Reputation is now just silly.

[Er1kTheRed]

I held off on mentioning this because I was hoping it would be swatted immediately post-1.3, but since this is apparently not the case I'll bring it up. The reputation system has turned into one of those gameplay elements where in attempts to balance it / make it more relevant has made it completely absurd instead. Having factions get stupidly annoyed by a mercenary company having ridiculous amounts of success against them makes sense. Having them refuse to deal with that company is mind-blowing lunacy (especially on lunar missions). The obvious solution for them - if they have an IQ higher than their shoe size - is to go out of their way to hire that company more often. The result should be bidding up your services, not a toddler's temper tantrum boycott. Because otherwise your only other alternative as a responsible mercenary company owner is to keep smearing their mechs all over various planets for their enemies, since, gee, only their enemies want to hire you.

Look at it this way - if you're running an empire or a pirate organization, your life is filled with crazy and annoying problems. When you can easily solve a major one with a quick and simple application of cold, hard, cash - while simultaneously smiting your enemies instead of them smiting you - that's just an easy call. C'mon devs... I know this is sci-fi fantasy universe, but one would think that the most basic logic still applies.

 

[mjbroekman]

Or you just hire other mercenary companies to eliminate them.

 

[Er1kTheRed]

Or you just hire other mercenary companies to eliminate them.

If it were that straightforward then they wouldn't have the continuous defeat problem.
They drop 400 tons on me, they lose. They drop 800 tons on me, they still lose. Cold, hard C-Bills in my pocket solves this problem quickly and reliably.

 

[mjbroekman]

What, so instead they should like you because you hurt them? They'll still hire you, if you find the jobs on the low-skull systems, but you make it sound like they should reward you for kicking the crap out of them. That makes no sense at all.

 

[Er1kTheRed]

What, so instead they should like you because you hurt them? They'll still hire you, if you find the jobs on the low-skull systems, but you make it sound like they should reward you for kicking the crap out of them. That makes no sense at all.

It's because you're looking at it from an emotional / ego perspective and not from a problem-solving perspective. No offense, but people who deal with problems emotionally generally only get into power through heredity or some other form of nepotism and they don't tend to last very long. From a logical cost/benefit perspective, yes, rewarding you for kicking the crap out of them gets both parties a better overall result. Should they get over themselves and start winning, or should they keep losing so that they can cling bitterly to their precious anger issues?

Heh, I suppose that an interesting gameplay mechanism would be that they get overthrown if they lose too often, which would reset your reputation.

 

[mjbroekman]

people who deal with problems emotionally generally only get into power through heredity or some other form of nepotism

You mean like every ruler in the Inner Sphere? Every 'House' in BattleTech is a giant hereditary kingdom. There may be trappings of a republic or democracy, but every single House has "a ruling family. The BattleTech universe is ALL ABOUT ego.

The other thing you're missing is that the reputation is really only with the contracting agent, not the entire House. Rarely are you ever talking to the House ruler. At which point, if you're looking for someone to do a job and you have a choice of hiring someone that has worked for you or hiring someone that consistently works against you, why would you take the one that works against you? You wouldn't...at least not for the high value job. Maybe you have some garbage trucks that need escorting for that person to "prove" they will work reliably for you.

The problem is that the difficulty level (skulls) of contracts has a floor equal to the skull rating of the systems. What needs to change is that the skull rating (plus variance) should be the ceiling and there should be NO floor. When contracts are generated at the top skull rating available in the system, any contracts that can't be taken because of reputation should be discarded and new contracts should be generated 1 difficulty level lower (half a skull). That should repeat until there are 'enough' contracts in the list or some number of iterations were done. Maybe you try it 3 additional times (so you end up with contracts as much as 1.5 skulls BELOW the system difficulty) and then give up with whatever contracts you have. This way, you are always populating with the maximum difficulty first and then resorting to scutwork if there aren't enough 'real' contracts.

 

[Havamal]

Greetings Mechwarriors,

Let us please avoid friction when inevitably contradicted with an alternative perspective.

For example;
Please avoid hyperbole, snark, flamebait, and representing opinions as facts
Please post topically towards discussion and not at others personally.
Please post with civility and respect even and especially in critique and disagreement.

Please remember to leave room to agree to disagree.

Thank you

 

[DarkSpade]

I can see both sides. On one hand, yea, if some merc unit is regularly kicking my butt I'm going to develop some bad feelings toward them. On the other hand, if they're good enough to defeat me regularly, maybe they're someone I want on my side. Consider the Combine getting their face beat in by Davion employed Wolf's Dragoons for decades. Soon as the Dragoon contract was up the merc hating Combine dropped a higher offer in their lap immediately.


In either case, I do think the amount of negative rep you get for missions is a little extreme. Really it should depend more on the mission type. Like a straight up battle should only give half as much negative rep as it gives positive while an assassinate mission may actually give more.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Contracting and Reputation have a lot of potential for refinement, layered depth and additional immersion.

I'll be curious to see how these facets of BATTLETECH evolve through both the current Season Pass and the "Major Motion Picture" expamsions to come. : )

 

[JibSail]

Actually it's all about trust.

Break trust, lose rep.

Earn trust, gain rep.

The emotional and logical argument doesn't apply on a 1 to 1 basis when trust is involved. You end up with a silly sliding scale of how likely it is that this merc will leak info, betray me, and or complete the objectives.

Rep system makes sense, thematically.

 

[David A.]

The interaction between the black market and pirates is a problem.

The rep system made me stop doing do anti-pirate missions. The problem is these are the most plentiful mission type, so I have to travel a lot. It makes the game less enjoyable.

 

[Donvale]

The interaction between the black market and pirates is a problem.

The rep system made me stop doing do anti-pirate missions. The problem is these are the most plentiful mission type, so I have to travel a lot. It makes the game less enjoyable.

It also creates the totally unrealistic premise that the pirates are somehow a single entity when in reality they are almost certainly smaller groups of unrelated people who's only commonality is the fact they live outside the law.

 

[DocDesastro]

I strongly agree with the OP's points. The more deadly a merc company is, the more interesting it should become to hire for a faction. Yes, you could happen to hit a certain faction very often, but frankly...why hate the hammer and not the hand swinging it? If you work for Marik against Liao, then Liao is certainly sure about Marik being the aggressor and you just an asset to fulfill their commands. If you do your job well, you will earn a reputation of being reliable and getting the job done. This will make you interesting for EVERYONE. If you ALLY with a faction still, you just won't get contracts from your enemies. Period. Overall mechwarrior experience, equipment rating and mechs available should have an impact on getting better contracts. The factions could keep track of how often have done a good job for them and when did you betray them.

On the other hand, doing jobs for pirates should hit your reputation and MRB rating since you are doing pirating. Black market access could come from other sources like having mechwarriors with the criminal or pirate background. Those can add up and contribute to the chance of getting access. I just cannot see how to handle the different fees for the pirates liking you or not.
Addendum: It is the LOCAL pirates - so...hitting those will upset every other pirate in the galaxy? Nonsense! Sometimes there are rivalries between pirates themselves.

 

[scJazz]

A couple of points...
I think Prussian Havoc said it best right here.

Contracting and Reputation have a lot of potential for refinement, layered depth and additional immersion.

We do need to keep in mind that the Reputation System in 1.3 is better than what we started with in 1.0. There is room for improvement but first, we must remember that there has been an improvement already. This is in keeping with HBS's notable commitment to listening to feedback.

Reputation is an abstracted gameplay element which is another thing to keep in mind. Are there going to be many different Pirate groups? Yes. Does that mean that every single one should be modeled? No, probably not. Is it easy to imagine there being an informal "Pirate Council" or even sharing of non-critical information between the various Pirate Bands? Yeah, it is pretty easy to imagine. All throughout history criminals have shared information. The Mafia, the Tongs, the Yakuza, etc all have one thing in common, they are all loosely associated groups of criminals. They frequently suffer from internal friction but they will all share information regarding their friends and enemies. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot but they do share internally and externally i.e. Mafia Group A with Yakuza Group B. So no, the idea of having one single Reputation for "Pirates" doesn't strike me as odd both in terms of Game Design and History.

It might be worthy to remove all MRB rating consideration from contracts for Pirates. It does make sense. However, that kind of screws up Career Modes scoring system and really... is it that big of a deal at all? Nope.

Finally, does it make sense that there is a penalty for working against a faction so often that they end up despising you? Yeah, it does. It is human nature after all. Humanity doesn't do purely rational thinking very well. Even the purely rational scientists working on purely rational research get annoyed with each other. So the idea that having beaten the bejeezus out of Faction X's forces, causing untold numbers of casualties, makes them hate you and not want to work with you on anything important makes absolutely perfect sense. Also, keep in mind that the current system is not zero-sum. It is possible to keep everyone happy. It is hard as hell but it is possible.

This makes me wonder if some of the complaints about the current system aren't just griping about how difficult it is to maintain balance.

But again, I will go back to what @Prussian Havoc said... is there room for improvement, yeah. Can we expect some improvement in the future... given HBS's record... I suspect we will.

 

[Venomhide]

On the one hand, OP, you'd appreciate the shrewdness of Liao's Mandrissa Anita Cho of Carver V, who hired the mercenary unit that thrashed her son's warriors under the employ of Steiner forces because of how efficient they were while understanding that as a mercenary, none of it was at all personal.

On the other hand, for every Anita Cho in the House structure of the Inner Sphere, there are dozens more who would pick a fight at the barest sleight, who would call for the elimination of a rival for a mere insult, and who would wage war on far less than even a simple contract. These leaders are TERRIBLY egotistical, unhinged even, and the rep system actually makes a lot of sense because of it.

 

[Timaeus]

On the one hand, OP, you'd appreciate the shrewdness of Liao's Mandrissa Anita Cho of Carver V, who hired the mercenary unit that thrashed her son's warriors under the employ of Steiner forces because of how efficient they were while understanding that as a mercenary, none of it was at all personal.

I dunno, you get betrayed by Liao to Steiner later.

 

[Venomhide]

I dunno, you get betrayed by Liao to Steiner later.

Well, I was gonna avoid that spoiler (dunno why, the game is ancient now), but yes, you get betrayed... just further showcasing how emotional and egotistical these figures can be. Though to be fair, Col. Renard wasn't the most stable guy to begin with and violated Liao sovereignty on a whim, and Mandrissa Cho wasn't the one to orchestrate any betrayal; her idiot son was the one to screw everything up and she kinda had a reason to get upset when you killed her only son and heir, even if it was only in self-defense.

 

[Draconislupus]

As an example of what the original poster was saying in the lore.

Why do you think the Wolf's Dragoons were so highly sought after?

The second house that hired them was the house that they had been tearing up for the past 5 years. House Liao had no problem hiring them and I bet outbid the other houses. The only stipulation was that they could not be used against House Davion since that was the employer that they had just left.

So it sounds like since they did really well against House Liao House Liao outbid everyone else to get their business.

But for a game play aspect I can see using it for control and saying that the "offended" house wouldn't be willing to give them the highest priority missions. But to say that they wouldn't deal with them is extreme.

As for in the game I have a problem that now that I have completed the game and I have 3 houses mad at me I can't find any 2 1/2 skull missions for them to start repairing the reputation. I would deal with the lower pay to be able to start repairing the reputation. As it is I have half of the map that is totally useless to me now.

Even one 2 1/2 skull mission for each in the empty zone and then have to travel would be do able, expensive but do able. But absolutely no missions below 3 is absurd.

And why can't we even deal with the Black Market in those zones? I have a 100 with the pirates and they won't deal with me?

 

[Draconislupus]

And just so you know my MRC score is 883. So 4 star.

And why is it I can't access the Restoration faction store?

 

[Venomhide]

Keep in mind that Wolf's Dragoons, even from the outset, was a celebrity/mythical merc outfit because of their mysteriousness and their 'mechs, so they get a lot more attention that most any other merc unit. In-game we're meant to be a competent but relatively small and only marginally-significant merc unit to the Great Houses, as referenced by your own crew's reactions to story missions (e.g., I use Assault 'mech chassis as currency but Yang was offended that I might offer a quarter-million c-bills to sate a spurned merc unit in place of fighting them, not because he wanted to fight but because of the money).

While my own merc unit could probably stand toe-to-toe with Wolf's Dragoons even with their SL-era tech, in-story we're not meant to be quite that prestigious outside of the Aurigan Reach.

As to the last half of your comment, I'm with you there; I can't post it now, but in my travels all the other missions and flashpoints had me predominantly smash Capellan interests to the point that I'm utterly loathed by them. I can't access any planet I've yet come across. Someone suggested I lower the difficulty to help spawn some lower-rated contracts to boost my rep back up, but I haven't seen much change yet in contracts.

And why can't we even deal with the Black Market in those zones? I have a 100 with the pirates and they won't deal with me?

Now this is interesting because I can still access the BM stores in Liao space despite being loathed by both Liao and the pirates. I can't remember what my MRB rating is, but the bar is full so maybe that has something to do with it or maybe it doesn't, but I find it odd that you've paid your BM membership and can't use them.