24 replies to this topic

[Raj]

What little we know so far in regards to roles in MWO:

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Players are highly encouraged to participate in team based gameplay. The fast manoeuvrable scouts will be able to relay information back to the commander units who in turn relay that information to the attacker and defender units. As players advance their MechWarrior in a role, more skills and abilities related to their role will become available.

That all reads very interestingly but I wonder about the specifics for the commander's role. What sorts of abilities do you think the commander should have? Do you think he should park himself in a dropship in the back or command from a mech out in the field? Should they implement actual command mechs? (certain mechs are written as having CCC equipment support, and special cockpits, the Battlemaster in particular comes to mind). Should there be incentives for people to follow a commander's orders? What sort of resources should the commander abilities use?

I'm sure everyone has their own idea of what a Mech Commander's responsibilities should be, so why not share them with us!

After a bit of thinking I came up with a few abilities that may be interesting.

- Coolant Trucks: There's been a long discussion in the suggestion forum about whether coolant tanks should be allowed in mechs. There was an idea mentioned that perhaps while not allowing coolant tanks the devs could implement coolant trucks. This got me thinking, 'Well how did the trucks get there?'. Maybe the team's commander saw the mech defending the east flank was running all energy weapons. It'd make sense to put down some spare coolant near him.

- Supply Drops/truck/hauler: Similar to helping out our energy focused defender to the east maybe one of the offense mechs uses all munition based weaponry. If he runs out it'll be down to his fists. Why not have the commander drop supplies crates in? (granted rearming a mech takes a bit of time so maybe have a timer while they load up or something?)

- Air Strikes/Artillery: A more direct way to help your teammates. If your team have a Heavy enemy mech holed up in a blind valley and don't want to take him head on why not have the commander drop some explosives on his head. It'll give him incentive to move even if the damage itself isn't too terrible.

- PDF Assistance: We're mercs and not likely to be the only military force on planet. Maybe the locals can be convinced to help your company out. Call in some friendly NPC controlled vtols/tanks to distract or finish off some enemy forces.

- Attack/Defend Orders: Nothing special about this. Just a marker on your team's map that calls defenders or attackers to an important position. It's often difficult to get people to follow these orders in multiplayer games so maybe giving bonus c-bills/exp when people actually go there would be a good thing.

I'll add some more later but now let's see what everyone else thinks.

Edited by raj, 04 November 2011 - 01:42 AM.

[John Clavell]

They said the Drop Commander will have a birds eye view of the battlefield which can be lived up dated by scouts. I'm going to guess it will be something like in Battlefield 2. The Drop Commander will be able to mark aries for strikes or set waypoints for his Lance.

[Hagan]

The commander abilities I feel will be a clear split between battlefield and 'home base' roles.
These abilities could determine accuracy of artillery and air-strikes, using recon drones, jamming radar and providing false radar images to the enemy. The full CnC and ECM-ECCM warfare support.

Then we come to home base, are there abilities to requisition more supplies, speed up crews, faster repairs, increased quality of repairs (as this will be all time based I'm guessing that heavily damaged mechs will take a few days to repair), better salvage rights, intel to procure supplies from the battlefield, hearts and minds of the population (gain and loss of public opinion of your unit that affects all of the above, including credits earned) and so on.

That's my overly complicated take on it.

[John Clavell]

I'm actually hoping the Commanding Officer will be able to give members of the corp rolls, spreading out the Admin load. The two biggest burn out factors are a CO doing all the admin for a large corp. Further still though is the burnout on Drop Commanders, when you have one corp dependent on one Drop Commander (leader of your forces in a battle) there can be a high level of burnout.

While this is no related to the systems put in place by the game I do hope that there are options to transfer 'Command' overviews to secondary 'Drop Commanders' should the primary be taken out. Further more, the options to allow personal within the Corp who are Drop Commanders access to shared resources at the admin level.

[Jack Gallows]

Thinking the Commander should be able to relegate certain bonuses, marking members of their Lance for specific tasks and they get a bonus to it. Should be active and not a "I'm going to sit here" kind of role.

Obviously, once the fighting starts some of these abilities will be hard to use, but that's why you need a good mix of pre fight and mid fight aspects.

Pre fight, like already stated, would be something like calling in Air Strikes. I'm not sure I want an aerial view for them unless the scout/etc mech has that ability/skill. Otherwise should be a camera feed from the other mechs in the lance, and they can pipe in and take a look to mark for aero space. Something like that.

Mid fight should maybe be something like getting a bonus for attacking targets the Commander calls out, making the group want to work as a team or however they need to be working. Bend it towards team play as much as feasible.

[Raj]

Jack Gallows, on 04 November 2011 - 07:38 AM, said:

Mid fight should maybe be something like getting a bonus for attacking targets the Commander calls out, making the group want to work as a team or however they need to be working. Bend it towards team play as much as feasible.

I like this idea. To expand on it perhaps the commander could give bonuses to nearby pilots. Sort of like the c3 computer bonus (or just call it inspired leadership or something). This would also add another element of strategy. Do you want to be up front giving bonuses to your offense? (but also hindering your ability to command) or in the back where you could only help one or two of the defense mechs and only if the enemy make a push.

Maybe the commander can be given some defensive abilities to help hold an objective/position.:

- Mines: I seem to recall mech mines being a part of canon, I could see these being particularly useful in urban combat. If they add a debris cloud to the effect it could alert you to anyone trying to sneak up on your flank. It also gives another tactical advantage to jump jet users.

- Demolish: It looked from the videos like they want some of the environments to be destructible. Why not add to that and let the commander set fire to things. You fires could have a fixed duration but while they're up they increase the heat of nearby mechs.

Edited by raj, 04 November 2011 - 11:07 AM.

[Aeryk Corsaer]

I am hoping for airstrike/artillery support, advanced map coordination, and similar parts in the Command skill tree.

[Fire for Effect]

wait and see....

anything else is rather useless (but maybe fun) speculation...

by the way:
ECM and ECCM seems to be the domain of the scout

[Radgor Ryan]

I'm pretty sure its been mentioned that there is no single commander. Command is done by anyone with appropriate pilot modules.

[Otto Cannon]

I'd like to see the Cyclops included with useful electronics either included as standard or unlockable. There are lots of possibilities for ECM/BAP/C3 computers etc. for players who like that sort of thing.

Edited by Otto Cannon, 03 July 2012 - 01:08 AM.

[Czechu_NS]

Raj, on 04 November 2011 - 01:40 AM, said:

What little we know so far in regards to roles in MWO:

Commander skills that are going to be in game (but be aware of the date this information was posted):

InnerSphereNews, on 03 February 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

• • Order View – Allows the pilot to right click and request friendly BattleMechs to attack or defend areas/objectives on the BattleGrid
  
• • Command View – Provides a layer of information over the BattleGrid including objectives and any intelligence information passed back by scout Mechs on the front line
  
• • Call Air Strike – Calls in an air strike that does AOE damage in a straight line
  
• • Call Artillery – Calls in a land based artillery bombardment on to a target area
  
• • Call Naval Bombardment – Calls in Naval artillery bombardment that has a larger and more powerful result than regular artillery
  
• • Call UAV – Calls a UAV that passes overhead of the battlefield and relays ALL enemy positions to the command pilot
  
• • Call Predator Drone – Drops a heavy explosive device on a targeted area
  
• • Call Satellite Sweep – Full detail information is passed to the command pilot including enemy location/direction/speed
  
• • Danger Close – A short range radar detection system that lets the command pilot know of any nearby enemy BattleMechs

http://mwomercs.com/...e-warfare-cont/

I'm fine with these but if Devs add something else, I'll be glad.

[Skirich]

Also it will be great asset in battle if commander (lance or higher) could draw the routes/directions on map that will be visible to mates. Not just "Help those Catapult before it will be wiped!" but to assign meeting point and routes to this point depending overall battle circumstances for each pilot.

[Reoh]

I'm worried with the uav's and all those call in strikes that most people will want to to roll as a Commander MOS.

[Gamgee]

They will likely be gimping themselves no? I'm not familiar with MechWarrior but I would assume command module takes up some slots. 1 for sure, but maybe more. So he likely be far less effective. Or perhaps the only way to earn those options is through being a good commander. Ie giving some orders, and notifying people ect.

It would be weird if it went all CoD on us there. I hate that series, hasn't been good since the first one long ago.

[Oy of MidWorld]

I'd love to see them have the ability of calling in some ai controlled vehicles, tanks or vtols. Having them drop ammo crates would feel a little like worms... Powerup gameplay doesn't fit mechwarrior in my opinion. After all, munitions would have to be loaded onto the mech, by a whole crew of techs, cranes, stuff.

Waiting to see how everything turns out. I hope the commander really has an impact, mechwarriors actually doing what he sais. Would make a scout's dangerous life more meaningful.

[Gabopentin]

Some of the ideas here have inbuilt problems in the implementation.
Arty strike. Will an end battle not turn into a CoD grenade fest where arty is used to 'finish off' the last opponenent? Or just be used to 'soften up' a particularly difficult enemy lance? Standing around in a Medium/Heavy mech awaiting the 'Commanders' orders to move in whilst he drops arty shell left right and centre will be boredom to the extreme. I might as well go to World of Woosies.
'Commander' issued bonuses. This will definately turn into a "He's my friend and I'll give him the best mish bonus. Cos your just a noob/outsider/auto place char/not in my (team/clan/guild/school)".
Ingame rewards/IGC. So what percentage of each lance members 'winning' should go to the 'Commander' because he has sat in the rear/dropship/on a hill so far away no missile can hit him and taken zero risks or fighting?
PDF/local assistance. Won't this turn into a 'droning' issue. Where the enemy mechs are deliberately lead into PDF/local forces to kill them off and still claim the rewards?
Things to think about.

[Threat Doc]

Being the most interested in having a command role, especially as I'm the UCO for our mercenary unit, this conversation holds specific import for me.

Raj, on 04 November 2011 - 01:40 AM, said:

Do you think he should park himself in a dropship in the back or command from a mech out in the field? Should they implement actual command mechs?

I believe commander's will be in the thick of the fight, no matter what, and there's not much to be done about, since the devs have already expressed that the best line-of-sight, and thus the best view of the battlefield and potential command problems, will be with all drop members being close to one another. That both makes sense to me, and doesn't. Your commander is the guy you sort of want at the back, directing the fight, using his resources, like Incident Commanders and Battlefield Commanders in the real-world, with the greatest effect. A Commander cannot perform their duty appropriately if they are having to switch their concentration constantly between aiming and firing, and then looking at the BattleGrid and putting down commands. The best thing to do would be for the developers to allow Drop Commanders (DC) to set up the general attack/defense plan, labeling tactics and consequences requiring follow-on adjustments, and then being able to set keyboard codes for switching up said tactics, as necessary, then the Commander would only have to worry about on-the-fly changes. These tactics would be transferred, on drop commencement, for every allied member of the drop, and must include time-on-target, waypoint, and force delegation information, at the very least.

For those of you who will now say "The best laid tactical plan never survives first contact with the enemy", I agree with you 100%, but it's best for a DC to try, and then evaluate, once in-game, if a full-on tactics change needs to be made, or if the plan just barely needs to be adjusted, or anywhere in-between. Mind you, none of this will matter without VoIP, preferably in-game VoIP so a DC doesn't have to switch windows all the time to adjust channels to speak to certain Lance mates, because the rest of their people might be unruly and unwilling to get off the channel.

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Should there be incentives for people to follow a commander's orders?

Yes, there should be... obey, or we lose and you don't get paid. I'm sorry to be harsh, but I'm not going to reward someone, if I have a choice, just because they have a bad attitude, are not a team player, and do not want to follow orders for the sake of gaining a win.

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I'll add some more later but now let's see what everyone else thinks.

Before I go on, just let me say that I liked nearly all of the ideas on here, as registered by my LIKES, so instead of continuing to say it, there you go... nicely done, guys.

John Clavell, on 04 November 2011 - 03:37 AM, said:

I'm actually hoping the Commanding Officer will be able to give members of the corp rolls, spreading out the Admin load. The two biggest burn out factors are a CO doing all the admin for a large corp. Further still though is the burnout on Drop Commanders, when you have one corp dependent on one Drop Commander (leader of your forces in a battle) there can be a high level of burnout.

While this is no related to the systems put in place by the game I do hope that there are options to transfer 'Command' overviews to secondary 'Drop Commanders' should the primary be taken out. Further more, the options to allow personal within the Corp who are Drop Commanders access to shared resources at the admin level.

John, as normal, this is all win to me. The devs have expressed, in one of the earliest interviews they had, I think the first one with PC Gamer, I think it was, that various ranks will be given various permissions; let's hope they meant the roles, as you expressed.

Jack Gallows, on 04 November 2011 - 07:38 AM, said:

Thinking the Commander should be able to relegate certain bonuses, marking members of their Lance for specific tasks and they get a bonus to it.

Now, if there are special missions to be done, and one or more MechWarrior's assigned to take on that mission do so, then yes there should be bonuses. However, for the general fight, the 'go here and hold this spot, please', that is part of the normal pay and does not deserve any manner of bonus.

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Should be active and not a "I'm going to sit here" kind of role.

I agree, active but cautious, and protected, also as the devs have expressed will need to be done.

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Obviously, once the fighting starts some of these abilities will be hard to use, but that's why you need a good mix of pre fight and mid fight aspects.

Yes, pre-drop planning should be paramount, but modifiable by the devs more than likely planned normal use of the BattleGrid.

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Mid fight should maybe be something like getting a bonus for attacking targets the Commander calls out, making the group want to work as a team or however they need to be working. Bend it towards team play as much as feasible.

You're always going to have those who are the gung-ho, go-get-em, damn the torpedoes types, but for the most part teamwork should be a natural part of the game, and should not be rewarded beyond standard pay. Further, those who don't follow orders, or go and do their own thing, should either have their payout docked or not be paid at all. Call me strange, but I'm really hoping THIS game is not an "everyone's a winner" weenie games, but is instead as realistic a simulation as can possibly be done. In real life, you don't get paid for sitting on your ***, or doing your own thing, and that should be every bit as much prevalent in a virtual game, where it doesn't actually hurt you. Who knows, some of these ADD kids may learn the actual life skill that it's necessary to EARN what you want.

Radgor Ryan, on 03 July 2012 - 12:53 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure its been mentioned that there is no single commander. Command is done by anyone with appropriate pilot modules.

That's correct, and to the best of my knowledge, it has NOTHING to do with what modules you have... if you're capable and willing to lead in a drop, you lead in a drop. Frankly, I hope I'm wrong about that, because I would like only for those in my unit who have the Drop Commander training to actually run drops.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

The Lance "commander" should be able to mark targets for focus firing.

[Havoc3D]

Wow, those powerups sound like carbon copies of Battlefield's. Not that that's a bad thing, I always liked the BF commander role. It was useful w/o being OP. It seems like over time people start to forget about it, though, since a ton of people always lone wolf'd and didn't follow orders.

I think a big component, which BF did but wasn't good at making very obvious, is rewarding the team play. At some point I think players need to be clearly and concisely told "You have earned nnXP and $nn,nnn from following orders" or similar. With BF as commander I always of course rewarded helpful squads with priority on requests, spotting, and the like, but that's a soft thing that only the useful squad notices; the 3/4 of other people lone wolfing just thing you're mean for not giving them every ammo supply or UAV they request.

[Threat Doc]

Gabopentin, on 03 July 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

Arty strike. Will an end battle not turn into a CoD grenade fest where arty is used to 'finish off' the last opponenent? Or just be used to 'soften up' a particularly difficult enemy lance?

Any of these bonuses are going to cost the unit money, so they won't be unlimited, but yes I expect the battlefield to turn into hell once all of this is implemented.

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Standing around in a Medium/Heavy mech awaiting the 'Commanders' orders to move in whilst he drops arty shell left right and centre will be boredom to the extreme. I might as well go to World of Woosies.

That's a pretty immature way to look at this. First, it will likely be about 15 seconds to one full minute, at most. If you're not able to wait around for that short amount of time to wait for a win, then there's perhaps "World of Woosies" would be the better place for you.

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'Commander' issued bonuses. This will definately turn into a "He's my friend and I'll give him the best mish bonus. Cos your just a noob/outsider/auto place char/not in my (team/clan/guild/school)".

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you completely. I had a rather lengthy conversation with my XO last night, and the problem of potential favoritism for one of our returning members (from the 2007-8 time of AU), on my part, came up in the conversation. I assured him, and this was the truth, that favoritism played no part in it and that, in fact, this returning member had refused positions he belonged in, unless I ordered him to take up one of them, and he wanted to start at the bottom. I needed a Lance Leader, he was the perfect fit, so in he went. For my part, if bonuses were to be handed out during a fight, and I had control of those, I work on merit's, not who's my buddy. Besides, every single member of Armageddon Unlimited is my friend, and many of them have already done exceptional things in the unit, so I would have a very difficult time choosing between any of them.

I have a feeling that most commanders will have the same quandary, because we're Human beings, as well, though I can agree that it's going to depend on the commander. However, let's take that into account for a moment, shall we... if I were a Commander, and I showed favoritism too often to the same person, people, or group, what are the other's in the unit going to begin to think, from that favoritism? They're going to start thinking, and the thoughts will become stronger with each new incidence of favoritism, that they can find a better place to be. The Commander who shows favoritism is inviting problems.

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Ingame rewards/IGC. So what percentage of each lance members 'winning' should go to the 'Commander' because he has sat in the rear/dropship/on a hill so far away no missile can hit him and taken zero risks or fighting?

I can tell from your tone that you're looking at this in the wrong way, G. Yes, you may win if you go in without a Commander, or with a Commander who doesn't actually command, but your chances improve dramatically if you have someone competent running the BattleGrid and giving the best possible directions, and using the resources they've built up and have available to them. A Commander SHOULD be paid more for successfully directing an attack, whether in a real-world or virtual environment. Haven't you ever noticed that the easiest and/or safest jobs are also the highest paid ones. They are so because of responsibility. Now, if I run a fight, and it ends badly, in a loss, or worse, a loss with really bad repair requirements, then as I spoke of, earlier, I should not get paid the full amount, if at all.

Alright, guys, I have to take off, as much as I love this conversation, because I have one person to induct, an Assistant/Adjutant to set in place, and then I have to get back to hunting for work in the real-world. (I know, sounds screwed up on priorities, right? Meh {shrugs})