MechWarrior: Living Legends

Are hits and misses in MWLL calculated entirely by twitch, or is there going to be a system involved where a Mechwarrior "grows" and becomes better over time, allowing him to hit more precisely or more often? This question was inspired by the Rank thread where people were discussing the Ranks that may be instituted into the game. Obviously a Colonel should be a better Mechwarrior than a new recruit, so is there any plan to effect this via game stats? Or are ranks simply going to be a Guild organization?

Also, according to Battletech rules, Clan Mechwarriors have better piloting and gunnery skills than their IS counterparts.

Skill in knowing how your Mech reacts and how the accuracy of the targeting is affected by current conditions is how experience will affect performance.

As for ranks, why should a Colonel automatically be a better pilot than a lieutenant or captain?  He may have obtained the rank through demonstrated leadership capability.

Clan technology plays a big part in their success.

In the Lore it was entirely possible to be a Colonel (or even Star Colonel) but not be the best warrior out there. We don't have any plans ATM (or in the near future unless we do a Single Player) to incorporate character growth.

Thinking about it, I think it might be a cool idea to implement "discounts" to higher ranks or give a New Recruit the "Student Discount" :P

Being a college student I got a good laugh out of this one.  Thanks.

No, we don't really want to include character growth, as we're shooting for a more "pure" FPS game. Future Wandering Samurai games may include growing a character more heavily, but for this game it's almost purely a combat simulator, not an RPG.

Then why does a combat sim need C-bills?

@Landros: Actually that's a good idea - it would make people strive for a higher rank for their unit so future costs would go down. But again, it begs the question "if it's a pure sim and not an rpg, why do you need money or how would you even attain rank"?

How would you propose limiting what can be piloted in a single session then?  C-Bills will be a necessary component for balance and play flow.

It's a simple balancing point, and also creates the escalation effect. The longer and harder the battle, the more c-bills/ranks everyone will have, and thus more potent the equipment on the field. Also, the C-Bills allow us to have an inherent balance in equipment that is naturally better than other equipment. (Think BF2 blackhawks as they were originally. Now, if there had been a cost associated with them, and all the equipment aboard them, then they would never have needed to be nerfed).

Am I right to say that some of you guys should try out the Powerstruggle gametype in Crysis Mutliplayer as it almost has the same system as the C-bills? It will definitely help everyone get used to the way things will be purchased in MW:LL. Instead of C-bills you have prestige in Crysis Powerstruggle. The more prestige you have, the better the weapons you can get. To earn the prestige you need to kill, capture, or repair. A person who is just new to the game could easily capture enough things to earn a Heavy Gauss Tank, however it doesn't mean they will be very good in it. The same could be said about MW:LL. Rank isn't everything. Crysis Powerstruggle is a very tactical gametype. While it does require a certain skill in aiming, you can get very far in ranks by just capturing and helping others out. (Although the latter rarely happens, damn noobs!) The same could be said about MW:LL. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Capturing, killing, and destroying, yes. The repairs are the domain of the repair bays, and to be able to afford the good stuff you'll need to be pretty good, or have a friend that is. Otherwise only elementals can capture, and mech pilots can't get out of a mech without ejecting and activating the self destruct system. It's all about team work.

Damn that sounds sweet!  :o One of the numerous things I hated in Crysis MP was the ability for everyone to have a repair torch. You could get hit by two rockets, land, repair for 10-15 seconds, and you're back to 100% like nothing happened.

Yes we talked about this ALOT!!! Trust me too when i say that there we some pretty hard arguments both directions. Now personally i hated fighting someone in bf2 or Crysis that would take their tank duck behind a wall and then come back out brand spanking new 2 seconds later. I felt ripped off and scammed even though i may have completely outgunned the guy.

We will NOT allow this in MWLL. First reasoning is the believability of the whole thing. Jumping out of an 80 ton machine and taking a little blow torch to it is really silly if you think about it (yes games are silly but common there has gotta be a bit of realism there). So we are doing the repair bays that are placed on the map in addition to the being in the bases. These repair bays now all of a sudden become a VERY important element for your team, because you want to acquire the most c-bills you can without losing your mech cause every mech you buy is going to cost you valuable c-bills and if you want to play with the big boys 80ton+ you need to be a decent pilot (so no more noobs rushing you with Daishi's ;) )

Awesome infos Crim! I can't wait to get the game on a test run :D

so we can capture hostile repair bays, defend it with a couple of ´Mechs, while a third is repaired? :D

Actually, yes thats basically the point of ToA (each outpost will have a repair bay after all).

rofl ... can´t wait for it!

Hey everyone!

I've replied to a few posts but just wanted to intro myself really quick.  Also I have a question..

I play in the NBT:HC (Netbattletech:HardCore) league.  The Dev's post the newsletter there so I know they are aware of the league.

One challenge I've seen is that with the money limitations and what was outlined that might not work with our league.

You see we have a planetary league where we have to plan our drop decs (mech forces) and configurations out ahead of time.  Is that going to be possible with the money restrictions?  How long does it take to configure a mech and can you have multiple configs for 1 mech?

It's possible to remove the money restrictions and if needed, mod the game to fit the goals of the league.

Sounds great, the best pilots get to use the best mechs - thus they become giants on the field of battle, and everyone else is left to their normal devices. I like how that adds spread to the types of mechs on the map as well, you're not going to see everyone in an assault or heavy, because not everyone can afford it.

Thanks for the reply Landros.  How hard would it be to modify it for NBT:HC?

Largely depends on what exactly needs to be changed from the core mod to suit your needs.
However, as we're not even at feature freeze state, assumptions and discussions are basically moot. Note though that we can teach and help out, which is probably more likely than us providing a separate build for NBT:HC's needs.

Whatever you do, please don't make the c-bills a server setting.  Everyone will flock to the servers without c-bills and it'll ruin the game.   >:(

Actually I disagree make it a server setting.  For leagues like Mechwarrior Leagues and NBT-HC this would be quite helpful.   

Aurora Paradox
Clan Smoke Jaguar
Alpha Star
Star Captain

If I remember correctly and as far as I know, the C-bills had been planned to be a server setting from the very beginning.
I'm not sure if that still applies though.

Oh well, I can't have everything.  But you know where I'll be playing.   ;D

Just make it possible to sort by whether they have C-Bills or not. Then everyone gets what they want :)

I'm very glad there's no RPG system, that defeats the entire point of being good at it.

An idea for the NBT-HC leagues, how about making a preset with the settings required as part of the standard mod? That would work, I think.

What do you mean?

Well something like having an extra game-mode specifically made for NBT-HC. I don't really know how the league works so I'm just guessing here.

Is it possible to make the server to only let in people with certain IPs and nicks, for example people who have registered on a website? Can the server also be forced to only let those people with certain name/IP to be able to only join one predefined team? How about letting a player to choose only from a certain list of mechs, vehicles etc? Those would open huge possitiblities. It would be nice to have players forced to join clans/squads/companies/whatever in which they would only have access to a certain number of stuff, reinforcements dropping slowly, and they should divide(the CO & XO divide  ;D ) all that stuff between the members. reinforcements and amount of stuff would of course be relative to the amount of time that clan/whatever would spend on that server.

Would, IMHO, make it possible to have a server without complete noobs, people actually co-operating, actually trying to stay alive and especially every kill especially over, say, an Atlas or other assault mech, would mean something more than just a kill to the whole team.

I've seen similar systems being used in a few other games, and the only problem in the system is the amount of players, if the game is very old(or unpopular, such as flight sims).

I don't think that level of coding is on the to-do list for the initial release, since some of those settings are pretty specific, especially the website one.  As for noobs, you just need to get some good admins and a little patience.

IP locked server access is a flawed implementation to any game server. that some people either share the same IP (via their interner-surplier) or they run an IP switcher. No company is interested in having their fanbase locked out. A simple registration with a nickname and a verification via the persons email is more than anuf.

Geez the game hasnt even been released yet and we have elitism rising its ugly head, open servers should  for EVERYONE, of all skill levels, if you want to be elite join a league and prove it there

I am all for people hosting private servers but that statement was inane.  Public servers are a necessity to attract a player base.

Agreed, if something this mod really needs to do is breathe some life back into the MW and BT universe and let the fan base grow once again.

I think a well run League that posts a good narrative and videos of battles would go a long way towards building that user base quickly.  Hell, I would get a big kick out of just reading it as I do not have the time to devote to such an organization.