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Guitar_Hero posted:Couldn't they just use the Project Phoenix designs? I know the old-school Warhammer and the rest of them are pretty iconic, but if Harmony Gold are going to consistently be huge dicks about it... They could if not for the fact that as a consequence most of the "Reseen" designs look almost nothing like their original counterparts, the Warhammer in particular being the most egregious example I can think of. Maybe I'm biased but something about the Reseen Warhammer just doesn't seem right. Also knowing Harmony Gold they'd probably still bitch about it even if they were using the new designs. Perhaps the biggest problem is that just about all the designs HG would be suing over are some of the most iconic designs for Mechwarrior (regardless of where they originally came from), and using their reseen versions would detract from it. That's just my stance on it, I know a lot of people have advocated using the Reseen designs and while I can see their side of it, as long as third-party mods keep using the original designs I think there should at least be the attempt to break HG's grip on those designs. EDIT: Terrible Page Snipe, here have a Project Phoenix Warhammer 
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Jan 30, 2011 18:32
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What do you think the chances are that MW5 will *actually* limit itself to the few weapons available at Tech level 1, and resist the urge to splurge in later stuff? I would like to hope that we'll get a faithful 3025-era game, but in this day and age I can't help but think that's a silly dream.
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Jan 30, 2011 18:37
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Agent Interrobang posted:Yeah, sorry for the inadvertent derail there. I think, however, that the basic gist of my opinion can be summed up as 'Battletech is about big robots and should stay that way.' I think it's just Harmony Gold being bastards. They seem to be basically extorting money for an IP they don't even care about using anymore. A quick Google search got me this: http://www.terrania.us/journal/2009/09/harmony-gold-vs-battletech-second.html
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Jan 30, 2011 18:43
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Mukaikubo posted:What do you think the chances are that MW5 will *actually* limit itself to the few weapons available at Tech level 1, and resist the urge to splurge in later stuff? I would like to hope that we'll get a faithful 3025-era game, but in this day and age I can't help but think that's a silly dream. MW2:Mercenaries was a pretty good example of a Level 1 game, I thought. When you start, you basically only have Level 1 equipment, and modifying mechs is expensive. Sure, you end up getting some Level 2 stuff thrown in there as time goes on, and finally clan tech, but I thought it made sense and worked well.
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Jan 30, 2011 18:50
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Mukaikubo posted:What do you think the chances are that MW5 will *actually* limit itself to the few weapons available at Tech level 1, and resist the urge to splurge in later stuff? I would like to hope that we'll get a faithful 3025-era game, but in this day and age I can't help but think that's a silly dream. I think the more likely tension will be whether they will stay true to the unmodifiable nature of battlemechs or treat them all as omnimechs in terms of customisation.
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Jan 30, 2011 19:18
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Alchenar posted:I think the more likely tension will be whether they will stay true to the unmodifiable nature of battlemechs or treat them all as omnimechs in terms of customisation. Ugh. Yeah, that'd be real tempting for a game to alter for more appeal.  A stock-only game wouldn't have to play all the stupid tricks the other games play with difficulty, either.
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Jan 30, 2011 19:31
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Considering Smith and Tinker is run by several former FASA guys, it wouldn't surprise me if they stay pretty faithful. I also look forward to the hopefully-inevitable Mercenaries spinoff of this game, that would be beyond awesome.
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Jan 30, 2011 19:34
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I must admit that the possibilities are very exciting, however if they get tied up in legal issues for years it won't matter. At least we aren't going to get a clicky version 
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Jan 30, 2011 20:09
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Agent Interrobang posted:Considering Smith and Tinker is run by several former FASA guys, it wouldn't surprise me if they stay pretty faithful. I also look forward to the hopefully-inevitable Mercenaries spinoff of this game, that would be beyond awesome. FASA developed Mechwarrior 4. I care at all for sticking with canon on this issue, or with the assumption that the rules of a tabletop game should be transposed as directly as possible into a video game of the same material. If it fits in with the campaign for the player to advance from mech to mech and gain more power that way, great. If it makes sense to distinguish between IS and Clan (not this time of course) mechs to emphasise how awesome the Clan ones are, so be it. But I also don't see any harm at all in opening up the game a bit and giving the player universal freedom to customise in the way that Mechwarrior 3 and 4 did.
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Jan 30, 2011 20:44
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Why does the Warhammer need a huge fuckoff searchlight?
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Jan 30, 2011 21:02
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Angry_Ed posted:They could if not for the fact that as a consequence most of the "Reseen" designs look almost nothing like their original counterparts, the Warhammer in particular being the most egregious example I can think of. Maybe I'm biased but something about the Reseen Warhammer just doesn't seem right. The biggest problem i think it is, is that it looks like a guy in a suit, instead of a big machine.
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Jan 30, 2011 21:31
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Alchenar posted:I think the more likely tension will be whether they will stay true to the unmodifiable nature of battlemechs or treat them all as omnimechs in terms of customisation. I think the Mechwarrior 4 setup was pretty reasonable: they had ballistic weapon slots, energy slots, missile slots, and omni slots that could take anything. That sounds to me like the kind of internal spaces that really could be modified fairly easily on a real mech. Would it really be impossible for even a retarded inner sphere team to swap out the ammo hopper, feed mechanism, and receiver/barrel assembly for a new autocannon? Not really. If they want to nail down balance more firmly, instead of just locking the mechs forever they could add more restrictions to weapon slots beyond size. It wouldn't be hard to give slots a weight limit and a mW limit as well. That would stop you from jamming 4 ppc onto a marauder or something, while still letting you swap mech parts to your hearts' content. For all that people complain about min/maxing, in real life poo poo gets min/maxed to hell and back. Remember those super-nifty early tanks that had several calibers of guns and machine guns in a bewildering away of sponsons and turrets? Yeah those lasted about 10 years. They may have been a tinkerer's dream but in real life, one giant gun (or 4 ER large lasers and nothing else, for example) is a lot more effective. I don't know if the early tank developers complained about their rivals min/maxing because it outclassed their "proper" designs, but I doubt it.
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Jan 30, 2011 21:44
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Axe-man posted:At least we aren't going to get a clicky version Again, the disdain for the clicky version puzzles me, especially after having read that blog post that paragon1 linked to which mentions that WizKids was founded by Jordan Weisman... the same guy who founded FASA.
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Jan 30, 2011 21:52
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Arglebargle III posted:I don't know if the early tank developers complained about their rivals min/maxing because it outclassed their "proper" designs, but I doubt it. I'm not sure that's a completely fair analogy. A game isn't real life. It's impossible to design a game system that is perfectly balanced, enough mathematical analysis will always result in optimal solutions. All you can do is offer up a system that won't break as long as you don't go out of your way to do so. Also it's not like a US tanker in WW2 could swap out his 76mm for an 88m when he saw what the germans were bringing to the table.
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Jan 30, 2011 22:01
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So did we ever decide on something for finding people to play MegaMek? The AI and random scenarios are getting boring.
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Jan 30, 2011 22:02
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Felime posted:So did we ever decide on something for finding people to play MegaMek? The AI and random scenarios are getting boring. I endorse this- if nothing else, it may restrain some of us from diving onto every derail that comes along.
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Jan 30, 2011 22:08
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Mukaikubo posted:I endorse this- if nothing else, it may restrain some of us from diving onto every derail that comes along. Someone setup a server and I'll play with ya'll I could but it was take a bit to forward ports etc, etc. W.T. Fits posted:Again, the disdain for the clicky version puzzles me, especially after having read that blog post that paragon1 linked to which mentions that WizKids was founded by Jordan Weisman... the same guy who founded FASA. To be actually be serious which is kinda hard for me the last time i posted on SA for any length of time it was in early days of YCS so i'm rusty, most of the old school guys who spent ages and ages painting and putting together models and battlefields for their mechs, with relatively nice pewter models didn't take to kindly to them putting out the newest version in kinda a "collect them all" style box collectables which was how it was at first. Randomly getting mechs is not something that someone who has a carefully planned assortment of what he is going to bring and put against the players or what the player wants to have. The fact that the quality to be honest looks like it took a dive did not help. In trying to go more mainstream and "pokemon" with it the core fanbase did what most relatively obsessed poeple do ignore it, or bash it endlessly. For me it lost all it's appeal, it was a game i played with friends when all we had were mech books, 14 random pewter mech hand-me-downs and some dice. I'll be honest we weren't the richest bunch of college guys, but you can only run so many campaigns with the same people and simular situations, when Wizkids released the "clicky version" it pretty much spelled the end of any real interest anymore beyond the video games. Then those slowly died or went "mechassault" arcade style. So to someone like me it hails back to the period of time when i stopped liking mechwarrior. As for others, the reasons above, i believe that some game shops still play with the old rules simply because they never liked the new ones, nor the insane mechs that sprung up. example: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Ares_(BattleMech)
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Jan 30, 2011 22:46
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Axe-man posted:Someone setup a server and I'll play with ya'll I could but it was take a bit to forward ports etc, etc. This is the third time that the Ares has shown up in this thread, so the clicky game's designs made at least some sort of impact.
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Jan 30, 2011 22:51
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elitebuster posted:This is the third time that the Ares has shown up in this thread, so the clicky game's designs made at least some sort of impact. This is like saying a commercial that you hate so much you decide you'll never use that company's service got your attention.
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Jan 30, 2011 22:55
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W.T. Fits posted:Again, the disdain for the clicky version puzzles me, especially after having read that blog post that paragon1 linked to which mentions that WizKids was founded by Jordan Weisman... the same guy who founded FASA. To add to what Axe-man said, also keep in mind the time period. MW:DA came about in 2002. Only a few years before, the great grand-daddy of all gaming companies, TSR, had been bought out by Wizards of the Coast. The foundation of the roleplaying community, now being run by the guys who's claim to fame was Magic: The Gathering. There was a lot of concern that WotC was going to turn D&D into something like M:tG - gronard fears, but still fears. Then FASA (another of the great early gaming companies) is bought out by a new young gun company, who promptly announce they're largely discarding the venerable Battletech line and remaking it as a collectable miniatures game with blind booster packs. It fostered a lot of bad blood in the old guard very, very quickly.
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Jan 30, 2011 23:00
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Regarding the odds MW5 will stay "lowtech": I'd say it's basically nil. I think the best you can hope for is that you get a campaign (or a subset of a campaign) done as a flashback in true 3025 style. Or perhaps that you get a game mode devoted to it that enforces 3025 rules. There just isn't any real way they're going to the more "realistic" (for lack of a better term) ruleset when people are used to strapping 8 perfectly accurate, non-mech-exploding ER Large Lasers onto their mech and alpha striking everything. Though I myself wouldn't mind seeing a true 3025 style game, it just wouldn't feel very "mechwarrior-y". Weapon inaccuracy being the biggest part of that.
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Jan 30, 2011 23:03
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Zaodai posted:Though I myself wouldn't mind seeing a true 3025 style game, it just wouldn't feel very "mechwarrior-y". Weapon inaccuracy being the biggest part of that. The 3025 stock mechs are pretty under-gunned in comparison to mechs after 3050. Even if you're more accurate than in the boardgame, if you have fewer guns (relatively) and they have realistic recharge/cycle times then you can shift the focus a bit more towards maneuvering tactically instead of trying to core the other guy's CT before he does yours.
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Jan 30, 2011 23:06
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I always rationalized all the games with "I am a 0/0 skilled deathgod behind a mech's controls. I am literally a mary sue character in the novels. All I touch turns to ash before me, and my shots almost always hit where they will do the most damage. My lancemates are normal people."
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Jan 30, 2011 23:08
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Speaking of minmaxing, I saw this on a 4chan archive a few months ago, and felt like sharing. They stripped all the armor and all weapons but an ERSL off a clan Blaze, getting it to 18/27/45. Then by adding in an LAM they reduced speed to 17/26/43 and allowed it to fly at ~5000 km/h. Dies to anything more than a single missile/MG hit, but good luck hitting it.
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Jan 30, 2011 23:12
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Ashsaber posted:Speaking of minmaxing, I saw this on a 4chan archive a few months ago, and felt like sharing. 1/36 chance of hitting it no matter how fast it's moving. 
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Jan 30, 2011 23:17
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Ashsaber posted:Speaking of minmaxing, I saw this on a 4chan archive a few months ago, and felt like sharing. Well, since they're already using hideous Level 3 tech, why not go all the way- if they'd cut the chassis weight down to 15 tons, they could have gotten a LAM on, 19 walking speed, and had a half ton left over. edit: Or 10 ton chassis, 20 walking speed, nothing left over. edit 2: Hell let's go whole hog. 15 ton chassis, 300 XXL engine, Extra-light gyro, small cockpit. 21/32 and an ER Small Laser for your troubles. As a LAM. I really don't like level 3 rules. edit 3: I am now compelled to tweak this even more. 10 ton chassis, 240XXL, same gyro and cockpit. 24/36 speed, LAM, ER SLas. Mukaikubo fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 23:18
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WarLocke posted:The 3025 stock mechs are pretty under-gunned in comparison to mechs after 3050. Even if you're more accurate than in the boardgame, if you have fewer guns (relatively) and they have realistic recharge/cycle times then you can shift the focus a bit more towards maneuvering tactically instead of trying to core the other guy's CT before he does yours. Think about it from the perspective of making a fun video game though. "Maneuvering tactically" is many times easier when you're playing from the perspective of an immortal god looking down on the battlefield. From the cockpit of a mech, it's not nearly as easy to tell that, for example, going around behind that ridge to the river would get you a great firing location on that enemy's rear. Even smart players don't think like that without training, and novices won't even consider it with a lance of mechs shooting at them. Instead, they're going to drop the target reticle over their nearest enemy and pull the trigger, and be pissed when their seemingly pinpoint accurate lasers miss at 300 yards. (And why shouldn't they be? BattleTech makes a lot of ridiculous assumptions about fire control.) Then they're going to repeat the experience a dozen times and uninstall the game. Trying to hit the other guy's center torso over and over is the optimal strategy and players who can shoot straight are going to do it. The fact that this is considered lame or cheap is more a problem with mech armor layout and players' assumptions than with the computer games. The fact is in order to adapt the game to a mech's armor profile, which was carried over entirely from a different game system, you'd have to carefully get the player to accept that his weapons are pretty inaccurate. Even then, good shots are going to be able to score center torso kills because the player in the cockpit has a lot more control over where his shots land than someone playing a board game rolling dice. I mean, I think the board game's armor melter/crit seeker dichotomy is interesting, but from a mechwarrior's perspective learning to shoot straight and carrying a battery of armor melters is by far the optimal strategy. This could be a good thing. For example, I don't remember any of the Mechwarrior games making your guns less accurate while bouncing along at 80 kph. Adding in an accuracy mechanic could make the BattleTech armor layouts a lot more reasonable for a Mechwarrior game. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 23:28
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Arglebargle III posted:Instead, they're going to drop the target reticle over their nearest enemy and pull the trigger, and be pissed when their seemingly pinpoint accurate lasers miss at 300 yards. (And why shouldn't they be? BattleTech makes a lot of ridiculous assumptions about fire control.) Then they're going to repeat the experience a dozen times and uninstall the game. I didn't say weapons shouldn't be accurate, I said you shouldn't be able to fire them fast enough that the optimal strategy becomes "run in circles and shoot him more than he shoots you".
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Jan 30, 2011 23:32
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As regards Mechwarrior 5, if it ever climbs out of Development Hell... I hope it starts at Tech 1 oldschool, but doesn't stay there. Let's find us a LosTech cache and go  all over those snake bastards. They may have numbers and they may have taken down the satellites, but I am an indestructible master of war behind the controls of a Star League-era Tech 2 Marauder or Warhammer. They have PPCs, I have ERPPCs. They have heat sinks, I have double heat sinks. They have Autocannon/10s, I have a Gauss Rifle or an Ultra Autocannon/10. They have Lasers, I have ER Lasers. They have ammo that blows their mechs up, I have CASE.Remember, just because a game is set before the Clan Invasion doesn't mean Tech 2 doesn't exist, just that it's not common. Besides putting the player in Tech2 LosTech versus Tech 1 CrapTech would be like the Clan Invasion in reverse.  As regards MegaMek: I have actually been thinking hard on it, but I had an Exalted game saturday to play in that went from 10:30 in the morning to 2:30 at night. Marathon gaming session, gently caress yeah! And I have to run my Star Wars game in half an hour. I haven't forgotten y'all, and if you guys like the idea of a MegaMek campaign with story and roleplaying, I'm bringing it. Gotta do something besides critiquing the active team's plans while waiting for my turn to go all over the DCMS in Poptarts' LAP, eh? (Also, it turns out that my friend is a goon, so making a thread here won't be hard at all.)
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Jan 30, 2011 23:33
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I just threw up a megamek test server if anyone is interested in playing some, looks like all my port forwarding is good 
Axe-man fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 23:46
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Another thing to remember about mechwarrior 5 is that it's been nine years since 4:Mercenaries. That's why they can get away with a reboot and drop the '5'. A very large proportion of the audience are going to be people who haven't played tabletop or even any of the other computer games - but they will be aware that Mechwarrior was one of those games that people talk about on the internet and is about awesome huge robots shooting each other. Those are the perfect conditions to get away with 'disarmament' on the ridiculous tech because few people will know what's missing and most who do will appreciate the fact that it isn't there. e: I'm totally interested, throw up the address Alchenar fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 23:57
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Tempest_56 posted:To add to what Axe-man said, also keep in mind the time period. MW:DA came about in 2002. Only a few years before, the great grand-daddy of all gaming companies, TSR, had been bought out by Wizards of the Coast. The foundation of the roleplaying community, now being run by the guys who's claim to fame was Magic: The Gathering. There was a lot of concern that WotC was going to turn D&D into something like M:tG - gronard fears, but still fears. Not to derail any further but WotC is actually releasing DnD: the Gathering as an optional rule that is mandatory for certain events. Like literally trading cards that you use in a DnD game. So the grognard fears were not unfounded.
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Jan 31, 2011 00:07
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 Axe-man fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 31, 2011 |
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Jan 31, 2011 00:08
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Axe-man posted:Tried connecting but it doesn't seem to be working.
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Jan 31, 2011 00:19
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Rhobot Mk. II posted:Tried connecting but it doesn't seem to be working. Yeah I see that , I'm not sure, you have any firewall going on? may want to allow megamek
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Jan 31, 2011 00:22
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Axe-man posted:Yeah I see that , I'm not sure, you have any firewall going on? may want to allow megamek I'm not behind a firewall, so I don't think its a problem on my end. Could it be a version mis-match issue? What build of MegaMek are you using?
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Jan 31, 2011 00:34
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Rhobot Mk. II posted:I'm not behind a firewall, so I don't think its a problem on my end. Could it be a version mis-match issue? What build of MegaMek are you using? 0.34.9 downloaded from the website about 2 weeks ago now.
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Jan 31, 2011 00:36
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Mukaikubo posted:I always rationalized all the games with "I am a 0/0 skilled deathgod behind a mech's controls. I am literally a mary sue character in the novels. All I touch turns to ash before me, and my shots almost always hit where they will do the most damage. The corollary to this though is "until my character is horribly derailed in an expansion pack"
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Jan 31, 2011 01:10
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view > client settings > mute sounds this is essential to not killing yourself in megamek
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Jan 31, 2011 01:14
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Dolash posted:Then Devlin Stone basically did that and founded the Republic, which is awesome (I'm a sucker for any government that just identifies itself as 'The Republic', not especially representing any one national-ethnic identity). Mukaikubo posted:Yeah- from the impressions that I've got, the Terra system if it were an independent political entity would be behind only the Successor States/MAJOR Clans as powers; and whether or not it'd be behind every one of the successor states is up for debate. Mukaikubo posted:Also, Joanna rules.  Tempest_56 posted:From the information I've read and heard, it boils down to that Smith & Tinker wanted to use the Unseen (several of them), and Harmony Gold pitched a fit and a half despite not actually using those designs in any way in like 15+ years. So off to lawsuit land it went. Yeah. Tanith posted:Why does the Warhammer need a huge fuckoff searchlight? Also: anime  Tempest_56 posted:There was a lot of concern that WotC was going to turn D&D into something like M:tG - gronard fears, but still fears. WarLocke posted:1/36 chance of hitting it no matter how fast it's moving. Arglebargle III posted:This could be a good thing. For example, I don't remember any of the Mechwarrior games making your guns less accurate while bouncing along at 80 kph. Adding in an accuracy mechanic could make the BattleTech armor layouts a lot more reasonable for a Mechwarrior game.
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Jan 31, 2011 01:49
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