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Real men sleep 12-18 hours per day! (Real men are literally bears. The flag of California? That's actually their founder. True story.)
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Jan 30, 2011 11:04
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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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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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Sorry to derail (hide your mechs, guys, it's a 25 ton light!) but is there any chance of getting Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance or Mercenaries to run on a 64 bit platform?
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Jan 31, 2011 07:16
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What is machine gun ammo made out of in BattleTech? It sounds like pure explodium rather than some fairly harmless small arms rounds. Dump the machine gun ammo, hide, wave the white flag, join the Dragon. It's the only way to survive this encounter.
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Jan 31, 2011 07:34
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Wait, Gauss Rifle ammo explodes? But, they're solid kinetic penetrators. 
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Jan 31, 2011 08:11
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Agent Interrobang posted:'troll mechs', that is, Mech designs meant primarily to confuse and annoy other Clans. Okay now you have to elaborate on this concept.
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Jan 31, 2011 08:34
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You don't really need a reason for fighting with the Clans. Nicholas Kerensky set up such a bad political system that everyone is constantly at each others throats, to the point that their entire society revolves around competition. Long-term cooperation is anathema to the clans. People talk about how great Clan society is for managing fighting as bloodlessly as possible, but ignore the possibility of setting up a society that doesn't fight itself constantly. The in-universe excuse is that resources were scarce and Nicholas wanted to set up a society where things wouldn't collapse into warfare. Nicholas was a self-aggrandizing dick though. The real-world reason is of course that this is source material for a giant robot fighting game. Peaceful cooperation does not require giant robots with laser guns.
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Jan 31, 2011 18:45
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How many times have you personally been in deadly combat? Before civilization the answer would probably be at least once. Now a vanishingly small percentage of people would answer more than zero. The incidence of organized violence has been declining steadily since the agricultural revolution. By any statistical measurement modern civilization is more peaceful and bloodless than any previous state of human existence. Cynics like to talk up the evils of civilization, but when you look beneath the "noble savage" myth you find people who spent an awful lot of time in low-level warfare. That doesn't happen any more. How many wars have been fought on the North American continent since 1776? Four? Five? There were many, many more before then. Anyway, the point is that it's entirely possible to set up a society that doesn't fight itself constantly. It might not be possible to set up a society that eschews armed conflict entirely, but that's not the point. The Clans fight every year, every season. They barely have any of the inter-state mechanisms that we would use to peacefully resolve conflicts. Modern states, on the other hand, fight a spasmodic, draining, violent war on the average of somewhere around once a century, and even then a small percentage of their total populations actually engages in combat. The SLDF Exodus was a mission of peace, but Nicholas Kerensky perverted it into the Clans and their institutions designed to perpetuate war forever. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jan 31, 2011 |
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Jan 31, 2011 19:31
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Cythereal posted:Or you could remember that BattleTech is all about giant robots blowing each other to bits and get on with the game. I mentioned that.  The terrible truth is just that I have a degree in political science and can't shut up about this kind of thing. edit: curse you! vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jan 31, 2011 |
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Jan 31, 2011 19:42
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I was going to write a long post with citations and everything but then I realized this is Let's Play. Sufficed to say, Kerensky's Clans fight way, way more than modern industrialized societies, warfare takes up a vastly larger part of their industry, and their institutions clearly perpetuate that. All that stuff about primitive societies was irrelevant. And that's why Nicholas Kerensky was a dick. vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jan 31, 2011 |
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Jan 31, 2011 21:10
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Zaodai posted:This explains everything (regarding my previous objection to your posting style). I double-majored! I'm not ruined for ever! 
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Feb 1, 2011 00:25
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WarLocke posted:Natasha walks in on Joanna and Marthe in a hot tub... while driving a Timber Wolf. Lesbians vs. laser beams! Action! Fixed for  A more realistic scenario: Natasha walks in on Joanna and Marthe in a hot tub. Jealousy flares up, and the matter is taken before the Jade Falcon Clan Council, who decree a trial by combat. Joanna defeats Natasha, who promptly declares a Trial of Refusal to contest the decision. A dozen smoking 'mech corpses later, Strike Galaxy Alpha is activated to deploy to the Lyran front. Marthe, in despair and rage at these events, declares a Rite of Possession to prevent her lovers' mechs' deployment. After another dozen mechs are destroyed, Marthe wins her Trial of Possession. Then Clan Wolf hears about a sweet hot tub party and promptly invades. Hot tubs: 1 Lesbians: 3 Rounds of ammunition expended: 84,391 Total tonnage of destroyed/disabled battlemechs: 466 Sex scenes: 0 Battles: at least 4 Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Feb 2, 2011 |
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Feb 2, 2011 08:16
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Death Commandosbecause seriously... Death. Commandos. Death Commandos!
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Feb 2, 2011 19:37
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Mukaikubo posted:A vote for the Death Commandos is a vote against Donald Duck. You heard it folks! Vote Death Commandos cuz gently caress that duck!
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Feb 3, 2011 00:35
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WarLocke posted:pulled nukes and mechs and entire planets out of their asses. Okay this is off topic, but OUCH
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Feb 3, 2011 03:50
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Oh man I finally finished downloading M4 Mercs and played it for four hours yesterday. I forgot what a great game it is. I also forgot how amazingly better late-era Inner Sphere mechs are than what we're seeing here. An Uziel could mount a heavier armament than some of these 80 ton monsters. Once again I get to indulge my retarded love for X-Pulse Lasers. Sure they overheat my mech, but that doesn't matter when I get to fire a large laser every second.  (They're also fantastically flexible. I find pulse lasers don't cut it when it comes to shooting mechs, but beam lasers don't deal with lighter targets well. X-Pulse fries everything (including yourself) and quick too!) Right now I'm rocking a 70-ton Thanatos loaded with a CLBXAC/20, CULTRAAC/5, CSTRK 4 & 6, 2 medium X-Pulse Lasers and a small X-Pulse. At 70 tons. With 360 degree torso twist. Power creep feels sooo good.  I pull off everything that isn't guns and armor. ECM? What's that? Engines? Whatever. Jump Jets? Always forget where the button is anyway. Anti-missile system? The best anti-missile system is an AC/20. Anyone else have pet designs or design philosophies? Anyone else use x-pulse lasers? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Feb 3, 2011 |
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Feb 3, 2011 17:59
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Actually I only ever use 3 groupings as well. The Ultra AC/5 has almost the same cycle time as a medium X-pulse laser. The AC/5 and pulse lasers are bound to the trigger, the AC/20 to the middle thumb button, and the missiles on the right-hand thumb button. I tend to group things by cycle time rather than range in a close-range slugging mech, because range is irrelevant at 40 meters. In MW4 I like to work with the awful AI rather than against it, so I usually pilot lighter slugging mechs and give my secondary lance heavier long range mechs. They're going to end up strung out a kilometer behind you anyway so you might as well give them ER PPCs.
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Feb 3, 2011 18:07
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So I'm unclear about the Death Commandos' motives in taking hostages. If their only goal is to kill them... why take hostages?
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Feb 4, 2011 08:11
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So I rediscovered why everyone does the Davion missions in MW4: Mercs. The Steiner missions are crazy hard. Gobs of escort objectives, multiple helicopter attacks, entire armored companies, waves of light, medium, and assault lances that chew on your armor no matter how well you play... and this is on Normal. Currently I'm stuck on a Steiner base assault mission up against a thick turret grid, four squadrons of attack choppers, an armored platoon, two light lances, three heavy lances, and an assault lance. And I'm limited to bringing one lance. Why? It's never even discussed why my second lance is grayed out. Ugh these are hard. Okay, and the last objective of the mission is to run away to a nav point a kilometer away. A nav point sitting directly under four calliope turrets and a strongpoint defense (AC/20, PPC, Gauss Rifle fortress). And if you don't get to the nav Davion appears to have unlimited heavy and medium reinforcements. So you're supposed to do this mission in a single lance of mechs that can take out all that resistance, and then also run faster than a medium. WHAT THE gently caress STEINER. 
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Feb 5, 2011 |
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Feb 5, 2011 22:47
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Arquinsiel posted:Helicopters are easy. Take a RAC and aim for the rotor. Oh thanks for that man, yeah, it was the helicopters I was really having trouble with. You know, not the fortress or the endless waves of heavy lances, it was the choppers. And aim for their rotors you say? Wow, never would have thought of that. Thanks buddy! 
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Feb 5, 2011 23:34
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Yeah I haven't been able to find a control tower for the turret grid. The thing about this mission (and the spaceport escape mission I just finally finished) is not that any one particular component is difficult, it's that the mission is 30 minutes long and throws almost constant waves of attacks at you as you move through heavy static defenses. Any individual five-minute snippet of the mission is easy. The thing is, when you're 25 minutes in even a full-armor Atlas is going to be down around 25% on its center torso. And then another wave of heavy mechs comes at you. And another and another until you can retreat to the escape nav point, where there are more static defenses waiting for you. (Why is this the escape nav?) So basically any advice about how to deal with one particular encounter is useless, because the real challenge is wading through the mission in good enough shape to make a fighting retreat with two or three fresh lances of mechs charging at you. At this point I'm thinking the best way to finish the mission will be to cheese the mission triggers and take out certain targets early. Like the static defenses at the escape nav. Why did the mission planners stick the escape nav point 200 meters in front a fortress and four calliope turrets. What about that spot remotely indicates that it would be a good escape route? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Feb 6, 2011 |
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Feb 6, 2011 00:09
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Re-railing the derail: I would love to see more repair bays in MW4 because armor attrition is what makes the long missions so hard. Is there any sort of repair mechanic in tabletop BattleTech or even some sort of self-repair system? Even like a team of guys who pop out of a little door in your armor and weld on pieces of scrap metal?
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Feb 6, 2011 02:08
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Is it bad that I'm rooting for the Death Commandos here?
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Feb 6, 2011 23:01
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Yeah what's up with that Blackjack hanging out like a kilometer south of its lance?
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Feb 6, 2011 23:59
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Dominus Caedis posted:Pretty sure this was mentioned earlier in the thread, (but I'm not searching back 80 pages) but the reason for such crappy coms and lack of guided missles is because every wargame is still set in WWII. Yeah. That was me. Dropping truth bombs from my  I think the real reason is that WWII was the United States' last war. Period. Every war the United States has fought since then has really been a counter-insurgency or a punitive expedition. I'm serious about this. Look at our modern military machine. All the parts of our military that don't actually get used (everything except infantry and units that support infantry invasions) are designed to fight WWII on steroids. We have gobs and gobs of military assets that are essentially obsolete, although naming which ones will cause a huge shouting match that can't be decided either way so I won't. The parts of our military that we do use have been steadily shifting focus to counter-insurgency and punitive expeditions, and that's not something you can really feel good about war-gaming. I mean I guess you could make a dark, cynical wargame called Pax Americana where you ruthlessly dominate the politics of small impoverished countries and resource-rich regions... hmmm can you get patents on games? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 09:29
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Look if you'd had an intelligent argument I wouldn't care but your point is incoherent. Why does it matter who is making the war games? Who has the empire and fights the wars in the Anglosphere? Yeah. It's not Britain and Canada. Oh, well I guess you might have some kind of point if Britain and Canada had been involved in a major war since WWII while no one was looking. Did they? Because if they did you might have some kind of point there. So you admitted that "World War II in space" is a standard "dynamic" although that's probably not the word you should have used. Jeesh, I'm not really sure what you were trying to say at all now. Maybe your point is that WWII was the last major world war? Wow. Thanks for that one. World War II is such a confusing name, I always get confused as to whether it was a major world conflict. And fantasy game settings don't count, that should be obvious. Nobody would ever ask why there are no guided missiles or satellite comms in War Machine. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 09:57
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I'll try to avoid derails from now on, sorry guys. I seem to be a major source of track-breakage. I'm really psyched for the new Mechwarrior game now that everyone has had a turn bashing the BT canon. A reboot could be seriously exciting. I would absolutely love to see what happens in a new canon timeline where the Word of Blake Jihad didn't happen or wasn't as catastrophic. There's certainly room for lots of evolution and conflict now that the Clans are living cheek-by-jowl with the Inner Sphere. In fact I would love to see the Clan homeworlds added to the maps and see the shape of politics in a shiny new era where things aren't quite as bad as they used to be. (But of course people still fight with giant robots.) (The 40K setting is awesome and awesomely derivative. That is all.)
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Feb 7, 2011 17:43
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Alchenar posted:I don't know where you're getting the idea that they're changing the timeline. Oh I don't think they will, I just kinda took the idea of a reboot and ran with it. I think most people aren't terribly thrilled with the post-Tukkayid timeline. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 23:02
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MadDogMike posted:cockpits Can you imagine the smell of a used mech cockpit? Weeks of sweat, solvents, overheated electronics, toilet breaks... I imagine real mech jocks have to take a shower or two before they're ready to be adored by the masses after their latest victory. *shudder* It would smell so bad in there. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Feb 10, 2011 |
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Feb 10, 2011 07:22
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PoptartsNinja posted:Worst case scenario is actually: Wait, this exists? Infantry can do that? BattleTech just keeps making less and less sense.
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Feb 11, 2011 18:51
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UberJew posted:Infantry generally move 1, and have tiny, tiny ranges, but they can do some serious damage with ambushes in thick terrain like a city Ah, short range makes sense then. That infantry sounded too good to be true. I'm surprised how many people got kinda butthurt about my question. Mukaikubo posted:The other one is carrying puppies!!! poo poo, puppy hostages! There is no limit to the Capellans' Evil!
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Feb 12, 2011 08:58
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Arquinsiel posted:It's because those infantry can deal out all kinds of rape to a mech using rifles but an Abrahms can't scratch the paint. IE: touchiest subject in all of Battletech, doubly touchy in the USA. When did an Abra(h?)ms tank come up? Zaodai posted:saying how stupidly unrealistic it is and how much the setting sucks. Hey I like the setting, but this thread has been kind of a journey of discovery for me in how silly it is. My last post was supposed to be an "oh well, battletech makes no sense so okay" but I could see how it came off differently. So I'm intrigued by the conversation about how energy weapons are always better than ballistic weapons. Mech building is probably my favorite part of the game. Can you really always get more firepower for an equal weight of energy weapons+heat sinks than ballistic weapons + ammo?
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Feb 12, 2011 19:33
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Psshh. You think you have big numbers? Man, my numbers are so much bigger than that. Think of your numbers, and then multiply them by a squillion. That's how big my numbers are. You wanna play me in numbers? I don't think you enough zeros to handle this. Talk to me when you have bigger numbers. 
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Feb 13, 2011 |
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Feb 13, 2011 09:34
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Zaodai posted:I love that the thread jumped on those of us who were discussing WH40k between turns for being off topic, but fat kids getting gangrene in the woods is fine and dandy. Hang on, did I miss out on a 40K discussion? Or was I there? Sometimes I can't remember because I have fluff-sperg blackouts where I wake up surrounded by a 40 page dissertation on Imperial institutions. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Feb 16, 2011 |
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Feb 16, 2011 21:01
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Goddamnit. Poor Capellans can't even catch a break outside of canon. I guess you could say they're... canon fodder. 
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Feb 17, 2011 02:05
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Helter Skelter posted:Another Defiance Industires innovation! Hey, between the legs is a totally legit place to put a pair of phased array radomes! The location provides protection, while the enhanced radar systems provide a sharp increase in pilot confidence and aggression. (Please note that your MechNut brand radar system integration may result in erratic control system behavior up to and including total shutdown in the event of radome damage.) This is a message from the Earthwerks Corporation.
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Feb 18, 2011 05:01
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Tempest_56 posted:Okay, that was kinda a sucky round. Yeah I can't believe the the headshot to the catapult didn't kill the pilot. That really sucked. 
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Feb 20, 2011 08:34
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I would think that the ejection system would only ever be the cockpit. Some of those mech have really big head. It would be hard to eject the whole head. I mean, at least you could agree that common sense dictates that the ejection system wouldn't be designed to carry half a ton of armor and a ton of ammo along with the cockpit?
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Feb 21, 2011 05:13
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You guys are honestly still getting protagonist luck. You nailed that Warhammer with a bunch of big guns this turn, while managing to escape retribution despite having critically low armor on two mechs and a head-shot catapult. If the Death Commandos can land even a couple shots each mech the Caballeros could be looking at 2+ ejections.
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Feb 23, 2011 08:37
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