If they actually implemented this I would probably be able to convince my friend to buy this game.
But seriously, whats HBS up to...?
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If they actually implemented this I would probably be able to convince my friend to buy this game.
PvP is never going to take off in BT. Without the interaction with that person standing next to you, TT games translates terribly to online. It's the social aspect that makes these TT games fun - without it, it'll just be [Mod edit: Please be respectful] rolling dice in his bedroom.
On the flip side, if HBS does implement a tournament style Solaris 7 with mech stables, team management, betting, announcer and all the vegas stuff, then it can work but nothing less would suffice. That is a complete new game and more work than the entirety of BT so far so don't expect it to be a side project in a DLC.
What the vanilla BT needs is some reason to use 80% of the existing mech. At this point, I'll event take hamfisted drop limits.
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I wasn't talking about the PvP mode, I was talking co-op (vs AI). My friend hates PvP, but co-op missions would be right up his alley.
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Right now 4 v 8(12) missions takes about 30min. An 8 v 16(24) mission will more than double that. This isn't 1hr of playing co-op with a friend but spending 3/4 of a mission sitting and waiting for the AI and your friend to finish their moves.
A system were you only control a pair of mechs might be workable but 4 mech each wouldn't appeal to any but the most hardcore BT with a LOT of time on their hands.
I don't know, other than "locust challenges" my buddy and I do skirmish games in 10-15 min, so 20-30 min co-op sounds like a good time to us. Plus, we'd definitely have a lot more fun doing vsAI challenges together than separately. [And don't forget that there is a setting now in the options to speed up the down time during combat.]
Edit: Oh, and this is not co-op campaign/career mode. So it's currently a max of 4vs4 and hypothetically a max of 8vs8.
I was going to argue against this, citing World of Warcraft and D&D... but HBS seems to agree with you. So I decided not to argue.
Well put, Good Sir. And apparantly quite succinct. :bow:
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Where's the "sad face" option like on Facebook?
I understand the discouragement, but I would like to add in a "correction" to the original quote by SQW that this isn't a direct TT translation (like MegaMek). And we all obviously find the game fun and spend that time in single player... so I'm not sure why PvP would have a disconnect. I still think there would be value to giving PvP (and Skirmish by extension) more love...
I mean... Paradox is currently trying to do weekly Skirmish challenges... what's stopping some PvP being thrown into the mix?
I hope DLC 3 is about 4SW.
I´m not asking for the Clans (yet), but we´re lucky if DLC 3 is delivered still in 2019.
And if it takes over 1 year and half to give us a 3 year advance in the timeline, i don´t want to even think on when (if) we´ll get BT2: The Clans.
Scary thought: It took 11 years to get from MW1 (3SW) to MW4 (CW)
I´m not asking for the Clans (yet), but we´re lucky if DLC 3 is delivered still in 2019.
And if it takes over 1 year and half to give us a 3 year advance in the timeline, i don´t want to even think on when (if) we´ll get BT2: The Clans.
Scary thought: It took 11 years to get from MW1 (3SW) to MW4 (CW)
I would love this!
But I am holding out hope for a Solar 7 Solo-Campaign as well as MP refinements. :bow:
The Fourth Succession War expansion might be a bit larger and moere involved that what could fit within the Season Pass. And deserving of its own stand alone expansion price.
Though again, if you should prove right I should dearly love that...
...if anything, it just might mean HBS' take on the CLAN INVASION is all the closer. : )
I don't see the point of advancing the timeline. Apart from some new gear, mech and weapons, there are no mechanical difference between the eras. I'd rather HBS focus on fleshing out the currently dead universe and extra battlefield assets like VTOL, auxiliary and infantry.
And the Clans. Oh boy, I don't think anyone in HBS want to touch that balancing nightmare until at least BT3. Either you curb stomp AI as clans or only fight one clan mech at a time with your meager lance of peasant IS mechs.
It would be hard to balance it if HBS just added new Mechs in, but it is not unachievable.
I'm not as familiar with all the lore as some, but my understanding is that the IS basically got bent over a table when the Clans invaded. Why not have a campaign that focuses on dealing with an organised fighting retreat?
As to gaining the tech themselves, to my recollection, it was so different that the IS couldn't simply slap one together, instead they used tech and info revealed by wolf's dragoons a few years into the invasion and used that to develop new battlemechs, and after a few wins and a lull in combat managed to reverse engineer an omni-mech.
Plenty of room to play with if you get creative!
What I would like to see is an expansion set in Clan space before the invasion, focusing on the lead up to it. Less merc play, more trying to become illkhan, trials of possession for new mechs instead of salvage, an honour system rather than morale - I know it would grate against the lore, but it would be fun. And that is the main aim of any game!
One of the biggest challenges HBS still needs to meet is speeding up the pace of combat in the base game. Modding the sound .jsons to reduce the absurd camera lag durations helps, and cuts several seconds PER MECH off the combat turn (even with all the cool animation sliders off), but I know there's more to do. If I had video skills, I could shoot two minutes of combat video and point out at least 40 seconds of wasted player time. This is a bigger deal than HBS seems to realize when it comes to fun, time, and getting people to keep playing the game (and thus buy DLCs).
There's no need for BT2 or BT3. Once sped up, the current engine handles everything needed. I would be very unhappy if I was asked to pay for BT2 three years from now on top of BT1 and 3 DLCs. Just make it another DLC for the existing engine.
Balancing factors for Clans:
-Reduce their weapon damage to match IS levels (note: Also nerf all the ++ and +++ weapons - small lasers should not hit harder than mediums, the amount of bonus is unneccessary). No more 35 damage ER mediums or 75 damage ER PPCs.
-Go with Lore armor levels (Hellbringer, Jenner IIC, and others dangerously thin-skinned, etc.).
-BT does not have much of a long range game right now due to absurdly short vision and sensor ranges. We'll be in weapon range before the Clanners have LOS on most maps.
-We won't be up in the FRR during the first waves...coming from the Rimward Periphery, we'll have time to know what we're getting in to. Expect to have two IS lances vs a single star unless we're on the back foot.
Au contraire.
I was in a MegaMek-campaign that lasted many years. It was set in the Kerensky-Cluster and each of was a "Clan" of two Binaries.
We fought Star vs Star in accordance with Zellbriggen.
We fought over planets, we fought over Mech-plans, we fought over bloodnames (bonuses), we fought because two of our characters hated each other for roleplay-reasons.
We modified our Mechs and bought new ones, we leveled up our pilots, when they died we replaced them with new ones...
What was especially fun to me was not just the game, but tracing how each player had their unique style and tactics and was dangerous in his very own way.
(There was this one guy who would take 5 minutes to come up with a move, but it always was an absolute killer-move. He was almost unbeatable.)
In the end, we wanted to make the campaign more realistic by adding more off-screen play. But as we were keeping track of these off-screen events by hand, the effort of keeping up eventually got so big that the campaign was no longer fun and people left.
So, Yes. PvP-campaigns can work and can be A LOT of fun.
I'd kind of like to see the 4SW, and the subsequent events like the Andurien Crisis. With the Aurigan Reach being promoted to canon it makes sense to move forward.
And speaking as someone who got into BT via MW2, which was all Clans, I'd rather not see them as an expansion for this game. I'd rather see them as their own game, with players as Clanners. Thus they would either be fighting other Clanners or just massively outnumbered by IS.
And speaking as someone who got into BT via MW2, which was all Clans, I'd rather not see them as an expansion for this game. I'd rather see them as their own game, with players as Clanners. Thus they would either be fighting other Clanners or just massively outnumbered by IS.
I´m not that worried about Clan Tech balance. As the game is now we fight 2-3 lances with our one in tough missions.
Let´em clanners drop a star in the field. We´ll manage.
And one campaign (or several flashpoints) later we´ll be fighting 2 stars with a lance made from clan tech salvage.
Let´em clanners drop a star in the field. We´ll manage.
And one campaign (or several flashpoints) later we´ll be fighting 2 stars with a lance made from clan tech salvage.
I would love an option to drop the size of the opfor and just make the AI better. Stopping the AI suicide runs of 1 mech into my group of 4 would go a long way, as would not splitting damage among your entire lance and focus firing. Also, the AI uses brace far too often.
Oh I agree. A pvp campaign of your description would be a blast if it exists. However, BT PvP is just skirmish death match. Basically you want a turn based MWO faction play mode as envisioned by fans and that is so far from HBS's current direction, it's not even in the realm of possibility.
A no-name merc lance destroys twice the tonnage of Clan mechs....yeah, sounds like Rogue Tech. If I'm designing the clans, I'd give them double the vision and weapon range of IS players - good luck getting the same kill ratio when both your Highlanders are cored beyond LRM/Gauss range. X-COM got it right when they give AI superior vision which hides much of AI's deficiencies while keeping the players on the edge of their seat. Too bad no turn based game did that again in the name of 'balance'.
Don't forget the whole extra turn they get to hide once spotted. Still XCOM2 long war mod is one of the best gaming experiences for turn based relaxed tactics game.
I think this is a really great idea. Why does an expansion that focuses on the Clans have to deal with balance vs. the Inner Sphere at all? MechWarrior 2 never faced a Clan vs. IS balance issue (and was arguably the greatest BattleTech/MechWarrior game of all time) because it focused on the Refusal War (granted, the BattleMaster did make one appearance). Something similar could be done here: you start the game doing your Trial of Position (a real trial, one of your 'mechs vs. three others in succession) to snag a snazzy new Clan rank. Then you set out and travel the Clan Homeworlds challenging other warriors for gene stocks, new 'mech parts, or just plain old glory. Point of the game is to earn a bloodname, and maybe the last mission is the discovery of Outbound Light or something.
Alternatively, it could just be the damn Refusal War again! I wouldn't mind! Let players choose between Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon and fight it out in the occupation zones and nice slices of Lyran and Rasalhague space (what's left of it, that is). A similar set-up as that described above could satisfy the non-story missions (including some missions having you face off against Inner Sphere surats in vast numbers), otherwise a nice 12-14 mission campaign can follow the course of the war for each side.
Because, honestly, the current setup -- in which you take a lance of four 'mechs against, typically, ~8 other 'mechs and supporting vehicles -- is basically already like fighting as the Clans. (Did everyone like the mission where you escape the Castle Brian in four Star League-era 'Mechs? It would be like that, only more.) An expansion from the Clan perspective is easily within HBS's reach.
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