Yes, I would like to avoid boating as well, but this seems to limit customization a bunch it seems.
I wonder how that will work out when the Clan Mechs arrive. I loved, loved mounting a ClanLBX20 in the arm of a Puma and terrorizing larger mechs. It sounds like I won't be able to do that.
0
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Hatch covers make plenty of sense to me. Considering there is all sorts of nasty stuff flying around out there, up to and including focused energy beams that burn really hot, I'd definitely want something to keep a stray shot from igniting a full missile rack. And mechanically, it wouldn't be hard at all to have a cutoff that prevents the missiles from being fired if the doors are closed.
If I had to choose between a missile cover that might keep my missiles from firing and the chance of some jerk Raven zipping around a corner and exploding my entire mech with a laser to the missile rack, I'd definitely have to go with the missile cover.
As for the Mechlab stuff, my understanding of it is that there's a combined slot and hardpoint system. So if you have 3 laser hardpoints, 5 weapon slots, and a large laser takes 2 slots, you could only fit 2 large lasers because there aren't enough slots for a third large laser. Alternatively, you could have 2 medium lasers (at 1 slot each) and a large laser, but can't add any more lasers because you're out of hardpoints but still have a slot left.
The new hardpoint system does reign in customization a bit. And I might sound crazy for saying it, but I think I'm actually kind of glad for that. Maybe it's just my time in WoT that's made me think this way, but there's something to be said for having a relatively consistent performance profile for a given chassis. It adds a layer of tactical complexity when you can make an educated guess about what your enemy is likely to be carrying: you can choose what kind of terrain you'd rather engage them in, what units on your team will probably be best suited for countering them, stuff like that.
To pull another example from the quotes above, if you allow complete customization, you might assume an enemy Awesome has his usual PPC loadout - good for long-range volleys at heavily armored targets, not so great against a fast target in close quarters. So maybe you'll try to lure him into an urban environment where you can use your team's lights and mediums to flank at close range. Then it turns out that LOL 10 MEDIUM LASERS! and your Jenner gets rapid-fire plinked into slag. With the hardpoint system, you can be pretty damn sure that the Awesome will be carrying a small number of high-powered energy weapons (PPCs/large lasers), giving you a better chance of pulling off some kind of plan to deal with it.
Yes, I would like to avoid boating as well, but this seems to limit customization a bunch it seems.
I wonder how that will work out when the Clan Mechs arrive. I loved, loved mounting a ClanLBX20 in the arm of a Puma and terrorizing larger mechs. It sounds like I won't be able to do that.
If there's a ballistic hardpoint in that arm and you have enough free space and weight, you would.
Or you might be able to anyway, we don't know how they're handling Omnimechs yet.
Yes, I would like to avoid boating as well, but this seems to limit customization a bunch it seems.
I wonder how that will work out when the Clan Mechs arrive. I loved, loved mounting a ClanLBX20 in the arm of a Puma and terrorizing larger mechs. It sounds like I won't be able to do that.
It might be a way to actually justify the variants (and maybe get people to pay for them)?
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Holy shit, those Catapult screens are gorgeous, goddamn.
From what we've heard about the customization, it looks to me like an ideal balance between the "Do whatever you want" system that most of the mechwarrior games had that leads to boating, and the "This is the mech's loadout. Period." that takes so much fun out of the game. I'm sure you'll still be able to build stuff that's broken and overpowered, but maybe it won't be so overpowered.
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
They can easily solve that by making it cost money to change the loadout of a mech.
$20 to unlock a mechbay. $20 to change the load out. $20 to get the equipment.
In this thread, Synthesis tries to justify an opinion about missile rack covers. And fingers. Although the opinion about ProtoMechs is fully justified. Fuck ProtoMechs.
There is fluff in the novels about internal missile racks also having internal missile rack covers for each individual tube (mostly to prevent them from getting shot). The armor on BattleMechs is ablative, and I just naturally assumed that the big rack cover was merely one style of ablative armor protection (which tends to be a "cover" rather than integrated). There are real life missile launchers that have those same kind of covers, although a more common design is a square cover for each individual tube (like on some Naval Missile Launchers, the M41). The big cover for multiple tubes only exists on some old helicopter mounted and ground mounted missile systems. I'm pretty sure the original artist for the Catapult saw a rocket tank with one of those flipdown covers and thought it was neat. *shrugs* I'm not sure an individual flap for each tube would look better. It certainly would make for a silly-looking model.
There are enough cringe-worthy 'Mech designs for each person who plays BattleTech out there. *grin* I feel that way about most of the Unseen and many of the Clan refits. The 3058 Tech Update has a lot of bad Mech art as well. I'm sure there are folks out there who hate the Hollander design because it looks so ridiculous, but it's one of my favorites because of its asymmetry and unique profile (you know EXACTLY what it's supposed to do just by looking at it).
Every BattleTech thread I've ever seen goes through periodic cycles where people point out the idiocy of some feature or another and half the people argue about it while the other half point out that nothing makes fucking sense. I've always been a part of the second camp. Yes, the doors don't make sense, and yes, the reasons for not having the doors are pretty obvious ones that fit into the overall universe (or at least maybe fit into the overall universe: you guys can argue about that for another couple of pages), but really in the end, the entire universe is completely incoherent at a fundamental level in multiple ways. Nothing makes any fucking sense if you really think about it. The only "design flaws" I'd ever call a 'Mech out on are ugly ones, and I think the doors look cool. ProtoMechs look stupid, fingers look stupid, doors look cool. Problem solved: doors are OK.
Every BattleTech thread I've ever seen goes through periodic cycles where people point out the idiocy of some feature or another and half the people argue about it while the other half point out that nothing makes fucking sense. I've always been a part of the second camp. Yes, the doors don't make sense, and yes, the reasons for not having the doors are pretty obvious ones that fit into the overall universe (or at least maybe fit into the overall universe: you guys can argue about that for another couple of pages), but really in the end, the entire universe is completely incoherent at a fundamental level in multiple ways. Nothing makes any fucking sense if you really think about it. The only "design flaws" I'd ever call a 'Mech out on are ugly ones, and I think the doors look cool. ProtoMechs look stupid, fingers look stupid, doors look cool. Problem solved: doors are OK.
But what else would we talk about? The games aren't out yet. *sadface*
From what we've heard about the customization, it looks to me like an ideal balance between the "Do whatever you want" system that led to completely predictible, boring, unfun boating, and the "This is the mech's loadout. Period." that brings the game to some semblance of ballance and fun.
Hell, Mechwarrior 4 put plenty of limits on customisation, and all that really changed was that people picked the same 2-3 chasis that let them have the boats they wanted. The more limits the better.
EDIT: For the record, I was perfectly fine with just having known variants and leaving the MechLab out altogether. I think the system they're proposing is a fine compromise.
MegaMek on
Is time a gift or punishment?
0
grouch993Both a man and a numberRegistered Userregular
Is this about the time where we discuss tons per square foot support and the mechs sinking into the ground?
In this thread, Synthesis tries to justify an opinion about missile rack covers. And fingers. Although the opinion about ProtoMechs is fully justified. Fuck ProtoMechs.
There is fluff in the novels about internal missile racks also having internal missile rack covers for each individual tube (mostly to prevent them from getting shot). The armor on BattleMechs is ablative, and I just naturally assumed that the big rack cover was merely one style of ablative armor protection (which tends to be a "cover" rather than integrated). There are real life missile launchers that have those same kind of covers, although a more common design is a square cover for each individual tube (like on some Naval Missile Launchers, the M41). The big cover for multiple tubes only exists on some old helicopter mounted and ground mounted missile systems. I'm pretty sure the original artist for the Catapult saw a rocket tank with one of those flipdown covers and thought it was neat. *shrugs* I'm not sure an individual flap for each tube would look better. It certainly would make for a silly-looking model.
In the Soviet/CIS armies, mobile rocket artillery sometimes came with large covers, made of hardened rubber typically, painted the same color as the rest of the vehicle. Which were removed before combat. Because they weren't stupid, and knew they didn't want their equipment exploding catastrophically because of a hinge getting stuck.
Fuck those ridiculous swinging panels. There's a reason why every other mech has some sort of missile rack, but only the catapult has the panels--even BT realized how ridiculous they were.
Well, they seemed to address the Awesome directly--since it has three PPCs, you're not able to easily turn it into a laser boat, for example--your cut-off may be three large lasers where the three PPCs had been.
In the Soviet/CIS armies, mobile rocket artillery sometimes came with large covers, made of hardened rubber typically, painted the same color as the rest of the vehicle. Which were removed before combat. Because they weren't stupid, and knew they didn't want their equipment exploding catastrophically because of a hinge getting stuck.
Again, swinging panels exist on real-life missile launchers today. It's pretty easy to find examples of naval missile launchers with a swinging panel covering a tube (there's several pictures on the wikipedia page). It's not that far-fetched. Your opinion on aesthetics is acknowledged, and perhaps you think they are less practical, but some of them ARE designed that way. It also wouldn't be the first time that a military object has some silly feature by design that no other similar piece of military equipment has.
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DeadfallI don't think you realize just how rich he is.In fact, I should put on a monocle.Registered Userregular
After seeing those screens I booted up MW4. Such a great game.
Yeah, I hear you. I assume the idea is to make them look like holographic elements floating in the cockpit, but if you were "really there" you'd be turning your head to look at the various panels... which would make them not look so slopey as your viewing angle changed. As it is it's kind of a form-over-function situation.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Yeah my only complaint about the HUD is that the graphic presentation isn't like, hard monitors and panels and shit all over the place. I really like that look.
They've shown in other pictures or a vid that you've got the ability to look up-down-around using an analogue stick or a hat on a joystick, and you not only see the physical displays on a dash, but other less important things that aren't represented in the holographic elements.
I hope there's at least an option to switch off the holographs and expand the FOV for those who want it. It's like cockpit-cam versus bonnet-cam in a racing game. Both have their merits, but people tend to prefer one over the other.
It would be interesting if they had older 'Mechs with solid cockpit elements and the more recent and sophisticated models (with LosTech neurohelmets) with enhanced imaging and built-in HUD instead. Showing a spectrum of cockpits for each 'Mech would be neat. In a piddly Locust or an ancient Zeus, you'd have the bulkier displays blocking your view, for example, because of the older and more robust construction.
An option to disasble the HUD and only use the physical displays would be cool, but I doubt I would use it that often. If such a feature is included I'd like an additional option to automatically remove the HUD when taking screenshots.
There's more to Battletech than just med. laser spam. For instance, you can spam other small arms, like:
-20x Machine Gun
-1 ton Machine Gun ammo
If you can't kill your target in the 5 rounds it takes you to burn through your ammo, you probably weren't gonna drop it anyway.
Or my favorite:
-20 Rocket Launcher 10's
Close to knife-fighting range and dump all 200 rockets into one target. Try not to miss cause you aren't getting a second shot.
Is time a gift or punishment?
0
KayWhat we need...Is a little bit of PANIC.Registered Userregular
edited May 2012
Oh, I know all about MG spam.
I used to pilot a custom duelling mech aaages ago on a realtime boardgame sim thing with dual LPLs and about 12 MGs. Punch holes, crit to death. I think it was called 'The Papercut'.
Heavily inspired by the Paladin - LPL, SRM6, 2x SSRM2, 7xMGs in a gatling-gun arm arrangement. So hot.
I also loved the Arctic Wolf Streak variant, and the SSRM6/2xMPL/4xMG Vixen-3.
Ugh, pulse lasers. I still haven't been able to find a more effective combat mech than a 60 tonner with 5/7/5 movement, 6ish med pulse, 10 double heatsinks, and maximized armor. Probably the best single-purpose cqc mech I've ever seen, since it's hard to hit and gets those pulse bonuses.
Too bad the things that work best on the table don't translate as well to the computer games.
In the Soviet/CIS armies, mobile rocket artillery sometimes came with large covers, made of hardened rubber typically, painted the same color as the rest of the vehicle. Which were removed before combat. Because they weren't stupid, and knew they didn't want their equipment exploding catastrophically because of a hinge getting stuck.
Again, swinging panels exist on real-life missile launchers today. It's pretty easy to find examples of naval missile launchers with a swinging panel covering a tube (there's several pictures on the wikipedia page). It's not that far-fetched. Your opinion on aesthetics is acknowledged, and perhaps you think they are less practical, but some of them ARE designed that way. It also wouldn't be the first time that a military object has some silly feature by design that no other similar piece of military equipment has.
The crucial difference between a cover over a single tube, for something like a torpedo, and the cover over an array of missile rack. It's not the same thing. Even submarines from the first world war had opening and closing doors over the torpedo tubes--something like that existing for a launcher over the water line doesn't surprise me. In fact, even a case of multiple missile tubes covered by a large door on a ship wouldn't surprise me that much, though I've never heard of such a thing personally.
A swinging door on a missile rack on a small land vehicle? Not the same thing. If you can find photographs of something like an MLRS or a BM-27 with a mechanically-operated cover over all the missile tubes, I will marvel at the wasteful over-engineering of that. In the meantime, fuck tradition.
EDIT: In retrospect, this makes me wonder why, with all the crazy stuff, simple angle adjustment for this sort of thing never factored in--then again, you're only firing a kilometer away at most.
Yeah my only complaint about the HUD is that the graphic presentation isn't like, hard monitors and panels and shit all over the place. I really like that look.
I'd like that too, but that's something that takes a lot more effort on the part of the developers than simply displaying information on a HUD as usual. I don't expect they're going to want to count on something like a joystick hat switch or TrackIR to allow a player to quickly look around at all of their displays, so grouping everything together on the HUD covers that. The fact that separate screens (that may or may not take up a lot of space) is aesthetically more impressive is a secondary concern.
Just my take on it though. TrackIR will probably just be used for looking around from your cockpit, rather than looking around at your cockpit, if at all.
Posts
I wonder how that will work out when the Clan Mechs arrive. I loved, loved mounting a ClanLBX20 in the arm of a Puma and terrorizing larger mechs. It sounds like I won't be able to do that.
If I had to choose between a missile cover that might keep my missiles from firing and the chance of some jerk Raven zipping around a corner and exploding my entire mech with a laser to the missile rack, I'd definitely have to go with the missile cover.
As for the Mechlab stuff, my understanding of it is that there's a combined slot and hardpoint system. So if you have 3 laser hardpoints, 5 weapon slots, and a large laser takes 2 slots, you could only fit 2 large lasers because there aren't enough slots for a third large laser. Alternatively, you could have 2 medium lasers (at 1 slot each) and a large laser, but can't add any more lasers because you're out of hardpoints but still have a slot left.
To pull another example from the quotes above, if you allow complete customization, you might assume an enemy Awesome has his usual PPC loadout - good for long-range volleys at heavily armored targets, not so great against a fast target in close quarters. So maybe you'll try to lure him into an urban environment where you can use your team's lights and mediums to flank at close range. Then it turns out that LOL 10 MEDIUM LASERS! and your Jenner gets rapid-fire plinked into slag. With the hardpoint system, you can be pretty damn sure that the Awesome will be carrying a small number of high-powered energy weapons (PPCs/large lasers), giving you a better chance of pulling off some kind of plan to deal with it.
If there's a ballistic hardpoint in that arm and you have enough free space and weight, you would.
Or you might be able to anyway, we don't know how they're handling Omnimechs yet.
$20 to unlock a mechbay. $20 to change the load out. $20 to get the equipment.
And a 60 days waiting period.
There is fluff in the novels about internal missile racks also having internal missile rack covers for each individual tube (mostly to prevent them from getting shot). The armor on BattleMechs is ablative, and I just naturally assumed that the big rack cover was merely one style of ablative armor protection (which tends to be a "cover" rather than integrated). There are real life missile launchers that have those same kind of covers, although a more common design is a square cover for each individual tube (like on some Naval Missile Launchers, the M41). The big cover for multiple tubes only exists on some old helicopter mounted and ground mounted missile systems. I'm pretty sure the original artist for the Catapult saw a rocket tank with one of those flipdown covers and thought it was neat. *shrugs* I'm not sure an individual flap for each tube would look better. It certainly would make for a silly-looking model.
There are enough cringe-worthy 'Mech designs for each person who plays BattleTech out there. *grin* I feel that way about most of the Unseen and many of the Clan refits. The 3058 Tech Update has a lot of bad Mech art as well. I'm sure there are folks out there who hate the Hollander design because it looks so ridiculous, but it's one of my favorites because of its asymmetry and unique profile (you know EXACTLY what it's supposed to do just by looking at it).
Hell, Mechwarrior 4 put plenty of limits on customisation, and all that really changed was that people picked the same 2-3 chasis that let them have the boats they wanted. The more limits the better.
EDIT: For the record, I was perfectly fine with just having known variants and leaving the MechLab out altogether. I think the system they're proposing is a fine compromise.
Everybody gets out and fights on foot.
In the Soviet/CIS armies, mobile rocket artillery sometimes came with large covers, made of hardened rubber typically, painted the same color as the rest of the vehicle. Which were removed before combat. Because they weren't stupid, and knew they didn't want their equipment exploding catastrophically because of a hinge getting stuck.
Fuck those ridiculous swinging panels. There's a reason why every other mech has some sort of missile rack, but only the catapult has the panels--even BT realized how ridiculous they were.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
Bushwacker, I miss you
Also, because the Mech games aren't out yet, and we are very sad.
Yeeep. Still looking the business. I'd say that flying Jenner is seconds from death courtesy of the glowering Atlus!
I hope there's at least an option to switch off the holographs and expand the FOV for those who want it. It's like cockpit-cam versus bonnet-cam in a racing game. Both have their merits, but people tend to prefer one over the other.
Medium lasers.
Nothing but medium lasers.
Anyone that does this is a bad person. This is how we got the insanity that was the Swayback. All the medium lasers. Maximum armour for a 50 tonner.
If you want a laser boat, take a Nova (Blackhawk) or a Jenner. One has 4, the other has eleventymillion. Both fall apart if you look at them. BALANCE.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
-20x Machine Gun
-1 ton Machine Gun ammo
If you can't kill your target in the 5 rounds it takes you to burn through your ammo, you probably weren't gonna drop it anyway.
Or my favorite:
-20 Rocket Launcher 10's
Close to knife-fighting range and dump all 200 rockets into one target. Try not to miss cause you aren't getting a second shot.
I used to pilot a custom duelling mech aaages ago on a realtime boardgame sim thing with dual LPLs and about 12 MGs. Punch holes, crit to death. I think it was called 'The Papercut'.
Heavily inspired by the Paladin - LPL, SRM6, 2x SSRM2, 7xMGs in a gatling-gun arm arrangement. So hot.
I also loved the Arctic Wolf Streak variant, and the SSRM6/2xMPL/4xMG Vixen-3.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
Too bad the things that work best on the table don't translate as well to the computer games.
I miss my Machine Gun Daishi.
The crucial difference between a cover over a single tube, for something like a torpedo, and the cover over an array of missile rack. It's not the same thing. Even submarines from the first world war had opening and closing doors over the torpedo tubes--something like that existing for a launcher over the water line doesn't surprise me. In fact, even a case of multiple missile tubes covered by a large door on a ship wouldn't surprise me that much, though I've never heard of such a thing personally.
A swinging door on a missile rack on a small land vehicle? Not the same thing. If you can find photographs of something like an MLRS or a BM-27 with a mechanically-operated cover over all the missile tubes, I will marvel at the wasteful over-engineering of that. In the meantime, fuck tradition.
EDIT: In retrospect, this makes me wonder why, with all the crazy stuff, simple angle adjustment for this sort of thing never factored in--then again, you're only firing a kilometer away at most.
I'd like that too, but that's something that takes a lot more effort on the part of the developers than simply displaying information on a HUD as usual. I don't expect they're going to want to count on something like a joystick hat switch or TrackIR to allow a player to quickly look around at all of their displays, so grouping everything together on the HUD covers that. The fact that separate screens (that may or may not take up a lot of space) is aesthetically more impressive is a secondary concern.
Just my take on it though. TrackIR will probably just be used for looking around from your cockpit, rather than looking around at your cockpit, if at all.