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dreadmojo posted:Kiva, is there a story behind why the mechbay was such a pain to change?
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Oct 20, 2018 12:21
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Just wanted to say thanks for all the fit tips! I feel pretty unstoppable now in early/mid-game. Now I just have to fix all my pilot skills that I screwed up early on. Some chumps gonna get DISMISSED. Might just wait until after flashpoint to see what the changes are, though. I love talking about this game, I just need to convince more of my friends to buy it.
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Oct 20, 2018 17:08
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Does a Nov 27th release mean you all are going to crunch through Thanksgiving? 
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Oct 20, 2018 17:29
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I would assume it's done before that but are delaying the release, till after thanksgiving, so their full team is available for support if anything goes wrong with it
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Oct 20, 2018 18:08
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I guess that makes more sense than working through the holiday. If that's true then good on HBS. With all the horror stories you hear I assumed the worst.
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Oct 20, 2018 18:27
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Klyith posted:OTOH I mentioned upthread that I don't like the sacrificial arms method of protection by intentionally taking side hits. Organ Fiend posted:Honestly, I've always thought that the "sacrificial arms" method (i.e. the one where you put all of your guns on one side of the mech) was a bad idea in BATTLETECH, and for that matter in the mechwarrior games as well. In BATTLETECH it means you just make it easier for your enemy to side-torso you. In mechwarror games, it just makes your mech easier to disable. It also makes your mech easier to kill once you start fighting opponents who know that power of side-torsoing mechs with favorable geometry. Cyrano4747 posted:It has the added problem in battletech of adding to your repair times and repair costs. Great, your heavy lost it's "ablative" arm and you're not out any weapons, but now you need to refit it in the Argo for a month and it's not available for the next contract. That's ignoring the repair costs. Intentionally taking side hits is for the most part dumb because it significantly increases leg hit chance (legs are important!), but ablative arms and torsos are good because it's straight up hits that just don't matter. (Note: I said for the most part. There are situations where it's an obvious call, like one leg being really beat up while the other side is fresh, from taking frontal distribution fire). Let's ignore legs, center torso and the head, since those are always mission critical, and so a mech is simplified to 4 sections: RA RT LT LA. For the sake of argument also assume equal hit chance between those. Say you miss your melee attack against a Demolisher, boom you eat an AC20 shot for your troubles. That's a hit that's pushing a section into structure (and liable to take crits), or possibly outright blowing it up in the case of arms. If you put all your weapons and components in say the LT like in a missile CN9-A, then that's a 75% chance that the hit you just took just doesn't matter. You don't care much. Sure it made the rest of the chassis more vulnerable by blowing through all that HP, and subsequent hits will start going for the adjacent sections, but you're not liable to randomly lose your important LT or its contents just yet so you can go and keep on trucking with the mission. That is the ablative components advantage. "But Conspirationist!" I can hear you say. "If you take the hit on that LT then ALL your precious internals will be exposed. You'll have to retreat! OTOH, if you distribute your gear more evenly, then you can peel off an arm or a torso, and still keep on fighting with only some risk  "And you'd be correct, but... do you really want to do that? Because as you start collecting the good rare equipment variants like the (+4 dmg +5 acc) SRM6++, or the (+10 dmg +3 acc) LL+++, do you really want to put them on the line for a lovely contract? If one of those components is exposed, I say that mech is better off hanging back, maybe help take shots against things it won't take return fire from, and that's that. Doesn't matter if it's just 1 or 3 weapons in that case, you pull it back, because gently caress Malik they don't pay you enough for this poo poo. It makes sense when that's not really a consideration, like early in the SP game when you don't really have rare variants, or in skirms where the mechs exist only for the drop and are going to get beat the gently caress up by an equivalent opfor, but if as you approach the midgame you're losing good variant equipment left and right then you're just either playing badly, or doing so well it doesn't even matter. Try upping the difficulty. On a related note, since it was brought up by one of those posts, replacing empty arms and torsos is actually quite swift - just ~4 days each with middling tech upgrades, since you are ignoring the mounting costs which are usually the significant time budget of repair & replacements. Given that you're usually going to spend 2 weeks traveling between systems for the next contract, that's an easily absorbed cost. Keep a single spare mech. The associated C-Bill costs are likewise really low. This all comes from first-hand experience playing at max diff once that got introduced. 8 parts required made assembling good chassis a rare event, so I was rocking 4~4.5 skull missions on mediums for a long while, and I only ever had to call it quits on a mission once. And let me tell you: ablative HP for the important bits works excellent when every loss is a real hit, so there's no way it's somehow less effective at keeping you afloat in less punishing economic settings. I never had multiple lances - at most I had a spare mech or two. I had to hunt down and buy all my rare poo poo! Things took so long to build up, every pilot, every mech, every rare component was a cherished special snowflake. So, yeah, considering I build for brawling and dislike ez pz grind, all my combats were brutal affairs that have given me some very firm opinions on what it means to fight effectively while safeguarding your important assets. Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Oct 20, 2018 |
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Oct 20, 2018 18:34
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The flip side of that is look at Paradox's Stellaris patch a few patches ago. I forget the exact issue but they had a really, really bad bug that got through and get released with a patch, but they released it the day before their staff went off for a three day weekend or something. I forget the details, but the gist was the bug was spotted in almost immediately by people who patched and hosed up games over a weekend because there was no one in the office to issue a hotfix.
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Oct 20, 2018 18:49
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I haven't had much time to play this game since it game out despite ordering from the kickstarter and now I see people talking about mods which I didn't even know was a thing. Are there any must have quality of life mods I should be getting?
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Oct 20, 2018 20:27
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CampingCarl posted:I haven't had much time to play this game since it game out despite ordering from the kickstarter and now I see people talking about mods which I didn't even know was a thing. Are there any must have quality of life mods I should be getting? Here are the instructions for getting the mod loader set up. And here are some QOL mods: Klyith posted:Awesome mods for stock play: Also: Skip intro - jumps through the intro splash screens real quick
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Oct 20, 2018 21:18
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I do wish there was something to do with the hundreds of thousands of unspent xp - like a "legendary skill" you could get at something like 500k xp tied to the pilot's main skill branch concentration.
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Oct 20, 2018 23:23
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I imagine the idea of a post-Thanksgiving release is helped by the fact that Paradox will probably be QA testing it during that time, and since they're Swedish, they don't care about Thanksgiving.
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Oct 20, 2018 23:36
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Sky Shadowing posted:I imagine the idea of a post-Thanksgiving release is helped by the fact that Paradox will probably be QA testing it during that time, and since they're Swedish, they don't care about Thanksgiving. Even tho paradox owns HBS now, I doubt HBS is on a swedish schedule.
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Oct 20, 2018 23:44
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BIG HEADLINE posted:I do wish there was something to do with the hundreds of thousands of unspent xp - like a "legendary skill" you could get at something like 500k xp tied to the pilot's main skill branch concentration.
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Oct 20, 2018 23:46
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isildur posted:Hmmm. That's reasonable. Not necessarily a legendary skill, but I honestly didn't even think about xp accumulation at 10/10/10/10. I'll bring it up to the team and see what we come up with. maybe they could spend some time in a "teaching" role distributing unspent XP to rookies and the like
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Oct 20, 2018 23:50
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Just stop maxed out pilots from gaining XP, but let the overall amount of XP given for a mission stay the same, so levelling a rookie in the endgame goes 4 times faster.
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Oct 20, 2018 23:56
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That’s good and all but can I just be able to rearrange my mechs in the bay without having to drop them in and out of storage? Also in the end game where are floating tons of cash if you could “order” the purchase of rare weapons, or mechs built to certain specifications for a premium price. This cuts down on farming missions for that last piece of a mech of traveling the map looking for a +++
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Oct 21, 2018 00:03
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RestRoomLiterature- posted:That’s good and all but can I just be able to rearrange my mechs in the bay without having to drop them in and out of storage? Amechwarrior posted:https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/preview-of-the-free-1-3-update-localization-beta-and-linux-release.1124593/
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Oct 21, 2018 00:07
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RestRoomLiterature- posted:That’s good and all but can I just be able to rearrange my mechs in the bay without having to drop them in and out of storage? In the next patch 
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Oct 21, 2018 00:07
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I’ll leave it up because I have to own not looking at the patch notes. Thanks for the heads up.
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Oct 21, 2018 00:36
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isildur posted:Hmmm. That's reasonable. Not necessarily a legendary skill, but I honestly didn't even think about xp accumulation at 10/10/10/10. I'll bring it up to the team and see what we come up with. Alternately, how about mechwarriors occasionally just retire? A maxed out pilot is getting paid a fortune, surely they'd like to spend it? I've looked through the event files and I was struck by how most of the really bad stuff like pilots quitting is all when you have low morale. Which thematically makes sense, but also is kinda kicking people when they're already down. I was kinda thinking there's a missed opportunity for events on the other end of the scale -- just because morale is high and the crew is happy doesn't have to make the "bad" events stop. But they'd feel totally different because the bad part is just the cold gameplay and the story you're experiencing is happy. I'm imagining an event where Glitch comes in and says she's retiring to go start a family, don't worry commander you'll be fine, I know you've got this! How awesome would that be?
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Oct 21, 2018 03:20
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yes it'd be  awesome to lose a 10/10/10/10 pilot due to RNG just deciding that event comes up instead of something in player control like a tactical mistake(no)
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Oct 21, 2018 03:25
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Psion posted:yes it'd be Yeah, that would just be frustrating bullshit.
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Oct 21, 2018 03:27
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mercs in the lore seem to fight until they die one way or the other anyway
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Oct 21, 2018 03:29
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Psion posted:yes it'd be I'm sure there's a large contingent of players who would check a "no events" box if it was available. though lol if you think a 1% dice roll is in your control. I've always been amazed at how people who like military tactics games always profess this idea of player control, as if perfect control was a thing that anyone has ever had in combat. Pattonesque posted:mercs in the lore seem to fight until they die one way or the other anyway fair enough. the wolves were clanners with a ridiculous honor culture, what were the normal mercs' reasons for being successful enough to buy a small planet but never hanging up their spurs? though speaking of which, does anyone else think the Clans would be a whole lot more awesome if they really were like Mongols, rather than just a surface veneer of Khan thematics over what is actually just Klingons? None of this stupid honor stuff, just  Genghis Khan badass motherfuckers. The actual mongols conquered half the world with the same disparity of population as IS vs Clans, and they didn't have no forgotten technology. Just ferocity, political brilliance, and tactical wits that people were still learning from & re-discovering in the 20th century.
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Oct 21, 2018 04:07
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Klyith posted:
I'm just thinking of the number of like, 90-year-olds who die in the cockpit and it seems to be v. high all things considered
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Oct 21, 2018 04:09
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Klyith posted:fair enough. the wolves were clanners with a ridiculous honor culture, what were the normal mercs' reasons for being successful enough to buy a small planet but never hanging up their spurs? If I had a job that let me punch people with giant robots I don't think you could ever get me to retire.
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Oct 21, 2018 04:14
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Klyith posted:I'm sure there's a large contingent of players who would check a "no events" box if it was available. The exact probability is less important than the illusion of control or choice. Getting hosed by a lucky shot in a battle is one thing, but rng suddenly deleting an asset outside of the normal gameplay loop (and this presumes, as is the case here, that being constantly rng-hosed is not an intentional part of said gameplay design as it may be in other games) is just utterly miserable. Just because having to deal with random merc retirements is realistic doesn't mean it's anything close to what most players actually want to play and that's the most important thing. And besides, if you want that kind of merc company management minutae, with a constant (and fairly regular) threat of mercs cashing out and bailing on your company, there's always mekhq.
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Oct 21, 2018 04:25
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Klyith posted:I'm imagining an event where Glitch comes in and says she's retiring to go start a family, don't worry commander you'll be fine, I know you've got this! How awesome would that be? gently caress no
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Oct 21, 2018 04:35
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Xarbala posted:The exact probability is less important than the illusion of control or choice. Getting hosed by a lucky shot in a battle is one thing, but rng suddenly deleting an asset outside of the normal gameplay loop (and this presumes, as is the case here, that being constantly rng-hosed is not an intentional part of said gameplay design as it may be in other games) is just utterly miserable. The perspective I'm coming from is that events are part of the game's story. Yeah they're randomized... but many have chains or only happen once, there's a clear authorial intent there to have them be a part of the game's story experience if not the exact campaign narrative. If the story can gift me a fully-functioning lostech Highlander, why would it not be equally valid to take away a pilot? For people playing a pure tactical merc sim the events are just an unwelcome distraction from the part of the game they enjoy. That's fine, and I really don't see anything wrong with a mod or option to disable events. (Though somehow I doubt they turn down the free Highlander. Maybe Glitch should give the commander a bunch of sweet loot as she's leaving?) quote:Just because having to deal with random merc retirements is realistic doesn't mean it's anything close to what most players actually want to play and that's the most important thing. And besides, if you want that kind of merc company management minutae, with a constant (and fairly regular) threat of mercs cashing out and bailing on your company, there's always mekhq. I've toyed with writing my own events, but there's not much enjoyment from playing out a thing you wrote yourself.
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Oct 21, 2018 04:59
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Klyith posted:If the story can gift me a fully-functioning lostech Highlander, why would it not be equally valid to take away a pilot? Because you can prevent the game from giving you the Highlander; just don't go to that mission. You would not possibly be able to prevent the game from arbitrarily telling you to just go gently caress yourself. Also, a game arbitrarily telling you to just go gently caress yourself and there being absolutely no way to prevent it is really bad design.
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Oct 21, 2018 05:07
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Klyith posted:The perspective I'm coming from is that events are part of the game's story. Yeah they're randomized... but many have chains or only happen once, there's a clear authorial intent there to have them be a part of the game's story experience if not the exact campaign narrative. If the story can gift me a fully-functioning lostech Highlander, why would it not be equally valid to take away a pilot? You could write and release your own pack of events, and have the base set and a "High Risk" add-on bundle for those who want that kind of thing.
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Oct 21, 2018 05:10
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Klyith posted:The perspective I'm coming from is that events are part of the game's story. Yeah they're randomized... but many have chains or only happen once, there's a clear authorial intent there to have them be a part of the game's story experience if not the exact campaign narrative. If the story can gift me a fully-functioning lostech Highlander, why would it not be equally valid to take away a pilot? It might be perfectly valid in principle, but game designers figured out a long time ago that human brains don't like to operate on perfectly valid principles. We've got a bunch of idiotic subconscious biases and how a game manipulates player expectations and perceptions is actually really important from a design standpoint. Players love getting things and hate getting things taken away, it's why people love seeing buffs and hate seeing nerfs for their preferred class/tactic in patch notes. Players need to be mentally prepared for loss and failure out of their control. Hell, players need to be mentally prepared for actual, honest probabilities presented to them and not lowball numbers actually operating under an rng tilted in their favor under the hood. Players might be prepared to lose Glitch to a random headshot because the game builds these expectations in. Suddenly losing a pilot out of combat because a one-in-a-million random event pops up in transit is a harder sell because the game as it is doesn't really support that kind of expectation. On the other hand mekhq actually does support this kind of expectation, and there's even a whole system for managing staff retirement. You'll note the sheer visceral difference between my reaction to the idea in Battletech compared to my acceptance of it in mekhq, and that was just a natural kneejerk human reaction. I had to actually step back and think about it for a second. This alone ought to illustrate that aspect of managing, and manipulating, player expectations as a part of game design. Amechwarrior posted:You could write and release your own pack of events, and have the base set and a "High Risk" add-on bundle for those who want that kind of thing. That too. There's always an audience for this kind of opt-in increased-difficulty-through-increased-randomness stuff. Hell, entire genres were built on it. But you gotta lay it out there first. Runa fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Oct 21, 2018 |
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Oct 21, 2018 05:11
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Xarbala's saying it better than I could. However, one point:Klyith posted:though lol if you think a 1% dice roll is in your control. I've always been amazed at how people who like military tactics games always profess this idea of player control, as if perfect control was a thing that anyone has ever had in combat. Dice rolls that lead to headshots are pRNG, but there are a lot of things in the player's control (note that I never said perfect control - let's not put words in my mouth here) you have before the actual shot resolution. What mechs did you take, what positioning did you do, what shots did you fire if any, what happened previously in the fight - all those tactical choices the player makes lead to a situation where rng could or could not remove a pilot from your roster. The two situations are not comparable; you can't just discard that context and pretend it doesn't matter. Psion fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Oct 21, 2018 |
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Oct 21, 2018 05:14
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I think I've told this story earlier, but there was a moment early on in my game when the RNG decided that Decker was going to die. Long range, 5 evasion pips, doesn't matter, eats an AC/20 round straight to the cockpit - what are the odds of that? Except ... he didn't die. Because I made the choice to jump him forwards and Brace instead of jumping forwards and taking an unbraced AC/20 shot. I had a choice as to whether I wanted him to be vulnerable to a headshot or not. After that, I had even more choices - do I leave him in the fight with only one cockpit structure left? Do I have him keep playing aggressively in his pristine-except-for-the-cockpit mech, and hope that no further attacks are going to roll a head hit? Do I play him behind the rest of my mechs so he takes less attacks overall? Do I just eject him right there and have to finish the mission with three, but guarantee that he's not going to die? You don't have any of that sort of thing if it's just an out-of-combat "event roll says you lose the pilot, gently caress you". -- Now, if you're talking about event chains where one choice leads to a pilot retiring, but the player can choose to avoid it - those are more interesting. I mean, there are some of those already (where you can choose to take a penalty from a negative event, or fire a particular pilot instead), but they're not very well balanced since you're never going to choose to lose a pilot. It would be interesting if you gave those event choices more of an upside, so people would consider getting rid of a mechwarrior to be worth it.
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Oct 21, 2018 05:32
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Xarbala posted:It might be perfectly valid in principle, but game designers figured out a long time ago that human brains don't like to operate on perfectly valid principles. We've got a bunch of idiotic subconscious biases and how a game manipulates player expectations and perceptions is actually really important from a design standpoint. Players love getting things and hate getting things taken away Yeah. Which is a thing that's a personal bugbear I have about power fantasy from military games in particular. I think about it frequently because I really like these games, and don't know how what the game that I want looks like. I want a game that makes me feel the same way I felt reading David Drake's military scifi series Hammer's Slammers -- that war is both exhilarating and completely hosed -- but I don't know if it's even possible. Even most of the recent post-Dark Souls wave of games that take pride in kicking player's asses are about challenges to master, rather than trials to endure. Dwarf Fortress is just about the only thing I know that takes agency from the player enough to make you feel like you fate is in the hands of these insane dwarves. Xcom2 at launch was a step in that vein and people hated it. The funny thing is I don't have this reaction at all if a game is in a fantasy setting. Dunno why. (Highly recommend those books btw. They're even about space mercenaries! this one is free) Xarbala posted:You'll note the sheer visceral difference between my reaction to the idea in Battletech compared to my acceptance of it in mekhq, and that was just a natural kneejerk human reaction. I had to actually step back and think about it for a second. That's should illustrate that aspect of managing, and manipulating, player expectations as a part of game design. It's definitely an acquired taste! Anyways thanks for seriouspostin with me. edit: and also everyone else who responded to my crazy idea even if you hated it! Klyith fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Oct 21, 2018 |
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Oct 21, 2018 05:42
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Klyith posted:It's definitely an acquired taste! Anyways thanks for seriouspostin with me. edit: and also everyone else who responded to my crazy idea even if you hated it! Yeah no prob, it's interesting to think about this stuff from time to time. Also, thanks for the book rec!
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Oct 21, 2018 05:45
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Events would be better if it was more than just bonus morale. Stuff like bonus HP, reduced injury duration, better vision, etc to reflect the pilot getting particularly pumped up, cyborged out, or just plain 
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Oct 21, 2018 08:05
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No. Don't just take away pilots because an event popped up that took away your pilot. The random chance in this game is already there, called random headshots by an AC20. At least in those ones it's somewhat under your control. If you want an event like that, make it so you have a choice between letting them go, paying a substantial bonus to them, or increasing their monthly salary. Or, if we do ever hit a point where you're managing Lances with an actual command structure, make it so your hotshot pilot barges in demanding a promotion or he'll leave and start his own outfit. With blackjack. And hookers!
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Oct 21, 2018 12:52
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Jabor posted:Now, if you're talking about event chains where one choice leads to a pilot retiring, but the player can choose to avoid it - those are more interesting. I mean, there are some of those already (where you can choose to take a penalty from a negative event, or fire a particular pilot instead), but they're not very well balanced since you're never going to choose to lose a pilot. It would be interesting if you gave those event choices more of an upside, so people would consider getting rid of a mechwarrior to be worth it. E: but I'd want to be able to choose that rather than have it foisted on me. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Oct 21, 2018 |
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Oct 21, 2018 15:00
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Klyith posted:The perspective I'm coming from is that events are part of the game's story. Yeah they're randomized... but many have chains or only happen once, there's a clear authorial intent there to have them be a part of the game's story experience if not the exact campaign narrative. If the story can gift me a fully-functioning lostech Highlander, why would it not be equally valid to take away a pilot? The problem with events like the ones you suggested is that they make me feel punished for doing well. Pilots quitting because of low morale and low pay? Okay. That's fine. I'm performing badly and that has consequences and so I am not upset when a crewmember gets pissed off and quits because of lovely pay and work conditions. But losing pilots because I'm doing well and have high morale and generous pay? That feels lovely because I'm being penalized for good performance, and it feels especially lovely if it makes it so that the optimal way to play is "Do well enough that nobody quits but not well enough to for anybody to be able to afford to retire".
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Oct 22, 2018 00:34
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