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Livestream April 12 - Dev Q&A!

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With all due respect (and I mean it) I watched most of the stream and I felt like watching PR stunt - they were talking for an hour without saying anything substantial, maybe apart from support for 21:9 monitors and Linux version. As previous posters already mentioned any "controversial" topic was carefully omitted and instead we got questions that have already been answered in the past (why 3025, why only 4 mechs, what about quads) or "flavor" ones like what's your favourite skirmish map, favourite artwork etc. I know you could do better guys!

EDIT: To be fair, they also mentioned that the engine supports more than 4 mechs so that was useful info I guess.
 
I am sad that I was ever excited to watch that. Was something I had the foolishness to look forward to as a high point of my day. :( Feeling dumb and a bit naive.

Let’s all just go find other things to do until the 24th, obviously we are just banging our heads against a rock here. They will let us know when they have something substantive to say.

RL beckons. :D It’s not so bad.
 
olin011 said:
EDIT: To be fair, they also mentioned that the engine supports more than 4 mechs so that was useful info I guess.
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Yep, that was my question. I actually phrased it as "could the engine support two-lance deployment without a major rewrite" with the aim of seeing how far 'in-success' could go without major recoding cost, and I had a sinking feeling the way @cKnoor phrased it and the guys started answering it, but then they swerved back to answer my original intent at the last moment.

My take away wasn't just that the engine could handle more than 4 mechs. My inference from the answer was that most of the limitations are configurable and a result of deliberate decisions, rather than hard limits in the code of the engine. This bodes well for modders, and even better for 'in-success' opportunities.
 
Tirno said:
Yep, that was my question. I actually phrased it as "could the engine support two-lance deployment without a major rewrite" with the aim of seeing how far 'in-success' could go without major recoding cost, and I had a sinking feeling the way @cKnoor phrased it and the guys started answering it, but then they swerved back to answer my original intent at the last moment.

My take away wasn't just that the engine could handle more than 4 mechs. My inference from the answer was that most of the limitations are configurable and a result of deliberate decisions, rather than hard limits in the code of the engine. This bodes well for modders, and even better for 'in-success' opportunities.
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If somebody could mod 8 mech deployment AND tonnage limits we could see mixed lances being in use!:D Of course the missions would need to be reworked as well. Time will tell...
 
olin011 said:
If somebody could mod 8 mech deployment AND tonnage limits we could see mixed lances being in use!:D Of course the missions would need to be reworked as well. Time will tell...
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The guys had a good point about 4 mechs being the right size for the kind of experience they wanted you to have. (We've already seen that the OpFor doesn't have that kind of limit, and they get tanks, too...)

Supposing, 'in-success', somehow the company gets ahold of another Leopard Dropship to stick on the docking ring on the other side of the Argo. (Recommissioned as "Pyromania", of course, to match with "Hysteria".)

The use case for double-lance deployment would be a story- or arc-ending boss fight. Could be done a few ways:
- All the mechs on the field for the same battle
- Two missions back-to-back, but presented as simultaneous action in different places

Yes, it does change the flavor of the game, but sometimes you want a vindaloo, know what I'm saying? On special occasion, full of significance. A random mission needing this would be exceptionally rare and marked with many skulls.
 
I think an easy "in-success" next step is to have missions with multiple parts that require separate lances. IOW, you have to do a patrol piece and say a raid piece... but they happen at the same time in two different places and thus require two different lances. This would force a need for more mechs without any changes being required to the tactical layer.

One thing the devs said that I agree with is that going beyond a single lance could make matches take a LONG time. I mean I'd be ok with that sometimes.. but I think I'd prefer most missions to be single lance length
 
Tirno said:
The guys had a good point about 4 mechs being the right size for the kind of experience they wanted you to have. (We've already seen that the OpFor doesn't have that kind of limit, and they get tanks, too...)

Supposing, 'in-success', somehow the company gets ahold of another Leopard Dropship to stick on the docking ring on the other side of the Argo. (Recommissioned as "Pyromania", of course, to match with "Hysteria".)

The use case for double-lance deployment would be a story- or arc-ending boss fight. Could be done a few ways:
- All the mechs on the field for the same battle
- Two missions back-to-back, but presented as simultaneous action in different places

Yes, it does change the flavor of the game, but sometimes you want a vindaloo, know what I'm saying? On special occasion, full of significance. A random mission needing this would be exceptionally rare and marked with many skulls.
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Another Leapord? No, bow before your new
54th_mechanized_regiment_by_spooky777-dar2w6q.jpg


I'll be looking to remove mech number limits altogether and instead impose a (number of skull difficulty) X 80 weight limit. 1 Skull = 80 ton weight limit. 5 skulls = 400 ton limit. Hopefully someone beats me to it as real life will delay me a while (my personal release date has already been pushed back to April 27th as work will send me out of town on the 24th). So come on modders, let me customize my hired pilots for my first run through :D
 
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Jadedfalcon said:
I'll be looking to remove mech number limits altogether and instead impose a (number of skull difficulty) X 80 weight limit. 1 Skull = 80 ton weight limit. 5 skulls = 400 ton limit. Hopefully someone beats me to it as real life will delay me a while (my personal release date has already been pushed back to April 27th as work will send me out of town on the 24th). So come on modders, let me customize my hired pilots for my first run through :D
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This is far, far into "success", but I can't help but imagine controlling a full company - would let us re-enact many legendary battles (something I have yet to see attempted!) as well as a bidding process... This would provide a chance for clan tactics to display their superiority to pathetic freebirth drivel, quineg?
 
me987654 said:
One thing the devs said that I agree with is that going beyond a single lance could make matches take a LONG time. I mean I'd be ok with that sometimes.. but I think I'd prefer most missions to be single lance length
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Oh, I absolutely agree. The standard should be single lance action.

Doing anything beyond one lance at a time should be a special occasion, and by that I mean as part of a scripted story mission in set-piece action.

XCOM, for example, had a couple mission where you exceeded the normal deployment numbers. Of particular note,
the ship is forced down, and to hold off an enemy ground offensive while the engines are fixed, three times the normal deployment numbers of troops are employed, and part of this is because some of the troops have to sally forth to squash an MacGuffin out in the field. Then, everyone that doesn't make it to the evac zone in time is left.

Naturally, if you create the capability to do more than one lance at a time as part of a story, some modder will make the Sooper Awsum Mishion mod with a storyline worthy of a pr0n-flick, and every mission will be twelve mechs versus wave after wave of Locusts. People that like that will eat it up with a spoon in each hand, I suppose.

Just because there are people in the world that like ghost chili pepper salsa on everything doesn't mean my desire for a monthly 4-star vindaloo isn't reasonable. Doesn't make their tastes unreasonable, either, assuming you don't have to share the food. I'd just like the options, and at least technically, it appears that's not impossible.
 
Scoughman said:
This is far, far into "success", but I can't help but imagine controlling a full company - would let us re-enact many legendary battles (something I have yet to see attempted!) as well as a bidding process... This would provide a chance for clan tactics to display their superiority to pathetic freebirth drivel, quineg?
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Aff. My regular tabletop friend and I tried multiple time to come up with an equitable tonnage ratio for Clan vs Inner Sphere matches. We never could. Instead of ratios, we had to do it like in the novels and disregard tonnage altogether. We would jointly create an Inner Sphere force that either of us would like to command. Then we'd jointly put together a clan force capable of easily steam rolling the inner sphere force. Then we took turns bidding away clan units. Lowest bidder got to play clan. Barring early head shots, our matches were very close from then on.
 
Jadedfalcon said:
Aff. My regular tabletop friend and I tried multiple time to come up with an equitable tonnage ratio for Clan vs Inner Sphere matches. We never could. Instead of ratios, we had to do it like in the novels and disregard tonnage altogether. We would jointly create an Inner Sphere force that either of us would like to command. Then we'd jointly put together a clan force capable of easily steam rolling the inner sphere force. Then we took turns bidding away clan units. Lowest bidder got to play clan. Barring early head shots, our matches were very close from then on.
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Either doing that or going by Battlevalue works well for clan vs IS asymmetrical battles.
 
One thing I just got since I wasn't able to watch the full stream while I was at work (just watched it tonight after I got back) was a little blurb about the campaign being in an easily accessible format?
Did anyone else catch that? And does that mean what I think it means?
 
KhazadDhum said:
One thing I just got since I wasn't able to watch the full stream while I was at work (just watched it tonight after I got back) was a little blurb about the campaign being in an easily accessible format?
Did anyone else catch that? And does that mean what I think it means?
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boom.gif
 
Now my takeaway is that he *could* have just meant things like global data, heat/damage. But it almost sounded like he meant campaign story, events, triggers.......
We could have user made campaigns with storylines, specific missions, set opfors.....

Anyone else get that impression?
 
KhazadDhum said:
Now my takeaway is that he *could* have just meant things like global data, heat/damage. But it almost sounded like he meant campaign story, events, triggers.......
We could have user made campaigns with storylines, specific missions, set opfors.....

Anyone else get that impression?
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Yes, that is all correct, but we had dev posts on the old forums talking about how they make events and campaign missions and we modders have known that we will be able to make our own campaigns for a while.

Edit: here is the old post that started the discussion: https://community.battletechgame.com/forums/threads/9846?page=1
 
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