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I dont think traditionally the Locust got MASC off hand, Ill have to look. Be even funnier if it has the failure rate of ultra ac5s and all of a sudden your super fast mech has its legs locked up.

I would equip it on all of my mechs if it sent you tumbling when that happened. Can you imagine?

Suddenly a locust goes rolling by like a tumbleweed.

I'm reminded of the overly complex and completely ridiculous "mech running on pavement skidding" rules from the battletech tabletop game. It actually does make your mech slide out of control across the table taking damage all the way. There's even rules for how much damage things take if you run into something. Mech bowling anyone?

It isnt really overly complex, its just not dumbed down to 40k rules level. Makes a lot of sense too. Plus it has rules reflecting pilots getting knocked out, not being able to see clearly due to high heat, taking enough damage to knock the mech flat over and having to get up again. Theres a good deal of stuff that should be implemented into MWO. Want to run at high heat, fine be prepared for blurry vision due to the heat. Step into a barrage of weapons, depending on your skill level you fall over.

I do hope eventually they bring in punching, kicking and death from above attacks along with penalties for slamming into the side of a mountain at full speed.

You want complex, go play the last edition of Ultimate Warzone, you actually had blast shadows and realistic ballistics. You shoot a grenade over the building, thankfully its tall enough that if you are close to the backside of the building the shooter cant get an angle of fire to have the round land close enough to the target to do anything and no it cant scatter back. Great game, loved the in depth rules.

I was referring to the mech skidding rules in particular. They always just seemed too much additional detail for what they were trying to represent (especially because they only apply on pavement and not stone or any other flat smooth surface they might realistically apply on).

I very much enjoy me some Battletech, although to be fair I haven't played all that much of it. Ultimate Warzone sounds like something I might enjoy. I actually have a bunch of Phoenix Command stuff that I've always wanted to run someday, although my local gaming group has got wind of that fact and look at me with suspicion every time I bring the subject up.

I'm still looking for the "holy grail" of systems, one that actually steps up to the plate and tackles explosions in enclosed spaces. I don't want my grenade to still have exactly the same blast radius and kill probability in a building with a 10 foot roof that it does in an open field. Not even Phoenix Command took on that one...

I don't suppose you've ever tried the Rifts system? Haven't played it much myself, but I believe it has rules for everything including Mecha combat. Highly detailed rules. It may have explosion rules that work for you.


@ erick99- You can't leave us hanging like that! How'd it play? Have any video footage?

Ultimate Warzone was the perfect miniture game. Nice and detailed, guys could do their jobs(a missile launcher dude in an infantry squad could shoot his launcher at a vehicle while the rest of the squad shot at other infantry). It unfortunately got hit with a triple whammy. 1st Edition did great saleswise in the mid 90s, then the company that owned the company that ran the game went bankrupt. I forget 2nds issue but it was a really good game but something not entirely its fault happened. Ultimate was 3rd edition. A guy bought the rights, published a huge tome of rules with all the units in it, started hiring artists to revise models and was going good. Retailers didnt want to risk it so he didnt get many sales there. Thom never got big enough to where he could feasibly move the company out of his garage and I heard he had a few very stressful life issues followed by a heart attack and Fantasy Flight got the license back. Prodos is making Warzone Resurection now with all new models and apparently a huge financial backing, before they did a kickstarter and the KS itself was wildly successful. So we will see how it compares once the rules come out in the big book. The models overall are amazing and keep alot of the original flavor and go for true scale over heroic scale.

Battletech- So, when are the clans coming out. I have been running my red Sword of Light mechs for awhile now, ready for Ghost Bear colors.

Battletech- So, when are the clans coming out. I have been running my red Sword of Light mechs for awhile now, ready for Ghost Bear colors.

Supposedly 1 year from now. They'll likely do another four mech pack like Project Phoenix. My front runners for the clan mech pack are Cougar, Shadow Cat, Cauldron-Bron, Daishi, Grizzly, and Kodiak. We all know the Madcat/Timberwolf will come but I actually wouldn't be shocked to find it made available as a separate release event.

Also you can already use Ghost Bear colors. All my mechs are already black blue and white

Ew, Clans. Vatborn hipsters. Play one of the normal units! District Regular Forces ftw!


Blurry vision in high heat would be amazing, by the way. I'd love some more immersion in general - such as additional fans whirring into action once temperature in the cockpit rises above a certain level etc...

 Lynata wrote:
Ew, Clans. Vatborn hipsters. Play one of the normal units! District Regular Forces ftw!

Freeborn scum!

But nah. I'm holding out for Ghost Bear Dominion rather than Clan Ghost Bear... Its gnna be a few years.

Blurry vision in high heat would be amazing, by the way. I'd love some more immersion in general - such as additional fans whirring into action once temperature in the cockpit rises above a certain level etc...

I loved in MW4 how my hud would start flickering as the mech got hotter. It really brought things to life. IMO the things MWO most desperately needs are in no order;

-The removal of Ghost Heat because as lackluster as the current heat system is Ghost Heat doesn't fix it.
-Numerous mechs need hit box fixes especially the Orion, Awesome, and the Dragon. Every mech barring a few (Centurion, Stalker, Atlas) could use some hit box tweaks.
-New game modes... please... pretty please?

People complain a lot of the forums but the game isn't in a terrible state. The worst part of it, 100% weapon accuracy can be rendered not that important if the hit boxes were restructured to account for it on certain mechs.

Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that I'd like to be added (more cockpit interaction, pilot customisation, tanks and infantry to stomp upon, bases and turrets in a siege game mode, COMMUNITY WARFARE), or stuff that is in the game that imho should be changed (ECM, "bulk-firing" missiles, greater delay in missile door opening/closing, price increase for Endo-Steel, using artillery/airstrikes via Battlegrid, ...), but ultimately I still find it to be an amazingly fun thing to play.
I think a lot of people are just very entitled nowadays - you get to see these crowds in just about every game that has a place where gamers can exchange opinions. It's probably a social phenomenon about how perceptions can change in a crowd - almost reminds me of Waldorf & Statler.

LordofHats wrote:The removal of Ghost Heat because as lackluster as the current heat system is Ghost Heat doesn't fix it.

I dunno - if it doesn't fix it, why are people complaining about it, given that there's no reason to do so unless they were afflicted?
One could even rationalise it somehow by coming up with some BS excuse about how this additional heat is generated because the basic design of the 'Mech was never intended to boat something. There's actually rules and fluff for penalties for extensive custom jobs in BT.

"To reflect these factors when using the Customization rules found in Strategic Operations (if you don't have that rulebook, it has the definitive rules for repairs and modifications of one's machines, so you should grab it), it is a simple matter to either restrict the players to lower-rated NPCs techs/engineers, or add penalty modifiers to their modification rolls to reflect the lesser quality parts and tools they should have available in the hardscrabble days of the late Succession Wars. When they start realizing that trying to make their custom PPC boat in 3039 carries with it the risk of costing millions of C-bills in ruined structure AND PPCs (to say nothing for the potential of then driving a glitchy, unbalanced, heat-spiking death trap they made for themselves), they might think twice about tinkering."
- Herbert Beas, BT Line Developer

That being said, I still think a better solution would be to place some greater limits on customisation, such as assigning a sort of "hardpoint size" to weapon slots. No, sir, you won't be able to cram a Gauss Rifle below the Cat's cockpit just because you ripped out a Machine Gun.


Also, I just found out that some of the Japanese Battletech rulebooks were illustrated by Kenichi Sonada. Holy gak.



Battletech + Gunsmith Cats = Awesomesauce

 Lynata wrote:
I dunno - if it doesn't fix it, why are people complaining about it, given that there's no reason to do so unless they were afflicted?

Because it unfairly gimps energy weapons. If they want to stop the alpha meta the solution was to increase heat dissipation but lower the heat cap but instead they added ghost heat which really only effects the AC2 so now we have the Auto-Canon meta.

Well, the thing that people were complaining about was PPC- and Laserboats. Energy weapons are generally lighter than ballistics, so they are much easier to field en-masse. Does anyone really moan about ACs being too good right now? Ultimately, energy weapons aren't gimped as long as you don't boat them.

Tweaking heat cap and dissipation is an interesting thought, though I think that whilst it would have the intended effect on boats, "normal" loadouts would be granted a much higher rate of fire as there would be no "cool down periods" anymore as you have them right now. Also, the Flamer would have to be re-evaluated yet again. There's a ton of hard-to-gauge consequences attached to such changes.

On a sidenote, Dev Q&A #49 just went up, and they talk about new game modes a bit:

"Attack & Defend will become a critical component of CW when planetary occupation comes into play. Skirmish is more catered to the competitive crowd that will allow them to set up their own rulesets (from what’s currently available) and choose who they play against. Skirmish can be related to private matches where you’re playing game modes in a manner not in line with regular public gameplay rules and mechanic."
- Paul

"Timing wise, we are done with basic functionality and could turn it on anytime. To clarify Deathmatch, we are only supporting 1 v 1 Deathmatch, which is technically TDM from our POV. Down the road we can examine expanding Deathmatch to include more players. That being said, we are waiting for some more features to come on line before releasing it."
- Bryan

 Lynata wrote:
Well, the thing that people were complaining about was PPC- and Laserboats. Energy weapons are generally lighter than ballistics, so they are much easier to field en-masse. Does anyone really moan about ACs being too good right now? Ultimately, energy weapons aren't gimped as long as you don't boat them.

I don't think its as much an issue as being to good as it is bland. Energy boating got hit (and why people complain about boating I'll never know) and while you can still do it and do well its become a pain in the butt. PPC's weren't even what people hated they hated jump snipers. Most builds now center around packing as much auto cannon as you can with some lasers as a backup and streaks as a counter to lights.

Tweaking heat cap and dissipation is an interesting thought, though I think that whilst it would have the intended effect on boats, "normal" loadouts would be granted a much higher rate of fire as there would be no "cool down periods" anymore as you have them right now.

The goal would be that firing too many weapons at once would push you to overheat but a higher dissipation would maintain reasonable fire rates for weapons.

I'm not sure I'll ever use Streaks. My solution to Lights is arms.

LordofHats wrote:I don't think its as much an issue as being to good as it is bland. Energy boating got hit (and why people complain about boating I'll never know) and while you can still do it and do well its become a pain in the butt. PPC's weren't even what people hated they hated jump snipers.

Both, actually - Jump-Sniping was just hated even more because when they overheat they'd just fall back into cover, whereas on the free range they'd become vulnerable to your guns.
As for the "why" ... I take it you've never been one-shot by a 4PPC-build presenting you with 40 damage in a single torso location? It's probably not as much of a problem for Assaults, but in a Light or even a Medium I can assure you it can be a bit frustrating to get taken out of action like this just for peeking around a corner. Direct damage weapons are always a bit more tricky in this regard as opposed to hitscan (lasers) because they put all their hurt on a single component, so when someone boats a lot of PPCs or Gauss Rifles, this is a far more destructive experience, as the damage you incur won't be spread across your 'Mech but is focused on a single spot.

I can only say that the changes have made the game more fun to me again.

LordofHats wrote:The goal would be that firing too many weapons at once would push you to overheat but a higher dissipation would maintain reasonable fire rates for weapons.

Sure, but those "reasonable rates" would still result in a lot more damage being dished out than now. DPS would increase across the board and make for an overall deadlier game - heat-intensive Alphas would be penalised, but you'd also have shorter matches.


Oh, and ... I'll just leave this here:

Damnit I was trying to avoid that video!

It really is brilliantly made, though. That even seems to be the actual pilot model? I had no idea PGI modelled his face!

Finally got around to the Battlemaster (almost done mastering the Hawks). The hitbox is much better than I initially thought. A real beast in firepower but I hate the narrow torso turn. I'm gonna slug it up to basic x2 with the hopes that it'll work much better then.

All my love is for the Thunderbolt right now. That mech is a sexy beast in both looks and combat ability.

Hah, finally had a game with Hats on my side.

And yes, the Battlemaster = <3
Still need a proper name for mine tho!

 Lynata wrote:
Hah, finally had a game with Hats on my side.

And yes, the Battlemaster = <3
Still need a proper name for mine tho!

Wait we did?

Oh were you the guy who said hey lord XD Now I feel bad for somehow not noticing you.

EDIT: Okay, I've redeemed myself. This time I knew it was you

Crimson Strait, I typed "Hey Hats o/" in chat at the start of the round.
No problem, though - figured you probably just forgot my character's name.

Oh, and I stumbled over this gem - 6xAC2 Jagermech, piloted by a rather crazy British (or at least British-sounding) lad:




Rather fun to watch - he really goes into Orky mode every time he shoots
If you're impatient, the action starts at around the 3rd minute.

6xAC2 Jagermech

Surely he is an ork because when presented with the quad AC2 Jeager he nodded and said "needs mor dakka."

Notice his Catalpult is called Hi Jenner?

I love how on/off the switch is. He flips back and forth instantly good laugh from that

Macks got some nice vids, it's where i got the idea of a dual gauss catapult

lol the 6x AC2 Dakka-Jager is pretty much an actual tabletop design if I recall correctly. Mech was kind of meant to shoot down aircraft, but I would imagine that it would put a serious hurting on light harassing units if it can get a clear field of fire.

 dementedwombat wrote:
lol the 6x AC2 Dakka-Jager is pretty much an actual tabletop design if I recall correctly. Mech was kind of meant to shoot down aircraft, but I would imagine that it would put a serious hurting on light harassing units if it can get a clear field of fire.

I was instantly curious, and found that the truth is far more horrifying.

From Sarna.net-
JM7-G
This variant utilizes twin Rotary Autocannon/2s and LB-X Autocannon/2s along with a pair of ER Medium Lasers. BV (2.0) = 1,278[13]

Maximum rate of fire in a game turn would be the equivalent of 14 AC 2s.

At that point, I think you'd overheat just from thinking about hitting the trigger.

wow. I know people really hate the Jager in the tabletop because AC2s do not have enough damage potential to get at heavy targets, even if they do mount a lot of them, so it fits the awkward position of being a heavy mech that is trying to counter light mechs (since most battletech games don't use aircraft it doesn't have a niche).

Good to see it's found a home in MWO though.