August 8th - Weapon Balance update

Oops... Removed!

 

IMHO, Can Mechs should be stronger, but then it should be 10 vs. 12.

One might think about including the good old honor rules into the game; by allowing a Clan machine to target (R-button) only one Mech until it is destroyed, and no Mech which is already targeted by another.
Furthermore, when firing on a Mech which is currently another's target, you get a penalty on XP and C-Bills, like a team-kill but with a stronger penalty (I know that this will be a weak punishment once you have all your Mechs equipped and mastered).

Unfortunately, there is no close combat in the game, otherwise Clanners would be banned to do it.

My 2 Cents.

 

I remember quite a few mentions in the lore where clanners would engage in close combat. For instance, the bloodnamed warrior who engaged Kai Allard-Liao on...Twycross, I think it was? Moments like that are why I wish there was some form of melee (Hatchetman, anyone?) just to see if someone could pull it off

 

Believe me after the release of all Clan-Mechs after End of November for C-Bills most Players would pilot Clan Mechs more than their IS Mechs. Reasons: They are new, they are fun and they are cool. Only new players who can't afford them will need time to grind for them. Veterans would only drive the Oldies out of fun Matters or if Competitions require to play IS vs Clan. Most of us old players have almost unlocked Master for all their IS Mechs and would need the grinding for the New Clan Stuff.

I can foresee that next Year 80+% will play Clan Mechs if not even more. Clan-Tech nerfing would piss the Big Majority of Players. PGI actually needs to rework the IS Mechs to make them attractive like adding the option to load Clan-Tech into them etc.

So i don't see a problem with the Clan-Tech being OP. Imagine next year you can load cERLLas and cGauss etc into your Victors, Highlanders or Atlases. Maybe we get also some Omnipod-Options for IS Mechs. Just let's see what the Future brings. In the meantime have fun killing Direwhales with inferior IS Mechs! Show them you can beat them with Brain and Skill. Just like a Kungfu-Master with Chopsticks can beat a apprentice armed with ten swords.

For Inspiration just watch my IS vs Clanners Video in the Vid-Section.

 

hegetsit[size=14pt]hegetsit[size=18pt]hegetsit

 

Im against buffing them, cause there is already too much damage flying around.

But then.. who would pilot clan mechs?!

 

[member=5075]Midnite7175[/member] for this to work you need to remove the space. Then it will notify him he has been mentioned.

 

Sure buffing IS-Tech is not optimal also, but i would prefer it over nerfing Weapons again.

Who would pilot Clan Mechs? Wanna bet?

 

I would love if they would simply strip clan mechs from the ability to share target data except for narc. This way clanner mechs migth be superior mechs, but suffer inferior team coordination and lurming.

 

This is actually an interesting thought. One could imagine scenarios that after a few thousand battles, IS forces would be able to salvage a fair amount of clan weaponry, and could then load them out on IS mechs. The tradeoff would be that since things like the heatsinks and engines are intrinsically tied to the destroyed mechs, they would not be useable in IS mechs. This way everyone gets access to the Clan weaponry, but there is still a reason to use Clan mechs.

 

I was going to mention that same thing. I would play the shit out of every IS mech I own if there was a percentage "salvage chance" based on every kill or component destruction I got. Say, destroying a component then winning the match gives you a chance to "loot" the ability to load a weapon type that was on the destroyed component. Similar to how leg killing a mech in MW3 made it more likely that you could salvage the whole mech.

I would play that RNG minigame nonstop.

 

Well the IS never get clan engines for a start so.....

 

But then we get into the realm of merc contracts and house unit differences... brings back fond memories of table top and the merc unit rules.

 

[quote author=Durandal link=topic=7585.msg50623#msg50623 date=1408031057]
I would play that RNG minigame nonstop.
[/quote]

You guys are thinking critically now.

This is good shit guys keep going.

 

To me, the biggest disappointment of the Clan release was keeping the basic economic system the same.

Had I been planning it each account would have an IS Faction and a Clan Affiliation you can switch between the two at any time outside of a match, but aside from being the same account, they would share nothing, except GXP and MC.

Your IS side of things would be exactly as they are now, in terms of economy.

Clan on the other hand - you get honor points instead of c-bills. (Yes, I would allow you to convert C-Bills to Honor Points and back... for a cost of MC, after all - gotta' make the money...)

Now, earning honor points? Well, biggest honor point gains come from engaging in zell, win a duel in zell and get honor points. Win a duel against a heavier mech than you? Even more honor points. Win a duel against another Clanner? More honor points than against an IS (After all, you're expected to be better than IS.) Win a duel against a heavier clanner? ZOMFG HONOR POINTS! Since you might not rack up a ton of kills this way, duelling and winning battles are the absolute largest source of honor points.

So, what about breaking zell? Well, if the other side hasn't proven to be dezgra (which we'll get to...), you lose points for firing on enemy mechs that have already been claimed for zell by another clanner. Friendly fire? Lose honor points. You lose LOTS of honor points for TKs.

Dezgra actions. Let's have a little bar at the top of the screen, similar to the assault base capture bar. Each time one side or another fires on a mech that someone else claimed in zell, once zell is declared and accepted, breaking radar contact for more than a few seconds (which might be harder to program...), and declining zell when in a heavier mech, the bar increases for their side a bit. Once the bar caps out, the side that capped it is declared dezgra, and a grand melee can begin. All players on the other side gain a significant bonus to their honor points (if they use them) and there are no longer penalties for firing outside a duel or into another's duel. Additionally, once a grand melee breaks out, if you continue to use zell you gain even more honor points.

Zellbrigen: To declare zell isn't as simple as targetting an enemy mech. First you have to target them, then there will be an additional keypress to declare it. It will be announced "Clanner in Mech has declared Zellbrigen against Victim in Mech." Then the victim... err target... will have the chance to accept or decline. Accept with the same keypress required to declare it. Decline by... I haven't pondered that. If you declare Zell against someone, and they decline, you cannot declare it against them for the remainder of the battle. Once someone has declared zell against a target, no one else can declare it against the same target until either he accepts and wins, or he declines. (As a side note, the threshold for becoming dezgra should prevent a single player from being locked out from zell by an entire team.)

Finally, unless we have salvage rules (random chance per player, per destroyed enemy mech to add a random piece of equipment found on that mech to their inventory) when IS faces Clan and *wins* there should be a c-bill boost for winning and salvage.

TL;DR
Clan and IS should be separate economic systems, though outside of how it is earned, it is superficially the same.
Clan rewards should be based on playing by clan honor rules, not salvage and kills.
How it should be rewards for lowest to greatest:
Playing Clan vs IS ; Clan vs Clan/ IS vs IS (Identicalish to how it is now); Playing IS vs Clan

Final Thoughts:
1.) "But Azakael, if the economic systems are separate, how does one start playing Clan?"
- Same way you started playing Inner Sphere. You start out in Clan Trial Mechs. After all, you haven't earned a Bloodname.
2.) "But what if I want to continue to use my IS Mechs and still represent my Clan in CW?"
- What are you, Solahma, Dezgra, quiaff? Second line units were the only ones to receive IS salvage, or field old Star League 'mechs from the Exodus. You want to represent your Clan, play goddamn Clan 'Mechs. Or wait for the IICs to release and you'll get the Battlemech flexibility on engines and structure, with Clantech.
3.) "Loopholes, loopholes, won't work."
- Shut the fuck up and be constructive. Yes, there are likely loopholes and things that might not work in my idea here. But it *is* an idea. Unfortunately, I don't work for PGI, so this is also merely a thought exercise.

There. Sorry for the wall of text.

 

I want to preface this by saying that I actually think there are a lot of good ideas in there, and that it could be interesting, but it would be awful for the game in the long term for one specific reason. Think about everything you just described, all the rules and mechanics and everything else to learn.

Now, think about all of that, PLUS all the complicated game mechanics we already deal with, from the perspective of a brand new player. For any game to survive long term, we need new players coming in to replace those who leave the game either out of boredom, burnout, or just finding another game to play. The state of the game, already, is excessively complicated - something made worse by the fact that a lot of the newer mechanics introduced into the game (even going back as far as Gauss Charge) have no in-game information about how they work. Making the game more complex at this point only serves to poison the experience and fend off new players, not invite them in to increase the population.

I wish that wasn't the case, and I'm not bashing your idea (far from it, I really like it), but I think it could cause more harm than good. It would be great for lore, but damaging to the longevity of the game.

 

Actually now that i think of it, that would probably make IS mechs competetive with Clan mechs. You get lighter and better weaponry with more customisation options on your chassis, but you don't get the superior engines, and DHS still take 3 slots. And it would add a twist to the game definitely

 

Actually there are Clan-Tech Retrofits for IS Mechs. Just look at some Variants on Sarnanet:

E.g.

 

Not sure where you're going with that Blagg as thats a Clan rebuild of an IS Mech not an IS addition of clan weapons which is what the others are discussing. Different factories/technical staff/scientists entirely. Those mainly come into play after certain invading clans set up factories in the Inner Sphere.

We know that in TT down the road there are clan salvaged weapons retrofitted onto IS mechs in limited numbers (with difficulty as the power conduits are different and mainly after Wolf Dragoons start training technicians) but here's a few points.. under those same retrofit rules heres a few things you can't change unless on the original factory line ... engine, structure, armour type and I have a vague memory jump jets either. Thats including Inner Sphere mechs.

The TT game is not balanced around the idea of the system we use in MWO so arguing that unfettered clan weaponry should be available for IS mechs isn't a given. They MAY allow some clan tech but so far PGI have said..."no mixed tech" though they have hinted at IS Omnimechs (Presumably like the Firestarter, Owen etc which still use IS weapons).

There literally would be no reason that I can see to take a clan assault energy boat if you could mount Clan weapons on certain of the Awesomes due to the very broken quirks they just added. I guess the thinking was to revamp one of the most reviled mechs in the game and they certainly succeeded. As a contrast most clan mech quirks are negative in nature as they directly counter hardpoint advantages with negative quirks or in addition just outright ban lower arm actuators (Direwolf or any ballistic arm mounted clan mech) so you lose arm targetting ability. I can imagine the howls of outrage if they added similar negative quirks to IS mechs.

 

True. But if there were actual, real, functioning tutorial, with voice-overs, it might work...

[quote author=Remarius link=topic=7585.msg50699#msg50699 date=1408106086]
The TT game is not balanced around the idea of the system we use in MWO so arguing that unfettered clan weaponry should be available for IS mechs isn't a given. They MAY allow some clan tech but so far PGI have said..."no mixed tech" though they have hinted at IS Omnimechs (Presumably like the Firestarter, Owen etc which still use IS weapons).
[/quote]

The one thing in the rules with IS Omni, they were designed to, with little adjustment, accept Clantech in their pods.
So, IS Engine - which can't be changed, IS Heat Sinks - which can't be changed, IS Endo and Ferro - which can't be changed... I'd see it as being a reasonable trade-off. Allow clantech on IS Omni.

On that note: Owens and Strider are DoA. Stuck with SHS.