69 replies to this topic

[miscreant]

It's amazing to me that the maps (with River City as the exception) do not feel like futuristic sci-fi locations.

My concepts for future maps:

Large Space Port
Asteroid Space Port
Moon map (covered in craters)
Spaceship - wayward spaceship with massive hanger battles!

I think the maps are nice, but they simply DO NOT convey the feeling of being in 3055.
My thought is that PGI's artists and level designers are great at map making, but they lack the Sci-Fi direction.

My opinion - thoughts?

[QuantumButler]

How about mechs fighting over a giant ice asteroid with engines strapped to it being taken to a planet with very little fresh water to use as water supply.

[DrBunji]

miscreant, on 29 November 2012 - 12:17 PM, said:

It's amazing to me that the maps (with River City as the exception) do not feel like futuristic sci-fi locations.

My concepts for future maps:

Large Space Port
Asteroid Space Port
Moon map (covered in craters)
Spaceship - wayward spaceship with massive hanger battles!

I think the maps are nice, but they simply DO NOT convey the feeling of being in 3055.
My thought is that PGI's artists and level designers are great at map making, but they lack the Sci-Fi direction.

My opinion - thoughts?

Well, they could sure make use of different planets or so, to make some spectacular locations, but hardly any mech-battles inside spaceships. Do you realize how big these things are? There isn't ships big enough to be able to hold them stomping around like that.

[Arumi Ornaught]

They need an underwater map.

[JebusGeist]

As far as I know lunar surface maps have been talked about. What I don't know is exactly how easy it is to adjust the gravity on this engine at the same time as compensating for the extra distance you travel when calculating damage from falls. I'm thinking stuff like that has a lot to do with why it'll take some time to see maps like that. Right now all the maps appear to have the same physics settings as one another. The only differences are map layout, color/texture palette, filters, effects, and environmental heat, which is quite a lot of difference.

Frozen City is definitely sci-fi as well. That there used to be a thriving metropolis until the succession wars happened, now its a dead and frozen wasteland half buried in the snow. No idea why its a battlefield now, maybe theres some strategically or fiscally significant installations left intact on it.

[Surtr]

QuantumButler, on 29 November 2012 - 12:18 PM, said:

How about mechs fighting over a giant ice asteroid with engines strapped to it being taken to a planet with very little fresh water to use as water supply.

i would kill for that map. one of my favorites from mercs 2. Its better when you fight aerospace though.

[EmperorMyrf]

I'm very much looking forward to some sort of lunar map, or at least a very alien one. They were always my favorite in the older games

[miscreant]

DrBunji, on 29 November 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

Well, they could sure make use of different planets or so, to make some spectacular locations, but hardly any mech-battles inside spaceships. Do you realize how big these things are? There isn't ships big enough to be able to hold them stomping around like that.

Giant hangar bays on the exterior of a massive ship? Are you kidding? The mechs aren't as big as you think, the Atlas is only 19 meters tall.

Also, wouldn't plant life on other planets be WAY different to what's on Earth? It's time to be creative and stop thinking 'terrestrially'!!!

Edited by miscreant, 29 November 2012 - 01:39 PM.

[Darkblood]

JebusGeist, on 29 November 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:

As far as I know lunar surface maps have been talked about. What I don't know is exactly how easy it is to adjust the gravity on this engine at the same time as compensating for the extra distance you travel when calculating damage from falls. I'm thinking stuff like that has a lot to do with why it'll take some time to see maps like that. Right now all the maps appear to have the same physics settings as one another. The only differences are map layout, color/texture palette, filters, effects, and environmental heat, which is quite a lot of difference.

Frozen City is definitely sci-fi as well. That there used to be a thriving metropolis until the succession wars happened, now its a dead and frozen wasteland half buried in the snow. No idea why its a battlefield now, maybe theres some strategically or fiscally significant installations left intact on it.

Lostech!

[Imagine Dragons]

OMG!

These would be awesome maps!

You could even have maps that mechs are walking on the outside of space ships, magnetic feet!...

Oh wait... what about jump jets...

[miscreant]

XenomorphZZ, on 30 November 2012 - 07:32 AM, said:

OMG!

These would be awesome maps!

You could even have maps that mechs are walking on the outside of space ships, magnetic feet!...

Oh wait... what about jump jets...

That's what I'm talking about!

The developer really needs to bring in a more sophisticated team of level designers, people who UNDERSTAND SCI-FI.

[Hubis]

Radiation Storms: -50% penalty to sensor ranges and +50% to lock times. For added fun, add a fog that reduces visible range, and have the storms disable Magentometer Vision (when it comes into play). Manual scouting becomes critical.

Meteorite Bombardment: A map with a surface area and a few claustrophobic tunnels. Continuous random projectiles fall from the sky, with a modest chance of hitting mechs up there with the power of an AC/2. The tunnels provide strategic positions that are safe from the DOT, but charging across the surface would give you potential flanking and tactical advantages.

Distant Planet: A location so far from its sun that there is no illumination but faint starlight. Spotlights and Night Vision would be helpful. Very cold.

[Wizard Steve]

A crumbling planet where two sides fight for control of a ship in order to escape before the planet collapses. Earth tremors, chunks of land falling away, your basic Star Trek III nightmare.

[Strum Wealh]

miscreant, on 29 November 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

Giant hangar bays on the exterior of a massive ship? Are you kidding? The mechs aren't as big as you think, the Atlas is only 19 meters tall.

Also, wouldn't plant life on other planets be WAY different to what's on Earth? It's time to be creative and stop thinking 'terrestrially'!!!

Spaceborne structures (ships and space stations) in BT/MW are not as big as some tend to think, either.

The idea of using a space station as a map was previously discussed here.

Space Stations in BT/MW aren't all that big; most are either generally-cylindrical and on the order of 400-600 meters long, or spherical and on the order of 400-600 meters in diameter.
By way of comparison, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is on the order of ~333 meters long and the Burj Khalifa (currently the tallest building in the world) is on the order of ~830 meters tall.
Additionally, the stations generally aren't built to accommodate 'Mechs at all, much less doing so outside of specialized bays for them and/or AeroSpace Fighters; as such, it would be even more difficult for any 'Mech to move outside of a few small areas.

An Overlord-class DropShip is 99 meters wide and 131.2 meters tall.
A Union-class DropShip is 81.5 meters wide and 78 meters tall.
The internal spacing of the latter is pictured below:


One of the most common classes of space station, the Bastion-class, is a sphere that is 345 meters in diameter.
The larger Crucible Station (a Capellan prison station) is a cylinder that is 400 meters in length and 450 meters in diameter.
The Olympus-class Jumpship Recharge Station is 660 meters long by 1500 meters wide (which must include the solar sail).
The Snowden-class Mining Station is 650 meters long and 300 meters wide.
The Invader-class JumpShip, one of the most common and iconic of its ilk, is 505 meters long and has a sail diameter of 1024 meters.

Part of the problem with the opening post is that the thread-starter is imagining that BT space stations are built using Gundam-style engineering specifications (which, in turn, are based on the "Island Three"/"O'Neill Cylinder" design proposed in reality by Gerard K. O'Neill, a physicist and professor at Princeton University).

The Gundam-style space stations (based on O'Neill's designs), built as orbital habitats, are 5 miles (8.047 kilometers) in diameter and 20 miles (32.187 kilometers) long.

O'Neill Cylinder, exterior view:


O'Neill Cylinder, interior view:


BT/MW space stations are minuscule by comparison.

Bastion-class System Defense Station (0.345 kilometers in diameter):


Snowden-class Mining Station (0.650 kilometers long, 0.300 lokimeters wide):


Capellan Orbital Prison "Crucible Station" (0.400 kilometers long, 0.450 kilometers wide):


For comparison, the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers fielded by the US Navy are 0.332 kilometers long.


An IS-built Large Laser has an effective range of 450 meters (0.450 kilometers); a medium-range weapon could fire the entire length/diameter of most BT/MW space stations.

Canon BT/MW space stations simply are not big enough to make effective maps for MWO, nor are they built with corridors that could accommodate 40-50 foot tall humanoids (e.g. BattleMechs), so using 'Mechs for any sort of "recover the data cube" type scenario makes no sense from an in-universe perspective.

Also: outside of a very few specific examples (like the RH7S "Space Hound", the Shadow Hawk IIC-7, and the LAMs), 'Mechs are built for land-based combat and do not perform very well - if at all - outside of that environment.

Given that, I think it would be generally better - and probably easier on the Devs, from a workload perspective - to use a hollowed-out asteroid or low-gravity world (which, from Sarna, seems to have a lower-limit of ~0.6g for the known inhabited worlds) rather than an actual ship or space station.

[Imagine Dragons]

Strum Wealh, on 30 November 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

Logical words and images of dream crushing power.

Motion to make PGIGP create fiction of a Star League Era O'Neill Cylinder magically being rediscovered...

Edited by XenomorphZZ, 30 November 2012 - 09:41 AM.

[Strum Wealh]

XenomorphZZ, on 30 November 2012 - 09:41 AM, said:

Motion to make PGIGP create fiction of a Star League Era O'Neill Cylinder magically being rediscovered...

And, discovered within it: the legendary DCMS Hero 'Mech... the Hatamoto-Musha!

Edited by Strum Wealh, 30 November 2012 - 11:37 AM.

[Garth Erlam]

JebusGeist, on 29 November 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:

No idea why its a battlefield now, maybe theres some strategically or fiscally significant installations left intact on it.

If you have a better way to get ice, I'd like to hear it.

[Elder Thorn]

DrBunji, on 29 November 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

Well, they could sure make use of different planets or so, to make some spectacular locations, but hardly any mech-battles inside spaceships. Do you realize how big these things are? There isn't ships big enough to be able to hold them stomping around like that.

also.. what would happen, if an AC/20 shell misses its target?

[Imagine Dragons]

Garth Erlam, on 30 November 2012 - 11:37 AM, said:

If you have a better way to get ice, I'd like to hear it.

What? 21st century ice makers are LosTech too?

What the hell man, did anybody think to have a flash drive that did not get "lost"?

Edited by XenomorphZZ, 30 November 2012 - 12:12 PM.

[Starwulfe]

The issue

XenomorphZZ, on 30 November 2012 - 12:11 PM, said:

What? 21st century ice makers are LosTech too?

What the hell man, did anybody think to have a flash drive that did not get "lost"?

The issue wasn't so much that there weren't ice makers, it was that many planet populations outgrew the water supply or were on a location that had limited water.
So the ice planets were mined to transport water to those worlds.