11 replies to this topic

[Aegis Kleais]

I'd like to use this area of the forum to officially re-suggest my Blueprints idea.

The Concept: People love tinkering and customizing their Mechs, trying to get every last ounce of performance out of them, and many times, users may not have everything they need to create these configs in their inventory.

The Blueprint system basically gives the user free reign to custom design a Mech whether they have one in stock or not. Choose the Chassis, armor type, engines, weapons, ammo, modules, everything. Once happy, save the Blueprint with a name.

Then, you can press a Mech into existence (and service) by building off the blueprint. You can select a blueprint you want to build and it will look at your inventory, determine what you have and what you need to buy from Market.

For example, you might have some parts, but then it will come back and say "In order to press this design into service, we require either X Mech Credits or X C-Bills". If you have enough, you can confirm and then the Mech will exist in your Mech Bay. (You should be able to see an itemized breakdown of the costs as well as the tally)

Let's say you have 2 blue prints for 1 chassis. After pressing Blueprint 1 into service, you can then select that Mech and APPLY Blueprint 2 to it. This will remove everything off the Mech, moving it into your inventory, and then attempt to use your inventory to apply the specs in Blueprint 2 to the chassis (Blueprints would be based on Mech Variants) In the event you are missing items to perform that change, you'd be alerted again as to the cost needed for those missing items to be bought from the Market.

In the event you still wanted to apply the Blueprint but not get the items, you'd be presented with a list of the tech that is missing from that conversion.

So in short, this allows us to customize to our heart's desire, but build to our wallet's.

[ManDaisy]

There is no reason why they should be stopping us from saving (our variants) we like, and being able to pop load em into the ready bay without having to have purchased copies of the same chasis hardpoints.

Edited by ManDaisy, 30 October 2012 - 02:12 PM.

[Aegis Kleais]

ManDaisy, on 30 October 2012 - 02:11 PM, said:

There is no reason why they should be stopping us from saving (our variants) we like, and being able to pop load em into the ready bay without having to have purchased copies of the same chasis hardpoints.

Programmatically, the only thing I could think of that would invalidate Blueprints if is the hardpoints on a variant got moved around. In that rare case, a notice would come up and list the Blueprints which had to be deleted due to their design being based on a now-obsolete loadout.

We were told a while back that the game is getting a UI overhaul, and a major part of UI overhauling is how the user consumes info and moves between different areas based on their current tasks and needs. I'm hoping that the Mechlab gets a progressive UI update that could possibly implement this type of "Freely Designed" mentality, rather than limiting the user to only config with what they have, and to "Buy as you go".

[ManDaisy]

Yeah thats another good point, the way mechlab is, it makes me scared to experiment with new designs and variants as I have to pay for them ahead of time. I like to get creative too just to see how much I can push a design to the limit, but I don't necessarily want to buy and use it, or may not want to buy it unless I can make it way I want to.

Edited by ManDaisy, 30 October 2012 - 07:13 PM.

[Lentil]

A good incremental step would be to simply allow us to save variants we've already built. This would allow a quick loadout change from the short range to the long range variant.
Remembering from past online MW games, having a 'stable' of variants for each chassis was absolutely mandatory, since you would adjust to the team strategy, terrain, temperature, etc.

[Deathscyte]

I like this idea.

[Timelordwho]

I like this idea a ton.

As a followup, allow the sharing of blueprints between players.

Like someone's design? Just pop it into the console, use existing parts/pay cbills(and/orMC) and you are ready to rock. I think this would lead to some interesting semi-standard builds propagating, while others keep theirs under lock and key to keep their mech's weaknesses hidden.

Later on, when community warfare is released, you could allow factions/mech corps to give (small) organization-wide bonuses to certain blueprints, leading to competitive engineering, where you might see a certain corp fielding standard mech drops, with counterbuilding going on between competing houses/corps. Features like these would allow for a strong metagame that keeps competitive play interesting.

[Xacktar]

Deathscyte, on 31 October 2012 - 04:25 AM, said:

I like this idea.

I third the liking of this idea.

[PapaKilo]

With your suggestion, you would only need one 'Mech of each type.

This idea invalidates one of PGI's money-makers -- namely, multiple Mech Bays. They want you to buy multiple versions of the same 'Mech to have different setups ready to go.

[ManDaisy]

While this may be true there is a small fix to help them get around that where everyone wins.

http://mwomercs.com/...ts-will-pay-mc/

Edited by ManDaisy, 31 October 2012 - 06:31 PM.

[PL Harpoon]

PapaKilo, on 31 October 2012 - 06:07 PM, said:

With your suggestion, you would only need one 'Mech of each type.

This idea invalidates one of PGI's money-makers -- namely, multiple Mech Bays. They want you to buy multiple versions of the same 'Mech to have different setups ready to go.

Not exactly. It would just make things easier. Now, if you have, for ex. Cat C1 with LRM's and want it to change into srm variant you need to manually strip it down and build up from scratch. With Aegis Kleais's idea you could just save the configs and easily switch between them. It's just a time saver.

[Dreaming Demon]

PapaKilo, on 31 October 2012 - 06:07 PM, said:

With your suggestion, you would only need one 'Mech of each type.

This idea invalidates one of PGI's money-makers -- namely, multiple Mech Bays. They want you to buy multiple versions of the same 'Mech to have different setups ready to go.

Not so. I doubt they envision many people purchasing multiple copies of the exact same mech variant. Instead, you pay for different chassies with different hardpoint configurations, but alter that chassis as your tastes change. Blueprints (or something similar) just makes swapping between loadouts easier. Only the hardest of hardcore players would buy multiple copies of the exact same variant. Everyone else would be annoyed that they could not easily refit their mech between a few commonly used variants.

Remember, it is only a moneymaker if the users feel like they are getting something for the money they spend. Since you can refit a mech for free (just takes a little bit of time), expecting players to spend $10 on a second copy of a mech they already own just to save a second variant... that is silly. It would not happen, it would only annoy users.