The Nuts & Bolts of Heavy Metal, Part Three: Refresh
Hello again, ‘MechFriends! Ryan Burrell, Lead Designer of BATTLETECH: Heavy Metal here. I hope you've all been enjoying Heavy Metal so far. For the last part of my dev diary series, I want to talk about the design work that’s gone into the existing game as part of the free 1.8 update to refresh and improve things.
For context, you should check out my previous post about the planning involved in Heavy Metal and how we defined its design space: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...the-nuts-bolts-of-heavy-metal-part-1.1283539/
I also wrote an in-depth breakdown of the thinking behind each new addition in Heavy Metal, and you can check that out here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...the-nuts-bolts-of-heavy-metal-part-2.1285041/
A huge thanks goes to Andrew McIntosh for editing these posts for both length and clarity!
Ripple Effects
Any time something new is added to a game, it’s like adding a drop of dye to a bucket of colored water. Too few drops doesn’t change the color at all, while too many colors create a muddy, obscuring brown. Generally, the best approach is to pick a color that enhances the existing pool and add a healthy amount of it, causing the water to become deeper or more saturated in its expression.
In my first post I went into detail about the creation of pillars by which we measured our Heavy Metal design work, and how we also defined target audiences to guide our approach. The work in Heavy Metal is intended to be a vibrant splash of color to invigorate the existing game, but these goals weren’t applied only to our new work. Our new color informed substantial updates to the existing game which are intended to enhance the experience for all players.
Building a Shopping List
A common bit of player feedback since 1.0 release is how awesome it feels to find better gear in stores, but also how frustrating it can be to track down because it’s so random and extremely sparse. There are many items in the game that have been functionally absent because the chances of finding them have been staggeringly low. A passion project for me in this update was to address those challenges as part of the goal of making players feel more powerful. This would also work to provide better access to new toys (even if those toys have been in the game for some time).
This was no small task: our stores operate via a fairly convoluted loot system with weighting tables. This was compounded by having few “buckets” for items to be sorted in, yielding an exceedingly small chance that any given item would appear in a star system’s shop. To fix this, I intended to add new, exclusive loot tables that would reliably provide more specific types of gear (lasers, autocannons, gyros, LosTech, etc). I then wanted to make certain these were dispersed across our star systems, tied to the tagging of a planet’s main industry (manufacturing, mining, battlefield wreckage, and so on.)
Making any sort of adjustment to this would be a massive drop into the BATTLETECH bucket, so I had to be extra certain I knew what color I was using. My first step was to create a new series of loot tables to use in stores that were exclusive to a thematic category of gear. For example, I made a set of tables that contained only gyros and arm/leg actuators with the intent that a planet tagged as a “battlefield” would always generate items for purchase only from its list.
I’m attaching a PDF print of my planning matrix for this and the subsequent loot tables if anyone is curious about a look under the hood (also useful for modding!) : https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/515807/Stores_Heavy-Metal.pdf
Fun Fact: I was a web developer before I starting working in games. To approach the task of overhauling the tagging and store assignment, I made myself a tool using a combination of Python and JavaScript set up on a local webserver. This mini-site ran through all the JSON files for our star systems and then displayed them in a map similar to the one shown in-game. This local map had iconography to reflect the specific tagging of planets and the ability to re-tag them easily.
Here are some screenshots I took that show the progression of my editing process. You should be able to click on them and expand to the full size of what the page spit out:
It’s important to note that all the work above is “just” in regards to the underlying data that powers the BATTLETECH economy. Planets have a lot of tags on them beyond just their industry, so more work would be required to surface these updates to the player: that’s where the new store filter dropdown came in. Creating a new filter on the navigation screen with a tooltip now gives players the ability to understand what these store types mean and to seek them out specifically.
On the right: the new store filter dropdown for the star map.
Newfound LosTech
Another colorful drop I wanted to add in was a rebalancing of the LosTech weapons that have been present in previous updates. We’ve received feedback over time that LosTech feels underwhelming compared to ++ versions of standard tech weapons. Given the store overhaul above and that finding existing LosTech is more reliable (due to storyline outcomes from the Heavy Metal flashpoint campaign), that feeling would be even more pronounced in a post-1.8 world.
My goal was to make the baseline LosTech gear as powerful as the ++ versions of standard tech, and to grow from there via ++ versions (yes, they do exist!). LosTech is incredibly expensive, so if a player buys it they should definitely feel it’s worth the cost. To this end, every piece of pre-existing LosTech — ER Lasers, Pulse Lasers, ER PPCs, and the Gauss Rifle — has received a re-tuning of some of their attributes to make them feel as powerful as they are expensive.
In a way, this is a soft addition of a brand new line of weapons since they now behave differently and were previously almost non-existent.
In Conclusion
Thanks for reading! If you’ve managed to make it through all three of my posts, you’re extra special and I applaud your fortitude. I hope these posts have conveyed the amount of thought and reasoning that we’ve put into the Heavy Metal release and the 1.8 update. Just as importantly, I hope you’ve been given a bit of understanding as to why and how we approach our work and the things we were trying to achieve in bringing new experiences to you.
We're excited for everyone that's got their hands on this update so far, and are excited to hear your feedback and your stories from the battlefield.
O7, MechWarriors!
- Ryan (RedMenace)
Hello again, ‘MechFriends! Ryan Burrell, Lead Designer of BATTLETECH: Heavy Metal here. I hope you've all been enjoying Heavy Metal so far. For the last part of my dev diary series, I want to talk about the design work that’s gone into the existing game as part of the free 1.8 update to refresh and improve things.
For context, you should check out my previous post about the planning involved in Heavy Metal and how we defined its design space: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...the-nuts-bolts-of-heavy-metal-part-1.1283539/
I also wrote an in-depth breakdown of the thinking behind each new addition in Heavy Metal, and you can check that out here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...the-nuts-bolts-of-heavy-metal-part-2.1285041/
A huge thanks goes to Andrew McIntosh for editing these posts for both length and clarity!
Ripple Effects
Any time something new is added to a game, it’s like adding a drop of dye to a bucket of colored water. Too few drops doesn’t change the color at all, while too many colors create a muddy, obscuring brown. Generally, the best approach is to pick a color that enhances the existing pool and add a healthy amount of it, causing the water to become deeper or more saturated in its expression.
In my first post I went into detail about the creation of pillars by which we measured our Heavy Metal design work, and how we also defined target audiences to guide our approach. The work in Heavy Metal is intended to be a vibrant splash of color to invigorate the existing game, but these goals weren’t applied only to our new work. Our new color informed substantial updates to the existing game which are intended to enhance the experience for all players.
Building a Shopping List
A common bit of player feedback since 1.0 release is how awesome it feels to find better gear in stores, but also how frustrating it can be to track down because it’s so random and extremely sparse. There are many items in the game that have been functionally absent because the chances of finding them have been staggeringly low. A passion project for me in this update was to address those challenges as part of the goal of making players feel more powerful. This would also work to provide better access to new toys (even if those toys have been in the game for some time).
This was no small task: our stores operate via a fairly convoluted loot system with weighting tables. This was compounded by having few “buckets” for items to be sorted in, yielding an exceedingly small chance that any given item would appear in a star system’s shop. To fix this, I intended to add new, exclusive loot tables that would reliably provide more specific types of gear (lasers, autocannons, gyros, LosTech, etc). I then wanted to make certain these were dispersed across our star systems, tied to the tagging of a planet’s main industry (manufacturing, mining, battlefield wreckage, and so on.)
Making any sort of adjustment to this would be a massive drop into the BATTLETECH bucket, so I had to be extra certain I knew what color I was using. My first step was to create a new series of loot tables to use in stores that were exclusive to a thematic category of gear. For example, I made a set of tables that contained only gyros and arm/leg actuators with the intent that a planet tagged as a “battlefield” would always generate items for purchase only from its list.
I’m attaching a PDF print of my planning matrix for this and the subsequent loot tables if anyone is curious about a look under the hood (also useful for modding!) : https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/515807/Stores_Heavy-Metal.pdf
Fun Fact: I was a web developer before I starting working in games. To approach the task of overhauling the tagging and store assignment, I made myself a tool using a combination of Python and JavaScript set up on a local webserver. This mini-site ran through all the JSON files for our star systems and then displayed them in a map similar to the one shown in-game. This local map had iconography to reflect the specific tagging of planets and the ability to re-tag them easily.
Here are some screenshots I took that show the progression of my editing process. You should be able to click on them and expand to the full size of what the page spit out:
Start: The planets and tags present in pre-1.8 BATTLETECH.
Midway: Planets now tagged with broader industry types and more even distribution.
Finish: Last distribution tweaks and an added legend for QA debugging.
Console output showing the total assignments.
Finish: Last distribution tweaks and an added legend for QA debugging.
Console output showing the total assignments.
It’s important to note that all the work above is “just” in regards to the underlying data that powers the BATTLETECH economy. Planets have a lot of tags on them beyond just their industry, so more work would be required to surface these updates to the player: that’s where the new store filter dropdown came in. Creating a new filter on the navigation screen with a tooltip now gives players the ability to understand what these store types mean and to seek them out specifically.
On the right: the new store filter dropdown for the star map.
Newfound LosTech
Another colorful drop I wanted to add in was a rebalancing of the LosTech weapons that have been present in previous updates. We’ve received feedback over time that LosTech feels underwhelming compared to ++ versions of standard tech weapons. Given the store overhaul above and that finding existing LosTech is more reliable (due to storyline outcomes from the Heavy Metal flashpoint campaign), that feeling would be even more pronounced in a post-1.8 world.
My goal was to make the baseline LosTech gear as powerful as the ++ versions of standard tech, and to grow from there via ++ versions (yes, they do exist!). LosTech is incredibly expensive, so if a player buys it they should definitely feel it’s worth the cost. To this end, every piece of pre-existing LosTech — ER Lasers, Pulse Lasers, ER PPCs, and the Gauss Rifle — has received a re-tuning of some of their attributes to make them feel as powerful as they are expensive.
In a way, this is a soft addition of a brand new line of weapons since they now behave differently and were previously almost non-existent.
In Conclusion
Thanks for reading! If you’ve managed to make it through all three of my posts, you’re extra special and I applaud your fortitude. I hope these posts have conveyed the amount of thought and reasoning that we’ve put into the Heavy Metal release and the 1.8 update. Just as importantly, I hope you’ve been given a bit of understanding as to why and how we approach our work and the things we were trying to achieve in bringing new experiences to you.
We're excited for everyone that's got their hands on this update so far, and are excited to hear your feedback and your stories from the battlefield.
O7, MechWarriors!
- Ryan (RedMenace)
