2nd dropship / building a base?

[Scoth Davion]

It will be great to have a second dropship or even to be able to replace the Leopard by an Union one.

It will be also great to have the opportunity to build a base that you will also need to upgrade and defend.

 

[Bahktosh]

This suggestion has come up several times already.. I agree that endgame content could be extended through this idea if done correctly.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

The union will be pointless unless the devs opt to increase the drop limit from 4 mechs. Everything I have heard indicates that they picked 4 and intend to stay at 4 (at least in the near future).

 

[BARBOSA (Aries)]

There is 2 docking collars on the Argo. I wish we could have a 2nd leopard even if as a cosmetic feature only. For symmetry.
Even better would be using it to drop support vehicle and/or infantry. Or to carry a 2nd team for off-screen missions, like final fantasy tactics bar missions.
And yes. I´d love to have a 2nd upgrade grid, like the one for the Argo, where we could build and upgrade a base.
Seems even reasonable that Kamea would offer land (maybe even a planet) to keep the company that won back the nation tied to her.

 

[AngeliDiAvanti]

The union will be pointless unless the devs opt to increase the drop limit from 4 mechs. Everything I have heard indicates that they picked 4 and intend to stay at 4 (at least in the near future).

I guess, that's because of
1. the more Mechs, the longer a round takes, drastically prolonging the game
2. the more Mechs, the easier it is to destroy a Mech before it has a chance to move, because Ini is fixed. Mistakes would have much more serious consequences.

 

[Wumpus]

There is 2 docking collars on the Argo. I wish we could have a 2nd leopard even if as a cosmetic feature only. For symmetry.
Even better would be using it to drop support vehicle and/or infantry. Or to carry a 2nd team for off-screen missions, like final fantasy tactics bar missions.
And yes. I´d love to have a 2nd upgrade grid, like the one for the Argo, where we could build and upgrade a base.
Seems even reasonable that Kamea would offer land (maybe even a planet) to keep the company that won back the nation tied to her.

Ok, so what about:

• A way to obtain a land grant in the Aurigan Reach, with a small upgradable castle w/barracks, repair facilities, hospital, training pods, etc.
  
• A way to obtain a second Leopard.
  • This second leopard would be used to transfer mechs, pilots, etc between castle and Argo, even when the Argo is far from the Castle. Travel time and expense would be incurred for the leopard on these trips of course.
• A "simultaneous missions" capability, similar to the must-do-second-mission-immediately thing (why do I forget what that's called?), where you could deploy both leopards to fight two independent battles in two separate locations, in order to complete a single contract. So the contract could be a bank heist, where one battle is "capture base", and the other is "distraction".

The castle and the second leopard aren't actually that strongly linked, would be quite possible to do one without the other. But they also have some synergy.

 

[BARBOSA (Aries)]

I think its called consecutive deployment.
While i suggested off-screen, i´d enjoy playing with both teams too, and probably would require less change to the game this way.
Nice ideas about having a castle. I´d add a Seneschal as new NPC to interact. I like the Argo crew but we need some new faces around...
And as much as any company who cleared the main campaign already did enough for House Arano to earn it, it´d be nicer to get Castle/2nd Leopard as rewards of new FPs.

 

[pguyton]

I would also love to see some sort of X-com like base management - maybe they are already working on battletech 2 - I'd love to grow into a Merc unit large enough to have multiple missions running at the same time, AI controlled auto resolve. More merc company management

 

[Icewraith]

The Argo IS a base, and if we hauled two dropships around we would need a third docking collar so we can still dock with a Jumpship.

In theory we should be able to use the drop pods to drop a lance of our own reinforcements, but we wouldn’t be able to quickly evacuate half our force. Using the pods when we don’t need to would also be an additional expense.

 

[Nelzie]

I can't imagine how long a battle could be if we could drop two full lances. It would almost necessitate larger maps AND would also require some work on missions to force the splitting of Lances, EVEN in Battle missions.

Without forcing that, the way things are, it would be to simple to setup a hard firing line and singularly crush any AI lance that will straggle towards the firing line.

 

[Scoth Davion]

I can't imagine how long a battle could be if we could drop two full lances. It would almost necessitate larger maps AND would also require some work on missions to force the splitting of Lances, EVEN in Battle missions.

Without forcing that, the way things are, it would be to simple to setup a hard firing line and singularly crush any AI lance that will straggle towards the firing line.

Well in some mission you are already facing several lance of mechs, specially in defense missions. Having a second lance may hurry the mission.

Why do we need to have 24 (not sure) mechwarrior when we only have 1 lance of mech usable. What is worst (for me) is that you can have an unlimited number of mech is storage, with 24 ready in the argos and can only use 4 in a mission.
I will prefer that we could have a second dropship (3 dockings; 1 for the jumpship and 2 for dropships) with not unlimited number of mech in storage but will a limited number of spare parts for mech reparation, config changes.

And for the planetary base, it could be part of as mission from Kamea or from one of th House you are allied with. And what can happens when you have a base? It could be attacked and in that case you also may need to have some mech there for the defense.

They also needs to implement the mech reactor core breach/explosion when the damage/critical damage is TOO high for the center torso, with the risk to destroy anything that is too close.

Also fire friendly and secondary hits to surroundings will be great ...

 

[Corraidhin]

I've seen (and made) various suggestions around additional dropships for concurrent deployments.

I like the idea of two separate battles concurrently, with you being able to move forces from the first battle into the second map as reinforcements. They would arrive on map in the second battle in the turn they left the previous battle.

There's a really good work up on this that somebody wrote up, but I don't have the link. The general ides though is that we only start wiyh one lance on field at the start of any map.

The underlying game mechanics don't change, but an additional layer of UI is overlaid to manage what's effectively an extended planetary assault/defence flashpoint.

 

[Nelzie]

Well in some mission you are already facing several lance of mechs, specially in defense missions. Having a second lance may hurry the mission.

Why do we need to have 24 (not sure) mechwarrior when we only have 1 lance of mech usable. What is worst (for me) is that you can have an unlimited number of mech is storage, with 24 ready in the argos and can only use 4 in a mission.
I will prefer that we could have a second dropship (3 dockings; 1 for the jumpship and 2 for dropships) with not unlimited number of mech in storage but will a limited number of spare parts for mech reparation, config changes.

And for the planetary base, it could be part of as mission from Kamea or from one of th House you are allied with. And what can happens when you have a base? It could be attacked and in that case you also may need to have some mech there for the defense.

They also needs to implement the mech reactor core breach/explosion when the damage/critical damage is TOO high for the center torso, with the risk to destroy anything that is too close.

Also fire friendly and secondary hits to surroundings will be great ...

The problem with more lances is that a given mission will take SO much longer to slog thru.

When you are facing two or more lances of enemy mechs and have ONLY 3 allied AI mechs on your side, the amount of time it takes for a round to complete can be excessive, as is. Adding in more targets for the AI to calculate around is only going to drastically increase the wait time.

The game, while certainly fun, is already excessively slow. It's even SLOWER with some of the features you talk about being added via the unsupported mods, like Battletech Advanced 3016, which includes AI tweaks, as well as some of the other elements you talk about, like fusion core breaches, etc., etc. There are some missions I've done with that, where the AI can take upwards of 20 seconds to work out all the paths and options, before moving a single mech... then it goes through the same algorithm again. The AI changes, sometimes, are really awesome and challenging, other times? The AI just acts really dumb, moving into a prime position and firing no weapons, even though it has no heat, or just running, making no attacks, just to scoot back closer the next turn, also making no attacks.

It's a complex game, adding more lances to the field, even with the base game, with the base AI, is going to really bog it down.

 

[The Shadowhawke]

The union will be pointless unless the devs opt to increase the drop limit from 4 mechs. Everything I have heard indicates that they picked 4 and intend to stay at 4 (at least in the near future).

Basically true , they never intended for more than lance level operations, on part of the player.

A shame there; that is, IMHO, the one fundamental flaw with the game. I can think of a few missions where I sure could have used a second, fire lance to support a brawler lance.

 

[Simon1812]

The problem with more lances is that a given mission will take SO much longer to slog thru.

When you are facing two or more lances of enemy mechs and have ONLY 3 allied AI mechs on your side, the amount of time it takes for a round to complete can be excessive, as is. Adding in more targets for the AI to calculate around is only going to drastically increase the wait time.

The game, while certainly fun, is already excessively slow. It's even SLOWER with some of the features you talk about being added via the unsupported mods, like Battletech Advanced 3016, which includes AI tweaks, as well as some of the other elements you talk about, like fusion core breaches, etc., etc. There are some missions I've done with that, where the AI can take upwards of 20 seconds to work out all the paths and options, before moving a single mech... then it goes through the same algorithm again. The AI changes, sometimes, are really awesome and challenging, other times? The AI just acts really dumb, moving into a prime position and firing no weapons, even though it has no heat, or just running, making no attacks, just to scoot back closer the next turn, also making no attacks.

It's a complex game, adding more lances to the field, even with the base game, with the base AI, is going to really bog it down.

- I think you mean Battletech Advance 3062, but you are right, quite slow gameplay in its current version. I would try Battletech Extended 3025 Commander's Edition, it might catch you off guard how fast it is compared to the vanilla and BT Advance. I might be exaggerating but only a little bit, which is still pretty messed up IMO.

 

[DocDesastro]

Talking about X-Com...this reminds me of being able to expand squad size after reaching a certain point in the game like your first sergeant or captain to expand to 5 or even 6 troopers in the game. What if we had something like this? A prerequisite like officer trait? A pilot with a certain level of XP? Commander having a certain level of XP to unlock extra slot with cash? Change INI-system with something actually working out fine on top of that? Heck, who knows?