65 replies to this topic

[Eric darkstar Marr]

Bishop Steiner, on 01 February 2013 - 05:51 AM, said:

um.. yes.. I do believe all those points are given?

Also given is that if IS players don't have some access, then the QQing will burn the forums to the ground. Canon vs IRL money making pretty well says that PGI will have to be flexible here.

Also of note, if you read many of the "side" novels, Units like Avanti's Angels and Camacho's Caballeros had jury rigged some Clan Tech apparently pretty early on. Now given MY preferrences, such expediences would be doable, but buggy as hell. Since I doubt that would really be implementable, we will see.

But sorry "locked" Clan Tech ONLY vs IS only queues simply won't work. Wolf's Dragoons have Clan Tech NOW. Within the Next Year, the Kell Hounds will have begun to refit their 1st Regiment with it. And in about a year the Princes of 2 realms will have Daishi. By your method, they would have to drop AS Clanners and fight the IS.

NO house has Clan tech for years though. The few and far between merc groups that do is just that few and far between.
Also Wolf's Dragoons IS CLAN BASED. They are from shocker here I know CLAN WOLF. Oh and then about the Kell Hounds... What about that nice Ilkhan Phelan Kell for Wolves in Exile?

Clan mechs were set to destroy themselves if moved past certain points through gyros so they could not be slavaged. Yes canon says there is a few that slipped here or there but it took IS years and Years to even reverse the tech to make an inferior version.

Now had you brought up Solaris VII that would have been slightly different as a lot of experimental weapons went on there most never coming to be though.

PGI will do what they want to do just as they have with the mechlab being able to min/max per mech that are not canon. I will be sorely disappointed if they make it so clan tech is available to IS mechs say later this year or next.

We the players either play for a house of IS or a merc corps or lone wolf (why is it an option?) Till we see how factions will be flushed out it is a guessing game for us all.

So if factions limits houses and say merc corps can be paid to defend a planet for CW it is possible that PGIs endgame is that it will be clan drops vs IS drops to hold a planet or take it back. That is speculation on my end and it could still be clan vs clan and IS vs IS for disputed planets but the focal I feel will be defending against the invaders and take back planets.

It is a game and can never be 100% canon as they have this grand plan which I hope they make to battle for territories which is still cool.

I just do not see a salvage system working unless it took a very long time to even piece together a clan PPC and even then only Merc Corps should be able to do it.

[Bagheera]

Bishop Steiner, on 31 January 2013 - 11:48 AM, said:

Anyhow, I am not claiming this idea as my own, Bagheera planted the seeds of it, and this is just my "epiphany and run" take on the idea:

I actually REALLY like the idea "Parts Salvage" .. dunno if I am thinking in the same lines as you, since they pretty obviously can't just decide at the end of a match "hey, Bob gets a large laser, Mike gets a PPC, etc". Hence we get C-bill "salvage awards". Fine, but TBH loses some of the flavor of Battltech.

Wait, I did what now?

Technically, it's not really my idea either. IIRC this was basically a part of MW2: Pirate's Moon. I might be mixing up games, but if I recall you dropped with your lance and were stuck behind enemy lines (or cut off from supply lines, or something) and had limited resources, which included a mobile repair base or whatever. Each mission awarded you some level of parts, (want to say clan parts eventually, but might be memory mixing again) and by the end of the game there was that ... er.. Mauler maybe .. and if you kitted it for range the last encounter on the open landscape was a joke.

But I digress. The point is that the salvage aspect, for me, has always been a fun part of the BT world. There's got to be a more robust way of representing that in MW:O.

I like the refinement. I know it's not, strictly speaking, canon to be able to retrofit clan gear onto an IS chassis, but let's be honest with each other here. Back in my teen years when I did lots of TT gaming we had a combined MW/BT campaign going in my group set during the invasion where we did salvage essentially the same way (interestingly, several years before the computer games) and setup a way of spending resources on R&D to eventually retrofit what we could. I'm pretty sure we're not the only ones who did this. "House Rules" (not IS house, literal house) are a widely accepted way to play any RPG; no reason that PGI shouldn't adapt some "House Rules" in the interest of making a more interesting game.

The "adaptation module" is a solid idea as well. Needs to be unlocked, and needs to be purchased for each mech that you want to fit a piece of clan gear onto. Advanced levels allow one to swap additional hardpoints to "clan compatible hardpoints" or something like that. This way we use the currency of Time to represent the difficulty of the retrofit.

Normally I would be against adding currency's to a game, but MW:O is still very nascent, and the economy and meta-game aspects are barely implemented at this point, so definitely valid to consider additional currency in this case.

Re: How to represent clan economy:

Mirror currencies are pretty easy to develop. CoX, despite it's rampant inflation and power creep late in life, did a good job with the influence/infamy/information system, which were just words for the same thing depending on where you started.

Here the IS gets C-bills, CSpts, and ISpts. Where the clan versions could simply mimic some clan lore that I don't know enough about to pick the right terminology. So <Clan Money Units> <I killed a Clanner Honor Points> and <I killed an IS d00d Honor Points> respectively.

Honestly though, ISpts could be considered redundant. Why would a clan player need points that are used to purchase/repair/rearm equipment they would never be using. Narrow it down to 2 currencies, <Economy units> and <CSpts> and it still works, in theory.

But this really only works so long as there is no <auction house> analog and no player to player trading. That's the road to crazy inflation, massive power creep, and gold farmers. Not something we want here. But having a second currency that allows for better distribution of clan gear could be very, very good for the game.

Re: Drop Sizes:

I doubt we will see 5v8 matches, and I am betting that we see 12 player teams (3 lances) before we see the clan invasion. 2 stars vs. 3 lances seems the most likely event and will help to balance the initial invasion, but the folks playing clans will start with clan mechs and gear, and there will be a whole lot of stomping going on, despite the all the chest beating that us old school IS guys tend to do in these threads. All in good fun, of course.

Re: How to start as a Clanner.

I'm not really sure. I do expect there to be developer events related to the clan invasion, where they are playing clan teams, or at least leading them in some way and directing the meta-game that way. See also CoX where the developers ran events where the bad guys from Uber-Fascist-Earth would invade both the good guy city and the bad guy city. I know that was not really a PvP mode for the game, but it's what informs my impressions about how they will start the invasion here.

Either way, there is probably going to be a hefty buy-in for switching to a clan faction - even if that buy-in is purchasing a very expensive mech and changing your affiliation here on the website. Honestly haven't really thought about that, since I won't be switching to a clan.

Carrioncrows, on 31 January 2013 - 12:02 PM, said:

I would support something outlined like this:

http://mwomercs.com/...eedback-thread/

Interesting, I'll have to give that a read.

Eric darkstar Marr, on 31 January 2013 - 12:31 PM, said:

Yes but it is YEARS later not in 3050 as clan mechs explode when tinkered with it wasn't till 3052 that clan tech was truly being seen in IS on mechs.

Fair enough, but they've said in the past that the timeline will not remain 1:1, and that they may advance it in larger increments for the interest of story/metagame/whatever. And more honesty here, we are talking about things that are fairly far down the game's development pipeline, so it could easily be 2014 before we even see clans.

Re: Monetization for PGI:

There's nothing stopping them from releasing a sub-set of hero mechs that get a CSpt bonus instead of a C-bill bonus. They could also have a (very, very, very inefficient) MC->CSpt conversion, but personally I would prefer they did not. That treads too far into the P2W DMZ for my taste, but I do understand that they have to find things to sell, and we can pretty much guarantee that - since they have already stated that players will be able to play as clans - they will set MC prices for clan mechs and sell hero versions of them as well. That alone will be like selling a paid expansion with the influx of MC purchases from people frothing at the mouth to RP as clan soldiers. They likely won't need the conversion idea, and likely won't be short on things to sell for RMTs once the clan "expansion" drops.

Edited by Bagheera, 01 February 2013 - 08:55 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Eric darkstar Marr, on 01 February 2013 - 07:36 AM, said:

NO house has Clan tech for years though. The few and far between merc groups that do is just that few and far between.
Also Wolf's Dragoons IS CLAN BASED. They are from shocker here I know CLAN WOLF. Oh and then about the Kell Hounds... What about that nice Ilkhan Phelan Kell for Wolves in Exile?

Clan mechs were set to destroy themselves if moved past certain points through gyros so they could not be slavaged. Yes canon says there is a few that slipped here or there but it took IS years and Years to even reverse the tech to make an inferior version.

Now had you brought up Solaris VII that would have been slightly different as a lot of experimental weapons went on there most never coming to be though.

PGI will do what they want to do just as they have with the mechlab being able to min/max per mech that are not canon. I will be sorely disappointed if they make it so clan tech is available to IS mechs say later this year or next.

We the players either play for a house of IS or a merc corps or lone wolf (why is it an option?) Till we see how factions will be flushed out it is a guessing game for us all.

So if factions limits houses and say merc corps can be paid to defend a planet for CW it is possible that PGIs endgame is that it will be clan drops vs IS drops to hold a planet or take it back. That is speculation on my end and it could still be clan vs clan and IS vs IS for disputed planets but the focal I feel will be defending against the invaders and take back planets.

It is a game and can never be 100% canon as they have this grand plan which I hope they make to battle for territories which is still cool.

I just do not see a salvage system working unless it took a very long time to even piece together a clan PPC and even then only Merc Corps should be able to do it.

Hello Head.. meet Brick Wall.

*SIGH*

Gosh thanks for the history update, Captain Obvious. The part you are OBVIOUSLY overlooking, is that Wolfs Dragoon have not been in contact with the Clans since 3019? And at this point in Time its "Bondsman Phelan". Not even a Mechwarrior, yet alone a Star Commander, Bloodnamed OR a Khan. Therefore, totally irrelevant to the Kell Hounds and the acquisition of Clan Tech.

The Kell Hounds had a fully kitted out REGIMENT by the battle of Luthien, courtesy of salvage and help from Wolf's Dragoons. And they didn't exactly manage to do all those mods on the trip in system.

If you wished to argue that since no one will be running those canon units, then you might have had some validity to your argument. Except of course, you are trying to use canon to make the opposite point, which would again, have nullified it.

But by all means, continue to get your panties in a bunch. It is rather entertaining for me.

[Bishop Steiner]

Bagheera, on 01 February 2013 - 08:52 AM, said:

Wait, I did what now?

Technically, it's not really my idea either. IIRC this was basically a part of MW2: Pirate's Moon. I might be mixing up games, but if I recall you dropped with your lance and were stuck behind enemy lines (or cut off from supply lines, or something) and had limited resources, which included a mobile repair base or whatever. Each mission awarded you some level of parts, (want to say clan parts eventually, but might be memory mixing again) and by the end of the game there was that ... er.. Mauler maybe .. and if you kitted it for range the last encounter on the open landscape was a joke.

But I digress. The point is that the salvage aspect, for me, has always been a fun part of the BT world. There's got to be a more robust way of representing that in MW:O.

I like the refinement. I know it's not, strictly speaking, canon to be able to retrofit clan gear onto an IS chassis, but let's be honest with each other here. Back in my teen years when I did lots of TT gaming we had a combined MW/BT campaign going in my group set during the invasion where we did salvage essentially the same way (interestingly, several years before the computer games) and setup a way of spending resources on R&D to eventually retrofit what we could. I'm pretty sure we're not the only ones who did this. "House Rules" (not IS house, literal house) are a widely accepted way to play any RPG; no reason that PGI shouldn't adapt some "House Rules" in the interest of making a more interesting game.

The "adaptation module" is a solid idea as well. Needs to be unlocked, and needs to be purchased for each mech that you want to fit a piece of clan gear onto. Advanced levels allow one to swap additional hardpoints to "clan compatible hardpoints" or something like that. This way we use the currency of Time to represent the difficulty of the retrofit.

Normally I would be against adding currency's to a game, but MW:O is still very nascent, and the economy and meta-game aspects are barely implemented at this point, so definitely valid to consider additional currency in this case.

Re: How to represent clan economy:

Mirror currencies are pretty easy to develop. CoX, despite it's rampant inflation and power creep late in life, did a good job with the influence/infamy/information system, which were just words for the same thing depending on where you started.

Here the IS gets C-bills, CSpts, and ISpts. Where the clan versions could simply mimic some clan lore that I don't know enough about to pick the right terminology. So <Clan Money Units> <I killed a Clanner Honor Points> and <I killed an IS d00d Honor Points> respectively.

Honestly though, ISpts could be considered redundant. Why would a clan player need points that are used to purchase/repair/rearm equipment they would never be using. Narrow it down to 2 currencies, <Economy units> and <CSpts> and it still works, in theory.

But this really only works so long as there is no <auction house> analog and no player to player trading. That's the road to crazy inflation, massive power creep, and gold farmers. Not something we want here. But having a second currency that allows for better distribution of clan gear could be very, very good for the game.

Re: Drop Sizes:

I doubt we will see 5v8 matches, and I am betting that we see 12 player teams (3 lances) before we see the clan invasion. 2 stars vs. 3 lances seems the most likely event and will help to balance the initial invasion, but the folks playing clans will start with clan mechs and gear, and there will be a whole lot of stomping going on, despite the all the chest beating that us old school IS guys tend to do in these threads. All in good fun, of course.

Re: How to start as a Clanner.

I'm not really sure. I do expect there to be developer events related to the clan invasion, where they are playing clan teams, or at least leading them in some way and directing the meta-game that way. See also CoX where the developers ran events where the bad guys from Uber-Fascist-Earth would invade both the good guy city and the bad guy city. I know that was not really a PvP mode for the game, but it's what informs my impressions about how they will start the invasion here.

Either way, there is probably going to be a hefty buy-in for switching to a clan faction - even if that buy-in is purchasing a very expensive mech and changing your affiliation here on the website. Honestly haven't really thought about that, since I won't be switching to a clan.



Interesting, I'll have to give that a read.



Fair enough, but they've said in the past that the timeline will not remain 1:1, and that they may advance it in larger increments for the interest of story/metagame/whatever. And more honesty here, we are talking about things that are fairly far down the game's development pipeline, so it could easily be 2014 before we even see clans.

Re: Monetization for PGI:

There's nothing stopping them from releasing a sub-set of hero mechs that get a CSpt bonus instead of a C-bill bonus. They could also have a (very, very, very inefficient) MC->CSpt conversion, but personally I would prefer they did not. That treads too far into the P2W DMZ for my taste, but I do understand that they have to find things to sell, and we can pretty much guarantee that - since they have already stated that players will be able to play as clans - they will set MC prices for clan mechs and sell hero versions of them as well. That alone will be like selling a paid expansion with the influx of MC purchases from people frothing at the mouth to RP as clan soldiers. They likely won't need the conversion idea, and likely won't be short on things to sell for RMTs once the clan "expansion" drops.

Also, actually, The Kell Hounds specifically did mount Clan tech weapons on IS chassis, as did Avanti's Angels and Camacho's Caballeros, among other "canon" sources (See the Kerensky Trilogy, "Double-Blind and Close Quarters). Not to mention that not all Clan Second Line Mechs are of the IIC variety, and they used "Star League" era mechs, like the basic Rifleman and Battlemaster Chassis.. refit with Clan Weapons.

Anyhow, I digress, I like your post, but felt that point needed some clarification.

And yeah, not even gonna speculate on how they plan to run the Clans, who or how access will be given. I can guarantee that they will have some sort of matchmaker mods going though, since there is no way to "balance" Clan Weapons to IS ones, they are just too advanced, and all the nerf and balance ideas I have heard for them, TBH are id1otic at best.

And yeah agree that the Clans have no need for IS salvage points (and that the IS stuff cna be Cbill bought by IS forces), that was part of teh "formative stream of thought" process, and indeed WOULD be redundant.

and access to general Clan tech for either faction through MC would defintely be P2W. Hence however they "birth" the Clan Factions, they need non IRL money ways to attain it. I do think that MC Cost for both "Clan Only" Hero Mechs, and for certain, very regulated IS examples (such as the above mentione Daishi-VSD) that still require Clan Salvage pts to fix and repair, woul dnot be P2W.

And salvage pts being attained ANY way but through battling Clan FOrces in game, I feel would be the worst. Defintely no way to monetize them should be considered.

Though I must wonder... not suggesting it would be a good idea.. but I would not put it past IGP to push for a "Clan Founders" package to be made available right before Launch. In fact, I would almost bet on it.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 01 February 2013 - 09:36 AM.

[Kasiagora]

I would be interested in the Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries way of handling it which is that you can get salvaged clan tech off of clan mechs that you destroy or off of an upgraded mech that you pull it off of, but these weapons can in turn be destroyed making the possibility of them being unsalvageable or needing repair when you get them, and you can lose them if, say, your arm is blown off in a battle that you lose. This would make you have to spend the big money for a replacement or revert to IS tech on your mech.

The side effects of this could be that for one, they really should have a savable loadouts option where you can easily click Loadout 1 to go back to your IS tech, and click Loadout 2 when you salvage a new Clan ER Medium Laser to replace the one you lost.
And two, this could open up the possibility for an auction house for people to sell off the equipment that they have salvaged to other players who need it.
Also, if the people getting clan mech initially are spending the 25,000,000 c-bills for one or 10,000 some-odd MCs then it would cause an advantage to the players who pay, which is unbalanced, but it would create a trickle down effect where players who pay less can still reap some of the benefits and maintain some amount of competitiveness.

I don't know, whenever I get to thinking about features that haven't been implemented yet it always opens up a whole can of related ideas that makes the topic into this bigger thing. :/

[Bishop Steiner]

oh yeah, and back to Bagheera's post... yeah.. NO "marketplace" or trading access for Clan Tech.... ever. (Why would the Clans need it? And for IS access, yeah that would be the door to P2W hell)

[RenegadeMaster]

Salvage Point System for Clan Tech makes sense and could work, BUT...
In the beginning, there would be a significant shortage of Clan Opponents to gain Clan Salvage Points from (is that wanted?),
AND...
it seems like everyone in this thread is ignoring one of PGI's published vision for community warfware that could be used for purchasing Clan Tech:

InnerSphereNews, on 07 December 2011 - 04:00 PM, said:

Loyalty Points and Ranks
Loyalty Points are used to determine how devoted you have been to a particular faction. The more loyal you are, the greater the reward. LPs are earned by engaging in activities that further the goals of a particular faction.
For Example: Killing an enemy faction player would earn 1 LP.
Loyalty Points decay over time if a player is not active. Participating in negative actions can also decrease LPs.

Let me play devil's advocate here: Why have two different point systems for loyalty and salvage when we could just have one for loyalty? What would make a Salvage Point System better than Loyalty Points for unlocking clan tech?

Implementing the ability for loyalty to allow purchase of clan tech could be done two primary ways:
1) Certain clan tech is unlocked when reaching certain ranks, but Loyalty Points are not "spent" each time clan tech is purchased.
This would be somewhat consistent with the Community Warfare vision:

InnerSphereNews, on 07 December 2011 - 04:00 PM, said:

Gaining ranks earns special privileges and items, including membership to special units, unit skins, and bonuses to C-Bills and XP.

The downside is that this method as written would not limit the amount of clan tech purchased.

2) Loyalty Points are spent in order to purchase clan tech.
The good/bad is that it forces pilots to choose "Do I want to stay loyal to my faction, or do I want clan tech?" Is it common in canon circa 3050 for any of the current 6 factions in MWO to use clan tech? If not, then this option makes far more sense for Loyalty Point usage, as it asserts that using Clan Tech is a deviation from the norms of factions.

[Cranky Poed]

I said yes..it would be more "canon" that way..i quoted because i am not up on the lore to know for sure.

I Imagine a pile of stuff at the end of the match with a system to do a round robin style of picking items. Houses and merc clans can discuss in TS to dole out loot(Ugh I hate to use that term) but the pugger in the fight will have a chance at salvage.

but on the same note..is that clan ER Large Laser gone if its destroyed in a fight? and you have to earn another? I would say yes to that as well., or you and no risk /reward.

[Solis Obscuri]

Right now we're working on getting the I.S. equipment balanced and the gameplay features all fleshed out... I think it's still too soon to begin drawing any serious conclusions about the Clans when we have no idea, at this point, how PGI will implement the invasion.

[Bishop Steiner]

Cranky Poed, on 01 February 2013 - 11:01 AM, said:

I said yes..it would be more "canon" that way..i quoted because i am not up on the lore to know for sure.

I Imagine a pile of stuff at the end of the match with a system to do a round robin style of picking items. Houses and merc clans can discuss in TS to dole out loot(Ugh I hate to use that term) but the pugger in the fight will have a chance at salvage.

but on the same note..is that clan ER Large Laser gone if its destroyed in a fight? and you have to earn another? I would say yes to that as well., or you and no risk /reward.

well, since too many people would argue over actual parts, the point of "Salvage Pts" would be a pool of "salvage" that would accrue to allow you to purchase Clan tech, lets say you get (pulling number out of butt here)2 Clanner Kills, and it pays out 10 salvage pts for a match against Clan Opponents.... then to "acquire a salvaged Clan ER Large Laser costs 20 Salvage (again not trying for "balanced number, fill in XYZ as you please for purpose of illustration), so 2 matches of similar results and maybe you can get the Clan ER Large Laser (Which in all honesty, this example would be getting stuff TOO easy, probably). The down side being also, if the weapon is destroyed or damage, it might take anywhere from 5-10 salvage to repair it before being usable again. Etc.

That keeps Clan Equipment in a "balanced" acquisition that should help reduce QQing, yet not TOO easy to get (since you HAVE to fight Clan Opponents to get any Clan Salvage) and removes any "infighting" over the loot.

[DEN_Ninja]

Since people seem to be ignoring lore despite the game following the time line...

Clantech should not be in this game for at least a year. Clan tech is so damn rare for many reasons.

Production and reverse engineering of clan tech takes toward the end of the the clan invasion. The Draconis Combine DOES gain access to a limited amount of clan tech by the battle of Wolcott but they still take a long time to reverse engineer and then place into production.

They only then start to license out the plans to the other houses.

Next up you cite that everything can be salvaged. That is hardly even true if you go back to lore again. The Inner sphere went for the full attrition battles toward the end. All ammunition would be well spent or hidden in caches. Even after the war caches of tech are still hidden on planets. Also with prolonged battles these mechs get ruined. Very few mechs get salvaged from battle. Chassis mods do get recovered and we get better endo steel, armour comps, and DHS but that is about it. Weapon systems are often mostly destroyed and have to be researched or pieced together.

Along with that, bidding made it very difficult for massive amounts of mechs or elementals to be fielded. Entire planets would be sieged by the bare minimum of a single star, binary, or trinary. Meaning at best fifteen mechs with the bulk of it mostly being elementals, aerospace assets, or even infantry.

Also the wolf dragoons are former Clan Wolf. They have access to a star league era production facility with clan tech knowledge. THEY HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY, they just have limited production capabilities. So they have clan tech. They give Hohiro and Victor Dire Wolves.

Kell Hounds are an elite mercenary group. They were the at the front of many major battles. They got some very good salvage rights for fighting that much. Not to mention the battle of Luthien was massive. They ruined the forces of Smoke Jaguar and Nova Cat with very good salvage rights. I'd imagine that the Kell Hounds who have had veterans of Clan Combat prior being a well equipped mercenary group could fight clans effectively enough to down mechs quickly and had enough salvage rights to lay claim to a lot of clan tech.

Tl;dr is that Clantech was rare to acquire. Once they had it they had no idea how to really use it. Once they figured it out it was too damn hard and costly to maintain for any front line units.

Edited by Tichorius Davion, 01 February 2013 - 03:17 PM.

[Dirus Nigh]

Bishop this is an interesting idea. You gave a good foundation for cross tech access to be based on.

[Bishop Steiner]

Tichorius Davion, on 01 February 2013 - 03:17 PM, said:

Tl;dr is that Clantech was rare to acquire. Once they had it they had no idea how to really use it. Once they figured it out it was too damn hard and costly to maintain for any front line units.

Yes. I probably know the timeline and history of the Btech universe as well as or better than anyone who didn't directly write the stuff. I also realize that some "concessions" will certainly be made, whether the die hard canon lovers like myself like it or not.

Hence the conversation is not about history or the books, but finding a happy medium. This would, with some tweaking, accomplish such. Hence, THAT is what the discussion should be about.

[Karl Marlow]

Im not opposed to the idea but it would need to be tied to an actual loss system. Over time everyone will just have all the clan weapons they could ever want if they never lose the weapon or piece of equipment.

I honestly think this is how advanced IS stuff should work as well. Maybe give us the ability to purchase Tech that isn't technically part of 3050 but using it risks its loss if someone destroys it in the fight.

This is part of the problem we have now. We are seeing alot of twinked out mechs using really expensive stuff on them. If they had to pay to repair or replace they 3 gauss, 4 LRM-15's, Dual AC20s, or the 6 SRM-6 systems we see running around we would see them used more sparingly. Imagine if you had to fix that Guardian everytime you were destroyed.

Maybe give the pieces of equipment durability. Lets say 10 points. You lose 1 point of durability every time the equipment is destroyed. You then can pay a repair fee to fix the part. Make it cheep. Call it maintenance and have your mech just be on downtime while the mech is being repaired. Hell put the mech on downtime everytime you change its loadout. Say 1 hour for every ton of difference for a standard mech and a flat 30 minutes when you change an omni mech.

Edited by ThomasMarik, 02 February 2013 - 06:58 AM.

[Mawai]

Clan weapons and tech are superior ... they are all strictly better than their IS equivalents.

MWO is a competitive team game.

In any match, Clan tech will be superior to IS tech and will offer an advantage in play to the player who has it.

Period.

Does anyone disagree that clan tech is not superior or will provide an advantage?

The system described here will limit the initial proliferation of clan tech weapons to those with the time or resources to play frequently. You earn salvage in this suggested system by playing. Anyone who plays a lot will have a significant advantage over everyone else. The harder the clan salvage is to earn the bigger the advantage they will have.

How can this be balanced? How do you balance a match in which multi-man groups who play a lot drop in fully clan tech outfitted mechs against others who may not have access to all the cool technology because they do not play as much.

The suggested system just bottlenecks the acquisition and makes the technology more expensive to use ... it doesn't balance it in any sense of the term and doesn't balance the resulting matches that involve clan technology.

Balancing could result from factoring clan tech into the match-maker so that clan equipped mechs will face overwhelming firepower from opponents. Perhaps clan equipped mechs will be limited to 5 mechs against 8 inner sphere mechs? THAT might balance a match though it is hard to tell without a huge amount of playtesting.

The problem is that meta-game elements are not sufficient or appropriate to balance matches .. the balance has to be established within the actual game play itself.

If I had to guess ... clan tech will only be available for CW matches in which organizations are grouped to fight for territory and can be expected to field their best equipment. It is possible that clan equipped mechs may not be allowed at all in regular matches.

Keep in mind that at this point in the time line, the clans are just entering the IS periphery ... clan tech will only be available through salvage. How many engagements were won by inner sphere forces in this time frame allowing for the salvage of clan technology or mechs? Could there be a total of perhaps 100 clan mechs recovered in 3050 - less? Did the IS even win that many engagements? (I am doubtful since the initial clan invasion was a steam roll of the IS forces for the most part if I recall) ... so maybe PGI should set up an MC auction for unique salvaged clan tech and mechs ...considering how few of these should actually be available in the current time frame.

[Critical Fumble]

Clan tech is definitely over-powered (well, kind of). Which is why I like the part in the middle of the opening post. The part where you need a module to mount the stuff. If there has to be a 1:1 ratio of Clan enabling modules to Clan tech items on a mech, most of the game will stay balanced without making IS gear totally obsolete.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mawai, on 02 February 2013 - 07:22 AM, said:

Clan weapons and tech are superior ... they are all strictly better than their IS equivalents.

MWO is a competitive team game.

In any match, Clan tech will be superior to IS tech and will offer an advantage in play to the player who has it.

Period.

Does anyone disagree that clan tech is not superior or will provide an advantage?

The system described here will limit the initial proliferation of clan tech weapons to those with the time or resources to play frequently. You earn salvage in this suggested system by playing. Anyone who plays a lot will have a significant advantage over everyone else. The harder the clan salvage is to earn the bigger the advantage they will have.

How can this be balanced? How do you balance a match in which multi-man groups who play a lot drop in fully clan tech outfitted mechs against others who may not have access to all the cool technology because they do not play as much.

The suggested system just bottlenecks the acquisition and makes the technology more expensive to use ... it doesn't balance it in any sense of the term and doesn't balance the resulting matches that involve clan technology.

Balancing could result from factoring clan tech into the match-maker so that clan equipped mechs will face overwhelming firepower from opponents. Perhaps clan equipped mechs will be limited to 5 mechs against 8 inner sphere mechs? THAT might balance a match though it is hard to tell without a huge amount of playtesting.

The problem is that meta-game elements are not sufficient or appropriate to balance matches .. the balance has to be established within the actual game play itself.

If I had to guess ... clan tech will only be available for CW matches in which organizations are grouped to fight for territory and can be expected to field their best equipment. It is possible that clan equipped mechs may not be allowed at all in regular matches.

Keep in mind that at this point in the time line, the clans are just entering the IS periphery ... clan tech will only be available through salvage. How many engagements were won by inner sphere forces in this time frame allowing for the salvage of clan technology or mechs? Could there be a total of perhaps 100 clan mechs recovered in 3050 - less? Did the IS even win that many engagements? (I am doubtful since the initial clan invasion was a steam roll of the IS forces for the most part if I recall) ... so maybe PGI should set up an MC auction for unique salvaged clan tech and mechs ...considering how few of these should actually be available in the current time frame.

actually, as acknowleged in the OP, and expounded on in various answers thereafter, the ONLY way to be able to represent the Clans is thru the MM system, the numerical difference and their honor (which is supposedly to be addressed by an honor system).

The qcomments on this is to discuss proper implementation of when clan salvage does, inevitably enter IS hands, period. I also fully agree with Thomas Marik that advanced tech, both Star League, and ESPECIALLY Clan, should be Lose-able".

[Barushkukor]

First things first, I just read your entire post and changed my vote from "Maybe" to "Yes!!" I think you may have hit upon a fair and balanced way to disseminate Clan tech in a natural and "flavorful" fashion, and still help to create End-Game content (can you imagine the GXP and CB cost on a Clan Tech Enabler Module?!?!?!)

3 internets and one Dire Wolf to you my good sir!

[Wintersdark]

Re: the OP.

First: Where do the early Clantech using players get their Clan gear? How could they earn salvage points by downing Clan mechs, when there are no players with Clan mechs?

Second: The problem with gating Clan tech on battle results is simple. Only the best players get Clan tech. This sounds great, but... The best players get the better tech, and this acts as a force multiplier - the best players get ever better weaponry, allowing them to win more, which ever increases the gap between better and worse players. Eventually, you end up with a system that's somewhat similar to outfitting new players in trials only, and pitting them against veterans in custom mechs now.

--------------------

Now, here's the thing. This has nothing to do with how I think things should be(as a player/BT fan), but this comes entirely from game design experience and what I feel is most likely how PGI will do things.

1) Clan mechs will be added exactly as current mechs, with the same customization options (hardpoints).
- Yes, it doesn't fully reflect how Omnimechs work, but it IS how every Mechwarrior game has implemented Clan Mechs. Also, consider that our current IS mechs are essentially, in MWO, better than Omnimechs anyways (we can swap weapons around effortlessly, AND change structure/armor/engines). All our IS mechs are already equipped with the inventions that were added later on to bring some parity with Clan mechs as well (endo steel, FF, DHS, etc)
- Most importantly, it's implemented without changing anything. Zero coding time, zero testing time, zero cost beyond what goes into adding IS mechs now.

2) Clan weapons and tech will cost. A lot. But work just like current ones, so yes, they'll just be better. But they'll take a while longer to "grind up"
- Again, zero coding times, etc, and the same effort that goes into adding new IS tech.

3) Clan tech will be available to everyone, but released slowly and gradually. There will, then, be no need to make complicated changes to the ELO system, matchmaker, etc.


See a common thread? You're not going to see lopsided matches with x Clanners vs. x+y Inner Sphere Mechwarriors, because it'd be an impossible nightmare to balance. Also you'd find there'd very quickly be VASTLY more Clan mechwarriors than Inner Sphere ones, because the majority wants to pilot the "elite" mechs rather than the numerous trash mechs, so Clan mechwarriors would find themselves in a horribly long queue trying to find battles.

In game design particularly, the simplest answer is generally the one that's used. I'd put real, hard cash that this is the route PGI goes.

[buttmonkey]

i would be in favor of this.