Dear HBS,
as you are aware, I am running a gaming league based on Battletech multi player.
As such, experience has proven, that there are circumstances, where the given ini system produces games with pre defined winner, which is quite awful for tournament and league play.
For example, in some of our drops, one party has to run with an incomplete lance. This produces a scenario, where the side with the lesser Mechs, not only has less Mechs on the field, but also plays against ini in every single turn.
Unless your opponent is a complete fail, you simply cannot win such encounters. You can consider yourself lucky, if you manage to kill one of the opponent Mechs.
Also, after watching a lot of our league play streams and records, it is apparent that HBS:BATTLETECH has one and only one viable tactic in Multi Player games: Kiting.
Given the profess of the player, it decides the game in almost all cases.
In fact, most of the new players who are inexperienced, leave multi player after loosing streaks without ever having realised that they did not loose on the map, but in lance Mech composition and pilot choice.
While such things are and should be important, they should not be game deciding from the start. But they are, thanks to the ini system.
The few cases, where (for example) a rush and brawl is successful, can be counted on one hand over the course of month's of league play.
So here comes the request for an MP feature:
Have a toggle on of switch for an ini dice, which will dice all Mechs on the field for which ini phase they will use in a turn. Along with the Reserve button, this still gives flexibility and a mighty tool for the experienced players. Yet, it disables ini as game deciding factor from turn 1 and will hopefully end the boring kite wars.
as you are aware, I am running a gaming league based on Battletech multi player.
As such, experience has proven, that there are circumstances, where the given ini system produces games with pre defined winner, which is quite awful for tournament and league play.
For example, in some of our drops, one party has to run with an incomplete lance. This produces a scenario, where the side with the lesser Mechs, not only has less Mechs on the field, but also plays against ini in every single turn.
Unless your opponent is a complete fail, you simply cannot win such encounters. You can consider yourself lucky, if you manage to kill one of the opponent Mechs.
Also, after watching a lot of our league play streams and records, it is apparent that HBS:BATTLETECH has one and only one viable tactic in Multi Player games: Kiting.
Given the profess of the player, it decides the game in almost all cases.
In fact, most of the new players who are inexperienced, leave multi player after loosing streaks without ever having realised that they did not loose on the map, but in lance Mech composition and pilot choice.
While such things are and should be important, they should not be game deciding from the start. But they are, thanks to the ini system.
The few cases, where (for example) a rush and brawl is successful, can be counted on one hand over the course of month's of league play.
So here comes the request for an MP feature:
Have a toggle on of switch for an ini dice, which will dice all Mechs on the field for which ini phase they will use in a turn. Along with the Reserve button, this still gives flexibility and a mighty tool for the experienced players. Yet, it disables ini as game deciding factor from turn 1 and will hopefully end the boring kite wars.