119 replies to this topic

[LordKelvin]

What will be the point of the Lower Arm Actuator? As far as I know, its only purpose in the tabletop game is to eliminate an accuracy penalty when performing punches, but since you're not going to incorporate melee attacks in the game, what will hitting that crit location actually do?

Additionally, will we have the option of removing the Lower Arm Actuator so that we can flip arms to attack targets in our rear arc? And (I apologize if this was answered in a previous Q&A, I think it was but I don't remember) will we be able to mount rear-facing weapons?

[Aegis Kleais]

If you want Jump Jets, weren't there these jump jets that could be used 1x before disconnecting from the Mech, but since they were affixed to it's outside, the weight caused your max speed to be cut in half while you had them on.

Could be a viable piece of equipment in the right situation.

[Monky]

My main question is this - internal structure, how does it work? Is your variant stuck with whatever internal structure (endo steel, standard, composite endo steel?) or can you swap them out for a cost? or possibly for free if you've already purchased a different mech 'skeleton'?

How do you plan to differentiate the interface to explain in an easily understandable way why you can/cannot mount certain equipment? as far as I can tell, there are 3 restrictions - Tonnage, Slot(crit) space, and 'type' of equipment. This is a relatively complex level of information to process for newcomers (and can sometimes baffle experienced Mechwarriors trying to tweak their builds).

Is it possible to switch between different engine types (Compact, XL, Standard, Light), gyro types(Compact, Heavy Duty, Light, Standard), cockpit sizes (small/med/large)?

Do variants with jump jets allow you to build jumpjets into any mech of that chassis, or only on that variant?

If you fit, say, 4 small lasers into a slot that previously held 1 large laser and 2 medium lasers, would it be visually different (and more to the point, accurately reflect the loadout to look at it from the outside) ?

Do the variants have only the hardpoints that they come with equipped gear in, or are there possibly unused hardpoints on each variant? IE; an Atlas has LRM's, an AC20, and 4 Med lasers, but could the arms have 2 or more 'energy' hardpoints(or unused other types) even if they only mount a medium laser in default? If so, to what degree of flexibility? Maybe 1-2 per mech, 5, or upwards of 10?

Will McMech ever become accepted in Canon? We're rooting for you, McMech!

Edited by monky, 04 April 2012 - 02:08 PM.

[CeeKay Boques]

Tell me more about the "Inventory" and how things get in and out of there!

Can you explain, in more detail, how the inventory system works and how items move to and from it?

Edited by Mason Grimm, 05 April 2012 - 05:06 AM.
Alex Trebec would want this in the form of a question, so I edited it!

[karish]

Ok as of now we do not have a small fast jump jet recon mech. If release was tomorrow i would be taking the Commando and ripping out both SRM's putting in an LRM5 in the torso uping the the engine to get the speed as fast as i can and wanting to install jump jets since there is a variant with them. the LRM's are there to Tag something from range just for fun the ML to keep other light mechs honest if you cant run away from them. and then maxing out the armor.

So my question is this "If there is a variant that has jump jets will we be able to put them on mechs that dont normally have them but have canon variants with them

[StaIker]

I'm liking everything about this Mechlab.

Will we be able to save the different custom builds of a chassis to allow easy switching between them, or will we have only one chassis of each variant that we have to manually reconfigure each time?

[Dayuhan]

Will we be able to save our variants so that we can quickly change between variants (as long as the parts are available) - allowing for the making of mission specific variants that can be quickly applied by just choosing it from a previously created and saved variation. For example: Deploying in a cold weather scenario, we choose a saved variant of our 'mech that has a winter camo scheme and energy-based weapons. In a later scenario we are deployed to defend a city environment so we change to a city camo scheme with ballistic or missile weapons.

[Tannhauser Gate]

Will customized weapons, armor, engines, components appear differently on the mech than the weapons on the base variant?

Can we save skin/color choice/decal layouts as a scheme template for quick selection and can we give people our saved schemes so they can wear our unit colors?

Will internal structures be determined by mechlab choice or are those static based on the variant we choose?

Will we be able to choose armor types found in 3049 or do we buy more expensive armor after the techs have rebuilt the mech after a battle?

Will we be able to trade or give away old modules, weapons, components, etc to others? ( I hope not)

Player-created decals?

Edited by LakeDaemon, 04 April 2012 - 04:49 PM.

[Belisarius1]

How, exactly, do the hardpoints work? Are they one hardpoint per weapon, one hardpoint per critical, or something else?

eg. If the player deleted a heat sink and moved the criticals around a little, could they mount a PPC in the LL's slot? Could I use an AC2's ballistic hardpoint to mount a gauss if I tinkered enough?

[Orzorn]

The deb blog said:

Quote

As long as there is space and tonnage available, things like AMS, ECM, TAG etc. can be put into any appropriate spot on a BattleMech.

How is "appropriate slot" defined? Can I put an AMS in the critical slot that should be where the weapons go, or are there some sort of equipment hardpoints that you need to put equipment in?

[Johannes Falkner]

How many distinct weapon classes (or subclasses) are being considered for the mechlab?

The obvious classes are Energy, Ballistic and Missile, but weapons can be broken down further into subcategories. Ballistic weapons can fall into up to five subcategories machine guns, autocannons, ultra autocannons, lb-x autocannons and gauss rifles.

Machine guns:
MG
Heavy MG
Light MG

Autocannons:
AC/2
AC/5
AC/10
AC/20

Ultra Autocannons:
UAC-2
UAC-5
UAC-10
UAC-20

LB-X Autaocannons:
LB-2X
LB-5X
LB-10X
LB-20X

Gauss Rifles:
Gauss Rifle
Light GR
Heavy GR
King David GR (battle armor MG like gauss rifle used to replace MGs)
Antipersonnel GR (Clan version of the King David)

Missiles have similar subcategories with Long (LRM), Medium (MRM) and Short (SRM) range missiles as well as streak SRMs and Thunderbolt missiles (and Arrow IV artillery missiles which I would group separately). Energy weapons also have a number of categories, standard, Extended Range (ER), pulse, heavy and PPC.

The mechlab will offer quite different levels of customization depending on the level of subclassification used.

[zudukai]

I bet this will be covered and should be straightforward, but, if you wanted to replace a PPC with two medium lasers, would you need to buy three medium lasers? or would you simply buy one and have it available when you want a medium laser for something.

just curious, I would actually like to buy a laser every time, or a AC, or a Gauss...

what about selling a weapon you have/salvaged?

[WerewolfX]

Will we be able to add ammo for other than Machine guns in half ton implements for more than the Machine gun? (Ex AC 2/5/10/20, LRM, SRM, and Gauss) I understand the tabletop implementations for this restriction, However as both a re imagining and the first game in years would that be allowed or possible?

Edited by WerewolfX, 04 April 2012 - 08:39 PM.

[BerryChunks]

QUESTION: how will further electronics and AMS system enhancements be managed on mechs? The reason you pick a variant on TT is to have AMS while others don't. If everyone can have it, and hardpoints are forced, then presumably there will always be missiles flying around, meaning AMS is just one of those things everyone automatically ads. Will the drawbacks be too harsh to optimize damage around, per chassis, such as taking up too much critical or other space and opreventing something like a hunchback from having its AC20 as well as other weapons with AMS on? Or will these special electronics have a further restriction by chassis?

Edited by Mason Grimm, 05 April 2012 - 05:10 AM.
Removed all the unnecessary things

[Namwons]

Another Q: (even though it wont get answered probably)

Will we be able to stack modules? Say i have three "Decrease Missle Lock Time by 2.5%" modules. Am i able to put all three of them on one mech if I have the mod space? And (if stacking if permited) how will the stacking rule work? Will it be additive or multiplicative?

[Nighthound]

Ok, I have a question wihich was stated aready earlier, but I would like to clarify and ask it with my own words.

Let's say I bought myself a new shiny Atlas (which I won't but that's irrelevant) and want to replace some weapons to make it more feasible for open area combat (which the AS7-D is rather crappy at due to its short range armament).
I could replace the AC/20 (10 Cits and 14 Tons) for an AC/10 (7 Crits and 12 Tons) and keep the Ammo as it is. (I saved 2 Tons)
I could then replace the SRM6 and the LRM20 with their Ammo (2+5+3 Crits and 3+10+3 Tons) for two LRM15 with 2 Tons of Ammo each (3+3+4 Crits and 7+7+4 Tons) giving it more range and staying power due to its increased Ammo/decreased weapon size.
All that is fine, but I can do nothing with those 4 Medium lasers, except removing them all and replacing them with1 Large Laser by also removing 1 HeatSink (or 1 Ton of Ammo or Armor) wich makes no sense at all.

So my question is this : If I have 1 HardPoint of a given Type is this HardPoint restricted by the Size (CritSpace) of the removed weapon (1 Medium Laser in each Arm, means 1 Energy Based Crit in each arm) or could I place a bigger weapon onto that HardPoint given I have enough free CritSpace (The AS7-D has only 1 Medium Laser, 1 HeatSink and the actuators in each arm and nothing else, leaving 6 Points of CritSpace empty)?
I think (if read the DevBlog correctly) the other way around is possible (Swapping 1 Large Laser for 2 Medium Lasers) which to my mind makes sense regarding CritSpace (and the TT rules) but makes actually less sense in that I would replace 1 weapon (1 HardPoint) with 2.

Could you please clarify?

PS.: Also what is Ammo? Does it belong to its Type (LRM = Missile Hardpoint, AC = Ballistic Hardpoint) or is it Equipment (like HeatSinks) and if it is Equipment could I place it in the legs although the weapons are in the arms or has it to be near (max. one location removed) its weapon?

Edit: Spelling

Edited by Nighthound, 05 April 2012 - 02:58 AM.

[Soviet Alex]

Namwons, on 04 April 2012 - 11:55 PM, said:

Will we be able to stack modules? Say i have three "Decrease Missile Lock Time by 2.5%" modules. Am I able to put all three of them on one mech if I have the mod space? And (if stacking if permited) how will the stacking rule work? Will it be additive or multiplicative?

To follow on from that, if I spend the XP to unlock "Decrease Missile Lock Time 2.5%" 3 times, can I buy a single level 3 module which gives "Decrease Missile Lock Time 7.5%", or do I have to buy 3 level 1 "Decrease Missile Lock Time 2.5%" modules? I don't like the later option, because it commits all of your module slots to one thing.

Edited by Soviet Alex, 05 April 2012 - 02:18 PM.

[Windschreiter]

Love the work on the MechLab - it feels really Battletech to me.

Question is:

will it take time to costumize your Mech?

Keep it up!

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Hi,
Will be limited to "Level 1" to start with or will we have the time specific "Level 2" tech ie ERLL etc available and if so will it be limited to the appropriate factions only?
Thank you.

[Gemini]

I'm curious how ammunition is going to be handled when balistic weapons are swapped out with different balistic weapons. Is ammunition simply going to take up balistic hardpoint space? For instance, in earlier MechWarrior games, if you had an LB 10-X AC equipped with one ton of ammo, you could swap it out with an LB 5-X AC with two tons of ammo, or three machine guns with three tons of ammo, all of which would take up the same number of slots. Would CASE work the same way too?