734 replies to this topic

[Damocles]

Sorry man but I have NOT seen that from the MPBT players at all. What I have seen from them is a desire to jump back into the structure that they were using during that time. Which is NOT a means to override or control current means, but just a possible set up (You do NOT have to go off of what they do) for the future.

And to attack and forcibly separate what is honestly an ASSET to your house (an active pre-existing community) is just...counter-productive. But hey I'm just a Steiner Loyalist and what do I know. You might as well RP it as an in-house fight between Davions and Haseks (whichever side views themselves as).

Feed that Egoooooo

Edit: Friendly suggestion - Treat your House structure like "alliances" in DAOC of WAR, just a grouping of units that wish to act in correspondence to each other. You don't have to have ALL units that are aligned with your house, just the ones that wish to work together and will reach the same goals.

/Damo

Edited by Damocles, 05 March 2012 - 04:06 AM.

[Thorn Hallis]

Meneiupptus, on 05 March 2012 - 01:31 AM, said:

In EGA MPBT we had an alert roster of hundreds... and we came when called. When Stone calls I'll jump to as I did before.

Thats the thing, no one needs to stay on alert anymore.

[Meneiupptus]

Hmmm. I prefer to think of it as efficient to have a Chain of Command, and an alert roster is efficient in any wargame. Elite? To me that implies arrogance. I am neither arrogant nor disrespectful and that means I in no way demean any player for any reason. We had a saying in EGA MPBTECH just for that reason... "Rank is for Wienies" I like it that way. I am Atron and I fight for the Federated Suns... or the Federated Commonwealth depending on the date we play in.

Think about it.. I could care less who is House Leader... old or new. However when that leader calls me I will come and I will fight and kill on demand. Also when any player regardless of age or experience calls I will fight and kill in that players defense. It will more efficient to call me if everyone has some form of alert comms in place. Hence a COC. How you all come about that COC is up to you.

[Meneiupptus]

"Thats the thing, no one needs to stay on alert anymore."

While it is forum war you are correct. When the game launches and you get your first "beer run" you may decide otherwise. (beer run = allot of players pulling an incredibly long war that isn't usually announced) In other games we had alert rosters as well... those that adhered to it kept their pixels and those that didn't watched their cities burn. It works in real life and in playtime. My advice is consider how much you want to win and play accordingly.

Edited by Meneiupptus, 05 March 2012 - 04:17 AM.

[Azantia]

Naive:
1. a. having or expressing innocence and credulity; ingenuous
b. ( as collective noun; preceded by the ): only the naive believed him
2. artless or unsophisticated
3. lacking developed powers of analysis, reasoning, or criticism: a naive argument
4. another word for primitive

If you believe the MPBT players are NOT entitled, then you fit into the Naive #3 Category. My personal opinion, so take it as such.

As for an asset to the house, I would say that we dont know enough about the game to say who is an asset and who is not, one thing is for sure, time will tell.

As for being a Steiner Loyalist and stirring up trouble, I ask you, where did you manage to Park that Assault Mech you Strolled up in? All compact spaces around here!

*grin*

Edited by Azantia, 05 March 2012 - 05:06 AM.

[Thorn Hallis]

Meneiupptus, on 05 March 2012 - 04:16 AM, said:

"Thats the thing, no one needs to stay on alert anymore."

While it is forum war you are correct. When the game launches and you get your first "beer run" you may decide otherwise. (beer run = allot of players pulling an incredibly long war that isn't usually announced) In other games we had alert rosters as well... those that adhered to it kept their pixels and those that didn't watched their cities burn. It works in real life and in playtime. My advice is consider how much you want to win and play accordingly.

I hardly doubt there will be any player-driven wars in this game, at least on house-level.

[Meneiupptus]

"When you first create your pilot, you are going to have to align yourself with one of the Great Houses in the BattleTech® Universe. Each house will have its benefits and drawbacks and it will be up to you to read up on the house selection menu on which house you will pledge your allegiance."

"Yes, this is where our plan for the Inner Sphere comes into play. All players in Merc Corps will be fighting for control over various border planets. The state of these planets is persistent "


This is directly out of the FAQ. If Mercs start out as House, then there will most likely be House warfare as well because they assuredly will not have any money or skills when deciding to go merc. Player Driven is a must because if Players have to wait on wars to start they will become bored and restless, and of course they will no level without constant fighting since there is a character sheet now. Also a full universe of Mercs would be nothing short of boring when Mechwarrior Mercs revolve around the House Contracts for battles and pay. Fighting over their own worlds is just Icing in my opinion.

Edited by Meneiupptus, 05 March 2012 - 05:29 AM.

[Dihm]

Meneiupptus, on 05 March 2012 - 05:23 AM, said:

[color=#898989]This is directly out of the FAQ. If Mercs start out as House,then there will most likely be House warfare as well because they assuredly will not have any money or skills when deciding to go merc.[/color]

And they've also said that players won't be running the factions.

[Thorn Hallis]

Exactly.

[Meneiupptus]

That is true, and most likely false at the same time. Players who do not work for the Developer will most likely not be in the Kingship roles but those Developers most likely will play the game too. Keeping the Leadership in house is a wise choice but it doesn't stop players from dropping lances on an enemies.. or allies territory if they can move their own units. In essence all it does is contribute to rogue efforts by Players who get bored easilly.... which all of us gamers do. It is why we play. When the players no longer listen to the Developers in where the next war is to be then the players do control the Houses. it is an inevitable shift.

Note: I do not know how teh developers will be handling this... in EGA MPBTECH the Players/House leadership would simply remove your units from the embattled area and fire you from your position in that unit. We will see what happens here.

[Jack Gallows]

Yea, it's a Free 2 play game, they're not going to fire you from a unit, especially since they're going to let us make our own "canon" units down the road. How can you be removed from position when they've got no say in who runs said unit, just like the Merc Corps? Also doesn't make sense from a business standpoint.

Most of the faction leadership is probably going to be NPCs and not actual players, it's not really needed. History has already been decided and we're just along for the ride, getting to play out the events from 3049 to whenever the game finally shuts down (which I hope is a very very very long time.)

They've said mercs can only fight over border planets unless they've got enough clout (IE: the merc company has enough loyalty points with a specific House,) but otherwise don't do faction warfare, that's up to the faction players. They've also said there will be faction planets where we can fight and try to take over, but at any time they can be changed to core worlds that are either important to the IP or ones that cannot be fought over.

They'll only keep those core planets, probably like the capitols or where major offenses like Tukayyid happen, locked out when it's called for by the story, and they've only remotely talked about that pilots with really really high LP might be able to help point the Faction in where to go. It may be limited, like maybe they'll declare a planet and we get a bonus to taking it or something, or it could be bigger, we have no way of knowing atm.

Probably keep most of the planets that are on the border of another House as Faction planets to be fought over, too many active Faction planets at a time would dilute the player base since there's a LOT of planets, making games harder to get. Mostly I see units and players picking planets they see about to fall or recently taken over and launching sorties against said planet to retake it, assuming we get contracts to go and do so. I say contracts because I think even faction players will pick "contracts" from high command NPCs to handle how we get money/LP, because they're not going to just fund us while the merc players have to scrape together missions and money to buy new machines.

We can go where the contracts show up, which will be mostly decided by the NPC/Computer side of the game, and we take those contracts and try to complete them, there's probably a competing contract open on the enemy faction that when you pick the opposite, it flags that in matchmaking.

We'll see, but I definitely don't see the player base picking where we're going to fight directly, especially with so many different ideas about any kind of leadership. My unit is going to pick where we go as a unit, and not someone who thinks they're top of the CoC picked from a fractured community who all, in various shapes and sizes, believe they've got some kind of previous experience that actually means a damn versus the fact that many of us regardless of what community we came from or what game we've played have leadership abilities. If we make friends with other units, and want to co-ordinate stuff, that's fine and dandy, but it'll be off new friendships we forge instead of going with the flow because of some old community not everyone was a part of or has heard of declaring some kind of right to leadership.

Basically, we're all equals, if you consider otherwise you're defeating yourself before you even begin your argument.

Edited by Jack Gallows, 05 March 2012 - 09:41 AM.

[Thorn Hallis]

I guess the "house-planets" wont be fought over one by one. I expect more something like combat regions, covering a certain amount of planets.

[LordRush]

You know, this whole thread has been increasingly become a concern to me.
Not because of words spoken or the demeanor of replies. Hell, Im a light hearted person and try to find the humor in almost anything. Even this post /grins. But now, it is dawning on me that the disagreement level is so high that it only makes me think about the battlefield. Which, I take VERY serious.

See all, what is going on in this forum is one thing and one thing only. Role play. No matter how you slice or dice it..it is mere Role play. It can be antagonizing at times as well as influential at other times. Yes, there is "chest pounding", to be recognized by ANY gaming community for actions within a game is fun and entertaining. Which all of this really is for.

This game, I do think we all pretty well know [even if they are NOT telling us directly] it's going to be AI driven.
And dont sit there and troll this forum with a foolish reply. You know it ,we ALL know it. Cmon...you cant put the pieces together?

What then?

see..that's when the whole ball game changes. And at that point "should" be everyone's biggest concern.

If we are unable to agree or even at least smile and shake a hand without coming to some sort of understanding now...what will it be like in battle?

Like these potential engagements :
If a unit drops into a zone that is not beneficial to occupied territories that are currently progressing towards a capital...
Not understanding what a "situational" mech is based on environment
Not following a Lance Leaders orders
etc. [plenty of others]

I swear to Eva Mendez, if anyone here tries to impede progression for my Guildmates,Lance or House

In a nutshell I'll end with this question...
When the day comes [and it will come] that you are in my Lance and I will be LL. Will you disregard my orders? Because the day will also come that I will be on one of YOUR Lances and YOU will be LL. And it will be YOUR direction that I will follow. For the benefit of the House,Guild and my Lancemates...this will never be questioned of me.

[SMDMadCow]

Quick question - how were planets won and controled in the older games / Leagues?

[Qin]

Hmm,

For MPBT: EGA i have to look at some of the folk who played that, but they did have a simple map with planents to conquer.

MPBT: Solaris, we had player run events. It had the city of solaris map, each house had its own region there, wich had a couple of Arena's and each of those had couple of locations with a 4 or 5 rooms where you could go to fight.
The Solaris Succession Wars would run something like this. Certain Arena's where marked for each House that they had to defend, and from where they could attack. The goal was to hold the 1st drop room, to get there you had to fight trough the rest of the rooms first. If you hold it then you whent to the next location and so on all the way down the list to the last drop room the Homeworld/HQ how you wanna name it. In the mean time you have to hold all the rooms down the chain. If you lost control of one of the locations you had to stop your assault, and first retake the place. If your House lost to many locations on its side same thing happened, you had to retake your own places first before you could go on.
This was ofcource a big team efford, while some regiments would go on the assault, others would need to defend, and hold the locations.
It was all organized by the Houses, and run by them.

MPBT:3025 Had the full map of the Inner Sphere, but instead of individual planents, they had divided each House up into 5 regions and those 5 regions into 5 sub regionts. So you would battle the other Houses for % points for each region. If you got 100% it turned you Houses collor and on to the next while defending the regions you got.

Inner Sphere Wars, had the full map. Intresting point there was they had economy and logistics. You would Tax your planents, heavy tax would reduce population in the long run but gave short term extra credits. With the credits you could build factories on worlds. Then you could tell the factories what mechs to make. Then you would use the jumpships to ship those mechs to the front lines. There on the contested worlds you could drop but only with mechs that your House/Regiment had shipped there. You fought NPC or other players for % points, get to 100% to control the planents and the routes you can travel from that planet.

For how other leagues worked i have to pass that part on.

[GargoyleKDR]

SMDMadCow, on 05 March 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

Quick question - how were planets won and controled in the older games / Leagues?

This is a very simple summary:

In MPBT (GEnie) planets were won by gaining 60% of the planet value. You gained planet value by winning PvE matches. While the matches were PvE, the opponents fighting on their side of the planet were real people running their own set of PvE missions. You lost planet value by having the opposing force on the planet win points until they had 60% of the total points. Once you owned a planet the supply lines opened up to the next set of planets. That allowed you to move your operations to the next planet so you could continue domination of the Inner Sphere. Each House had a number of units (representing battalions) that it could move from planet to planet to influence the value of missions available to select from. It also affected what the other side had to fight in their missions. Players were responsible for the movement of those units.

In MPBT: Solaris zones and drop rooms were in areas associated with each House. The game code didn't recognize ownership. Instead, the players created a system where PvP matches were used to determine "ownership". Each drop room in a zone equaled a planet. Each zone had multiple drop rooms. Winning a progression of rooms resulted in a side advancing to the "capital planet" of the region. The winner of a war was the group with the most number of rooms owned at the end of the player run event.

In MPBT: 3025 the I.S. map was, in reality, a map of drop rooms. By winning in a drop room your side gained % ownership of the zone. That allowed you to own a zone, and then move on to the next series of drop rooms. Basically it programmatically did what the players of MPBT: Solaris had come up with on their own.

In ISW and War Online the PvP matches reported points to a database that managed ownership of planets. If you won the match, you advanced your ownership of the planet. If you lost, your planet was able to be captured by the winner. Winning matches also resulted in economic impacts to a House through the impact to factories and resources assigned to each planet. The players (commanders) could move resources from planet to planet, and construct Mech factories on planets. The factories drove the type and quantity of Mechs that each faction could play with in the PvP matches.


- Garg.

Edited by GargoyleKDR, 05 March 2012 - 02:25 PM.

[Jack Gallows]

LordRush, on 05 March 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

Like these potential engagements :
If a unit drops into a zone that is not beneficial to occupied territories that are currently progressing towards a capital...

Capitol's are important things, but I'd wager they are not always the goal. There are many ways to win a war, cutting off the "head" is one of them...but it can also have the drawback of galvanizing an enemy force/people. This is something that must be considered and is not something we have enough information on which to make a suitable strategy for.

LordRush, on 05 March 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

Not following a Lance Leaders orders

This is also conditional, blindly following orders is of no use to anyone. I'm not saying to disobey direct orders all the time, but a true warrior is one that will question, one that will learn and suggest changes to orders if they're needed. It's a two way street obviously.

LordRush, on 05 March 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

In a nutshell I'll end with this question...
When the day comes [and it will come] that you are in my Lance and I will be LL. Will you disregard my orders? Because the day will also come that I will be on one of YOUR Lances and YOU will be LL. And it will be YOUR direction that I will follow. For the benefit of the House,Guild and my Lancemates...this will never be questioned of me.

Again, as the statement above, there is leeway. There is cohesion, and then there is blindly following orders just because someone is your lance leader. There is no easy answer, there is no single answer. To define yourself to one and only one path is to bring about your downfall. I will evaluate a leader and decide if his actions are of sound mind, and there will be a bit of inherent trust at the beginning. Whether or not that trust remains is another issue, but that is for the future to discover.

Maintaining unity is important, but how that is achieved is critical, and blindly following orders is not one of them.

[Azantia]

Warriors are superior to soldiers in spirit, conviction and execution of war because they are free-thinking and self motivated. Warriors may be soldiers, but not all soldiers are warriors.

Warriors crave three things, and only need these three things to indefinitely wage war without regard to fear, fatigue or bodily harm.
they are
1. A righteous Cause (Think long term goal : push back the forces invading our homeland, or liberate an oppressed society)
2. A righteous Leader (A leader of sound judgement, strong conviction and fair principle)
3. A clear goal (Think short term goal - Take objective A, defend objective B.)

A soldier only needs clear orders and will follow them unquestioningly.

It is much easier to lead a soldier than it is to lead a warrior.
I for one, would rather be surrounded by warriors and lead by one (or lead them if worthy) any day of the week.

I will never be lead by a soldier who is not a warrior.

Edited by Azantia, 05 March 2012 - 05:19 PM.

[Hellen Wheels]

Azantia, on 05 March 2012 - 05:18 PM, said:

Warriors are superior to soldiers in spirit, conviction and execution of war because they are free-thinking and self motivated. Warriors may be soldiers, but not all soldiers are warriors.

Warriors crave three things, and only need these three things to indefinitely wage war without regard to fear, fatigue or bodily harm.
they are
1. A righteous Cause (Think long term goal : push back the forces invading our homeland, or liberate an oppressed society)
2. A righteous Leader (A leader of sound judgement, strong conviction and fair principle)
3. A clear goal (Think short term goal - Take objective A, defend objective B.)

A soldier only needs clear orders and will follow them unquestioningly.

It is much easier to lead a soldier than it is to lead a warrior.
I for one, would rather be surrounded by warriors and lead by one (or lead them if worthy) any day of the week.

I will never be lead by a soldier who is not a warrior.

Well said, and worthy of repeating.

I would follow you into battle any day, Sir.

At your service <S>
=H=

[Demi-Precentor Konev]

Azantia, on 05 March 2012 - 05:18 PM, said:

Warriors are superior to soldiers in spirit, conviction and execution of war because they are free-thinking and self motivated. Warriors may be soldiers, but not all soldiers are warriors.

It is much easier to lead a soldier than it is to lead a warrior.
I for one, would rather be surrounded by warriors and lead by one (or lead them if worthy) any day of the week.

I will never be lead by a soldier who is not a warrior.

The Soldier and the Warrior have been at odds for a long time, and the Warrior lost out. Disciplined troops and flexible chains of command win battles, not passion or righteousness. For evidence I submit the following image along with the broader historical narrative of Western "Soldier" armies dominating conventional battlefields ever since the Turks were beaten back in the late 17th century.