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Clearly, that's a false-flag Lyran company commander, and the real reason for this raid. ;)
Or Lyran defector(s)? Eitherway, in 3025+, very interesting.



Great idea! Would likely need some polishing/trimming to fit into HBS's vision for their game, but sounds very promising and inspirational. Really hope something like this gets added eventually.
 
Thanks for the great feedback, everyone! Makes the grunt work worth it and It's really exciting to see so much enthusiasm for the basic idea (which I certainly didn't create).

Also, one of the purposes of the thread is to stimulate further discussion on how this sort of thing could be implemented. No doubt there are better ways to achieve things and some of the systems could be better conceived, so if anyone has any ideas, please put them out there. :)

Spartakus said:
Wow, this looks great!

I have just one question: Secondary objective to eliminate Captain Combat Pants???
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scorpnoire said:
Excellent concept! I really like it.

(Though as a German I really have to follow Spartakus' question: Kapitän Combat Trousers? o_O)
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I couldn't help myself! There was so much pedantic alignment fixing as I was basically brainstorming in Adobe InDesign and constantly changing things - I needed to put in some easter eggs to stay sane. And anyway, I always thought "Armored Fighting Pants" was a more honest description of Mechs anyway. :p

I'd be on the lookout for other nonsense in there as well - Commander Oddity is tasked with hunting down Major Tomm? o_O

SQW said:
This is basically a upper-level mock up of the Warhammer 40k: Dark Crusade with some thematic fluff like drop deck thrown in. It's probably something a 4th succession war expansion focused on conquering one planet combined with combined arms and logistic issue.

This design looks fun but has a lot of issues too. You have to program a LOT of variables to account for player success/failure. That simple example would have 5+ branching node paths and most players would only see one or two - terrible use of resources. Also, while this one example sounds exciting, this template will grow stale very quickly unless you have a huge number of scenarios seeded on every map each of which have to give player a decent challenge WHILE accounting for various other variables based on earlier node results. Again, the scope is way out of reach for HBS who also has to get the tactical side of things right too.

What HBS needs is to simply tie a few sandbox missions together and give them a narrative in the campaign/sandbox so players don't feel so removed by doing these isolated missions. Even something as simple as MWO's faction warfare where individual mission completed moves a ticker a little until you reach conquest is enough to give liberation missions some meat/narrative than just doing a single crafted story mission.
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Well, you never know - if there was enough excitement, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy with HBS seeing the interesting and deciding to implement.
We do also know from the AMA with @HBS_Adarael that there has at least been some idle watercooler talk about this sort of thing:

TEahQsd.png


...So, you never know what will happen until you make a Mockup and post it on the interwebs. :D

As for the Nodes and so forth, the idea is that they would probably just be procedurally generated missions as we have now (though theoretically, they could also be more complicated with an enemy AI maneuvering around if that was considered desirable and/or feasible). Overall it would work best if it didn't rely on much in the way of curated content and had high replayability - yes. I'm not here to say it wouldn't be a big job, so it just comes down to if the interest from the playerbase would justify that development versus what other alternative development paths would offer. Hopefully, this Mock-Up at least makes a discussion about multi-prong missions easier. These talks and suggestions have taken place many times on this forum, but without visual reference, it's hard to conceptualize.

Obviously, it is ambitious and it would make sense to create something more modest - like a few linked sandboxed missions - sooner (ie. DLC 1 - I certainly am not going to poo-poo that idea). But it still won't do any harm to throw out a more ambitious model as an idea and see where that takes us.
 
This would be great. I'm thinking maybe what you've got has a bit more moving parts than might be fun to keep track of (for me anyway) but it would certainly add a lot to the game to keep it interesting.

Also, not quite armored pants, but

 
I love it, but I think it’s probably too complex to be integrated into this game unfortunately. I would have no problem paying for it as DLC or a stand alone title/expansion. But honestly i’d Be thrilled if HBS implemented something 10-25% of this complexity.... I just want linked missions where you either carry over forces with whatever damages they’ve acquired or have to deploy a second lance and your first lance and mech warriors can’t be used in the 2nd battle.

Heck I’d even settle for missions that unlock other missions. The very first prof gen mission I took was destroying a base that said it was “the opening moves” of a larger campaign... Darius even said it would lead to more work, but after I completed it, nothing. I was bummed.
 
A strategic map seems to be the way to go to keep the UI that is optimized for one lance at a time (although somewhere in the future with coop we could field one lance per player? maybe...and then a campaign editor with gamemaster option...and...;)).

Excellent graphical mock-up and great ideas! o7

I don't know how much dev time would be needed to implement it but it is the way to go when we we approach the 4th succession war (with at least one campaign per house and maybe one merc campaign?). So maybe just some multimission in the right order without a strategic map for the beginning?

Some possible missions for light lances (basically hit and run):
- Scout enemies/installations => get line of sight/sensor lock on primary/secondary objectives and then get out
- Destroy fragile objects like crates or bridges
- Ambush transport convoy and destroy at least one of the vehicles
- Recovery mission / Drop something like a beacon at a point of interest
- Stomp some vehicles after you triggered the perimeter alarm before they can be manned
- cross a minefield/frozen lake that would be triggered with heavier units

Another option to motivate the player and the AI to use primarily light and medium Mechs:
Yang needs internal structure (IS) spare parts of the appropriate weight class to repair damage. You can either buy it or get some when you scrap a Mech. Maybe like...Light IS is readily available in all shops, medium IS is available in rich/manufacturing/industrial/research shops, heavy IS is sometimes available at research shops, assault IS is very rare and MAY appear in black market shops from time to time. The main source for the heavy and assault class IS should be to scrap partial Mech salvage you aquired.
So while you can field any Mechs you have after scouting the enemy force you need to decide if it is worth the risk of damaging one of your precious heavy/assault machines.

...und 'Stiefellecker' ist der Adjutant von Captain 'Kampfhose'? ;)
 
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Aidan Abacus said:
Some possible missions for light lances (basically hit and run):
- Scout enemies/installations => get line of sight/sensor lock on primary/secondary objectives and then get out
- Destroy fragile objects like crates or bridges
- Ambush transport convoy and destroy at least one of the vehicles
- Recovery mission / Drop something like a beacon at a point of interest
- Stomp some vehicles after you triggered the perimeter alarm before they can be manned
- cross a minefield/frozen lake that would be triggered with heavier units
Click to expand...

These are fine ideas. I'd just love for some mission types to be virtually or actually unwinnable with an assault lance, just as it's currently virtually impossible to win a five skull base attack with an all-lights lance. Make us appreciate those fast movers.
 
Aidan Abacus said:
A strategic map seems to be the way to go to keep the UI that is optimized for one lance at a time (although somewhere in the future with coop we could field one lance per player? maybe...and then a campaign editor with gamemaster option...and...;)).

Excellent graphical mock-up and great ideas! o7

I don't know how much dev time would be needed to implement it but it is the way to go when we we approach the 4th succession war (with at least one campaign per house and maybe one merc campaign?). So maybe just some multimission in the right order without a strategic map for the beginning?

Some possible missions for light lances (basically hit and run):
- Scout enemies/installations => get line of sight/sensor lock on primary/secondary objectives and then get out
- Destroy fragile objects like crates or bridges
- Ambush transport convoy and destroy at least one of the vehicles
- Recovery mission / Drop something like a beacon at a point of interest
- Stomp some vehicles after you triggered the perimeter alarm before they can be manned
- cross a minefield/frozen lake that would be triggered with heavier units

Another option to motivate the player and the AI to use primarily light and medium Mechs:
Yang needs internal structure (IS) spare parts of the appropriate weight class to repair damage. You can either buy it or get some when you scrap a Mech. Maybe like...Light IS is readily available in all shops, medium IS is available in rich/manufacturing/industrial/research shops, heavy IS is sometimes available at research shops, assault IS is very rare and MAY appear in black market shops from time to time. The main source for the heavy and assault class IS should be to scrap partial Mech salvage you aquired.
So while you can field any Mechs you have after scouting the enemy force you need to decide if it is worth the risk of damaging one of your precious heavy/assault machines.

...und 'Stiefellecker' ist der Adjutant von Captain 'Kampfhose'? ;)
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I forgot to get back to this one previously!

I like the list of dedicated missions for lights on the tactical map.

In this instance for the OP, I downplayed that as I wanted to communicate the strategic layer advantage that dedicated Recon lances would add even without those missions (aside from one unexplained interception mission against Major Tomm).

Some of the most useful actions performed by scouts in a large scale strategy game would be dull to perform at the tactical level ("checkpoint 37 clear - still no contact. Over"). At the same time, when that larger strategic operational level is present, gaining the benefits of recon is quite rewarding, richening the game experience (ie. we always keep an eye on our scouts, spies and explorer units in 4X or Grand Strategy games). So, I wanted to address that with

But, some surgical mission structure that genuinely needed mobile units would be great and there's lots of room to tinker with that. Being procedurally generated, there's a good bit of room for things to go wrong with mission design, so they're probably more challenging than more straightforward combat missions. I don't mind that they weren't implemented with the base game, but definitley want them in the future (even some of the current missions need a bit of work to hit their potential, such as Escort or Base Defense; Recovery could also be more interesting as right now it's pretty much just a variation on "kill everything").

As a side, note, while I don't like the idea of drop weight as a limit, I wouldn't mind mobility requirements for missions depending on how they were constructed and how well executed the fluff text was to make it seem genuine.

For example, if we can't drop a Leopard right on the target for whatever reason (enemy Air superiority or SAM batteries), it would make sense that there would be times that you need fast Mechs to even think about attempting a mission. Spitballing, imagine we need to drop on one side of a mountain and get to the other side to hit a supply depot before overwhelming reinforcements arrive from a nearby base. In that instance, maybe we need all Mechs on the mission to be at least 5/8 speed and possibly even have Jump Jets. You'd never even attempt that sort of thing with a 3/5 Awesome waddling along who has no chance of outrunning the reinforcements if it can't evac on the Leopard.

In other instances, maybe the area of the mission is just "big" and not properly scouted so you're going to need to be able to cover a lot of ground within a reasonable timeframe to figure out exactly where you're objective is. Sometimes in a Grand Strategy game this will become apparent even without hard rules, so the player determines for themselves in a Total War game that bringing those Catapults along in a patrol force is just not viable when they slow the whole army down (a feature which Creative Assembly has ditched more recently, but it used to be that the army would move at the speed of the slowest unit). So, again, not having the option to bring that 3/5 Awesome on a 'Robin Hood in the Woods' hunt could be acceptable as long as the rationale is clear and explained. That, of course, is a bit trickier to communicate without a strategic map, but it should be doable.

Anyway, maybe a combination of mission design tailored to what Light Mechs do well and then some soft limits on what's possible in certain circumstances would help on the "Make Lights Great Again" angle.
 
I like the need for speed idea. It doesn't require you to have light mechs (if you have a high level pilot who has a speed bonus maybe you could go heavier if you wanted), but it would encourage it. I know the dev's have said that they have more ideas for mission types, so maybe that's going to get added anyway.
 
Added points for Porkins!!!

Well lets hope there is something to the "all things in success" that we've heard for so long and maybe something like this can happen.
Well done, great visual examples
 
Darrious Quinn said:
Added points for Porkins!!!...
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Then Triple Word Score for working Corporal Ferro in there! : )


@Mojo Amok, Great concept!

Great pitch and portrayal!

Outstanding Attention to Detail!

You Good Sir, have out done yourself. :bow:

It is my hope that HBS is already moving toward some of the elements and “Operational-level” mechanisms that you depict here.

While Contracts can be for one-off Missions like we have now, what you describe here really extends all that is so very GOOD about BATTLETECH, taking it to the next 2 or 3 Levels!

Well done! :bow:
 
Extremely good... Please tell me you have the coding skills to go with the concept... then send an application into HBS and when they hire you, move to canada.

Then implement. Please.
 
Multi-engagement contracts would be wonderful. It would probably take tons of work to build and playtest, so I'm guessing that if we do see them it will be in a future full-fledged expansion similar to XCOM's War of the Chosen.
 
Mojo Amok said:
As a side, note, while I don't like the idea of drop weight as a limit, I wouldn't mind mobility requirements for missions depending on how they were constructed and how well executed the fluff text was to make it seem genuine.

For example, if we can't drop a Leopard right on the target for whatever reason (enemy Air superiority or SAM batteries), it would make sense that there would be times that you need fast Mechs to even think about attempting a mission. Spitballing, imagine we need to drop on one side of a mountain and get to the other side to hit a supply depot before overwhelming reinforcements arrive from a nearby base. In that instance, maybe we need all Mechs on the mission to be at least 5/8 speed and possibly even have Jump Jets. You'd never even attempt that sort of thing with a 3/5 Awesome waddling along who has no chance of outrunning the reinforcements if it can't evac on the Leopard.
Click to expand...

I absolutely Love this idea, and there’s really no reason they can’t impliment it right now. Just add the appropriate flavor text to the procgen mission, take out the drop ship animation in the beginning of the mission and just start the unit on an edge of the map. The mission flavor text can say something about patching in control of the unit once they get close (so we don’t have to sit through 10 turns of running on a huge map). Then either just put the mission on a timer, or have a overwhelming reinforcement spawn in after a predetermined number of rounds (they’d have to smooth out the reinforcement spawn issue, they can’t spawn between the objective and the extraction point.) once the objective was complete the player would have to get back to an extraction marker where they started, no Sumire pickup, even if you wiped out the non reinforcement defenders. Gotta get back to the evac marker. Once you’re there you get a Darius pop up that says “we’ve left them in our dust, good job commander, the lance has broken contact and is headed back to the leopard.” And the mission ends.

Not only would this be a solid reason to devote at least 5-6 of your mech bays to mediums and lights. It would also take Dragons and Quickdraws from “put the salvage together and sell that piece of s*?t as fast as you can” to something people might want to actually use.

I’d even love to see different grades of this mission. With ones with 5/8 requirements, ones with 6/9 (especially once we get certain 6/9 mediums) requirements, and maybe even 7/11 requirement missions (we’d need more 7+ speed mech options for that though)

One big issue to consider is how is salvage handled on these missions? Salvage kind of implies ownership of the battlefield after the engagement. So these would either have to be cash/rep only missions, or there’d have to be some willing suspension of disbelief in the players part in how exactly the salvage got back to the Argo. Of course every mission ends with a Leopard Evac, and a lot of the missions have text that suggests they are going on behind enemy lines, and no one has complained about salvage on those missions being unrealistic, so maybe it can just be hand-waived away...

You mentioned you didn’t like hard drop weights, neither do I, but I like the idea of a soft cap, something like a recommended drop weight and for every 5 tons you are over you lose 2% of the payout and 1 piece of random salvage, and for every 5 tons you are under you get a 2% bonus and 1 extra piece of random salvage. That would at least give players a pause to think before just slotting in the 4 biggest bruisers they have. If it needs in game explanation it could be handwaived as the “free” re armor and re ammo at the end of the misson being cheaper on smaller mechs than the big boys. Or maybe Sumire gets slightly better MPG hauling mediums than assaults.

There really does need to be some sort of incentive to not just drop 400 tons every single mission. Mech commander had all kinds of flaws of its own, but the drop limits did make you keep at least a few lights and mediums around, and all assault all the time gets boring, it’s good for the game to force us to have to change up tactics from time to time, it’s good for keeping the player from getting bored and for long term playability. And I for one intend to be playing this for at least the next decade :D
 
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Mojo Amok said:
...I like the list of dedicated missions for lights on the tactical map.
...
But, some surgical mission structure that genuinely needed mobile units would be great and there's lots of room to tinker with that. Being procedurally generated, there's a good bit of room for things to go wrong with mission design, so they're probably more challenging than more straightforward combat missions. I don't mind that they weren't implemented with the base game, but definitley want them in the future (even some of the current missions need a bit of work to hit their potential, such as Escort or Base Defense; Recovery could also be more interesting as right now it's pretty much just a variation on "kill everything").

As a side, note, while I don't like the idea of drop weight as a limit, I wouldn't mind mobility requirements for missions depending on how they were constructed and how well executed the fluff text was to make it seem genuine.

For example, if we can't drop a Leopard right on the target for whatever reason (enemy Air superiority or SAM batteries), it would make sense that there would be times that you need fast Mechs to even think about attempting a mission. Spitballing, imagine we need to drop on one side of a mountain and get to the other side to hit a supply depot before overwhelming reinforcements arrive from a nearby base. In that instance, maybe we need all Mechs on the mission to be at least 5/8 speed and possibly even have Jump Jets. You'd never even attempt that sort of thing with a 3/5 Awesome waddling along who has no chance of outrunning the reinforcements if it can't evac on the Leopard.
...
Click to expand...
Just snipped a bit to not make an oversized post.

Short version:
I agree with you completely.

Also thought about that and I like the concept of mobility restriction (either min speed and/or min jj) for missions a lot more than weight restrictions. It would make lance composition a lot more interesting than pure weight restrictions.

In the long run the strategic map and more strategic management options than we have atm with the Leopard/Argo are definitely the way to go. The game screams to be expanded with so many things and I can see there is an abundance of community love for the BT universe to make that happen :)

As a side note:
I have linked your fantastic mock-up in our forum in this post (and a lot more in the first and second) to keep the interested Commanders informed => https://www.elitedangerous.de/forum/viewtopic.php?p=161192#p161192

"Incoming fire has the right of way!" ;)
 
Nice but I rather keep it simple. Like EvE online.
If you take this contract, you have to do this 3 missions in a chain with a set time limit for completion.

Maybe the first mission limits you to light only as fast recon and the next mission allows you to bring your best Steiner Scout Lance team.
Then the grand finale could be something like a mission with limited turns, so it discourages all assaults (like the destroy 3 reactor missions) but heavies / mediums and fast assaults.

That's the way it can be done.
Simple and to the point.

And if you fail the chain mission at anytime, you take a decent hit to standings.
 
It could also scale with the acquisition of new and larger drop/assault ships. I’m dying to have a Union Dropship. The Argo, while it fits in canon, is silly too big for a single lance. Big Merc outfits even have their own jumpships to boot.

But overall I love the idea of each planetary mission being a minicampaign, which needs a variety of assets, simply not 4 Assault Mechs.
 
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