246 replies to this topic

[Thomas Hogarth]

Let's take a step back.

Can anyone suggest a better method of limiting the number of rare chassis you see in a match?

[Halfinax]

Thomas Hogarth, on 05 March 2012 - 02:14 PM, said:

Let's take a step back.

Can anyone suggest a better method of limiting the number of rare chassis you see in a match?

I don't see it as an issue to begin with, but making them rare by making them extremely expensive and real world cash only is just going to turn people away.

Also see Garth's post above yours.

[whiskey tango foxtrot]

Tactics and driver skill is what it's all about. imo.

[Thomas Hogarth]

Halfinax, on 05 March 2012 - 02:17 PM, said:

I don't see it as an issue to begin with, but making them rare by making them extremely expensive and real world cash only is just going to turn people away.

Also see Garth's post above yours.

Okay, so you don't have a problem with EVERYONE running around in 'Mechs that are canonically extremely rare? I suppose you feel the same way about variants. So if the HBK-4G is incredibly rare in-game compare to the HBK-4P, you don't see an issue? If every assault is a limited-production Wolfs Dragoons-only model, nope, that's fine?

See, that would absolutely kill immersion for me. Oh, look, another MAD-II. And another. and another. etc etc. Same with variants. All Banshees are Steiner models? How odd.

I am absolutely willing to abandon my concept of expensive chassis if you can come up with a better solution.

Garths post, while informative, does not deal with this issue.

[edit] Hold on. Why would not being able to afford a handful of chassis with a field full of 'Mechs just as good or better turn people away? "Oop, I can't financially justify that ONE 'Mech, let me just throw in the towel." Consider WoT and the Lowe. A lot of people, myself included, won't ever spend that much on an imaginary tank. And a _lot_ of people still play, myself included. So where are you coming from with this argument?

Edited by Thomas Hogarth, 05 March 2012 - 02:24 PM.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Thomas Hogarth, on 05 March 2012 - 02:14 PM, said:

Let's take a step back.

Can anyone suggest a better method of limiting the number of rare chassis you see in a match?

Well you have a few choices
1) Actually making them rare. Some sort of RNG to see if they are available to buy. However they'll be come more common over time and this sort of thing tends to **** people off.
2) Making acquiring one very expensive both for cbills and $$$. Again, this merely slows down people, but it'll become common if its a really good mech eventually.
3) Some sort of fatal flaw- hey there had to be a reason why they weren't common, right? Maybe the books could give reasons. Bad twist range, easy to spot on radar, etc, etc.
4) Economics- Just make the cbill/xp return on it very low compared to other mechs (rare parts are hard to find, right?)
5) Limit mechlab- Make it so no mods or even more limited mods are possible.

Id favor 3 combined with a little of 4 and 5. Give people a chance to try it, but only make it workable if you can really figure out the quirks of the mech.

[El Loco]

So... how's the question on whether or not all released 'Mechs should be available from the start to every player going?

I'm still strongly convinced that it is great to have every chassis ready to play without having to pay for them with hard money or to wait until you can unlock them using in game money. If you want more chassis and you want them faster, go ahead and buy yourself in game currency with your hard money. I mean, we earn experience points on a chassis, it just doesn't make sense to force a player using a machine he or she can't handle because he or she is used to playing something heavier. It would turn me away from the game (and I'm a medium to low heavy jockey).

That being said... rare chassis are rare for a reason, which usually is all but a few 'Mechs are lost due to war or the Exodus and their factories have been destroyed. How to handle these rare designs? You simply could not release them for the game... that's it, but it is less than appealing. You could also give every design a couple of tags, one being "rare" or "near extinct in the wild" or what not. For each match only 1 of these designs would be allowed per team (blocking every other rare design once the slot is filled). I think this is quit manageable using an algorithm (in LoL you can use each hero only once per team... they must have a similar algorithm, right?). This way, you could collect all the rare designs you want, you would only get the chance to play each of them once in a while. But I see a big downside to this method as it could easily cause serial quitting while 'Mech selection before the game, plus all the whining, crying, flaming, nerd rage, and you all know the song... If that's not good enough an option, we're back at the first suggestion: Not including rare designs to begin with.

[Project_Mercy]

One hope's there's some compelling reason to have something other than Assaults in the game. And by that i mean, more than just 3 assaults and some C3/TAGing light to assist them.

Depending on the missions, there could be plenty of reason to not want to drop an assault. Say it was something like "take and hold these 3 points", then the assault speed penalty could be an issue, especially if the lance had to drop at a single spot.

Grinding for mechs is lame. It's just like current FPS where later on the game turns into a slug-fest that's not conducive to new people joining because everyone else has massive weapon advantages. Not to mention, the game should be fun in itself, not because you want to grind for stuff.

Vanilla Battletech was fun because there was scarcity. You made due with what you had, and if someone dropped a beafy heavy or an assault, that meant some serious butt was getting served. It also meant that side was willing to risk massive resources to that operation. It was like going all-in in poker. There was a reason to try to kill the meat and save the mech. If you scored a cockpit kill on a heavy/assault, it wasn't as much that you dropped it, it was that you just scored a rare resource. For me at least, BT really lost its charm with 3056+. I really didn't care about what kind of whored up heavy someone was going to throw down. It was just a bunch of munchkins boating. The same was true with The MW3-4 games.

Back to the poker analogy, without some limits it just turns into digital poker where you just log out and log back in to refresh your chip pool. Every single hand is an "all-in" case, since there's no negative reprocussions for betting with everything you have.

I think it'd be cool if there was a repair cooldown on your mechs. You're allowed to "bind"/"synchronize" to say 3 lights, 3 mediums, 2 heavys, and 1 assault. If your assault gets raped on a drop, then it will take you say 80 hours IRL to repair it. You can either log out, or man up and drop something else.

So, I guess back OT, I don't think people should have to grind up the mech classes (though maybe they need some rank/xp to use a certain one within that rank, some rarer config or something). But I think there should be reasons to field a balanced lance, as well as bonuses for under-tonning.

Edited by Wraeththix Constantine, 05 March 2012 - 02:50 PM.

[Project_Mercy]

Garth Erlam, on 05 March 2012 - 02:12 PM, said:

2) The idea is to balance the classes as much as is possible. IE. yes most of the time an Atlas will beat a Commando 1v1, but as long as it isn't 70% of the time, say, it's more fun. IE. an Atlas beats a Commando 60% of the time, but a Commando beats, I dunno, a Jenner 60% of the time, and a Jenner beats an Atlas 60% of the time. Something like that is more what I'm talking about.

This would not be Battletech/MechWarrior though. Yes, occasionally someone REALLY exceptional mechwarrior can drop something of a better class, or maybe the mech is all short-ranged and slow and it gets ranged or something. But for the most part, a warhammer vs a jenner, is a dead jenner. If you're telling me they're trying to somehow make it no that way, then I propose that's sort of a sacred cow. You throw that out, and you're just another mech game with BT stamps on it.

[Halfinax]

Thomas Hogarth, on 05 March 2012 - 02:21 PM, said:

Okay, so you don't have a problem with EVERYONE running around in 'Mechs that are canonically extremely rare? I suppose you feel the same way about variants. So if the HBK-4G is incredibly rare in-game compare to the HBK-4P, you don't see an issue? If every assault is a limited-production Wolfs Dragoons-only model, nope, that's fine?

See, that would absolutely kill immersion for me. Oh, look, another MAD-II. And another. and another. etc etc. Same with variants. All Banshees are Steiner models? How odd.

I am absolutely willing to abandon my concept of expensive chassis if you can come up with a better solution.

Garths post, while informative, does not deal with this issue.

[edit] Hold on. Why would not being able to afford a handful of chassis with a field full of 'Mechs just as good or better turn people away? "Oop, I can't financially justify that ONE 'Mech, let me just throw in the towel." Consider WoT and the Lowe. A lot of people, myself included, won't ever spend that much on an imaginary tank. And a _lot_ of people still play, myself included. So where are you coming from with this argument?

Same reason you don't see that issue in the TT. People like what they like, and the minis, nor the C-bill price are prohibitive or very different from any other chassis. You are assuming everyone will want to ride that ride simply because it's canonically rare. I've played the TT for quite sometime and guess what even without any limiting factor you still don't see them often.

The reason I don't have a problem with it is I just don't get twisted up about a Maurader IIc being rare in canon, but being potentially not in MW:O. It's not going to ruin my immersion, and I don't think it would ruin it for the vast majority of players. I'm sure if the devs want to find a way to make a chassis rare they can and will.

Hell they could make those super rare 'Mechs available only as prizes for certain events or something (assuming they still aren't superior to other 'Mechs). Now that would be something, and I'd be more impressed when I saw one on the battlefield because they would then be legitimately rare, and not forcibly rare through artificial means like extreme pricing. Having a Marauder IIC as a badge of honor for winning a tournament or something would be truly rare and really exciting when you do see one fielded.

[Aegis Kleais]

It seems PGI is more than aware of what we call "Battlefield Dynamics"

Whereas many people get caught up in finite numbers or the labels and classification of things, PGI realizes that far too many dynamic variables have a more significant weight on the outcome of a game than the static ones.

People are so focused with "What is the best?" when that pretty much is a gross oversimplification of war simulation. As Garth hinted at, "The Best" is an amazingly rare case of tens if not hundreds of things being absolute that you should never even expect it to happen in pub gaming.

Think of it as in Rock > Scissors > Paper but not in the manner that one thing is always better than another, but that no 1 thing can beat everything else.

Edited by Aegis Kleaisâ„¢, 05 March 2012 - 02:48 PM.

[Orzorn]

Wraeththix Constantine, on 05 March 2012 - 02:31 PM, said:

One hope's there's some compelling reason to have something other than Assaults in the game. And by that i mean, more than just 3 assaults and some C3/TAGing light to assist them.

Depending on the missions, there could be plenty of reason to not want to drop an assault. Say it was something like "take and hold these 3 points", then the assault speed penalty could be an issue, especially if the lance had to drop at a single spot.

A while back, one of the developers mentioned that maps are HUGE. Like, a dozen kilometers across. An assault mech (like an Atlas) that can only move at 54 km/h would take 13 minutes to get across the map, compared to a mech like the Commando that runs at 97.2 km/h which could do the same trip in 7.5 minutes.

And that's just the Commando. We've got light mechs like the Fire Moth (Dasher) that can run up to 216 km/h with MASC engaged. That trip would take only 3.3 minutes. That's an insane speed and four times faster than an Atlas. There's no way a full company of Atlas mechs could even compare to a company of faster scouts in a game mode where you were supposed to capture objectives.

Wraeththix Constantine, on 05 March 2012 - 02:39 PM, said:

This would not be Battletech/MechWarrior though. Yes, occasionally someone REALLY exceptional mechwarrior can drop something of a better class, or maybe the mech is all short-ranged and slow and it gets ranged or something. But for the most part, a warhammer vs a jenner, is a dead jenner. If you're telling me they're trying to somehow make it no that way, then I propose that's sort of a sacred cow. You throw that out, and you're just another mech game with BT stamps on it.

What? Battletech has rules for making faster vehicles harder to hit. A light mech can still beat heavier mechs on a regular basis in the tabletop due to these rules. You get a mech running fast enough and the to-hit modifiers go through the roof.

[Aegis Kleais]

Orzorn, on 05 March 2012 - 02:49 PM, said:

A while back, one of the developers mentioned that maps are HUGE. Like, a dozen kilometers across. An assault mech (like an Atlas) that can only move at 54 km/h would take 13 minutes to get across the map, compared to a mech like the Commando that runs at 97.2 km/h which could do the same trip in 7.5 minutes.

And that's just the Commando. We've got light mechs like the Fire Moth (Dasher) that can run up to 216 km/h with MASC engaged. That trip would take only 3.3 minutes. That's an insane speed and four times faster than an Atlas. There's no way a full company of Atlas mechs could even compare to a company of faster scouts in a game mode where you were supposed to capture objectives.


What? Battletech has rules for making faster vehicles harder to hit. A light mech can still beat heavier mechs on a regular basis in the tabletop due to these rules. You get a mech running fast enough and the to-hit modifiers go through the roof.

Good points.

What many people also don't understand is that Sun Tzu stated that 2 of the most potent forces in battle are power and speed. Speed makes for an amazing dynamic that not enough people give credit to.

Speed lets you avoid.
Speed lets you determine the range.
Speed lets you flank.
Speed lets you flee.
Speed keeps you invisible.

[Solis Obscuri]

This game isn't being designed as a PvE grind-fest, so I think everything should be available from the get-go. I've seen games that tried to make you "level up" your equipment to a PvP endgame, and it just forces a lot of otherwise good content into being crappy speed-bump gear, because the big high-level stuff has all the best stats and most players would rather not play than go without the "best/top gear" in a competitive game.

Of course, that means assaults have to be balanced in such a way that they aren't preferrable in all ways to heavy and medium 'mechs in combat. I also hope factors like repair cost make any advantage from rolling super-heavy come at a steep cost.

And I would also be ok with some discrepancy in skill-progression speed, reflecting that piloting an enormous battlemech like an Atlas is much more challenging to master than controlling a somewhat smaller and handier design like a medium chassis.

[Project_Mercy]

Orzorn, on 05 March 2012 - 02:49 PM, said:

What? Battletech has rules for making faster vehicles harder to hit. A light mech can still beat heavier mechs on a regular basis in the tabletop due to these rules. You get a mech running fast enough and the to-hit modifiers go through the roof.

At best it's a +4, and they're generating heat while they're running. They're also taking penalties for it (+1 or +2), so at worse, they're giving a +2 delta in firing shots, and for that they're running in a mech that's likely to be catastrophically damaged by a single large weapon hit (PPC, AC-10, LRM-20, etc), vs a heavy which is going to ignore a few light weapons.

Like I said, it's possible with terrain, and good piloting, to do it. I'm just saying it's a confluence of bonuses. It's not "given equal skill lights are balanced vs heavies" much in the same way that in an MMO you'd say that a rogue is roughly as good as a ranger in some generic MMO for killing people; which is how i read what he said.

Fleeing doesn't count as "success". Fleeing counts as dying.

Edited by Wraeththix Constantine, 05 March 2012 - 03:00 PM.

[Orzorn]

Wraeththix Constantine, on 05 March 2012 - 02:58 PM, said:

At best it's a +4, and they're generating heat while they're running. They're also taking penalties for it (+1 or +2), so at worse, they're giving a +2 delta in firing shots, and for that they're running in a mech that's likely to be catastrophically damaged by a single large weapon hit (PPC, AC-10, LRM-20, etc), vs a heavy which is going to ignore a few light weapons.

Like I said, it's possible with terrain, and good piloting, to do it. I'm just saying it's a confluence of bonuses. It's not "given equal skill lights are balanced vs heavies" much in the same way that in an MMO you'd say that a rogue is roughly as good as a ranger in some generic MMO for killing people; which is how i read what he said.

Okay, I can agree with that.

And I think we're diverging a little bit here. It's important to remember that a scout mech should NOT, on average, be able to beat an Assault mech in a FACE TO FACE battle. That's just fine, though, because if an Assault mech can't win in its intended domain of combat (face to face battles) then what the hell was it made to do? Of course, that isn't to say that a scout mech can not defeat an assault on a regular basis, but it most likely won't be in a face to face battle. I would expect a scout mechs chances of beating an assault in a city to be very high, or a scout with a set of long range weapons in mountainous terrain or something like that. Regardless, it won't win in a head to head battle. It shouldn't.

But I understand the sentiment of some of these posts. People don't want a repeat of Mechwarrior 4, where the mechlab combined with how armor and coolant works allowed assaults to beat every other class at almost every role. It's a legitimate concern, and even one that I share (Depending on how they balance the mechlab). People simply want mechs to be able to do their roles well.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Let just hope objective play is an important part of the game mix. Getting away from death match type fight and into objective based missions opens up a whole lot of room for other mech types to be effective. Mission to infiltrate a base, scan a building and get out? Good luck doing that in your Atlas. Right tool for the job and all.

[Project_Mercy]

The issue as I see it revolves around the (assumption?) that sides are going to be numerically balanced based on players. Battletech isn't balanced that way, it's balanced on tonnage or points (depending on which system you're using). So I can take a Jenner and a Hunchback vs a Stalker, and there's advantages and disadvantages to either choice.

But if it's balanced on mechwarrior count, then the question comes is a jenner == a stalker. Given equivelent mechwarriors the answer in BT would be "no" in most cases. Now I can see certain mission(game) options giving advantages, but once the clan mechs start getting in there, their heavies end up being "speedy enough" (I'm assuming no LAMs also).

The only way to remedy this is to either limit the people, limit the tonnage, or rebalance the system away from battletech.

I don't know, maybe that's the way, but it doesn't really feel like battetech to me. Like I said, I'd rather see a system where the person has to actively make a choice as to what he/she's dropping, and when he/she wants to bring out the heavy iron. Dropping an assault into a combat SHOULD be a rush. You sould be able to wreck hell with it. It's just that it looses that umph if either a.) everyone's dropping assaults or b.) there's some arbitrary system to equalize the assault vs a light.

I've been playing Battletech since 89. I've played at conventions for years. All assault/heavy slug fests just get boring really quick, whether rolling dice or mice.

[Orzorn]

TheRulesLawyer, on 05 March 2012 - 03:12 PM, said:

Let just hope objective play is an important part of the game mix. Getting away from death match type fight and into objective based missions opens up a whole lot of room for other mech types to be effective. Mission to infiltrate a base, scan a building and get out? Good luck doing that in your Atlas. Right tool for the job and all.

Well, considering they said that there won't be a kill counter (the current one is just because all they do in their testing is kill each other), I highly expect almost all of the missions will be objective based.

Assaults definitely have a place in that system, too. Assaults are supposed to kill stuff, but they aren't supposed to do what they did in Mechwarrior 4 and kill ALL the stuff. Their main purpose should be to stay at an objective and make sure it is safe, or stay by the commander and keep him safe. Sure, you might have a strike team that leads an assault into a city or whatever, but I expect that most assault mechs won't have to waddle around on their slow legs trying to kill everybody. Leave that to the heavies and mediums. Assaults, in terms of combat, should be, at best, the cleanup crew for the heavies. Scouts find the enemy, mediums tangle with them and slow them down, heavies kill them, and you might get an assault that shows up to ruin any stragglers and remove all hope.

[TheRulesLawyer]

****** Pillager, on 05 March 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

First Post -
I do love battletech. Probably one of my most favorite universes. There is another Freeware Game that I am playing which is "World of Tanks"(use to be in the Armor Branch so I love Armor Warfare). The system they have in that game is two fold for picking up new equipment. You must use the vehicle to gain expereince and once you save up enough you purchase(through XPs) the ability to buy with cash the next more powerful vehicle. Just dropping my 2 cents

Welcome to the board. You might want to start here
http://mwomercs.com/...-pretty-please/

WoT is an often discussed topic. The above should get you up to speed on what info we have right now.

[Garth Erlam]

Wraeththix Constantine, on 05 March 2012 - 03:17 PM, said:

The issue as I see it revolves around the (assumption?) that sides are going to be numerically balanced based on players. Battletech isn't balanced that way, it's balanced on tonnage or points (depending on which system you're using). So I can take a Jenner and a Hunchback vs a Stalker, and there's advantages and disadvantages to either choice. But if it's balanced on mechwarrior count, then the question comes is a jenner == a stalker. Given equivelent mechwarriors the answer in BT would be "no" in most cases. Now I can see certain mission(game) options giving advantages, but once the clan mechs start getting in there, their heavies end up being "speedy enough" (I'm assuming no LAMs also). The only way to remedy this is to either limit the people, limit the tonnage, or rebalance the system away from battletech. I don't know, maybe that's the way, but it doesn't really feel like battetech to me. Like I said, I'd rather see a system where the person has to actively make a choice as to what he/she's dropping, and when he/she wants to bring out the heavy iron. Dropping an assault into a combat SHOULD be a rush. You sould be able to wreck hell with it. It's just that it looses that umph if either a.) everyone's dropping assaults or b.) there's some arbitrary system to equalize the assault vs a light. I've been playing Battletech since 89. I've played at conventions for years. All assault/heavy slug fests just get boring really quick, whether rolling dice or mice.

I'm not sure exactly how balancing it this way would be any better - sure an Atlas is worth a Jenner and a Hunchback - so who in their right mind would choose a Jenner? It'd be a ghosttown of Atlas on Atlas combat. You'd be actively punishing people for not choosing an Atlas.

Making each chassis (somewhat) equivalent means that your choice is about function, not ability.