Your favorite mech to own.

Silly comments 101... the ones we have all look similar just not identical and were fine as not covered by lawsuits.

Well here's the shocker ... FASA LOST THE LAWSUIT. Worse the other party have very aggressively defended their claim and won every time. There is almost NO chance those mechs in the forms people remember will ever see the light of day again unless the owner decides to release those rights. If you completely redesign them to where they don't bear any resemblance to the original and change their loadout.... wait its really not the same mech at all. If a name was all that mattered you could have a 20 ton mech and call it "Marauder" or Warhammer".... but that's not what players want.

 

The Reseen designs that are currently used in the tabletop game, and sold as miniatures, are close enough for me. And there is a chance, they have not been entirely ruled out.

EDIT: Also, FASA did not lose. They settled out of court, they had acquired the rights to use the images from a company that may not have had the legal rights to allow FASA their use. This is why they were not sued into oblivion.

 

The Archer is hideous and not even close. The dragon looks closer.

 

The Marauder is passable.

 

Gasboy covered the legalese, so I'll cover the rest:

They are still allowed to be used as/in product, the dispute is over promotional imaging using the artwork. This is why they are called the "Unseen", not the "Unused" or some other, sillier name. The "Reseen" and advanced variants are allowed to be shown, despite obviously being close to those designs in most cases. The originals are still canon and sold as product, that art just can't be used. PGI could release carbon-copy variants in terms of game mechanics and be in the clear. But PGI is smart enough to know that releasing something without being able to use screenshots or concept art for marketing is a rather silly deal and that lots of casual fans won't understand what the problem is. This is where the thorny distinction comes in. And ties directly to the next part.

The distinctions between 'similar enough to be considered the original' and 'similar enough to be recognizable' and 'just sort of similar' are very subjective...as exemplified by the very strange double standard you yourself put forward. Things like the in-game Jenner, concept art we got for the Zeus, modeling of all the weapons on every mech, and outright changed proportions and profiles for a few others (meaning they are NOT instantly recognizable to an old-hat that is new to MWO) are okay as having the mech in-game, but suggesting the same thing happen for the Unseen makes them not the same mech? If the only way to get them in-game is to go FURTHER than PGI's current designs in modification, I'd probably agree with you. But if a little elbow grease in their current style can skirt the visual rights thing, then I'd be completely onboard. My guess, though, is that PGI would rather not even *court* potential disaster when there's so much IP to see on the horizon.

Ok, yeah, I'm a horrible person. But my point remains!

 

Huginn or Oxide or Firestarter H, I can't decide which I like best.

Sparky is just brilliant, especially if you ignore the Quirks and go for the MPlas boat
Cent has unbelievable endurance.... but XL engine, no thx

Heavies... well, uh. I guess the.. hmm... the Thunderbolt 5SS is okay-ish?
Compared to the clanners, no IS heavy is good.

Assaults, well I love the Banshee 3E and the Stalkers must be pretty sweet.

 

Orions, Jagers and Dragons my friend.

 

I'll keep it short... the current in game designs just aren't that different and yes unlike most people on these forums I do have the originals of every TRO and every Battletech book ever produced. End of story. The designs that have any chance of getting through will need to be utterly different.

I'll add the requirement you missed - 'similar enough to be unrecognizable and have no chance of being sued'.

In the era of morphing Inner Sphere mechs I can't see why people desperately hold to mechs that they'll just utterly change - the only unchanged items will be their name and weight... Your Marauder becomes effectively just an Orion with worse hitboxes....

PS: Try not to invent crap I didn't say as it just confirms you have no reasonable argument.

 

My forever best mech since the first MW is TIMBERWOLF! Imo, one sexy looking beast!

 

a.k.a glass cannons

sorry, not tanky enough

 

*Sigh* This again. Alight, here we go.

The implication for 'just sort of similar' was 'not sue-able', and if you're going to try and hold me to that standard of explicit speech then you have a few posts to completely rewrite IN THIS THREAD before you have any right to be pissed off at me for holding you to something you STILL explicitly stated.

Sure, MOST of the current in-game designs aren't that different. I mean, hell, even the Jenner I mentioned is recognizable. Blahblah, little kid goes "nuh-uh, the nose is different!", we're adults. We all know that won't hold anymore than trying to get away with altering Darth Vader's mask by shaving down the front protrusions, changing the grating pattern at the mouth, and hoping not to get sued. But there are still multiple mechs where the concept art and in-game designs can only be considered instantly recognizable as the original mech when someone outright tells you what they are, as the guessing games and arguments on the official forums for pre-release teaser art and profiles pretty aptly demonstrates. This is exacerbated when coming down from the profile/outline level and looking at components, but that's less important...we are talking about able to be sued over, yes? Even if you want to tell me you or some other geek can, having never played the game before, see game assets only and identify each mech chassis on sight using only the TROs as reference/memory, then I'll congratulate you on your high level visual pattern recognition and remind you most people can't do that without similar training...and sometimes not even then.

So let's talk examples, precedent, and art. Let's take a borderline case that would definitely cause dispute if it there were someone who owned the rights and was annoyed, but might slide because not every judge is an art major. Even a schmuck like me can recognize the in-game Nova is meant to be the Nova. It's got the blocky hand-weapon clusters, the hunched look, the distinctly shaped cockpit and nose, the gyro joints. No, wait, actually the joints are different. Not even the spacing between the shoulder and hip, though that's there too, the way they are even if they were connected has changed. And there's all that space where there used to be connections, and connections where there used to be space. The feet, the support structure. The game's source-books and table-top models already have variations on that level that can still be legally shown even when they don't have additional fluff like II or more letters.

Oh, right, we didn't even need Clans for examples, we still have the Phoenix and Resistance packages to pull from! Silly me, trying to be comprehensive and actually walk through the whole argument piece by piece so you can't conflate things again.


You want the short version? If you consider the Battlemaster we have and the Zeus we're getting to be mechs in game as their original, and then try to tell me with a straight face that the Marauder can't happen on the same level and be accepted by the players, then you have a double standard. But, hey, that's not what you were saying after all, you did make that clear after the fact, since you didn't bother to distinguish between the two things beforehand. If you're instead trying to tell me that even that would lead to a suit PGI doesn't want even if they could win, which is why the in game Marauder is probably-definitely not going to happen, then we've already agreed with you while saying we're still hoping instead of being total pessimists about it, so you're just being pissy because people agreed with you and had the gall to present alternatives and be optimistic.


The worst part is, I'm not even sorry that annoys you.

 

This is all fascinating and all...but this is supposed to be about favorite mechs Can we not get into fratching territory?

 

The King Crab is turning out well, I'd say it edges out the others as my favourite 100 ton mech. Also, look at it from ths side.

 

Really now? I, don't have one, but watched one of my teammates tear apart an Atlas on it's own with those nasty SRM4s. The cooldown is insane.

On topic:
I'm IS, so my favs are also IS.
Lights: Designwise and piloting.. I'm all about the Ravens. This Mech and I have a long story incl. former Mechwarrior series.

Meds: I like the Wolverine design most. But I prefer the Black Jacks over any other med, closely followed by the Hunchbacks.

Heavies: The Thunderbolt replaced my Cata.

Assaults: If I go superheavy I go the full monty and use an Atlas. Although I also love my Stalkers.

 

I agree with Aylek. I love my Highlanders, but they are just so underwhelming right now.. Still if I had to pick only one assault I'd pick them, and just settle with being mediocre because of my love for them.

 

Hello all,
My favorite is Firebrand. Jaggers was my love at first sight, and FB has a gorgeous heroic paint.

 

Smorgie <3 Kitfox.

I love what it can do in-game. So versital. So unexpectedly firepowerful.

If ever the Crab or the Whitworth become available, I'm gonna maybe have to re-evaluate.

 

What is all this tl;dr discussion in here? Geez. This isn't the main mwo forums here.

 

King crab is up, and there are Crab mech drawings on one of them. Just saying.

Things I want. (excluding unseen like VF-1, and things too far off the timeline, ot melee mech I love.)
A certain Assault mech from a certain famous Merc group.
Ebon Jaguar!
Mauler!
Viking (cause I want to shoot people with my knee)
Ares... it is a cute little mech... yeah.
Urbanmech, obviously, cause they are cute.
I don't know if protomech is allowed.

Myst Lynx Config G omnipods. (Don't ask, just get this, and Myst Lynx would not suck)
Myst Lynx Config P omnipods. (loads of energy hardpoints for stacks of cSL)
Summoner Config F omnipods. (torso energy hardpoint)

 

*Austin Powers mode engaged*

Yeah baby! Yeah!

*Austin Powers mode disengaged*