Command roles would hold you back further.

Scout = ## xp for completion of Scout objectives to go from Green to Regular, double that for Regular to Veteran, and double that again for Veteran to Elite.

Assault = 50 tons converted to ## xp/ton, or ## xp of Assault objectives completed to go from Green to Regular, double that for Regular to Veteran, and double that again for Veteran to Elite.

Defense = 50 tons converted to ## xp/ton, or ## xp of Defense objectives completed to go from Green to Regular, double that for Regular to Veteran, and double that again for Veteran to Elite.

Command = ## xp for completion of Command objectives to go from Green to Regular, double that for Regular to Veteran, and double that again for Veteran to Elite.

Each role is calculated in the mix, each at a minimum of Green Quality, or better, and averaged together with the logged cockpit hours, regardless of the 'Mech type. Green = 1, Regular = 2, Veteran = 3, and Elite = 4. Once they're averaged, it comes out with an overall rating.

Yeah, it's a complex explanation for a problem that's not really all that complex and, since no MechWarrior would actually see these formula's at work, though they might see their points and figure it out for themselves, it shouldn't be a big deal for us to figure out. Right?

[Thrall]

There is going to be Merc Corps, how would all of you want it to function?

Something simple where you can just recruit players and kick players out?

Something a bit more complex with additional options, maybe announcement pages to tell your lances where they should go and fight among other stuff.

Maybe something economincal like I suggested?

What about rosters? Should that be optional or exist? Would you want a roster for recruitment and statistics on players that have their name on the Net?

Maybe players would prefer to recruit random people they only see in matchmaking..?

Should recruitment only be on here on the forums?

Any thoughts to any of these questions or have your own ideas..?

Edited by Thrall, 27 March 2012 - 11:08 AM.

[Threat Doc]

Honestly, I would like to see, from the beginning of a MechWarrior's career with my unit,

• The option to fill out the enlistment form we have for the unit, or not. If not, their MechWarrior name, starting rank, and MechWarrior quality fills the proper parts of the database, while filling out some or the rest would, of course, place their information in the correct places so they would have the ability to have their rank by points.
  
• The ability to appoint a place where each MechWarrior goes in a Table of Organization & Equipment (what I call a Wartable) in accordance with standard operational setup for proper Battalions, Companies, and Lances.
  
• From that TO&E, I want players to be able to click into their MSR (MechWarrior Service Record) to view their game and AU statistics, all of their awards, tabbed and cased, everything they've accomplished, their achievements, for both the game and AU, their points, kills, whatever statistics are going to come from the game, etc.
  
• I would then like the ability to reassign personnel and brevet their rank when necessary to continue building the unit up.
  
• Now that the MechWarrior is taken care of, I would like to have each MechWarrior take care of their own finances, their own 'Mechs, AND have a means of hitting up the unit's coffers, via a request requiring approval from someone in authority, to get money from those coffers for repairs and/or upgrades.
  
• After Action Review and Promotions/Awards documents should be available and readable on completion and archiving.
  
• I want to be able to use points and/or C-Bills to upgrade the Merc Corps HQ to have more bells and whistles, as many as the devs want to design into it, including the potential of being able to make suggestions for further upgrades.
  
• I would also like to have a configurable RSS feed for everything I mentioned, above, perhaps on separate pages, so my Command & Staff and I can take a good look at anything that might need to be done on logging into the game, especially when we're somewhere it's not possible to be in the game.
  
• I'm sure I'll think of other things, but this is a good start, I think.

Edited by Kay Wolf, 27 March 2012 - 11:46 AM.

[Kenyon Burguess]

the problem with any sort of experience rating system is that its not new player friendly. or veteran player who rolls an new character friendly. I have played guild wars for years and this is one area where a great game failed. in GW pvp you earn points for winning. X amount of points (years of playing numbers here) earns you title step and the ability to use a special emote. after a while guilds began to require players to flash a certain level of emote to play with them, all others were turned away. this severely handicapped the influx of new players because they couldnt get on a team to earn points to get on a team. after all this time the GW pvp population has so choked itself out of players that they suffer long wait times for matches and dont recieve developer attention for new pvp formats. while the PVE side where most play happily get rare updates still. quite impressive for such an old game imo

Edited by Geist Null, 27 March 2012 - 12:04 PM.

[Threat Doc]

Geist Null, on 27 March 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

the problem with any sort of experience rating system is that its not new player friendly. or veteran player who rolls an new character friendly.

It's not supposed to be; what's wrong with starting at the bottom and working your way up?

[Mattiator]

I like the idea of a 'hiring board' for prospective mercs.

[MaddMaxx]

Geist Null, on 27 March 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

the problem with any sort of experience rating system is that its not new player friendly. or veteran player who rolls an new character friendly. I have played guild wars for years and this is one area where a great game failed. in GW pvp you earn points for winning. X amount of points (years of playing numbers here) earns you title step and the ability to use a special emote. after a while guilds began to require players to flash a certain level of emote to play with them, all others were turned away. this severely handicapped the influx of new players because they couldnt get on a team to earn points to get on a team. after all this time the GW pvp population has so choked itself out of players that they suffer long wait times for matches and dont recieve developer attention for new pvp formats. while the PVE side where most play happily get rare updates still. quite impressive for such an old game imo

Great point Geist. I have seen the same in other games in other genres. What I would like to see is the other way around. Players (LW's) would be provided a place offer their services and provide any potential employer with a good reason to hire them for a Match, which could turn into a full time gig.

One good thing might be the ability to offer your services at -20% of any XP - C-Bill gains made by said LW. Not sure how the transfer could be done but it ouwld be a good incentive program for Merc Corps.

[Thrall]

I'm not exactly up to date on XP other than tree skills for roles which only give slight edges in combat.

Hrm.. Perhaps the idea of Merc Net Roster would also have not just players looking to join Companies, but a list of Merc Companies that players can make attempts to join as well?

Merc name, member count, house loyalty, brief description by leader - perhaps Nemesis/at war with a particullar house or Merc Company? (Would probably make it more likely to face hated companies during matchmaking or in any mode of war.) - Alliances as well, players could communicate with allied companies and create joint parties for matchmaking on occasion.. transfer players between the groups.. create and build sister companies for under or over 18 years old players..

This idea is already part of Battletech since there are numberous battalions that interact with one another one way or another, normally ordered to do so by a high ranking officer or whoever commands the force in that region of space. Some commit to joint attacks/defence, others merge to reinforce other units, and so on...

Simply adding some thoughts on how this game can be a bit more strategic for players who would enjoy commanding forces off the battlfield as much as they would on.

(Add-on)

Just a thought on balancing for this post.

Thrall, on 26 March 2012 - 04:08 PM, said:

The idea would be that all the money that is accumulated in the companies treasury by your Merc Corps pilots in every battle they partake in, can be invested into build a much larger company to have mechs/weapons in reserved, shuttle to save C-Bills on transportation for your Lances, and so on.

For some it's hard to accumulate wealth, for others. The money just flows into your bank account. I believe that prices on acquiring "upgrades" to your Merc Company is massive... Making Atlas's seem like chump change. Of course there would be stages.. such as -

Mech Hanger I - Houses 4 Reserved Mechs
Mech Hanger II - Houses 8 Reserved Mechs
(up to V recommended - 20 Reserved)

and so on... Of course as I said before, the upgrades cost fortunes and the costs per upgrade would make anyones head spin.

Edited by Thrall, 31 March 2012 - 04:03 AM.

[Threat Doc]

I like Thrall's take on the money, but I always thought a good portion of it, like standard duty pay, would go to each individual MechWarrior, and the remainder of the contract money would go to the Merc Corps, to be used to expand the Merc Corps AND help MechWarrior's who've fallen on hard luck to repair their machines.

[FinnMcKool]

"BEGIN RANT"
Problem is those who feel kills are most important , tend to be bad team players, sorry but you all are proving it here on the forum,
you want death match , you want the assault Mech, you will put up with others on your team, like scouts but thats just so they will
help you get more kills.But winning or helping your team,no your worried about the kill/death ratio,I say a team should share the ratio,
you should get stuck with the ratio the team earns, not your own, or Im sure you arnt going to take a shot for the team, you wont risk
a death so your team would win, is it team game or not?
"END RANT"

that being said I think the original Idea is good; a way for Corps. to find players ,and a way to judge who you want and dont want.

[Threat Doc]

You know, I think Finn is right, and I'm going to either eliminate, or find a better use for, the average Kill Ratio Baseline I usually insist on through training, and for the sake of advancement. That is somewhat self-defeating. For the rest, I think we're just going to have to figure out what PGI intends to do for an advancement point system. In World War II, you became an Ace if you splashed five enemy aircraft, and that's basically held true. The question I have is this, will MWO be seat-of-your-pants enough to justify that sort of system, again, or will it actually end up being KDR/KRB, anyway?