MechWarrior: Living Legends 0.5.5 public open beta is now available for immediate download!

The release addresses a number of issues with the MWLL 0.5.4 release and introduces a few new features as well as the first complete pass of the draft build rules over all currently released vehicles.

MWLL 0.5.5 Changelog

Bug Fixes:
- Harasser hitbox values adjusted for legacy asset size
- Fixed Mk2 “C” being able to fire left arm Arrow IV missile after being destroyed
- fixed “block” font for targeted enemies and build messages

New Features:
- Passive assets no longer receive incoming missile warnings (visual or audible)

Balance Changes:
- Fafnir, Blood Asp base chassis prices increased
- Atlas base chassis price decreased
- Atlas LT/RT damage transfer multiplier decreased to 1.2
- Awesome LT/RT damage transfer multiplier decreased to 1.2
- Decreased Fafnir maximum torso pitch by 10 degrees
- Increased maximum c-bill transfer ceiling/minute to 10,000
- Rescaled ticket values for all assets for ticket-based game modes
- DHS cost now independent of standard HS cost, 1350 per unit
- AC10/UAC10/CUAC10 projectile speed increased from 900m/s to 1100m/s
- AC10/UAC10/CUAC10 primary/secondary damage increased 12%
- CUAC10/CUAC20 heat-per-shot increased by 5%
- NARC rounds-per-ton increased from 4 to 6
- Mgun multiplier increased from 0.3 to 0.7 for all tanks, hovercraft and ‘Mechs
- Blood Asp “Prime” – changed 2x CERMBL to 2x CMPL, removed GECM, decreased armour
- Blood Asp “B” – removed GECM, decreased armour
- Blood Asp “C” – removed 2x CERSBL, decreased armour
- Blood Asp “D” – removed AMS, decreased armour
- Blood Asp “E” – new configuration: 2x CHLL, 2x CHML, 6x CHSL, 22DHS
- Madcat Mk2 “Prime” – decreased armour
- Madcat Mk2 “D” – removed 2x CERSBL, decreased armour, removed 1 DHS and 2 free tons
- Puma “Prime” – removed Crusader pods, replaced with Assault Basic pods on arms for size rule compliance, Flamers moved to chin mounts
- Shadowcat “A” – changed 1x CERMBL to 2x CERSBL to preserve free tonnage, decreased armour
- Shadowcat “C” – removed Barrage pod, replaced with Assault Basic pod for ClanGauss mount for size rule compliance
- Shadowcat “E” – new configuration: 3x CMPL, 1x CHLL 6 DHS, MASC, additional armour
- Thor “C” – changed BAP to BHP and added 1 DHS
- Atlas “C” – removed 2x SRM6, reduced free tons to 3
- Bushwacker “Prime” – removed BAP, reduced free tons to 1
- Bushwacker “A” – changed pods for RAC5 to Assault Basic Pod for size rule compliance
- Catapult “A” – added 1x HS, increased armour
- Catapult “B” – added 1x HS
- Catapult “C” – upgraded BAP to BHP, increased armour
- Fafnir “A” – reduced free tons to 4
- Fafnir “E” – removed all free tons
- Hollander “A” – removed 2 free tons
- Owens “A” – removed Flamer
- Owens “B” – BHP downgraded to BAP
- Owens “C” – removed single HS
- Raven “Prime” – downgraded BHP to BAP
- Raven “C” – removed 1 HS
- Thanatos “D” – decreased armour
- Uziel “Prime” – changed 2x MG to 2x ERSBL
- Uziel “B” – added GECM, reduced armour
- Uziel “C” – changed SSRM6 to SRM6
- Uziel “D” – removed BAP, added GECM
- Uziel “E” – removed free tons
- Warhammer “Prime” – added 1 HS, increased armour
- Warhammer “B” and “C” – decreased armour
- Harasser “Prime” – removed BAP
- Harasser “A” – removed GECM
- Harasser “B” – removed BAP
- Harasser “C” – removed BAP
- Harasser “D” – removed armour, removed BHP, increased HS count to 5
- Harasser “E” – removed 1 free ton
- Hephaestus “Prime” – added 2 DHS
- Hephaestus “A” – increased armour
- Hephaestus “B” – increased armour
- Hephaestus “C” – decreased armour, downgraded BHP > BAP
- Oro “B” – added armour
- Oro “E” – reduced armour
- Demolisher “C” – removed 2 free tons
- Sparrowhawk “Prime” – increased armour
- Sparrowhawk “C” – removed 1 free ton
- Shiva “A” – variant refactored to 2x ERPPC, 2x HeavyGauss, 4 DHS, BHP, 4 tons free

Known Issues:
- AC10/UAC10/CUAC10 exceeds stated range slightly (present in 0.5.4)
- Mech torso twist and pitch and tank turret sounds do not play (present in 0.5.4)

Use the auto-updater included with your MWLL Launcher to automatically update your build to the latest release.

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It has been a few weeks since our last significant media release and I failed to capture any screenshots of worth during this last Sunday playtest so I will make it up to you with a pre-release peek at the upcoming MechWarrior: Living Legends 0.5.5 open beta release.

Originally intended to be a hotfix, MWLL 0.5.5 ended up with a couple of new features rolled in along with a number of balance changes.  I’ll go into a few of these below:

No Missile Notification for Passive Assets
Running passive has become de rigueur within MWLL and the benefits of doing so have long outweighed any negatives for doing so.  Coming with MWLL 0.5.5 any assets that are running passive will not receive audible or visual warnings of incoming locked missile salvoes. Missiles: the new silent killer.

Dual Heat Sink Pricing Revision
A rather minor tweak, but with the release of MWLL 0.5.5 the pricing of DHS equipment has been separated to a unique entity and is no longer 2x the base single heatsink cost.  Single heatsinks will continue to cost 500 c-bills per instance, but DHS will now be 1350 per instance instead of the previous 1000.   This is an initial step towards supporting simultaneous HS/DHS equipment outfitting on variants.

AC10/UAC10/CUAC10 Balance Changes
All AC10 weapons have had a 12% increase in primary/secondary damage and also increased the round speed from 900m/s to 1100m/s.  CUAC10 and CUAC20 heat-per-shot increased by 5%

Harasser Hitbox Fix and Armour Adjustments
The resized Harasser model is still not quite ready for release so we have reinstated the 0.5.3 hitboxes on the existing asset.  In addition to this we have applied a sub-set of our draft build rules to revise the total amount of armour allowed on hovercraft (+/- 10% of base armour tonnage).  The armour levels of the dreaded Harasser “D” areno longer valid and have been adjusted accordingly.

And Also…
Numerous variant changes
Fafnir and Blood Asp price increases
Atlas price decrease, LT/RT damage transfer multiplier decreased
Surprises?

This week we are testing Release Candidates for 0.5.5 and plan to have a public release available shortly.  Thank you for your patience and continued support of MechWarrior: Living Legends!

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Some topics covered include:

• ModDB MOTY 2011 Honorable Mention Award
• Environmental Artist Recruitment Callup
• Heavy Battle Armour Development Progress
• New HUD development for each vehicle category
• Global Variant Validation Balance Pass
• Chassis Pricing Multiplier vs Base Chassis Cost Systems
• MWLL 0.5.5 release and the Harasser hitbox bug

This was the first of many such appearances MWLL staff plan to make with the NGNG team to keep the MW/BT community apprised of our ongoing MechWarrior: Living Legends project.

Listen to the latest No Guts No Galaxy Podcast now.

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Enjoy and discuss in our forums!

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2007 #4 Player’s Choice Best Upcoming Mod
2008 Honorable Mention Player’s Choice Best Upcoming Mod
2009 Editor’s Choice Multiplayer Mod of the Year
2009 Player’s Choice Mod of the Year
2010 Honorable Mention Mod of the Year

Answer: Winning again with 2011 Honorable Mention Mod of the Year.

Thanks to our community, MechWarrior: Living Legends has once again earned a worthy mention in the ModDB.com Mod of the Year competition for a 6th year straight.  We are very proud of this accomplishment and hope that you will celebrate with us as we enter into our 7th year of development.

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We are pleased to announce the immediate release of MechWarrior: Living Legends 0.5.4 public open beta.  This release features two headline assets, several bug fixes and optimisations and changes to game balance as follows:

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed Thor shooting from the hip
- Improved Loki texture

New Features:

- Crash reporting is now enabled in the release dlls (without a performance penalty)

Balance Changes:

- Changed tank armor distribution

New Content:

- New ‘Mech:  Inner Sphere Fafnir
- New ‘Mech:  Clan Blood Asp
- New weapon:  Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle

Other Changes:

- Resized Inner Sphere Uziel to be in line with the other medium ‘Mechs
- Various small changes and fixes to TC_Thunderrift, TC_Marshes, TC_Kagoshima, TSA_Inferno, TSA_Marshes

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Clan Blood Asp

The long awaited Clan Blood Asp assault ‘Mech makes its MWLL debut.  The 90 ton Blood Asp brings an enormous arsenal to the battlefield in a highly mobile and deadly platform.

Inner Sphere Fafnir

The 100 ton Inner Sphere Fafnir stomps out of the hangar bringing with it a fearsome new weapon: the Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle.  Designed to point at a single target and reduce it to smoldering ruin, the Fafnir is easily one of the most heavily armed and armoured ‘Mechs in MechWarrior: Living Legends.

We are putting the finishing touches on MechWarrior: Living Legends 0.5.4 public open beta and expect to release within the next few days.

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We have been asked in the past what the teams position was on the tactic of legging ‘Mechs, and it has always been that shooting the legs was justified and expected; why would we make the legs capable of taking damage if they were not intended to be shot at?  Such as it is, the legs on certain ‘Mechs can be quite easily disabled or destroyed and we have recognised this as an issue for a while.  The problem was in determining the best solution that delivered a gameplay experience in which shooting at the legs or shooting at other ‘Mech components were both viable tactics.

Feature Evolution

We had initially considered increasing the allocated armour points for the legs to make them more difficult to destroy simply in terms of raw durability.  While this certainly would have worked, it would have made other components of the ‘Mechs disproportionately fragile.

Another possible avenue we looked at was applying a fractional damage multiplier to the legs to make them take damage at a lesser rate.  Unfortunately this would have resulted in a situation in which shooting the legs would have a reduced award (since rewards are tied to damage points) and would have resulted in the legs being valuable targets but difficult to actually convert on when fired at.

Finally, we looked at sub-dividing the legs into sub-components (ex. upper leg, lower leg) and requiring that they both be critically damaged or destroyed before invoking negative consequences.  This was problematic in that the leg hitboxes cannot be easily sub-divided into upper/lower sections and maintain a consistent hitbox as they move in a multiplayer environment.

Feature Solution

What we have arrived at is a solution that uses the Internal Structure of the legs as a supplementary damage soak and yields a better gameplay experience.

The Internal Structure for each leg will be represented to the player as an integer percentage and shown on their status HUD and the enemy targeting information HUD as two additional values.  Though not representative of the final version, this is how we will likely represent this information on our current ‘Mech HUD.

From a code side, the leg internal structure will be derived as a percentage of the external armour component durability points (ex. idComponentLeftLeg*0.70).  We have not settled on the actual value as yet, and we actually have planned  to have the actual multiplier value differ for each ‘Mech but it will be consistent across all variants of a ‘Mech regardless of variations in external armour.   The value for internal structure for each leg will be equal (ex. one leg cannot have more starting value internal structure/armour points than the other).

What does this mean to the player?  Well for a given ‘Mech weight category (let’s say 100 ton assault ‘Mechs) the internal structure values may differ between an Atlas and a Fafnir even if their external leg armour where to be exactly the same.  This will give MWLL another facet to balance individual ‘Mechs with an will be particularly important in lighter weight classes as a selection criteria for players.

When the external armour component has been destroyed (reduced to 0 armour points) the corresponding leg is considered “disabled” and the ‘Mech will assume a limp animation behaviour. This is a change in the current behaviour wherein the limp animation is invoked prior to the leg being destroyed.

When the internal structure has been destroyed (reduced to 0 armour points) the leg is considered “destroyed” and the ‘Mech will topple over.

Internal component structure takes damage at the same rate (at least for the initial release) as the External damage components and the awards for damage to internal structure are the same as external armour points.

Internal structure cannot be repaired.  If your vehicle sustains internal structure damage during the course of a battle and you manage to return to base for repairs, the internal structure will remain in a damaged state.

The Leg Internal Structure feature is one of many in-development features for MechWarrior: Living Legends that will be forthcoming in a future release.

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If I get a chance I’ll post the in-progress feature teaser later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Enjoy!

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