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[Turbo Corvair]

This thread is to discuss the quote below from Dev Blog 1 about joining "special units", how we interpret it, and a guess on how the system might work that if incorrect could also be a suggestions compilation on the subject.

My motivation is this:
I (and many others I'm sure) want to play for a Great House rather than a Merc unit, but I do not want to be limited to an "unguilded" style of gameplay.
Some might jump in here and state that the "unguilded" playstyle would be the "lone wolf", but playing for a huge faction would still fall into this category.

The way I see this working is that joining a special unit will be similar to (like joining a merc corp) joining a guild/corp/clan except that the unit is not player created, has no permanent leader, and requires continued participation in order to remain a member.

I would see the person who currently holds the highest awarded rank as being the leader of sorts, and he might be given some basic "authority" to help manage things a bit but very likely would not have any real "power" that could do harm to the unit.

Players within one of these units would hopefully choose to coordinate their efforts and manage their own affairs as to organizing teams for matches and such.

I imagine that some units (probably those that are highly popular due to canon or even just "cool" names and paint jobs) would likely be flooded with people and disorganized, while others that remain small would be much more likely to function as a true team.

There could be a cap on the number of members in each unit to try to minimize this problem, but likely it would be left to balance itself out. People unsatisfied with the way one unit is functioning would leave the mega-unit and join a smaller one.

So, in short I'd like to see "special faction units" function as a clan/guild/corp that functions as described below as far as gaining and maintaining rank to have access to membership.



From Dev Blog 1:


As a Faction Player, loyalty points are earned by playing and winning matches. As the player accumulates loyalty points, they will gain a military faction rank at pre-determined loyalty point totals. If a player loses LPs by decay or negative actions, they will be demoted.

Gaining ranks earns special privileges and items, including membership to special units, unit skins.......

Edited by Turbo Corvair, 03 April 2012 - 12:07 PM.

[Shadowstarr]

I am also very much interested in how this all will be handled for both houses and merc units. Its cool folks want to use their canon units, I know i got my favorites too. At the same time its a tough community relations choice for PGI. Their are folks here whom been championing their specifc regiment sometimes to the company level since 3025 ega on genie. Those folks understandably feel an entitlement to use it in MW:O. At the same time the 1st time online battletech player of today might want to be in that company too, for whatever reason. Who get to use the name for their unit. Neither? Both? 1st come(register) 1st serve.

I know I am in the minority here but I kinda like the chain of command political metagame unit interaction can bring out in folks. MPBT 3025 community was all about it maybe even too much but still it made a basic 4 on 4 match game into something far more for a long time.

It'd be nice if House units were structured. Players in command positions up the chain of command, and possibly to the house leader level. Players should have to be granted certain benchmark promotions by another players above them.

At the same time Merc units should be able to customize and maintain their own CoC.

The biggest headache are gonna be stuff like Wolf Dragoons and some of their more famous regiments/battalions. No matter how you do it some folks are gonna have hurt feelings over not getting it or others they may not like being there too.

-SS