StarDestroyer.Net BBS

It was more a problem of no ongoing support. The broken builds, like missile stacks, could have been mostly neutered by patching the flare dispenser so that it deflected all incoming missiles no matter how many were currently locked on. (If the enemy fired two missiles your flares would only deflect one of them), and rebalancing the amount of damage that piles did to bases.

Yeah ultimately From stopped supporting it quickly and SEGA apparently never liked it to begin with. I also felt that a lot of the most blatant balance concerns could have been fixed very easily. Forcing the weapon line-of-sight to be from the cockpit, including a more strict balance system, not giving tiny ass parts like the Naqa legs ridiculous hit point and armor values, etc.

VF5SS wrote:

you can still laser boat in MW4

just not as blatantly

fatacatapult fatacatapult~

The 7 ER large laser Nova Cat is about as extreme boating as you can get. Though it was always balanced by the extreme heat. Very specialized in game, and needs a team to actually do anything. Pretty much any organized clan/guild/team used it though, at least on the cold maps.

Oh my experience with MW4 was in the single player where there's less emphasis on teamwork.

MW3 was my trial in the munchkin crucible with the extreme boating that was worse than Hydro Thunder.

Vendetta wrote:So your "solution" is "more dice rolls"?

That sounds unspeakably bad for an action/sim game. Flight Sim X doesn't roll dice to see if you landed or not, sim games are supposed to simulate the physical rules by which things work and let their performances come as emergent properties of the simulation. (So, for instance, the different turning performances and stability of planes in a flight sim are a result of the values which simulate the control surfaces, not whether it has 2D6 stability or 3D6 and it might still stall if the dice roll says so).

Tank simulators already stimulate armour penetration.

A more better solution to broken builds would actually be to, y'know, just restrict weapons and balance mechs so you can't have all lasers all the time, you can only have them where the slot says "lasers can go here". It's also trivial in a modern game to have things like bullet drop and loss of stopping power, which you can fiddle with to differentiate all your different AC/Whatevers and lasers and missiles with different performance over range without having arbitrary maximum ranges and to hit rolls and other bollocks which has no place in an action/sim game.

MW4 already did that, it didn't exactly work.

So what you're saying is, try to convince people who have probably never played the pod game and who only know the series through point and clickan mouse-aim games that they have to wait a few seconds before pulling the trigger so their instantaneous laser weapons can lock on and shoot some slowass robot. Yeah I don't think the 90% of people playing with a mouse and keyboard (AS GOD INTENDED) are going to buy that.

Right. Just like the huge number of players who bought F-16 falcon simulator didn't like the complicated targeting system, including different aiming sights for bombs....

Seriously. MW needed to break out of the mold instead of sticking to the same mechanics in the old games. So, stick to one model. Either go for an arcade shooter, but we already had that in MechAssault. Keep that.
Hell, come out with a sequel MechAssault 3.

But for a mech sim, the sim needs to become more "real" and more "complex", while keeping gameplay relatively easy and fun.

and armor penetration is just another number to overcome using those vaunted custom builds you're so fond of

And so? The whole idea of "balance" is to make it so that there are trade offs and to remove broken cookie cutter builds.

A new Mechwarrior SHOULDN"T stick to the old mechanics which already had better models in 2000. A new Mechwarrior should actually revamp the basic weapons behaviour instead of sticking to the same old model introduced back in 1989. Seriously, apart from some minor revamps to autocannons, there hasn't been a single chance to Btech weapons mechanics and it just lay in recharge time.

customization ruined the game because it emphasized the most munchkiny behavior for over 25 years.

Armored Core is literally built around customization and barely has any balance and yet it's still better

Speaking of AC, which i love so much i fuck it, I know how to fix aiming. Just have auto tracking weapons like Armored Core that uses piloting skill like the FCS. That way most of the controls can be streamlined to emphasize positioning and movement rather than fiddling with shit like torso twists and mushy throttles.

I also liked AC piloting works.



Seriously. You guys want the BEST piloting and aiming mechanics? Gundam for the PSP has one of the most fun UI and mechanics around. But be serious, do you actually think that can be ported to Battletech?

PainRack wrote: Tank simulators already stimulate armour penetration.

tanks are also not two height levels tall with precision weapons mounted on myomers

MW4 already did that, it didn't exactly work.

big surprise

Right. Just like the huge number of players who bought F-16 falcon simulator didn't like the complicated targeting system, including different aiming sights for bombs....

Ok the most hardcore sim I own (which I can't play anymore thanks PC gaming) is Jane's F-15 which has most of that stuff and the F-15E itself is touchy to fly. Honestly bomb aiming sights on an airplane are functional and fairly intuitive. Just point down and line up the cross on the line. The less complex sims from Janes kept the basics.

Honestly I don't know what flight sims have to do with what we're talking about. Other than people crowing on about Mechwarrior games being sims because you can change the HUD elements in game.

But for a mech sim, the sim needs to become more "real" and more "complex", while keeping gameplay relatively easy and fun.

Armored Core already had all the sliders and stats comparing down pat since 1997.

A new Mechwarrior SHOULDN"T stick to the old mechanics which already had better models in 2000. A new Mechwarrior should actually revamp the basic weapons behaviour instead of sticking to the same old model introduced back in 1989. Seriously, apart from some minor revamps to autocannons, there hasn't been a single chance to Btech weapons mechanics and it just lay in recharge time.

Seriously. You guys want the BEST piloting and aiming mechanics? Gundam for the PSP has one of the most fun UI and mechanics around. But be serious, do you actually think that can be ported to Battletech?

man every time we look at Battletech it becomes more and more obvious how it struggled for relevance in the face of the foreign menace. Other than deep rooted xenophobia, what does it have to offer anymore?

PainRack wrote:

Vendetta wrote:So your "solution" is "more dice rolls"?

That sounds unspeakably bad for an action/sim game. Flight Sim X doesn't roll dice to see if you landed or not, sim games are supposed to simulate the physical rules by which things work and let their performances come as emergent properties of the simulation. (So, for instance, the different turning performances and stability of planes in a flight sim are a result of the values which simulate the control surfaces, not whether it has 2D6 stability or 3D6 and it might still stall if the dice roll says so).

Tank simulators already stimulate armour penetration.

Yeah, and I bet they don't do it by rolling dice to see whether you penetrate and giving you a bonus to penetration if you stopped to aim harder. The aim in a simulation should be to minimise randomness, not rely on it to balance your armour penetration system.