11 replies to this topic

[Zakatak]

I'm not sure if there is going to be any gameplay mechanics associated with dropships/jumpships/warships, but I did have some ideas, and if you have any, feel free to share. Even if these aren't in the beta, its an idea for the full release or future implementation.

Aside from the money earned for doing missions, I think that players in Merc Corps should be able to pool the "extra" money they don't need into the Corps fund. Let's say a new Mercenary unit starts out with 5 billion C-Bills, not including the funds the player have themselves. They can spend this money on dropships and jumpships.

The type and amount of jumpships determine:

• How much salvage your fleet can hold.
  
• How far your fleet can move each day (not to scale with canon, for gameplay sake).
  
• The amount of dropships you can carry.
  
• Amount of Fighters, which improve effectiveness of Airstrike.
  
• Naval weapons, which improve effectiveness of Naval Bombardment.

Choices include:



Merchant - 350 million C-bills, N/A, 2 Dropship Collars, 90LY/Day
Invader - 500 million C-bills, N/A, 3 Dropship Collars, 70LY/Day
Monolith - 1 billion C-bills, N/A, 9 Dropship Collars, 50LY/Day
Pinto - 1 billion C-Bills, Minor Firepower, 1 Dropship Collars, 100LY/Day
Riga - 2 billion C-bills, Medium Firepower, 2 Dropship Collars, 80LY/Day
Lola - 2 billion C-Bills, High Firepower, 0 Dropship, 70LY/Day
Dart - 4 billion C-bills, Minor Firepower, 5 Dropship, 75LY/Day
Samarkand - 7 billion C-bills, High Firepower, 3 Dropships, 55LY/Day
Texas - 12 billion C-bills, High Firepower, 5 Dropships, 65LY/Day
McKenna - 20 billion C-bills, Super High Firepower, 7 Dropships, 60LY/Day
Bug-Eye - 24 billion C-bills, N/A, 0 Dropships, 150LY/Day, Provides lots of tactical data in different star systems

Of course, I don't have... things... fully planned out yet. I have no idea how this would translate to gameplay. But it's just a WIP idea. May have something like the Mass Effect galaxy map?

Edited by Zakatak, 06 May 2012 - 09:51 PM.

[Kenyon Burguess]

i think if u own a warship you can pretty much hit the "win" button anytime u want during an engagement

as for dropships. that would be a neat idea to limit merc houses by the size of the dropship they have to carry junk around.

[Hayden]

There are no warships in the inner sphere in early 3050 that don't belong to comstar. The Vandenburg White Wings say so.

That said, I'm hoping dropships have some functionality. Jump ships should be a non-issue. Yes, in the canon some units didn't have jumpships and that impacted them, but for the sake of the game, it should be assumed that the players/factions will have the necessary Jumpships to move what they need to.

Edited by Hayden, 05 May 2012 - 03:31 PM.

[Sym]

I can maybe see the hiring of Jumpships and dropships to move from system to system (if game play required) but Warships...and Fleets?

The Inner Sphere did not processed any Warships before the Clan invasion.
It has be pretty much printed that after the Succession Wars there were no WarShips left in operation within the Inner Sphere. The last functional WarShips in the Inner Sphere were believed destroyed during the 2nd Succession War, leaving any other non-salvageable derelicts with the exception of a small hidden fleet secretly maintained by Comstar.
The Inner Sphere did not start rebuild Warships until the mid to late 3050's and even they had to rely on Comstar to buy jump drives as Comstar was the only builders of these engines.

I do not think it plays into what MWO is trying to do. However, I remember playing Battlespace...and although it would be kinda cool, I think it would not following the time line in which we are going to start in.

[Kaemon]

Let me line up an 'if' attack and see if it does any damage...

If we have salvage, or a player economy at some point in the game (even if it's merely repair bonus that faction leaders can assign to members), and are able to spend Cbills (only Cbills) on ancillary units like this...

If we need to implement a cool down function for Faction/Merc Corp because they don't cap member limits (and they start running close to disrupting canon events), we could use this as a travel timer to help with metagame tempo issues.

If we end up with regional servers that require coordinating times to attack across time zones (hooray 3am hit times).

If we end up with additional pilot roles (um...pilot for one) that allows these to be 'somewhat' player controlled

If we want to add 'crafting' of sorts (as well as non-mech support roles).

Then yes.

[Morashtak]

This could very well be a micro-transaction item; One time purchase costing a couple of bucks that would turn on the option in the Lobby to drop as a group.

Want to drop as a Lance? Buy a Leopard (make it $2 or so). Want to drop as a Company? Going to have to purchase a Union ($5 or so, economy of scale and all that).

Maintenance cost could be added but would turn the game into a subscription fee if there was a monthly cost to keeping your DropShips fueled and flying. F2P would prevent that. One time purchase would do nicely.

[Long Draw]

Kaemon, on 05 May 2012 - 03:41 PM, said:

Let me line up an 'if' attack and see if it does any damage...

If we have salvage, or a player economy at some point in the game (even if it's merely repair bonus that faction leaders can assign to members), and are able to spend Cbills (only Cbills) on ancillary units like this...

If we need to implement a cool down function for Faction/Merc Corp because they don't cap member limits (and they start running close to disrupting canon events), we could use this as a travel timer to help with metagame tempo issues.

If we end up with regional servers that require coordinating times to attack across time zones (hooray 3am hit times).

If we end up with additional pilot roles (um...pilot for one) that allows these to be 'somewhat' player controlled

If we want to add 'crafting' of sorts (as well as non-mech support roles).

Then yes.

Oh man, you just said the magic word for me! Crafting!

[Sym]

Crafting would most likely mean farming and I do not want to waste my time farmer for anything.


Now if you could take salvage from after a battle and make it into an upgraded form of a current weapon or system...and as long as it was something like a 5% upgrade and nothing that could become OP then I say fine.

It would be kinda unique to have an modded Autocannon that could shoot a bit faster or a detection sensor that was a bit stronger than what was standard. It would give character to your own mech that others would not have. Like having your own Mr Scott as your chief engineer...lol.

[Zakatak]

I had no idea that the Inner Sphere had no Warships during 3049, aside from Comstar. So I assume they just use civilian Jumpships to piggyback on?

[mbt201188]

I don't know. It would be neat I guess but at the same time I'm not going to lose sleep over it if it isn't in the game.

[Morashtak]

Zakatak, on 06 May 2012 - 12:17 PM, said:

I had no idea that the Inner Sphere had no Warships during 3049, aside from Comstar. So I assume they just use civilian Jumpships to piggyback on?

Jumpship.

In the fluff under Manufacturing it mentions that the consensus is that there should be approximately 30,000 Jumpships of varying sizes to meet the demand of shipping needed to support billions of people flung all over the IS. One can presume that of there are a significant number of "civilian" class Jumpships that are wholly owned by any of the House's military as transports.

As an aside, there is no mention of the number of Dropships in service but it would be safe to say that there are more Dropships in service than hard points available. Make it 7 dropships per jumpship on average and we're looking at well over 200,000 dropships floating about.

[Aethon]

I don't see how we'd pick up any warships, unless we made a trip to Bristol before the Wolf's Dragoons picked up their fleet...and I don't even recall if their mothballed fleet included any warships.