8 replies to this topic

[Fecal]

Hi fellas,

With the coming of MWO, I've taken the opportunity to grab the free, "enhanced" version of Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries from MekTek.

Holy moly they have added a lot of new weapons and upgrades to this game. There are LRM's with artemis targeting, LRM's with heavy explosive warheads, inferno gel, Arrow IV clusters, Heavy Lasers, Heavy Pulse Lasers, Continuous Lasers, Assault Lasers, PPC's with capacitors, Light PPC's with Dual Capacitors (basically pulse PPC's), coolant pods, Hyper AC's... the list goes on and on.

Now this leads me to a couple questions: are these weapons just made up (or do they exist in books/tabletop), and will any of them be featured in MWO? Should they be?

I'm used to the weapons from MW2, 3, & 4 and this seems like a nice way to add complexity to the game but I'm not sure if it's really going overboard. Has there been any mention of how many weapons are available, and how do you guys feel about all of the new ones?

[Dlardrageth]

To start you off, there's one fundamental difference between MW4 and MWO - the timeline. So you can straightaway forget about a lot of stuff from MW4 for the time being. As it is a balancing nightmare as is and thankfully won't make it into MWO, and it is "far future" technology as well. The good news about that is, we can still have high hopes for a decently balanced game with MWO for a change.

Edited by Dlardrageth, 12 March 2012 - 09:40 AM.

[GDL Irishwarrior]

I'm actually surprised by how many of the things they introduced were in fact canon; most of them were fairly uncommon, though - only heavy lasers and Artemis IV targeting were seen on a regular basis, with Infernos being more of a special-case weapon due to the dangers of mounting them.
Rather than listing every bit of that equipment that is canon, I'l do it the quick way and say what isn't - Heavy Pulse lasers, continuous lasers, and assault lasers. The PPC capacitor is a special case - it is canon, but nothing I've seen indicates that two may be attached to the same PPC, making the dual-capcitor Light PPC an iffy matter *Edit* Whoops, just double checked a few of the things, and the high-explosive LRMs don't seem to be canon - curse my assumptions

Now, just because the rest are canon doesn't mean MWO should have them. The only one of those things that will be timeline-accurate at launch will be Inferno missiles. Artemis IV and Arrow IV equipment becomes widely available shortly after the Clan invasion (so we might see them in a year or two), while everything else is at least 10 years away,

Edited by GDL Irishwarrior, 12 March 2012 - 09:47 AM.

[ExAstris]

Frankly, I don't care if they stick to the timeline for weapons deployments. They're already completely revamping how mech customization works, modifying weapon behaviors, giving mechs entire information warfare suites that were non-existent in the original vision (which even in the advanced versions worked differently) along with onboard uav's and a host of other new bits. I think flubbing the timeline for what weapons get introduced on what dates is asking too much for a reinvisionment of the franchise.

Things they shouldn't change are as follows - Which empires rise and fall and when. Major players in those Empires and the novels. The general look, feel, and base loadout of iconic mechs. Dates, locations, and victors of major battles.

The rest is up for modification in my opinion. Now, I'm not advocating wanton mutation of the existing timeline. That would be disrespectful obviously. But if the game play and mechanics would be enhanced by giving us access to various types of armor that didn't originally exist during that time, so be it. The only real reason those items were invented at those times in the original timeline was to facilitate the growth of that game by introducing new customizations and tactical options as the game grew. Thats exactly how it should be here. If the game would benefit significantly from having a choice bewteen standard, ferro-fibrous, reflective, or reative armor even though a few of them weren't originally around at this time, then go ahead and enhance the game with their inclusion instead of snuffing its growth with overly strict adherence to a timeline originally generated from the very gameplay growth decisions you would be denying to MWO.

There is even middle ground to work with too. It doesn't have to be black and white between timeline preservation and gameplay options. We can have our cake and eat it too.
Here's how:
I'll run with the example of ferro-fibrous, reflective, and reactive armor. We can simply include precursers to these technologies. You can even give them different names, such as woven, deflective, and explosive armor. Given this game will have its own entire set of stats that will merely mimic the TT game but not be identical to them, we can set the effectiveness of these precurser armors to whatever the game balance demands. Then if we ever do make it to the point in the timeline when one of those canonical armor types becomes available for mass use, say ferro-fibrous armor in the Inner Sphere, we can just replace our woven armor with it, give it a slight stat boost (to accomodate for tech inflation), and preserve both our gameplay options throughout the life of MWO and the original timeline.

Best solution for everyone.

[Dlardrageth]

Best solution?

Not really, because if you get your fancy whatever armor I want my NSS, heat baffles and CLPS on my Exterminator EXT-4D. After all that is all existing Tech, and if you can wantonly grab stuff from the future (don't kid yourself, that is what you're advocating here), I darn well should have access to past LosTech. Yeah, right, and **** any pretense of balance then additionally.

I bet people are gonna enjoy fighting a fully kitted out Exterminator from the StarLEague era...

Edited by Dlardrageth, 12 March 2012 - 10:24 AM.

[MilitantMonk]

ExAstris, on 12 March 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Frankly, I don't care if they stick to the timeline for weapons deployments. They're already completely revamping how mech customization works, modifying weapon behaviors, giving mechs entire information warfare suites that were non-existent in the original vision (which even in the advanced versions worked differently) along with onboard uav's and a host of other new bits. I think flubbing the timeline for what weapons get introduced on what dates is asking too much for a reinvisionment of the franchise.

Never in canon did it say that mechs didn't have these onboard electronics or uavs.

[ExAstris]

Dlardrageth, on 12 March 2012 - 10:23 AM, said:

Not really, because if you get your fancy whatever armor I want my NSS, heat baffles and CLPS on my Exterminator EXT-4D.

ExAstris, on 12 March 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Now, I'm not advocating wanton mutation of the existing timeline. That would be disrespectful obviously.

Dlardrageth, on 12 March 2012 - 10:23 AM, said:

After all that is all existing Tech, and if you can wantonly grab stuff from the future (don't kid yourself, that is what you're advocating here), I darn well should have access to past LosTech. Yeah, right, and **** any pretense of balance then additionally.

ExAstris, on 12 March 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Now, I'm not advocating wanton mutation of the existing timeline. That would be disrespectful obviously.

You're generating a counterexample by the exact methodology I precisely disassociated myself with. This is not a grab all method to import everything that ever existed in TT into 3049 MWO. Its a method we can use to take functional, good ideas, and import them into MWO without contaminating the timeline. This could be used on just a few things, it could be used on a bunch of things. But its use still needs to be guided by reason, we aren't importing functional options just to have them, we're doing it because they present MWO with varied gamplay mechanics and a functional variety of tactical options and loadouts. All imports would still be guided by balance and the needs of MWO, not the wanton fancy of a powergamer looking to bend the advanced TT rules to his whim to generate ultracombos.

Dlardrageth, on 12 March 2012 - 10:23 AM, said:

Best solution?

ExAstris, on 12 March 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Best solution for everyone.

[FinnMcKool]

well what is best? personally I think less of the advanced weapons
would be best for everyone, after all we will all have the same stuff
to work/deal with.


I intend to rely heavily on duck tape and WD 40.

[Gabriel Amarell]

OK, when the game launches, I will be happy if all the 3049 cannonical equipment is there. This is the time after the Gray Death Legion finds the Star League memory core on Helm (thats a planet for those who dont know the stories). The inner sphere weapons factories are already producing Pulse/ER Gauss Rifles and many other weapons associated with the clans, the truth is that the IS has access to most of that BEFORE the clan invasion. Clan tech comes with the Clan invasion, but its improved Star league tech, which the IS already had by 3049 thanks to the Helm memory core. This means that during the Clan invasion we will have "lost tech" and Clan tech.

Assuming the game is successful enough to survive its 1st year (a lot of games dont make it that long) there will be plenty of weapons, endo steel internal structure, double heatsinks, basically a whole lot of stuff. That said there are things that I think the original archetects of this property would have put into the game had the technology/time been there. I would argue that different types of radar (phase dopplar for example) stealth technology (if only in some limmited form) and Electronic warefare (this was implimented, but poorly if you ask me) are just a few non cannon technologies that could be added to the game without unballancing it (if implimented appropriately of course), and that the original creators would have done so if those technologies had been around at the time when this property was created. These are just the tip of the preverbial iceberg, there are tons of things that could be added that would enrich the game (Different types of rounds for ballistic weapons, armor piercing, explosive?) are they cannonical, no, are they really dramatic departures from cannon, maybe to some of you, but to me again no.

I am all for cannon to a point, but I think that minor departures could enritch the game significantly without changing the core experience that those of us who love Battletech are hoping for.