Drunkard's Walk Forums

I'd explain this... but it's late and I'm tired.

---

The Legendary Message of the Day: Legendary discussion forum on the Web: p087.ezboard.com/fdrunkar...orumsfrm27

[The Legendary] MOTD (2007-10-22 11:52:33): Happy Hallowe'en!

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Yo valles! Congrats on Brightsky making it tp level 50! Wish I had been there for it!

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: Well, I posted the log, so that's close, right? ^_^

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Hehe. Saw that.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: So. Working on a Kheld now?

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: Yup.V's a Peacebringer, and I'm -loving- it.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Now is V an original character?

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: Kinda sorta mostly? 'Me as a girl' kinda sums it up. With a cute little kitten living in the back of her head.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Okay cool. The "kitten" being the Kheld part of the fusion?

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: Yup. She's a single-form build; the story goes that 'Chibi' was 'spawned' about three months ago, on Earth, and hasn't had impressions of Dwarves or Novas.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Oh cool. that's a good way of explaining a "single" build. An actual Kheldian child!

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: I figured that the shadow cysts couldn't be the -only- baby Khelds around...

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Good point.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: I'm coming over to Atlas to see the new character.

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: I'm probably going to try and copy Lora's 'shining human of light' effect once I get her to 30. ^_^

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Cool. I'm honored. ^_^

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: Inside city hall, where the light is good?

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Yeah, considering the two week dark.

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: My theory is that it's some kind of mystic eclipse.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Nice!

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: A spell that makes it -look- dark without actually doing anything - seeing as how the planet doesn't freeze during it and all.

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: Thank you! I'm planning on altering the hairstyle one I11 hits, but otherwise this is pretty much one of the rejected concept designs for Brightsky.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Ah I see. That explains why this character is also pretty zaftig.

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: If I can't indulge myself on 'me', where -can- I do so? ^_^;;

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Nothin wrong with that. ^_^

[SuperGroup]Valles: Oh! Um, hello. My name is Valles, pleased to meet you.

[SuperGroup]Cyberman 8: Welcome to the Legendary, Valles!

[SuperGroup]Valles: *bashful grin* Thank you.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: One of the things about Nova form that Lora'Lai find handy is the increased range. You can make a pretty effective "blapper" out of human form kheld, but the range on the blasts is about half what a blasters is.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: You going to go for increased range IOs when you have room for em?

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: *nodnod* I'd noted that effect playing around with the character build program...

[Tell]--}Cyberman 8: ...so I'm considering doing that, yeah. I'm thinking she'll be more of a scraster than a blapper, but that's the general shape of it.

[Tell]Cyberman 8: [AUTO-REPLY -- User is away] {Processing...}

[Tell]Cyberman 8: Let me think... I've got some other characters on server that are closer to your level if you want to team up and stay with Valles. Oh... I've got just the thing. BRB.

[Team]Valles: Um... Hello? I think the leaders wanted us to work together...

[Team]Zmierzch: Hey there

[Team]Valles: You can call me Valles - pleased to meet you.

[Team]Zmierzch: Yeah, Cyberman 8 suggested I team with you. I'd been in Europe for a while. Haven't used my powers very much. Could use a refresher.

[Team]Zmierzch: My name is Zmierzch

[Team]Zmierzch: You can call me "Zee" if you like.

[Team]Valles: I'm still learning, myself... Um, is the information you need something only the ones in Skyway would know?

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Actually, I was going to suggest we do your missions.))

[Team]Zmierzch: ((I really AM rusty on this character.

[Team]Valles: [I ask because there are trolls in hollows. Two birds. ^_^;]

[Team]Zmierzch: ((That might work too. Let's find out))

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Oh, and exempt me down?))

[Team]Valles: Um, are you going to... oh. Cool!

[Team]Zmierzch: Whew... that's fast, but tiring.

[Team]Zmierzch: I can tport you here.

[Team]Valles: Oh! Wow, that's wierd...

[Team]Zmierzch: Heh

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Re-exemp?)

[Team]Valles: Anyway. You ready?

[Team]Valles: I still can't get used to being able to shrug those off...

[Team]Zmierzch: It's a rush

[Team]Valles: That's one way of putting it.

[Team]Valles: AAGH!

[Team]Valles: Oh, god, I hate those things so much.

[Team]Zmierzch: Oh yeah. Forgot about how PAINFUL those things are.

[Team]Valles: Like every nerve in your body suddenly got hit with an ice-cold chainsaw.

[Team]Zmierzch: Ick... yeah

[Team]Valles: [DOs -do- make a difference, huh.]

[Team]Zmierzch: Yeah]

[Team]Zmierzch: Stiff opposition

[Team]Valles: Now, let me see if I can remember how this works...

[Team]Valles: Bingo.

[Team]Valles: Owww...

[Team]Valles: Wonder why they kept picking -me- to shoot at.

[Team]Zmierzch: *Shrug*

[Team]Zmierzch: More obvious target?

[Team]Valles: ...Makes sense.

[Team]Valles: My own fault for wearing white, I guess.

[Team]Valles: There was another branch back this way.

[Team]Valles: Nothing.

[Team]Zmierzch: I got this one

[Team]Valles: Sweet.

[Team]Valles: ...ow.

[Team]Valles: *frowns* ...None of these guys know anything.

[Team]Zmierzch: One more branch

[Team]Zmierzch: QUANTM

[Team]Valles: AGH!

[Team]Zmierzch: Crap

[Team]Zmierzch: At least the hospital reclamator is able to handle energy forms as well as physucal

[Team]Valles: Thank god. You'd never catch me doing something this suicidal otherwise, scholarship or no scholarship.

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Hey, all.

[The Legendary] valles: Hey, K!

[Team]Zmierzch: Shadowstar tells me that you can learn to totally reconstruct your own matrix.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Yo!

[Team]Valles: *whistles* That sounds like some trick...

[The Legendary] Kaeda: What's up?

[Team]Valles: [Incidentally, the reason I was avoiding RPing Bright tonight - besides the, 'ooh, shiny kheld!' factor...]

[The Legendary] valles: Squee! Peacebringer -rock-!

[Team]Valles: [...Is that Stephnie has put Bright up to taking, um, a further step in her and 8's relationship, and the thought RPing that makes my brain go 'Erk!']

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Rocks how hard?

[Team]Zmierzch: [O_o]

[The Legendary] valles: Rocks better than Brutes hard.

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Wow.

[Team]Zmierzch: [How -do- we approach that?]

[Team]Valles: [Say that they're having a romantic evening while V and Z work their heinies off an leave it at that?]

[Team]Zmierzch: [Haha. Yeah. Could that that. I must ad

[The Legendary] valles: I'm not -quite- sure how their HP stack up, but otherwise, take a Dom's secondary as the primary and a Brutes as -their- secondary.

[Team]Zmierzch: How RUDE!

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Hmmm. That's a whole lotta rockin', alright.

[The Legendary] valles: Then add a -free travel power-.

[Team]Zmierzch: [Did they just spawn on top of us?]

[Team]Valles: What's -with- these guys?

[Team]Valles: [I think so.]

[Team]Zmierzch: [Right! As I was GOING to say....]

[The Legendary] valles: And that's even without -taking- the shapeshifts. *nods firmly*

[The Legendary] Kaeda: How do the shapeshifts work?

[The Legendary] valles: Basically, you take the 'form power', which is a toggle.

[Team]Zmierzch: [I would be a tad more comfortable with RPing the romantic aspects if I didn't know that there was a male on the real life end of the other character. (grin)

[The Legendary] valles: And it automatically gives you, like, four to six powers that -only- work in that form...

[Team]Valles: [I am, I assure you, entirely sympathetic. ^_^]

[Tell]Freeze Breeze: hi can i join your team?

[Tell]--}Freeze Breeze: [Private group, sorry.]

[Tell]Freeze Breeze: its all good

[The Legendary] valles: ...but shuts down all other toggle and auto powers while it's active.

[Team]Zmierzch: [Otherwise, Let me tell ya, Brightsky is... wow... ]

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Hmm.

[Team]Valles: [*nodnod* Oh, my, yes. Why do you think I play her so much? ^_^]

[Team]Zmierzch: [Verra easy on the eyes, what? ^_^]

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Are we expecting to SF tonight?

[Team]Valles: [In-deed.]

[Team]Zmierzch: [Let's step into the mission]

[The Legendary] valles: I don't think so... but I wouldn't have a problem with it if that changed.

[Team]Zmierzch: ((On Btw, can you drop the aura for a moment? Just want to see which face you were working with.))

[Team]Valles: [Of course, the way the character designer works makes the options for that...]

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Same face as Bright?))

[Team]Valles: [...pretty much 'Wow' and 'Gonk', so that's not really a suprise.]

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Hehe))

[Team]Valles: [Don't recall exactly, but quite likely.]

[Team]Zmierzch: I tend to gravitate towards faces 13 and 14.

[Team]Zmierzch: This one is 14.

[Team]Zmierzch: Lora's is 13

[Team]Valles: [I think those might well be my favorites, also - which is why I try to avoid -over-using them, yes? ^_^]

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Ah yes. ^_^))

[Team]Zmierzch: ((But 13, when modified with the sliders to a more "anime" proportions, is beautiful.))

[Team]Zmierzch: ((14 is a little more "harsh" but stiil lovely.))

[Team]Valles: [And 14 is essentially 13, only scary.]

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Yeah

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Well? Shall we go and bust some heads?))

[Team]Valles: [While we're on the subject, I'm still not certain about the glove fins, for V... And definitely. ^_^]

[Team]Valles: [I figure that the shoulder pads complement the boots, which go -very- well with the leg pattern, but... *shrug*]

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Hmm... maybe the "flared" option if you decide to go for something different?))

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Mrrrg.

[Team]Valles: [Hm. I'll ahve to see how that looks once I get my Halloween salvage collected.]

[The Legendary] valles: Hmm?

[The Legendary] Kaeda: System froze up while I was swapping toons.

[The Legendary] valles: Ahh.

[Team]Zmierzch: ((Speaking of which, I'm perfectly happy to go ToT in Atlas.

[Team]Valles: [After we spank quantum boy?]

[Team]Zmierzch: Yeah

[Team]Zmierzch: Oh... clue over there

[Team]Valles: Looks like some old book.

[Team]Zmierzch: Hmmm... I think I'm going to go for the Skyway Exit

[Team]Valles: Works for me.

[Team]Zmierzch: Omigod, no WAY!! LOL

[Team]Zmierzch: I got an Eidolan costume right off!

[Team]Zmierzch: I feel like such a fetishist! ^_^

[Team]Valles: Just keep away from whips and candles and you should be okay.

[Team]Valles: *koff koff*

[Team]Valles: *smirk* It doesn't suit you.

[Team]Zmierzch: Heh

[Team]Zmierzch: This... surprisingly. does

[Team]Valles: Remember what I said about the candles.

[Team]Zmierzch: No worries. ^_^

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hi. What's up?

[The Legendary] valles: Khelds are -WIN-!

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Hey hey! Not much

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: That's assuming you can deal with voids and quantums in *every* mission, including the ones that make no sense.

[The Legendary] valles: Why couldn't I?

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Eventually the idea that every mission I go into just *happens to have anywhere from 1 to 6 guys with massively lethal hand-cannons just loitering around for little old me to show up pushes my suspension of disbelief a little far.

[Team]Valles: ACK! GYAAA!

[Team]Valles: ...eugh.

[Team]Valles: Hentai tentacles? -Not- fun in real life. *shivers*

[Team]Zmierzch: Got 2 Lord Recluse masks

[Team]Zmierzch: Thanks!

[Team]Valles: I could use one.

[Team]Zmierzch: Have you got a Lord Recluse?

[Team]Valles: ICK! Not AGAIN!

[Team]Valles: *deep voice* Howdy, Ma'am.

[Team]Zmierzch: **Giggle**

[Team]Valles: *grins*

[Team]Valles: [Woo! States, too!]

[Team]Zmierzch: Cool!

[Team]Valles: [I'm starting to think that Gleaming Bolt and Proton Scatter are the same thing, and V just sprays them all over the place.]

[Team]Zmierzch: Lord Recluse mask again

[Team]Valles: Hm. Do you think it suits me?

[Team]Zmierzch: And another costume

[Team]Zmierzch: Yeah!

[Team]Zmierzch: Legacy Chain costume

[Team]Valles: *stares at W-man* ...dear god...

[Team]Zmierzch: WONDERFAT??????

[Team]Zmierzch: GAH!!!

[Team]Valles: *shudders*

[Team]Zmierzch: Or to quote Futureama -- "YOU WATCHED IT! YOU CANNOT -UN-WATCH IT!!!"

[Team]Valles: 'Horror achieved, mission accomplished?'

[Team]Valles: [Broadcast... the stupid... it burns...]

[Team]Zmierzch: Yeah

[SuperGroup]Bella Fuego: Hola all!

[SuperGroup]Obsidian Heart: Hi Bella!

[SuperGroup]Valles: Good evening, ma'am.

[SuperGroup]Bella Fuego: I have completed my Holiday duties and returned to burning down miscreants, rather than the exclusively seasonal

[Team]Zmierzch: Oh cool

[Team]Valles: Hm?

[SuperGroup]Evangelia: Hi Bella!

[Team]Valles: Oh, -cool-. And it glows, too.

[Team]Zmierzch: I think that's just me

[SuperGroup]Bella Fuego: Eva, good to see that your grounding has been revoked.

[Team]Valles: *looks down at tattoos* ...how does -that- work? And where'd they go?

[SuperGroup]Evangelia: Well, it was only one night. Anyway, Mom and Dad were at the lab again, so if I really needed to go out on SG business, I could have.

[SuperGroup]Bella Fuego: Perhaps with this new emphasis on memory...

[Team]Zmierzch: Hey, put on teh Crey outfit again.

[Team]Zmierzch: Now we're a Crey fireteam. ^_^

[Team]Valles: An excellent point. ^_^

[SuperGroup]Evangelia: Feh. I never had a problem remembering things. *Getting around*, that was the problem.

[SuperGroup]Bella Fuego: Parents hide your seven league boots? (Glad to hear your computer is back online)

[Team]Valles: Well, at least there's no question what happened to the rest of me in -this- outfit...

[Team]Zmierzch: LOL

[Team]Valles: Now, if only I could -breathe-.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: Anyone 18-20 blue side virtue down for some missions?

[SuperGroup]Evangelia: Nah, they just caught me going out one night when I was supposed to be in. (Thanks. I thought I'd be shut down for much longer... fortunately I had the ready cash.)

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Still only edging up on 14, sorry.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: you prepped for your travel power, sil?

[Team]Zmierzch: Hang on. Answering Wiregeek

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Flight at 14, yes.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: I missed it on my two mains - have to wait until; 16

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Then STamina path for 20th. Long trek...

[The Legendary] Atlantea: I have characters in that range or higher who could help out.

[The Legendary] valles: Yay, sidekick action! ^_^

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: You'd be welcome to join, but we have some nibbles already, I think we're gonna be cool

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Ok then. ^_^

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Hm. I'm getting bored of solo'ing.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I hate soloing. If I wanted to solo my online games, I'd be playing EVE: Online.

[Team]Zmierzch: I think I'm going to disable broadcast for a while. }_{

[Team]Valles: [Good idea.]

[The Legendary] Kaeda: The last game I solo'ed and enjoyed was Quake 2.

[Team]Zmierzch: And clear history to boot, so I don't have to have the MEMORY of that godawful brain destroying crap.

[Team]Valles: LOL.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, last game I thoroughly enjoyed soloing was Halo 3, but it took like two days to finish. Not a lot of replay value there.

[Team]Zmierzch: Hey! Clothes Horse Badge!

[The Legendary] Ankhani: Deus Ex has a lovely replay value. A little old now, though.

[The Legendary] valles: Hm. Medieval 2, for me.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Deus Ex was fun when you started playing with some of the mods out there for it. But it had a limit. DX2 was also fun, but much less moddable. Too bad though. That game had potential, if only it lended itself to modding.

[Team]Valles: This! Is! ATHEEEEEEEENS!

[Team]Zmierzch: lol

[The Legendary] valles: When was the last time a giant robot game came out, anyway?

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Virtual On?

[The Legendary] valles: Predates MW4, IIRC.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Armored Core 4 then.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Even though I've never played it.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: I used to play Virtual On a LOT. I think it was the last arcade game I really got into.

[The Legendary] Obsidian Heart: There were a couple for xbox.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Around 98-99 I got involved in playing Armored Core, now THERE is a mech game. Not so much the latest iteration though. But the PSone and PS2 versions were outstanding.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I used to hear all sorts of good things about that game. I could never undestand why the game deliberately crippled the player though.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Crippled?

[The Legendary] valles: Que?

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: You work for a military organization, have no say in your missions, are expected to risk your machines regularly, don't get battlefield salvage, and are lucky to do more than repair and rearm after missions.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Oh, and they won't pay your repair costs while you're out fighting their war.

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Riiight.

[The Legendary] valles: I know -I'd- work on a Cost-plus basis if I were a mercenary robot pilot...

[The Legendary] valles: GAhhhhh. I -hate- runner. }.{

[The Legendary] Atlantea: That was annoying. The runner I mean

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Runner?

[The Legendary] valles: A mob that bolts off for the hills rather than letting you finish it.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Me and Valles are ToT in Atlas. Werewolf took off running.

[The Legendary] valles: Which is good for verisimilitude, but -really- annoying.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Ah. Industrial Strength Chicken. Especially if it's a demon lord that does it.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: BUt yeah, Armored Core. Most customizable Giant Robot game EVER.

[The Legendary] RevDark: The council were warned not to use bassets in their breeding program

[The Legendary] valles: Hmm.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: I love ragdoll physics sometimes.

[The Legendary] valles: What -would- the characteristics of the ideal Giant Robot game be?

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Ideal game? Massive customization, the ability to salvage parts off the field, maybe even build entirely new units. Research and development of new technologies.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It doesn't take much actually. MW4 got it just about right before FASA vanished.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: Utterly, Truly, Massive Customization

[The Legendary] Atlantea: A good mix of the sense of scale - stomping around, breaking things and buildings, crossed with a reasonably fast paced gameplay.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: Incredibly Massive customization.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: And what Wiregeek just said.

[The Legendary] valles: Combination of scripted missions and AI generated ones based off of a persistent 'strategic situation'

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: the problem with Extreme Customization is the balance aspect

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Online community play that helps to drive that.

[The Legendary] valles: That the player's actions could actually -change- significantly.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: MMOGRPG?

[The Legendary] Atlantea: That would be AWESOME

[The Legendary] valles: EXTEEL is supposed to come close,I've heard...

[Team]Zmierzch: Grats!

[The Legendary] valles: ...but IIRC it's also PVP only.

[The Legendary] valles: Which is a NO in my book.

[Team]Valles: Danke Schoen!

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Very much agreed.

[The Legendary] valles: Hm.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Oh not AGAIN!!

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Whew... got im

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: heheheh

[The Legendary] valles: Beats chasing it all to hell and gone.

[The Legendary] valles: Hmm...

[The Legendary] valles: Relatively small robots.

[The Legendary] valles: Like, 20-30 feet, tops.

[The Legendary] RevDark: BTW Valles - Cograts on 50!

[The Legendary] valles: Which makes agility more plausible, -and- pleases the Real Robot people in the process.

[The Legendary] valles: Thank you! ^_^

[The Legendary] His Lovely Wife: GRats Valles. Hi guys

[The Legendary] Kaeda: V, you ever play Heavy Gear?

[The Legendary] valles: Yup. The reversed mouse aim drove me -bats-.

[The Legendary] valles: HG 2 rocked, though.

[Team]Zmierzch: Say - isn't it time for you to train up?

[Team]Valles: Huh? Oh, right.

[SuperGroup]Morgan Mac Hine: Hello Eva

[The Legendary] valles: What mostly sticks with me about HG2 was that it was -pretty-.

[SuperGroup]Evangelia: Hi, Morgan!

[Team]Valles: Done.

[The Legendary] valles: What -didn't- I like about that? Hmm...

[Team]Zmierzch: Hang on. Slotting some enhancements.

[The Legendary] valles: It was -hard-. It gave very little feedback about weapon effectiveness.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Roku was the fire-based Avatar in that era.

[Team]Zmierzch: Okay. Being a big hairy dockworker? So NOT my style...

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: mt

[SuperGroup]Bella Fuego: Target located.

[The Legendary] valles: I really have to wonder if better customization than what I've seen of Armored Core is even -possible-... or worth the effort.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So keep that level of customization. Just add battlefield salvage, and the opportunity to earn money doing odd missions.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And maybe some "research" to improve vehicle or module performance.

[The Legendary] valles: Hmm. That wouldn't really make sense for a small merc unit... but...

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Well in later editions of AC, you could not only choose different parts, but TUNE those parts to give them better abilities in one area or another.

[The Legendary] valles: Maybe, like, paying the backsheesh and paperwork for more 'cutting edge' gear?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: same thing

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: I pay my R&D dept. 550000$ to get Pulse Laser Version 9

[The Legendary] valles: Pretty much.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: you pay your fixer 550000$ to steal/buy plans for Pulse Laser Version 9

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: big mechs _and_ little mechs

[The Legendary] valles: Hm... Actually, the funnest -gameplay- I've had in a robo game was ZoE

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And some "research" and/or "fixer/theft" to add heavier weapons onto lighter chassis.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: tin can with a railgun, I always liked those in swarms

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Zone of the Enders is fun. But the mecha must violate *some* decency laws they way they're built...

[The Legendary] valles: That part I definitely -wouldn't- keep.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Gives a whole new meaning to the word COCKpit.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Or would that be codpit? AS in "codpiece from hell"?

[The Legendary] valles: Define the top end of machine agility by ZoE... the bottom end by MW4...

[The Legendary] valles: I'd go for a relatively low-powered setting.

[The Legendary] valles: Like, 2400 AD, solar system colonized but no star travel.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Sort of "gundam"-ish?

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Giant mecha evolve out of a logical need for heavy construction machines. Very ZoE that way.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: the thought of juggling the heat requirements of Mars low atmosphere with the jump improvements provided by Mars lower gravity tingles me.

[The Legendary] valles: Exactly. But with colonies all over the system rather than just orbit and the moon.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: Valles, you in Atlas on Virtue?

[The Legendary] valles: That kind of setting is large enough to be epic but small enough to be detailed without being overwhelming.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I'd actually get rid of heat concerns almost altogether except under extreme conditions. There's no reason in a culture capable of building the things to be troubled by heat.

[The Legendary] valles: Yup.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: omw

[The Legendary] valles: I don't think that heat problems are going to go away, personally. But...

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It's like a friend of mine said about cultures with matter conversion technology. "If you can build a starship with a push of a button, you don't HAVE to."

[The Legendary] valles: ...I'd handle them by -weapon- rather than by -robot-, if that makes sense.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: ooo, is that some Council Wars theory?

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Heat was BT's way of giving things a limit on firing rates withint giving weapons firing rates to track.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: we've got this great overwhelming power, oh noes let's fight over it.

[The Legendary] Kaeda: The idea was to only track one number, rather than one per each weapon.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yeah, but remember that not all weapons heat up at the same rate. Energy guns might heat up fast, but clip-fed projectile ammo wouldn't have the same issues.

[Tell]@Wiregeek: where you at?

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Right, Sil. And they do take that into account in BT.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: nor the same (unlimited) fire plan - projectile ammo requires projectiles after all.

[The Legendary] Kaeda: A laser builds up a lot of heat, a projectile or missile builds up less.

[Tell]--}@Wiregeek: By the skyway entrance.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Except that in BT, the heat buildup was overall. You could fire the PPC three times and blow up the ammo in your mech's other torso.

[The Legendary] Kaeda: True.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And for some Mechs, like the Battlemaster which held the PPC in a handgun, that made even LESS sense.

[The Legendary] Kaeda: You could track it by section, but then you'd have to deal with heat diffusion, etc...

[The Legendary] Atlantea: In BT, I always replaced the small machine guns with small lasers and extra heat sinks. I figured to cut down on the risk of ammo explosions, and the extra heat sinks helped offset whatever extra heat teh small lasers did

[The Legendary] valles: Whereas, what I'm thinking of, you can burn through have your gatling's ammo and ruin -it-, but your laser cannon would still work fine.

House Kat sit ledge

House Kat: 1@#!@@#

House Kat: still figuring out the keyboard methodology for a lot of the emotes

[The Legendary] valles: Lessee... mission locations...

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: a more detailled heat model

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: In BT I always found room to pack in an SRM/6. Once you got anywhere good, called head-shots would succeed three times out of five, and there would be LOTS of salvage afteward.

[The Legendary] valles: Tunnel mines of mercury.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: beacons _everywhere_, CoH does a wonderful job with that

[The Legendary] valles: Modern systems can handle detailed heat without a problem.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Valles? Are we inviting House Kat?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: no, I'm slumming

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And at 12 points maximum in the head, a full salvo of misiles from an SRM/6 would take out a mech, no matter its tonnage. Simple, easy, effective.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Ah

House Kat: {-- wiregeek

[The Legendary] Kaeda: True, V, I'm still thinking in boardgame mode.

House Kat: logging off soon, poking around and chatting for a few first

Zmierzch: Ah ok

[The Legendary] Kaeda: Sil, I don't know what version of BT you've been playing....

House Kat: 'mow'

[The Legendary] valles: The Cloud Cities of Venus, playgrounds of the rich and famous.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: mech-level sniper rifles

[The Legendary] Kaeda: But last I checked, you can't do called shots with missiles.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Battletech, Rules of Warfare, and so on.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yeah, you can, but there's penalties. The odds of success aren't good. But after you'd levelled a few times, the odds get better.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: I've always wanted to squeeze trigger on something that fires a shell the size of a railroad car into a target area the size of a cocker spaniel

[The Legendary] valles: All the varied environments of earth.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: You get your adjusted gunnery skill to -1 or -2, and suddenly you have a real chance on a called shot.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: LOLOL

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Oooh! A Gustav Gun on a lonely, defenseless soldier.

[The Legendary] valles: The Hot-Cold-Hot whiplash of action on the moon, moving between the domes and the desolate outside.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: the mooon?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: the moooooooon?

[The Legendary] valles: Worse pay, better hours.

[The Legendary] valles: Worse pay, better fellow workers.

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Well folks, I'd better take off. Got company over here at the house and I need to go be a social being. ^_^

[The Legendary] valles: B-bye!

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: where a nice powerful shot can literally be seen 'round the world

[The Legendary] Atlantea: Later!

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Funny thing is, on the head-shot thing, we gamed it once. Every mech on the field used any weapon they could use to generate head shots with. By the end of the day, there were maybe half a dozen living soldiers and a whole battlefield of headless mecha

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: sure thing, I'll wait right here

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: mt

[The Legendary] valles: Torso cockpits? Good idea. ^_^

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: variable cockpits

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: that's the thing that always chafed me about BT - I can't build my own mech.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: I want a damn turtle walker with a miniature discworld amulet embossed on the back

[The Legendary] valles: LOL.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hehe

[The Legendary] valles: Fast moving running fights across the icy sands of mars!

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: boo yah

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I'd settle for a Valkyrie-type mech with forcefields, Fusion guns, battlefield Fold drives, and better-than-human agility.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: just made a million influence doing a mule

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Doing a mule? That sounds wrong on so many levels... What do you mean?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: guy hands me 5 mil, logs across to his new 'toon, and takes 4 mil back

[The Legendary] valles: Deadly serious hide-and-seek in the ruddy-lit ice-fields of Europa and the hellish sulfur lava of Io.

[Tell]House Kat: need some cash : D

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: the plasma column between Io and Jupiter would be a navigational hazard and a useful weapon

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Nice work if you can get it.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: knockback a mech with a grounded framework into range and zap it with some negative ions.. ZORT

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Variable mecha with unconventional forms. Maybe even old stuff.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Airwolf on Io, anyone?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: playing 'gundam' in the asteroids.

[Tell]--}House Kat: Me? Nah, I'm fine.

[The Legendary] valles: Not the asteroids, Saturn's rings. Prettier -and- more plausible. ^_^

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I had a silly image a couple days ago while snoozing after a Stargate Atlantis episode. Build an Airwolf entirely out of Ancient tech. Oh, and replace the blades with solid holograms while you're at it.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: oh, for the record - 28 weeks after = wonderful zombie movie with helicopter zombie processing

[The Legendary] valles: Epic clashes amid the misty veils of Titan!

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Someone uses a helicopter to mist zombies? Ick!

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: expansion set - isles of fantasy, opens a set of 'virtual' worlds that provide fantastical environments, allowing one to have a chibi-mech battle in a colossal bathroom..

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: of course, I only say that because I desperately want to take a walkertank through The Shire...

[The Legendary] valles: Heh.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Variable mecha that become common household machines, fighting each other for possession of the whole property.

[The Legendary] valles: Snrk.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: toaster pwns all with electric heat cannon!

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: until blender uses a clever trick to drop him into the volcanic pit of Oven, dooming him to an eternity of fire!

[The Legendary] valles: Boom Box SONIC SMASHER! FIRE!

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Lawn mower rules with razor grass blade attack!

[The Legendary] valles: Hee. ^_^

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: oh no, Vaccuum Cleaner has entered the arena!

[The Legendary] RevDark: Ghost ship is up in Talos if anyoe needs the badge

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: No worries, find her switch, and the vacuum goes from suck to blow...

[The Legendary] valles: Important question.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: omw for ghost ship

[The Legendary] valles: PC or console?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: here's the answer - yes

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: all console, mac linux and windows

[The Legendary] valles: Ideally, yeah, but which first?

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Probably starts as console, with a PC port, but it'll be modded in PC version so it may be more popular long-term.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: windows PC

[The Legendary] valles: I loath and abominate joystick shooters, see.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: FPS = mouse+keyboard

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: s

[The Legendary] valles: So it'd make a big difference whether we're assuming MW4-style actual aim...

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Depends on the shooter. Flight sims should be joystick, period.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: any other point of view is blasphemous

[The Legendary] valles: ...or ZoE lock-and-shoot.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And if you're using variable mecha, flight sims come into this somewhere.

[The Legendary] valles: Sil, point, but I'm talking about Halo type things.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: I'm biased against console - I don't have the fine control to target with a thumbstick

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: FPS... Mouse is easiest. I've tried playing a Halo style game with the joystick, and it's very hard.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: You need the mouse in a halo style game to maximize intuitive free-look control.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: ok, so dual-stick Tank Control style, right?

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It only works in consoles, because some bright person separated free-look from movement.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: you can map an axis onto a treadmill..

Umbral Vixen: Lead on...

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: and put a treadmill under each foor

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: *foot

[The Legendary] His Lovely Wife: I have Insect Wings, does anone need them Virtue Blue?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: add some buttons

[The Legendary] valles: In other words, say that the player picks their target via button cycling...

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Have you heard that there's an "interactive combat harness" about to hit the stores? So in games like Halo, if you get shot, you feel it.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: and you can handle fore/back/steer with your feet..

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: leaving the upper body free for workouts or weapons targetting.

[The Legendary] valles: Wire: support for that, maybe, but make the basic version suited to the standard handheld controllers.

[The Legendary] valles: Otherwise you end up with something like, what was it... Steel Battalion?

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: As opposed to several games (can't remember names) which shipped with a custom control console for all their buttons.

[The Legendary] valles: Thirty dollar game, three hundred dollar controller.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: yah I remember that

[The Legendary] valles: Besides, IMHO, control simplicity is a virtue.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yeah, but what people tend to forget is that simplicity in design is what happens *after* the first couple of runs are built.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: For some strange reason, every first-run thing we've ever built as a race is some Rube-Goldberg contraption of sophistication.

[The Legendary] valles: Mech sims are not new, though.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: *sigh* wish I could play one of those..

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: True, but just look at every game company out there. Despite how easy it should be to take what's been a proven success in the past and duplicate it, you still get plenty of stinkers who miss the boat.

[The Legendary] valles: Ayup.

Azure-Fumare Renard: I don't know how long it took me...

Holy Angel Angela: I think it comes natural to my kind

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: duplicating past sucess is not a guarantee of success

Azure-Fumare Renard: Were you always a hero?

[The Legendary] valles: Precisely.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: of course, I'm trying to come up with an example, and all I'm getting are negatives..

[The Legendary] valles: But adopting traits is not duplication, right?

[The Legendary] valles: Question:

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yeah, but inevitably, programmers want to try "something new" with their product, and often, their leaps into the beyond fail miserably. some succeed, but not often.

[The Legendary] valles: RPG-like 'pilot character': desirable or not? Likewise character interactions.

Gwyneth smiles at blue and taija

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: are we back to hypothetical mech game?

[The Legendary] valles: I hope so.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I've always preferred games that let me evolve my character. Games like Deux Ex or System Shock 2, where it's not actually possible to max everything, forcing me to choose.

Azure-Fumare Renard smiles back at Gwen...

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: I'd say limited meat development and interaction - this is about the metal, not the meat, right?

[The Legendary] valles: Agreed. But, are actual levels obligatory?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: like a lounge or something..

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: they're a handy indicator of experience and 'time served'

[The Legendary] valles: Or in-mission conversations with mission control and wingmen.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The thing about personal development is that you can set it up so that depending on how well your stats work out after mission earns you points. Simple evolution system.

Azure-Fumare Renard nods

[The Legendary] valles: A specific ability increases according to how often it's used? I was working up to that. ^_^

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: Evening folks

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or, you could design it so that it's "under the hood". So as you play, you begin to get "better". So the computer is making certain actions easier over time to represent growing skill.

[The Legendary] valles: Evening, North! Do you like giant robot games?

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: morning, north

[The Legendary] valles: Like, hitting more often when you hit the 'fire' button.

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: heh. I played the original Mechwarrior game so much, I could headshot everything. Had a full wing of Battlemasters for the final battle

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: So that would be 'yes'

[The Legendary] valles: We're trying to figure out a design for the -ultimate- one.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Let's say at the beginning of the game, walking is jerky, guns are maybe 60% base accuracy, and so on. But you prefer energy guns, and over time, your accuracy with energy weapons becomes more reliable than with kinetics. Stuff like that.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: tonight's topic, then, is "what would make the perfect mech game"

[The Legendary] valles: Exactly, Sil!

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: Customization.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: yes exactly - the player through their choices influences the meat which influences the mech

[The Legendary] valles: Covered. We're thinking of cloning Armored Core for that.

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: I want to design my own combat robot, and by god, if I can squeeze in the quad rotary laser cannons, I should be allowed to stuff them in there. ^_^

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: so pretty much everyone is gonna be good at basic movement, but someone like Valles with the Superdeformed Battroid Valkyrie is gonna be better at flight/acrobatics than me driving the Disc Turtle..

[The Legendary] valles: Speed, acceleration, etc.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Exactly. And since its based on choices you make when you customize the mech AND use it over time, it allows for personal development.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: acribatics, flight, laser accuracy, kinetic accuracy, melee, dodge..

[The Legendary] valles: Overheating is tracked by individual components/weapons.

[The Legendary] valles: Missile accuracy.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: you'd have a superset of normal RPG stats for str, con, end, etc..

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: truth be told, I prefer the personal battlesuit type of thing....but I think anyone who knows me already knows that.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: Electronic Warfare

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Needed only if it applied to the mecha, or you wanted the capacity for FPS/Power armor combat.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: sil: needed _for_ the mecha, not the meat.

[The Legendary] valles: 'Acceleration tolerance', 'reflexes', 'visual acuity/aim', 'Computer operation'

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: Ideally I'd want my armour suit, and a motoroid frame.

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Being able to step out of the mech and change perspective for 3rd person power armor, it would be interesting

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: Gaaaaaaaaaaarland

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: *drools*

[The Legendary] valles: Save that for an expansion pack, I'd say.

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: Heh. Mecha has a Malta costume

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Eh, if somethin glike power armor capability isn't in the main release, it won't be in the sequels. That's too much part of the core code to be an add-on.

[The Legendary] Wiregeek: ok, I misparsed that and got an image of a Rifleman battlemech with a jaunty hat.. I think it's naptime.

[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: LOL!

[The Legendary] Silhouette.: But you could add the capacity if say, the ejection seat is a suit of power armor. So suddenly ejection doesn't mean you're out of the fight.
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: have the initial 'powersuit' code be very very limited, ejection seat/cyclone stuff - but build it up for an expansion
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: YES!!! PPD HARDSUIT COSTUME!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!! XD
[The Legendary] valles: Treat power armor as differently scaled mecha. Design the engine to allow the -possibility-, but don't spend time on it until- yeah, exactly, Wire.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: That works.
[The Legendary] valles: Controls:
[The Legendary] valles: Target with shoulder buttons.
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: (Oh Good GOD I want these parts for Mecha's REAL costume!! )
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: Support Everything, say it with me now..
[The Legendary] valles: Left joystick, horizontal movement plane relative to the target.
[The Legendary] valles: Wire: This is the core. Other options come later.
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: point with mouse, target with mouse buttons, weapon select and firing patterns through keyboard
Gwyneth kisses blues cheek bye sweetie
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: Valles: Controls specifically. don't limit to mouse/keyboard, or to joystick, or to Gamepad
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: wind up like freelancer, a killer game crippled with a stupid control interface.
[The Legendary] valles: Mmm
[The Legendary] valles: Yeah, okay, though that makes this harder. Hmm...
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: this is also about 80% of the tough part of making a console port.. ; )
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Freelancer... Ugh... Mouse-only will drive may players away. Even if you like console or mouse controls, include joystick support to cover as much of the gaming market as possible.
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: and dual-joystick
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: hell, make it an open, plug-in-based control system.
[The Legendary] valles: Pardon?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: PLayer defined controls would also work, yes. But have a few defaults for players who don't want to be faced with the daunting task of assigning every key.
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: true dat
[The Legendary] valles: Ah. Yeah, of course things would be redefinable.
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: valles: open interface, any joe can write a hardware driver for the input section, allowing me a dual joystick + ddr mat, while you might be mouse/keyboard, etc, etc..
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: hrm. nevermind, I just reinvented DirectInput.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hehehe.
[The Legendary] valles: So, you have a horizontal movement plane - sounds good - a vertical move axis, a target cycle mechanic, a fire button, a weapon group cycle button...
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: For which?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Just the image of someone playing the "ultimate mecha game" using a Dance Dance Revolution mat scares me.
[The Legendary] valles: Probably more that one each of those last two.
[The Legendary] valles: EML: Which what?
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: primary/secondary at the very least, valles
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: What is this control scheme for? Just logged in
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: the hypothetical Ultimate Mecha Game
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: we're taking over the world!
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Ah
[The Legendary] valles: We're designing the ULTIMATE GIANT ROBOT GAME
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: no, that's tomorrow
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: robot game today, world tomorrow
[The Legendary] valles: Define fire-linking on the mech design screen.
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: oh, right. sorry....that was top secret, right? damn...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: No worries... NARF!
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: heehee
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: you could quite easily end up with a freaking HUGE list of actions.
[The Legendary] valles: I'm worried about that, yeah.
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: mechs can easily have seperately rotatable sections, viewport controls, autotargetting...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, you'd have to start with your wish list, and then either pare it back, or decide which actions are automatic and are part of a set.
[The Legendary] valles: Sounds wise.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or you could design "simple" controls
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: move forward, move back, turn turn and shoot.
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: blech
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And have "advanced" and even "Master" controls, depending on the skill of the player
[The Legendary] Wiregeek: but I gotta crash, so I'll catch you fine folks later.
[The Legendary] valles: I see the targeting movement interface as staying focused on the target - tracking around through all angles.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So the guy who picks it up off the shelf randomly can still play it, but the in-depth player can customize it so it's almost a totally new game.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heh. Next question. How advanced is the targeting system? Can you select multiple targets and shoot independantly at once, or are you locking up single targets. And do the guns autotrack or fire in a straight line?
[The Legendary] valles: Animate it so that, in 3rd person, the machine runs sideways and backwards, fires over its shoulder... the way a real person would address that angle.
[The Legendary] valles: Absolutely default to autotrack.
[The Legendary] valles: Otherwise the console version would be unplayable.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Halo is playable without autotrack.
[The Legendary] valles: Single vs multitarget...
[The Legendary] valles: Hah. Says you.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hehe. I played it twice through, so yeah.
[The Legendary] valles: Leave the option for those crazy enough to try, then.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Auto or not is an easy selectable option.
[The Legendary] valles: ...default to single target, I think.
[The Legendary] valles: Maybe a button that says, 'remember this target', and some weapon groups can be defined to spread their fire across all marked targets.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I'd think that in a real-world situation, your ability to track multiple targets moving in many different directions and speeds in real time and predict accurate intercept shots would be difficult. It would depend on the power of the compute the mech has.
[The Legendary] valles: Which is part of the customization system. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So you might have the ability to select multiple "saved" targets, but you'd need a better mainframe later in the game to get better multitrack performance.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also means the player can get used to single-target behavior early on before htey have to learn multitracking.
[The Legendary] valles: Exactly.
[The Legendary] valles: First person mode would have a full-surround cockpit, to keep from having to -completely- change targeting and camera work.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heh. Personally in a situation like that, I'd set at least one function to "multitrack: Air defense" and let the shoulder-mounted cannons shoot incoming missiles.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Easy way to do full-surround cockpit. Ever see Gundam: Stardust Memory? When the gundam pilot was in Unit 3?
[The Legendary] valles: Which would suggest the idea of defining -autofiring- weapons groups.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I never got that far
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The seat was in what amounted to a 360 degree video bubble.
[The Legendary] valles: Nope.
[The Legendary] valles: Exactly what I'm thinking.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Oh yeah. That dates back to Char's Counterattack
[The Legendary] valles: Hmm... what's left before getting into the nitty-gritty of damage math and such?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Funding?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker:
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So the pilot in 1st person mode is piloting a video bubble with a translucent image of his mech beneath him.
[The Legendary] valles: Yup.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heck, funding theoretically should be a snap. "Hi, we're looking at doing THIS. There's what? over ten million or so people out there who want this? If you send us each $1..."
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Hee.
[The Legendary] valles: Muahahah.
[The Legendary] valles: How many of each type of component? And -what- types of components?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Figure it's not hard-set devices. IT's percent increase in performance. with a random name generator to keep it looking and sounding unique.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It also means performance isn't as easy to quantify in Gamefaqs.com when the helpdocs are being written.
[The Legendary] valles: Er, wouldn't that be -bad-?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: That's just cruel
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Goofy armband of mech enhancement isn'at always a +2 acuracy enhancement, found at the tent of mech evil...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I think I've been reading too much Megatokyo lately...
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: There's that super-customizable mech game for Playstation. I can't remember the name...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Custom Robo?
[The Legendary] valles: Armored Core? ^_^
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Armored Core, yeah
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: There was also that online mecha game that closed (I think) a few years ago. Roboforge, I think it was.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Something on AC's custom level? Or would that be *too* much?
[The Legendary] valles: No more than a touch below.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I'd say there should be variable levels of customization. The device has a "static" performance level, and there are ways you can tweak it with subcomponents if you feel up to the challenge.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Much the way CoH works, actually.
[The Legendary] valles: Hm. Like, say, Plantigrade, Digitigrade, and Quad legs for the basic light-medium-heavy....
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Tracks and hover jets for advanced...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And the ability to add super-heavy suspension to increase it's handling over rough terrain, or extra-heavy myomers to handle heavier loads, and so on.
[The Legendary] valles: ...and then you can ask your mechanics to modify them to suit, with visible changes.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: There would be a fixed number of "slots" per section for modifications, however, to keep it from getting out of hand.
[The Legendary] valles: Tracks and Hover Jets are not giant robots. ^_^
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: If they still have arms they are. See Guntank.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker:
[The Legendary] valles: ...I reconsider my statement.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Eh. include them for the fringe market. Just don't make tracked vehicles the god-vehicles they way they are in AC.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Point.
[The Legendary] valles: The idea of being able to build -actual tanks- with the same design system that creates Orbital Frames appeals to me.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Heh.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Oh, it has potential. If there's enough variability to build conventional units using the mecha system. Tanks. Planes, helicopoters, etc.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: *grumbles at RL*
[The Legendary] valles: Arms: Clean, Armored, and Stub.
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: what's a helicopoter?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hehehe.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The dangers of typing in combat.
[The Legendary] valles: With the last being Rifleman style direct gun mountings.
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: aha
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Tomahawk!
[The Legendary] His Lovely Wife: Hmmm. I have defused the two bombs and defeated the arachnos escapee and my mission isn't completeing
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also, if the planned expansion includes power armor, and the ability exists to build conventional vehicles in the main game, the ability then exists to commandeer vehicles a la Halo.
[The Legendary] valles: Assuming that they're unmanned. These pilots aren't Spartans.
[The Legendary] valles: And that would go in the expansion. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: No, but you know reviewers will be looking for that capability if there's any 1st person support.
[The Legendary] valles: So tell them so.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Besides, if you're designing the game right the way we'd like to see it, we're probably designing the game so that it's very moddable.
[The Legendary] valles: Torsos: Slim, Full, Deep. Humanlike, cubelike, tank-turret-like.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: In fact, if we build it to that scale, the core game is critical game engine and behavioral stuff, and all our mecha and equipment are *created* as mods.
[The Legendary] valles: That would be nice, yeah.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Be really cool if we could go Super Robot Warsy and license *everything*
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So when the game is released, we wait a decent length of time, and release developer-approved mod tools. The same tools we used.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: They did that with System Shock 2, and people are *still* making mods for the thing.
[The Legendary] valles: Heads: Scout, Battle, Turret.
[The Legendary] valles: And... do we -want- to tangle with backpack options?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Treat that as the "turret mount" on a tank.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Whether or not anything else is produced for mecha might be someting for the expansion.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Backpacks are kewl
[The Legendary] valles: Sil, I think we're conceiving our tanks differently.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Any support for the Super Robot genre?
[The Legendary] valles: Not from -me-.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Suddenly I'm reminded of an old Battletech player who decided to be *different* with his Ostscout. It has almost no armament, and massive mapping ability. So he built a jogging suit for it, and giant Nike-style running shoes.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Then he just ran from everything while enemy mecha commanders stared in disbelief.
[The Legendary] valles: Snrk.
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: O_O
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Heh.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: o.O
[The Legendary] Kaeda: That's about all an Ostscout is good for.
[The Legendary] valles: I think you're thinking that the tanks'd be, like, front half torso, back half legs, turret on the back/top?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, it was unrealized in game. In reality, the Ostscout should provide some kind of spotting capability for artillery. That would make it scary. You see one, and you *know* there's artillery around here somewhere...
[The Legendary] valles: While I'm thinking hull=legs, turret=torso, with missile racks on the sides of the turrets and a little cupola gun for a head.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Sil: That's because the game in general has no clue about ECM/EW of any sort.
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: OMG, the PPD hardsuit costume is just too damn cool!
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Valles's way is what they did in Armored Core
[The Legendary] valles: ...maybe make the back option a kind of 'stalin's organ' overhead carry?
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: It has boot jets of its own!
[The Legendary] valles: Hm.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I'm not saying Valles' way is wrong. Heck{ i'm half concentrating on combat, so I might be missing whole threads... Don't worry about it.
[The Legendary] valles: Flight pack, weapons pack, endurance pack?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Works
[The Legendary] valles: Hmm. Question is how finely to divide weapon size, next.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Simple? Small/Medium/Large? Even if they're called something else, divide them into three basic firepower levels?
[The Legendary] valles: Suits me.
[The Legendary] valles: -Maybe- an Extra Large?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Also need either division into hardpoint types, or different appearances for different placements
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And again, you could have customization slots on the weapons, for the players who want more diversification in their weapons performance.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Extra large would probably show up later in the game, when you gain access to the bigger frame sizes.
[The Legendary] valles: EML: Different appearances. Again, wonders of modern comp hardware.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker:
[The Legendary] valles: Yeah, I'm thinking that the heaviest torso and backpacks would have, like, one XL each.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Perhaps also have something like the current weapons-customization thing, with several different possible options for each weapon type. Mostly-cosmetic differences, but still...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heh. What if the XL wasn't a single weapon, but instead a combo device. So it allows the players to combine several other devices and enhancements. Allows for a great deal of customization without us having to invent lots of XL weapons.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I'll form the head!
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Sorry
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I know that wasn't what you meant
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hehehe
[The Legendary] valles: Sil: Hmmm... Yeah, I think I like that.
[The Legendary] valles: Ack! Forgot hand-carry.
[The Legendary] valles: Or would that be under 'arms'?
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Hand-carry has practicality issues.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: You need either a) power conduits for an energy weapon, or b) some means of reloading ammunition for an independantly-powered energy weapon or a projectile weapon.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Unless you have several "generic" gun cases that you could optionally fit weapons into. Allows you to carry an extra weapon or two beyond what your frame is rated for, but it's limited to kinetics and when it 's out, it's out.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Or (c) an energy weapon with such a nifty cell that it doesn't need reloading in mission time
[The Legendary] valles: Or you're forced to allocate reinforcement and power conduit slots in the carrying arm?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I think Gundam beam sabers work off conduits in the hand. I think.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And as for power conduits for a portable gun, an engineer friend of mine once came up with a perfect answer. The gun has a port in the side, the mech has a power transfer ssytem in the palm. Your mech holds it, it's powered.
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: Skyknight has that in his hardsuit for his sword. ^_^
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Right, Sil. It's just something else you have to fit into the mech at the design stage.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Costs money, takes up space...
[The Legendary] valles: Has weight.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yes, but if you want the extra firepower...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also, it allows us to add beam swords. And lets be fair. We all want beam swords...
[The Legendary] valles: Exactly.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Damn straight.
[The Legendary] valles: And shields and real swords. Because they're cool.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Heat melee weapoons
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: ^weapons
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: The cheap alternative: superheated alloy blades.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Nuclear wessels.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Shields and standard swords are easy. Shields are just more armor for that side of the body and the torso. Standard swords may have a break value if targeted by weapons.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: In Alameda!
[The Legendary] valles: Also, I have a way to make energy swords without forcefields.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Oh?
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Generator at the core of the blade?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: In fact, since there was the concept of player skill over time improving mech performance through use, it would be funny if a targeted enemy shot knocked the sword out of your hand, forcing you to run over, target it, and pick, it up.
[The Legendary] valles: Granted that you still need unobtanium, but... yeah, pretty much.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Or get your backup from the backpack mount
[The Legendary] valles: Sword-sized rigid, absurdly strong nonconductive rod.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: That's why Gundams have two
[The Legendary] valles: It spins.
[The Legendary] valles: And has an electrode at either end.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or you could pull a Dammoramu, and have a sword concealed in your forehead. Pull out the energy sword from your head and attack!
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I'm not familiar with that one o.O
[The Legendary] valles: Up the charge difference until it arcs across the length of the blade.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Dragon Half. Dammoramu is a dragon killer who gets his sword stuck through his head. Later on he shows up again and says he only survived because of the compact nature of his brain.
[The Legendary] valles: Has amusing consequences for inconvenient electronics. ^_^
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Ah (to both)
[The Legendary] valles: Hm. Three weapons per type?
[The Legendary] valles: Short-ranged, high-ROF, small ones, balanced, then big slow ones?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Figure "type" is ammo-based, missile, melee, and energy.
[The Legendary] valles: Yup.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Maybe more than 3. Although 3 would be the early number.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Again, if you could customize ammo with say, one slot each type, that would let you have missiles with napalm, or missiles with AP and so on.
[The Legendary] NorthFlayme: night all, happy designing
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Cya!
[The Legendary] valles: Balance between types I'd reccomend...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The play balance would be the longest part of this.
[The Legendary] valles: Energy: Low damage, high accuracy, long range.
[The Legendary] valles: And ohhh-yeah. That'd be the hardest part of the creation process.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Treat it like a Champions game. Every advantage has a tradeoff. You could add in a customization for the legs for boosted durability, but the tradeoff is you lose speed. And so on.
[The Legendary] valles: Start with a certain number of 'freebie' slots, though?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Say, any frame section can be modified once with no penalty?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: But each section can have up to "X" modifications.
[The Legendary] valles: Sounds reasonable. And that number would be included in the 'balance tweaking' phase of design.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yes. the standard performance is set, but modified based on tweaking, if any.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Ammunition has only one slot, and the advantages are pretty fixed.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So machine gun ammo can be AP or explosive, but not both.
[The Legendary] valles: Ahhh. I was misunderstanding you completely. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hmm?
[The Legendary] valles: I thought you were talking about how ammo storage would be allocated on the frame.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I was aiming for the idea that most frame component sections have a predetermined number of "modification" slots based on frame section type, and maybe tech level of component.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: One upgrade per frame section wouldn't cost you basic performance hits, but multiple add-ons would start changing the base performacne of that frame section.
[The Legendary] valles: AH! Lightbulb moment!
[The Legendary] valles: Autonameing for variety, but have a 'Type Code' matrix that never changes.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: This allows for altering the behavior of the vehicle at a fine level *if you want*. If not, the game plays as normal.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: But there would be advantages in cusomizing components.
[The Legendary] valles: So, an Advanced Standard torso would be, oh, T2A whether it was called Peregrine, Xerxes, or whatever.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Note to self: First thing V!Misao is going to do, once she realizes it, is hunt down one of the "Mad Scientist" types and demand they research a cure for the common cold.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hahaha
[The Legendary] valles: Heh. Sil, that sounds right.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Won't work. The "common cold" is over 300 virus types and they mutate constantly.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Valles: Works, but allow player naming?
[The Legendary] valles: Of course.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So the name of the part has no bearing on the under-the-hood performance specs.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Sil: That's why I specified a mad scientist.
[The Legendary] valles: Gun characteristics: Good damage, decent range, so-so accuracy, plentiful ammo
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: With an advanced customized torso, to the game it reads possibly as "Torso, Class 2, Variant Beta: +2Accuracy/-1 ECM)
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: You need a mage. Cure the *concept* of the common cold.
[The Legendary] valles: And the specs are indicated by an invarying type code.
[The Legendary] valles: Which the player can see and remember and not worry about.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The player just sees how the mech's performance changes based on the "system analysis" screen to the side. Speed, base accuracy, refire rate, and so on. The in-game mechanics are invisible to them.
[The Legendary] valles: Missiles? Better range than guns, better accuracy, Major Hurting... but single digit ammunition.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Unless they're minor teeny missiles
[The Legendary] valles: Yes, that sounds right - but they need to be able to keep track of what sort of component is supposed to do what.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or, optionally, box launchers. Can fit more of them, but when they're fired, they're empty.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Of course, in that case, each ammo unit would represent many micromissiles
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: ^could
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Oh, each component would have the effect is has on the mech's performance visible, but to the *game*, the component has a defined value. And the internal game name that defines that value is fixed. The "game name" is random.
[The Legendary] valles: I'm -assuming- boxes. And micromissiles would fall under 'weapon weight within classes'
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Micromissiles -- long range, medium accuracy, harassment?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Works
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Useful for, say, suppressing infantry or drone bits.
[The Legendary] valles: Sil, a randomly assigned name system would be extremely frustrating for players - they couldn't keep track of what would be supposed to do what.
[The Legendary] valles: K: Sounds right.
[The Legendary] valles: K: Sounds right.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Okay. Sounds reasonable.
[The Legendary] valles: Specific weapons would be where to start getting less regular, I think.
[The Legendary] valles: Like, light autocannon have an insane rate of fire but short range...
[The Legendary] Kaeda: That was one of the things about Battletech that got to me. All kinds of little hints about specific weapon types manufactured by different companies, with little differences, but no game effect to them...
[The Legendary] valles: Light lasers are mostly a pretty lightshow.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: ...Urg. Lincoln Memorial could use an assist.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Night Widow Nocturne is proving surprisingly obnoxious
[The Legendary] valles: Weapon distinction vs. balance...
[The Legendary] valles: Ah.
[The Legendary] valles: Make 'tweaking' weapons...
[The Legendary] valles: ...defined as, 'Your mechanic goes down to the local swap meet and trades Company x's Model b for Company y's Model c.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker:
[The Legendary] valles: It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Pretty much
[The Legendary] valles: Oh. Another balancing trait about missiles: Cost.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Ah yes. Way more than bullets.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Money is always a balancing factor. Bear in mind what selling battlefield salvage may do to your resources as well.
[Tell]--}Lincoln Memorial: [Sidekick?]
[The Legendary] valles: True, true. Energy weapons would -cost- to buy and repair, too. Finicky components.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or you could sell tot he Black market. You won't get the best price, and purchases there are steep. But if you absolutely *must* have cash or equipment, *can* get it... if you have the equipment and/or money.
[The Legendary] Ankhani: Anyone in need of company tonight? Looking for somthin to do.
[The Legendary] valles: Sounds right.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Sorry, DC'd
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: This also means the gamers have the ability to get the weapon they believe will give them the next mission,. I don'tk now how many games I've had to restart because I didn't have some crucial part I couldn't get.
[The Legendary] valles: I'll probably log once I run out of game theory to argue.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: hahaha
My mentor is assisting me again.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
My mentor is assisting me again.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Nice costume
[Team]Valles: Mr. President, it's an honor. I'm Valles.
I'm getting a little too far from my mentor.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
My mentor is assisting me again.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: A pleasure to meet you
[The Legendary] valles: Thank you. One of my old concepts for Brightsky.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
My mentor is assisting me again.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (Oops, didn't select the mission)
I'm getting a little too far from my mentor.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (You need to come back out)
My mentor is assisting me again.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
My mentor is assisting me again.
[The Legendary] valles: Hm. Transforming mechs... how do -they- work?
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (They switched mission buildings on me? )
My mentor is assisting me again.
I'm getting a little too far from my mentor.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
My mentor is assisting me again.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Special torso section? This means automatically you can't have a transforming tank... I think... Or handle a different way?
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (There's something wrong here)
My mentor is assisting me again.
[The Legendary] valles: Hmm. Maybe.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (It's supposed to be in a mission instance of this dam set)
[The Legendary] valles: Or...
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
My mentor is assisting me again.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (Ah, this entrance }.{ )
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
[The Legendary] valles: A specific type of transformation is added by adding a specific component to -one- set of frames.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (Found it)
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So you could have partial-variable frame designs?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Interesting.
[The Legendary] valles: No - it wouldn't enable unless installed across the entire chassis.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (Ready?)
[The Legendary] valles: So, you take -all- the light frames...
[The Legendary] valles: ...add a transform part to each...
[The Legendary] valles: ...and then and only then do you get a jet transformer.
[Team]Valles: [Ready.]
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hmm. But if it's an upgrade option added to the modification slots, then you theoretically could have a partial-transformer. A tank with torso, head and hands, say.
[The Legendary] valles: Saves immensely on design work.
[The Legendary] valles: Getting the art and models to work would be a bitch.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: True. Having it as something added to the design slots saves on development time all the way down the line.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Only if all the parts were meant to meld. What if only certain models were meant to be used that way?
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (At least he has chicken.)
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So only certain types of transformables are on the field. With modular weapons and component level customization, there's still plenty of room to work with.
[The Legendary] valles: Besides, you can -already- pretty much do that by...
[The Legendary] valles: ..working with nontransformable parts.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: What it means is that you're taking a hit in customization. Each compoent must have a slot devoted to the transformation process. But you gain air superiority as a bonus power, as well as massively boosted movement speed.
[The Legendary] valles: You -can- put a standard torso on a tank basic.
[The Legendary] valles: It's realigning things that's the special ability.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And if the procedure were only available on a limited number of frames, on the justification that it's a "special" capability not all frames support, you don't have to model every possible combo.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Just a handful of frame combinations, ideally.
[The Legendary] valles: Exactly, I think.
[The Legendary] valles: Say that Transformation is an Advanced-class only ability.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: It'd have to be.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So only say, "Tech 2" frames, or something like that can support it. So it's not available at the beginning, and it takes more training.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (Ready?)
[The Legendary] valles: And fighters need a high power-to-weight ratio, so they're Light class only
[Team]Valles: [Ready.]
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It also means that while your piloting with a normal mech may be smoother by then, you get into a transformable, and it's less easy to control.
[The Legendary] valles: You're already taking a hit at the design stage, though.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Bear in mind the tonnages and the fact that a modern jet is something like 30-50 tons. A medium sized vehicle would also probably be acceptable.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Although a heavy or XL vehicle would have more in common with the Space Shuttle than a fighter jet, yes.
[The Legendary] valles: I'm thinking that
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Although it might be fun to have say, a heavy transformable submarine.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: (Nice!)
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So the heavies and XL aren't fighters. They serve as much "bigger" classes of vehicles.
[Team]Lincoln Memorial: Thank you, ma'am/
[The Legendary] valles: ...Lights would be, like, 10-15 tons, 8 meters or so.
[Team]Valles: You're quite welcome, sir! ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Cars and helicopters, mostly.
[The Legendary] valles: Exactly.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
My mentor is assisting me again.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Roadstrikers
I'm getting a little too far from my mentor.
I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
[The Legendary] valles: If I'
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Essentially.
[The Legendary] valles: m guessing what that means right, yeah.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: A roadstriker is any transformable vehicle that falls between power armor and mecha.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: The class of car-size mecha from Mekton
[The Legendary] valles: Mediums up to 30 tons, 9 meters.
[The Legendary] valles: Ahh.
[The Legendary] valles: Heavies, 80 tons, 10 meters.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Bear in mind that a jet is something like 10 meters, and it's less than 80 tons.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Thanks for the assist
[The Legendary] valles: Ah! Something I'd wanted to mention but forgotten to...
[The Legendary] valles: My pleasure. ^_^
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: (Not sure if the next one is soloable either. I'll give it a shot )
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The risk in sizing is to make the same mistake the Macross game designers at Palladium made. Where the SDF Macross is only about a mile long. I mean, chekc the anime!
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Um, it's 3/4 of a mile long.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: This is true.
[The Legendary] valles: I'm thinking that Heavies are more tank-like.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I have Macross Perfect Memory on my bookshelf.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Check the anime. They put a CITY in there. That's much more than a mile long.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Seventy thousand people can fit in a football stadium.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: The city may have been poetically exaggerated,
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yeah, but seventy thousand people can't put a small city in a football stadiuma nd have room to keep tripping over Zentran sized rooms no one knew were in there.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Nevertheless ^.^
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Officially, the Macross is indeed 3/4 of a mile.
[The Legendary] valles: Let's put that down to 'poor plot planning' and move on.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The trick is to pull in a couple of engineers briefly and have them come up with believable statistics for the size/weight details.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: That's what the designers of the Gundam anime did, and it shows.
[The Legendary] valles: *nodnod*
[The Legendary] valles: Lessee...
[The Legendary] valles: Ah!
[The Legendary] valles: Weight limits vary based on local gravity.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Cool. Like that one.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also, if you're having variable gravity, and possible additional drag issues, you can also do underwater the same way.
[The Legendary] valles: Ayup. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also possibly arctic conditions, by applying massive penalties on traction.
[The Legendary] valles: I don't think that there'd be that much of a difference at mech scale, but...
[The Legendary] valles: ...underwater would need to put a -big- hurt on physical gun range.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The only thing I'd worry about in an arctic environment is the chance you go throught he ice and wind up underwater.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Desert conditions, gunking up the gears...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Some mecha could be made "cheap" with air-cooled engines. Desert and water environments would have an effect on that.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Never heard of that.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Short Discovery-channel show about guys who run a truck route over frozen lakes in northern Canada.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Okay, I *live* here, and that's insane...
[The Legendary] Kaeda: The kinds of problems you get with engines running in arctic conditions are ... prominent.
[The Legendary] valles: Ahhh. ^_^
[The Legendary] Kaeda: And they're running parts, food, supplies, etc, to billion-dollar-a-year diamond mines.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Fall through the ice, and you're not coming back. You'd have to be insane to do that.
[The Legendary] valles: Of course, the degree to which a vacuum-rated machine would be affected by this is debatable.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Ah, a diamond mine. That explains it. They have LOTS of money to throw at these guys.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: V: One could use the same argument to dismiss desert issues.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, it gets back to the idea that the player could economize on power plant weight by making it "cheap" and going with air cooling, instead of having it space-rated.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I think you'll find more grit in a desert than in deep space.
[The Legendary] valles: 's why I'm agreeing there -would- be problems.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I still would. But I suppose if enough money were thrown at me and I though the risk manageable....
[The Legendary] valles: More intersting that way. ^_^
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I wouldn't work for the diamond industry for any amount of money,
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heh. Considering the diamond industry is artificially maintained *anyway*, it's not like there's a real shortage of these things.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Artificially maintained through *pure evil*!
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Okay, I should not rant.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: True. But honestly. If a rich SOB showed up, and offered to let you manage your own diamond business... would you *want* to flood the market? Or would you play the game?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Back tot he subject. ^.^
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I would *tank the market* and *smile.*
[The Legendary] Kaeda: And then deBeers would hunt you down and make you die slowly.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: They are Not Nice People.
[The Legendary] valles: Which is exactly the reason to do it.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: The deeds that have been done in the name of or as a result of the diamond market are *monstrous*
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Serious supervillain territory
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: But again: mecha game theory!
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: No different than organized religion.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: I'll grant you that
[The Legendary] valles: True, but outside the point.
[The Legendary] valles: Um, lights:
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: lights?
[The Legendary] valles: Scout car transform? Jet transform?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: ah
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Bahamode!
[The Legendary] valles: Other potential ones?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: helicopter
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Bahamode. Big-ass motorcycle.
[The Legendary] valles: Both of those are just visual design variations on the two I mentioned.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Small boat?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yeah, but I see Airwolf mods for the helicopter.
[The Legendary] valles: Or submarine, yeah.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Like the TARDIS-powered missile magazine?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Sub might be Heavy.
[The Legendary] valles: Give me a moment. ^_^
[The Legendary] valles: Mediums: Jet or Sub.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: No, I don't think Airwolf ever fired more than five or six missiles per show. Even allowing for generous storage per tube, it may only have five missiles per tube in a rotary barrel. 10 Hellfires and 5 sidewinders would be plenty
[The Legendary] valles: Heavy: Tank or sub.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Small transformers... I'm tempted to say "pillbox." Immobile bunker mode.
[The Legendary] valles: Hmm... maybe just make the 'scout car' so's it can float.
[The Legendary] valles: That gives two transforms per weight class.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, a heavy may have the ability to become a fixed fortification. Essentially locking itself in place to increase accuracy over long range. Maybe artillery capability when fixed.
[The Legendary] valles: That's the advantage I was thinking for Tank mode.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Goliath Mode from Starcraft
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yeah.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Veritech Hovertank type.
[The Legendary] valles: Mm-hm.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So the heavies and/or XL frames can gain long range ballistic artillery capability for kinetic weapons only when in fixed-fortification mode.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Just as long as they're not open cockpit. Southern Cross was freaky stupid even before Macek.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The down side is they're sitting ducks, and the transformation is not fast.
[The Legendary] valles: Sounds right, though I'll note that I was only assuming XL -hardpoints-, not chassis.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: True, but if you fit artillery support to the vehicle, you'll need to lock it in place before it can be fired, or the first shot will knock it ass over teakettle.
[The Legendary] valles: Yup. BFG only in tank mode and -only- when not in motion - but it's not -stuck- immobile.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: If it's a tank transform, that would be different. The treads woult brace it admirably. I was assuming a minimum -transform heavy or XL.
[The Legendary] valles: You could, I guess, but that's not what I had in mind.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Interesting... Got the Ostentatious award, but I have only about 30 costumes. I suspect if it awards you a costume you already have, that still counts.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Yes it does.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: All the way up to 50.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Correct.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: There *are* only 33 costumes.
[The Legendary] valles: Yeah. Um... submarines. What are -they- like?
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Watery?
[The Legendary] valles: Thbbbt!
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hehehe.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Stealth and long-range missiles?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, if you assume a submarine is the underwater equivalent of a fighter transformable... that adds underwater combat.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It would have an artillery component. Cruise missiles.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: You won't be able to do silent running in robot mode.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: If it winds up in combat against another underwater mech, the pilot can either use torps and short range kinetics or switch to robot mode and bash the other guy.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So you have a choice to make. better ECM and torps, or better melee damage and poor ECM?
[The Legendary] valles: Blue-green lasers would still work.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: True.
[The Legendary] valles: Mech-mode would be -slow- underwater.
[The Legendary] valles: Water missions... two sorts, I think.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: True. But the mech has blue-greens, and attacks with a melee weapon, that makes up for the slow attack. But the big lure for people to play the underwater mission is the sub warfare option.
[The Legendary] valles: Deep water, where you're fighting things beneath the surface on Earth or Europa.
[The Legendary] valles: And amphibious, where you're moving in-and-out of a river or swamp between modes and engagements.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also, the deeper you go, the less movement ability a mech has. After a point, sub mode is the most effective choice.
[The Legendary] valles: Or -always- - I'm thinking that sub mode would be faster -moving- than mech...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also true. Imagine a mission in a swampy delta. You could take a tank transform and attack enemy bridges at range with arty. Or you could walk it with a walkermech. Or you could take a sub mech and slip behind enemy lines...
[The Legendary] valles: Or you could spread your wings and drop out of the sun. All -sorts- of options.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The mission is presented as is, with multiple engagement options. It's up to the player to decide how the mission plays out, and on what stage the game plays.
[The Legendary] valles: *nodnod*
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It also suggests in games like that, the pilot is a merc of some kind, because *how* they do the misison is up to them. The objective is fixed. The approach method is up to them.
[The Legendary] valles: I thought we were assuming that from the start?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Which usually means they start at the edge of the map. Never dropped "in the action" and forced to find a neutral location before making a plan.
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: Is it just me, or is Captain Castillo really Don Karnage?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hahaha
[The Legendary] valles: *shatter*
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: ... I think it's deliberate
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: After all, DK would say things like "This is a happening that is impossible!"
[The Legendary] Evil Midnight Lurker: All right, signing off for a while. Might be back later tonight
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Ok. Cya later!
[The Legendary] valles: Seeya!
[The Legendary] valles: ...crap. stupid voids in spawns.
[Tell]Dyson Demon: Want to do some missioning with us? Spelunker mission is up right now.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: AT least it's not voids in swarms... I still dread that possibility someday
[The Legendary] valles: Sil: Possibly some of the scripted missions could be 'bait and switch' - things go pear-shaped between the briefing and the drop.
[Tell]--}Dyson Demon: No thank you. I'm chatting with folks, mostly.
[Tell]Dyson Demon: Allright.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also makes sense. Real life is like that sometimesx.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Oh? What'd I miss?
[The Legendary] valles: Mission types... Kill everything.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The questoin is how the player handles it.
[The Legendary] valles: We're discussing the Perfect Giant Robot Game.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Do they abort, try to get to a comm tower somewhere and request mission updates, or try to invent their own objectives and accomplish them.
[The Legendary] valles: Ooooh. That's -brilliant-, Sil.
[The Legendary] valles: Kill specific unit X.
[The Legendary] valles: [Artillery or whatever]
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Hmmm.
[The Legendary] valles: The dreaded Escort Mission.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: I've got my vote for finalizing that SF... I can try for 10 pm EST Mon and Wed.
[The Legendary] valles: I can do that.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Monday is probably more likely, since my dad is starting a "critical thinking" unit for his online college course...
[The Legendary] Foxboy: This means I'm proofreading as soon as I get home from work.
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Should work.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Imagine slogging through the worst offenders on the pit of voles.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: And you can't turn away because it's your DAD.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heh. TAke on the escort mission. Admiral is throwing party. You've got a lucrative contract. All you gotta do? Escort the "Escorts" to the party.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Lol!
[The Legendary] valles: Hah. I -like- that.
[The Legendary] valles: Anyway. What are some other ones that've been seen?
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Mission types?
[The Legendary] valles: Yeah.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: PAtrol CHeckpoint-to checkpoint
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Standard assault and capture.
[The Legendary] valles: *nodnod to both*
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Honorable duel/challenge missions.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: CAnyon run for flying mechs
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Rescue/hazardous environment containment
[The Legendary] valles: Mm-hm!
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Eva 2 in the Volcano FTW
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hehe. _
[The Legendary] valles: 'Get away with your life'
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Oooh! Synchro battle!
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Oh yes. The mish that starts out simple, and turns into an enemy ambush.
[The Legendary] valles: Que?
[The Legendary] valles: Synchro?
[The Legendary] Foxboy: A lot of the episodes early in EVANGELION were Giant mech tropes.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hahaha.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Oh yes. Pair of mechs having to fight in synchronization. Don'
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: don't know if that's doable here though.
[The Legendary] valles: Hm. 'Feint/Distraction'? Go there, make a noise at mission clock X. We'll take it from therre.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: So having to do close support/wingman duties for a total JERK
[The Legendary] Foxboy: I'm a sad case.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Instruction for new wannabe mech pilots.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: I'm working up some RP scripts for Mother Meyai
[The Legendary] valles: ...oooooooh.
[The Legendary] valles: Especially if we include the Sakura Taisen 'speech selection' rpg element I was thinking of a while back.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So in communications, you have the option to determine the course of conversation?
[The Legendary] valles: Exactly. And a limited amount of time to make your choice.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: That could be useful for RPG game plot missions. For random contract missions, they might get repetitive after a while. So if they're used there, keep them either as text (comm transmissions to an in-game screen) or simple choice.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Sox WIN!!! Sox WIN!!! Woohooo!
[The Legendary] valles: *yawn* Agreed, Sil.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also, if they're kept as simple text for standard merc missions, it lends itself to the modding community.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heh. If you're tired, we can call it here. I should be off anytime now anyway.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: He was responding to the Red Sox announce
[The Legendary] valles: No, I'm expressing disinterest in the Sox. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hahaha
[The Legendary] valles: If we're doing that, then probably should keep -all- in game coms as text;
[The Legendary] Kaeda: The Sox can suck my big fat one. The big sports news is the Bills crushing the Jets.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The game plot stuff can be verbal as well, since we want the players to emote witht he main characters.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Bills? Ya mean five years ago's New England Patriots?
[The Legendary] valles: Except that doing them differently doesn't make sense...
[The Legendary] Foxboy:
[The Legendary] valles: ...maybe 'squirting' 'canned' vid messages at points?
[The Legendary] valles: And explained and described as such.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, the alternative would be to make the vocal files also moddable, so the players could add their *own* text/vocal message choices?
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Anyhow... I'm respeccing "Becky" so I'm a bit incommunicado
[The Legendary] valles: Um, that'd be a given, right? Campaign is not core game.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: the game-related vocals are designed so the players can't just randomly change the game vocals. But they can change the merc mission vocals.
[The Legendary] valles: I'm intending to put the ability to script missions and campaigns in the mod tool pack, so, yeah.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Either would work. But I suspect any player studies would show the method that allows for speech in game would be preferable. So whichever method they like that we could do would be what we focus on.
[The Legendary] valles: Anyway. Technical question, I think,r ather than design as such.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: True
[The Legendary] valles: Anyway, where were we before that?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Types of missions
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I'd just mentioned the mission that falls apart, and the game player has the opportunity to either call in for new orders, or script his own objectives based on the options in-misison.
[The Legendary] valles: Right. Hmm... ah. Scramble.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yes. The enemy's attacking right now. An addendum to that, you only have a limited amount of time to choose your vehicle. No time for customization.
[The Legendary] valles: Betrayal.
[The Legendary] valles: Employer hands you an abominable order. What do you do?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Always big.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Ah, yes.
[The Legendary] valles: Like, 'slaughter this crowd of protesting civilians'
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: YOu're a merc. YOu work for money. The employer tells you the leader of his resistance problem is in the village nearby. Your orders, kill the village.
[The Legendary] valles: Two sorts of these.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Do you do it, or take the hit and keep the moral high ground.
[The Legendary] valles: One is 'up front' - you get told, you say 'I refuse'
[The Legendary] valles: The other it just comes at you mid-mission.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also, you could have an invisible "morality" stat in the mission database. Depending on the kinds of missions you take, or the number of noncombatants you kill, you get uglier missios, or nicer missions.
[The Legendary] valles: Do it? Break you objectives? Turn around and cap the sick bastard sneering over your shoulder? Up to you.
[The Legendary] valles: *nodnod*
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It would be interesting if one of your options was to kill your employer in certain missions.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or if along the way, the other side contacts you and offers to hire you away.
[The Legendary] valles: And of course the old favorite where -you-'re the one betrayed... but that'd be just a subset of 'suvivals'
[The Legendary] Foxboy: So what kind of mecha are we thinking?
[The Legendary] valles: Especially if your morality stat or cash reserves are low.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: True.
[The Legendary] valles: Armored-Core grade customization, 7-10 meters tall, 10-80 tons.
[The Legendary] valles: Light, Standard, Heavy.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Hm.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The mecha customization system concept is ripped right from AC, so that section's pretty solid.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: So a minor "shiny" hit for the flexibility
[The Legendary] valles: Lights can achieve agility comparable to ZoE's Orbital Frames, Heavies maneuver more like battlemechs.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Although each fram section has customizable "slots", the number of depending on the frame section and class type.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Sort of how CoH lets you modify powers to a limited extent.
[The Legendary] valles: [IE, size and tech level.]
[The Legendary] valles: Weapons divided into beam, gun, and missile categories.
[The Legendary] valles: Two 'transformation' types per weight class, only possible with -exact- frame combinations and special parts installed.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Each weapon category has three levels of ammo / damage type. Each ammo has one slot for customization. Giving you MG ammo with say, AP or explosive, etc.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: To keep the design work down, only certain frames are capable of transforming, but parts from those frames interchange.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Techhead's been Base modding again
[The Legendary] valles: Lights can be jet/choppers or amphibious scout car-boat things. ^_^
[The Legendary] valles: Mediums can be fighter-bombers or submarines.
[The Legendary] valles: Heavies can be subs or big honkin tanks.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: XL concept that was being tossed around was a "pillbox" fixed fortification.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Maybe with anti-air or anti-orbital strike capability.
[The Legendary] valles: Frame weight classes do -not- have to be matched; IE, you can have a Heavy torso on medium legs, or vice versa.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: But you take performance hits if the class type is too extreme.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Like say, mounting an artillery cannon on a light torso with light legs.
[The Legendary] valles: Performance hits, weight and power issues... yeah.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Finally got flight for Ecs.
[The Legendary] valles: Solar-system wide setting with extremely varied environments - Earth, Mercurian mines, zero-g among saturn's rings, etc.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Sub water missions could be earth, Europa, etc.
[The Legendary] valles: I have a standing concept for a colony environment settled in a tented-over Valles Marineris.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Gee I wonder why?
[The Legendary] valles: Heh.
[The Legendary] valles: Ah! Character interaction modeled after the Sakura Taisen series - time-limited opportunities to select various conversational options.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Variable in-game economy. Some equipment may be scarce and thus more expensive or more lucrative to sell, other euipment may not be available or no one wants it. Plus a black market if you just *have* to have it.
[The Legendary] valles: Gameplay controls modeled after Zone of the Enders with the addition of linked weapon groups.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: For PC port, controller, joystick and mouse support included.
[The Legendary] valles: Persisten campaign environment that responds to your mission actions.
[The Legendary] valles: IE, blow up the Laser Factory and lasers get more expensive.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Since you're a merc, you have (usually) total freedom in determining how your mission planning goes.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: And everyone say hi to Bob!
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hi Bob!
[The Legendary] valles: Hi Bob!
[The Legendary] Kaeda: !boB iH
[The Legendary] Looney Toons: Hey all in fight, no time to chat
[The Legendary] valles: Hm.
[The Legendary] Looney Toons: Okay, fight over.
[The Legendary] Looney Toons: Sorry about that.
[The Legendary] valles: The snide answer to 'why are people fighting' is, 'because they're people', but in a little more detail than that, what's happening in this setting?
[The Legendary] Looney Toons: After racking up the badges and an accolade with Eva this afternoon (Thanks Morgan and Bella!), I decided to round out the evening with Kawaiiko-chan from Dark Heart High School.
[The Legendary] Looney Toons: Going into combat again...
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Well, Ko-chan is always welcome, Bob. And if you don't get costume-slot salvage from ToT'ing, we have plenty of spares.
[The Legendary] Looney Toons: Actually, not TOTing, but running back from a mish and trying to gain a level in the process by fighting my way there.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Ahh, the joys of CaD during Halloween. Eochai, and Deathsurges... all I need isa Rikti raid...
[The Legendary] valles: Bite thy tongue, sirrah!
[The Legendary] Kaeda: Do enjoy.
[The Legendary] valles: Hm. We've kinda casually mentioned wingmates, but how many and how effective?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It would depend on system load and capability.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: That's why MW2 through 4 had only 2 lancemates.
[The Legendary] valles: *doesn't know much about AI*
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: the AI is half the battle. The amount of load having controllable AI's would put on the system is the question.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also, unless the AI's are meant to be disposable, you probably want them to reflect your growing level, so their capability is based on a certain percentage of your skills as well. This gives them an edge on the battlefield.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Though not as good as yours.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, "Have you *played* X-Wing? Make no mistake, you ARE the Rebel Alliance!"
[The Legendary] valles: Hm.
[The Legendary] valles: Maybe, during the 'load screen', premission, have the game look at the personality traits of your wingman and try and customize -their- mech?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Either that, or you can personalize your wingmen's mecha just like your own, and even choose pilots from a stable of mercs you hired. Much the same way MW:Mercs did it.
[The Legendary] valles: I'm thinking one to three wingmates, tops, probably just one.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: In that case, the wingmates are hirelings who pilot more of your spare mecha.
[The Legendary] valles: I'd rather have more developed and realized wingmates - after all, these are also the characters you're going to be getting to know.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The really valuable hirelings come with their own mecha, and it is self-maintaining.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, you could have two varieties. The commong soldiers who are piloting your equipment, and the "name-brand" NPC's who come with their own machines.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Congratulations, dear! I'm so proud of you!
[The Legendary] valles: Like... the merc squad you're in has something like six 'name brands' plus you plus your 'name brand' wingmate.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Whoops
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Depending on how much time you want to devote to the NPC back end, you could have a "threshold" that if the common soldier reaches it, they become NPC name-brand material and gain their own personal mech.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Thus there's a reward for being intersted in raising your soldier's experience levels and caring for them.
[The Legendary] valles: And each of those eight has their own specific machine and resources that you can't touch.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: That works.
[The Legendary] valles: Hm. So, like, you and your wingmate are the lead pair of a squadron or something?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The question is if the back end tracks finite resources for each of these, or if it just assigns a point value to their combat stats and keeps raising it after missions.
[The Legendary] valles: Depends on what kind of memory there ends up being room to allocate them.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, on the squadron front, set it up like the way Mekton recommends. The cutscene shows about twenty fighters show up, half become mecha, and engage the enemy. YOu and your wingmen peel off to engage the primary target, thent he mission starts.
[The Legendary] valles: Ideally it'd be the first, but the second would be so much simpler.
[The Legendary] valles: You have your mission, the other NPCs have theirs.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Whoo! Luck charm sells for 11,111
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Technically your merc army is huge. But you're hte heroes and they're just backdrop.
[The Legendary] valles: The elite squad of the entire company, that draw the troublesome jobs.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The game starts as you being part of a small unit, part of a larger merc force. Some missions pass. Then something happens, and you have to strike out with only your squad and some support personnel.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: probably abandonment and betrayal, since those work well for anime-style mecha games.
[The Legendary] valles: *nodnod*
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Over time, the mission backdrop animations change from you and a handful of people assualting the enemy location to whole wings of planes as you build up. But it's still just you and your couple of extras in the mission.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The rest of the "army" is just animated backdrop for the background.
[The Legendary] valles: And the members of the squad each have their own preferred weapons and tactics, their own opinions of you and each other... even their own regard for orders.
[The Legendary] valles: Sounds like a plan. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The game could make intelligent decisions on how much backdrop is active depending on how successful you've been.
[The Legendary] valles: Option to determine the breakdown and/or abilities of the line troops, rather than generics or micromanaging?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So if you reach the end of the main game arc and you've been really successful, the before-mission cutscene shows waves of fighters, mecha running across the ground, and maybe a couple of small capships duelling it out overhead. THEN you start the mish
[The Legendary] valles: Like, to say 'Order one of these, one of these, and four of those for every active squad, and use this and that sort of doctrine'
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The ability to determine as much or as little of your TO&E would be up tot he player. There's the generic "let the computer handle it" and there's "Let me at it!"
[The Legendary] valles: Just like the rest of the game, then. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Functionally, the game could handle it using the mech engine. Each segment is like a frame of a really complex mech, and the doctrinal behavior is like mod slots in the frame component.
[The Legendary] valles: Getting the behaviors to slot into the AI might be interesting... but -wow-. Good idea.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Now we need a numbers guy to say "waht are you nuts?"
[The Legendary] valles: Hush. This is a wish-list.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Hehehe. Well, coding the TO&E would be complex. It would be an issue if you wanted to do strategic control. Like say, you aren't dropping for this mission, you're just controlling troops.
[The Legendary] valles: *smacks himself on the forehead*
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: So the memory segment which is normally allocated to mecha combat is for this mission allocated to strategic management. And you have no *direct* mecha control for the fight.
[Tell]NEUTRON KEN: hollows team lfm wanna join Valles?
[Tell]--}NEUTRON KEN: No, sorry.
[The Legendary] valles: Duh. -Core- game is just you and your squad.
[The Legendary] valles: Company support is expansion territory.
[The Legendary] valles: Like battlesuits. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yes. But the strategic management would work if you're not actually in combat. The "squad" is the company is made up of "wingmen" units.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yeah, it's expansion material. But it can be done using the existing game engine.
[The Legendary] valles: Agreed; include that option in from the ground level.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: In reality, the army is maybe twenty "blocks" of troops, each block acting as a single unit. But if animated properly, this will be impossible for the player to detect. It will *look* like they're manipulating the entire armada individually.
[The Legendary] valles: Sounds like the Total War games, in a way.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The trick will be to put a random number of units from each segment into a block. so a single "wingman" is controlling units randomly scattered across the map.
[The Legendary] valles: And you go through the battle just by talking to your subunit leaders?
[The Legendary] valles: Like you would ordinary wingmen.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yes. The point of that portion of the game, is that you're assuming a more strategic role.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Again, it's optional. But it would appeal to some of the players, and would extend the lifetime of the game.
[The Legendary] valles: Or, for the -really- ambitious, multitasking that -and- frontline fighting.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Also, imagine the multiplayer capability....
[The Legendary] valles: Indeed. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: One person on your team is tagged as the squadron commander, and he's watching the strategic map, sending you instructions. On a tactical level, the rest of the players are driving mecha and fighters.
[The Legendary] valles: ...oh, wow.
[The Legendary] valles: I -like- that.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I suspect due to memory and processor limitations, you can't pilot a mech *and* run the strat map simultaneously. But hter'es no need. In a real command environment, you wouldn't anyway, and that's the point of this capability.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: You have to choose.
[The Legendary] valles: Ahhh.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And in a multiplayer game, it adds another level of strategic control to the game.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: A pair of people on either side of the combat are squadron commanders, each with their own strat maps. And the other players in the multiplayer game are in vehicles.
[The Legendary] valles: Melee fights would be pretty simple from the player's end, right?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, from the commander's viewpoint, yes. But the people *playing* the mecha, it's like the standard game.
[The Legendary] valles: Flashy-looking, maybe, but basically 'get close, hit Attack3'
[The Legendary] valles: No, no, I'm thinking of IN the standard game - train of thought jumping tracks, here.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: But unlike automated agents, the commander could send instructions to a player to disengage and get behind a hill, the other side just revealed an element that's about to flank him.
[The Legendary] valles: Because there's already a -crapload- of things to track, no?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: At the commander level? YOu'd depend heavily on the AI. YOu'd have overall control. "Go here, shoot this."
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: But the combat resolves without your direct control.
[The Legendary] valles: Yup.
[The Legendary] valles: *is back on track now, really*
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: For that, you'd put the special NPC's in charge of the critical units.
[The Legendary] valles: Of course. They've -already- got much more developed AI than the rest, so.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or potentially, your main forces just draw attention while a super-elite strike force made up of say, four or five of your NPCs go in together.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And you ahve to hope you've judged their personalities right so they don't clash in combat.
[The Legendary] valles: Decisions, decisions.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Really shows how hard it is to design a game like this. So much work to put in. And we've just kitbashed on the first *night* of game design.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Of course, I'd *love* the chance to actually *do* this.
[The Legendary] valles: Hm. My thought for range balance in the base game...
[The Legendary] valles: Ohhh yeah. I have a -lot- of respect for game devs, even if I don't usually think about it.
[The Legendary] valles: A laser will burn some armor. A gun can ruin a weapon or or damage a component.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: For range balance, there's the built-in 60% accuracy or so to start. Then as you progress, depending on your hit accuracy percentage and the number of times you use a given weapon, your accuracy goes up.
[The Legendary] valles: A sword will cleave you limb from limb.
[The Legendary] valles: That is, melee fights are -decisive-.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Beam swords are a combination of energy guns and swords. So they're rare, and when you see one, you *know* you're up against a name-brand villain.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: FORM BLAZING Soooado!
[The Legendary] valles: Heh.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.:
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Why they never started a fightwith the stoopidsword I'll never know.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: They did on numerous occasions.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: But it wasn't until they got the "charge attack" animation that htey were unstoppable.
[The Legendary] valles: Melee options... 1-hand sword, axe, 2-hand sword, 2 swords, shield... spear?
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Scythhe.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Chainsaw on rotating gimbal? Swings blade around, handgrip locks in palm, chainsaw spins up....
[The Legendary] valles: Scary, but not a real weapon. ^_^
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Mind doms are fun... but slow solo
[The Legendary] valles: Oh! Duh. Knives.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Early in the game, fighting with low-end equipment, probably on a backward world where they use kit-bashed leftover mecha... might encounter a few.
[The Legendary] valles: Later on? Something to add a -bit- of close-fighting to a long-range machine, or an expression of your own leetness.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It would be frightening, even if fighting chunky piecemeal light mecha if they suddenly manifested a pair of wicked chainsaws and advanced on you.
[The Legendary] valles: I grew up in a house with a wood stove and a stand of forest on the property.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: punch-daggers are easiest for knives. Triangular, the back end is the palm grip.
[The Legendary] valles: I spent many days watching my dad swear at jammed chains.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: hehehe
[The Legendary] valles: Chainsaws do not impress me as weapons. ^_^
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Swordchicks, yo.
[The Legendary] valles: 'chucks, you mean?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Or is that feminine-style mecha with swords?
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Yeak. i spaek tpyo
[The Legendary] Foxboy: That's not bad either
[The Legendary] valles: Thought for Light Legs:
[The Legendary] valles: Digitigrade, right?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Yes?
[The Legendary] valles: Some will, of course, look hooved. Others completely mechanical. Still others, feminine.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Could do simple digitigrade legs, like a Locust. Or more complex like a midform kitsune.
[The Legendary] valles: Giant robots... with stiletto heels.
[The Legendary] valles: I'm thinking more complex, actually.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Don't laught they had them in Virtual-On
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Oh, I know. I loved Virtual On.
[The Legendary] valles: I'm not laughing - I think it'd look really cool, better than the hoof options.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: I've got the PC version kicking around somewhere.
[The Legendary] valles: But - y'know - still. -Heels-?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Sure. Why not. It's an anime based game, and it's a mecha game. We might as well go whole hog and cater to our audience.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: You *know* they'll want it.
[The Legendary] valles: 'Bot' = simple, 'Hoof' = standard, 'Heel' = advanced?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And a large component of the gaming crowd will probably prefer feminine mecha, so we'd need to provide a lot of support for it. MAybe alternates for most of the common forms, and a few specialty forms.
[The Legendary] valles: Maybe.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heh.
[The Legendary] valles: Put it on the budget after most of the other things. ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The initial pass would only be a couple, then the rest could be expansion material.
[The Legendary] valles: Right.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: Nothing says badass like the swarthy, doughty fighter with a pretty Sammy mech
[The Legendary] valles: Mediums have ordinary, human-like plantigrade legs, I think.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Probably make the feminine types specialty equipment, maybe only after encountering certain NPC's who have feminine mecha, and "enlighten" the pilot PC that this is possible.
[The Legendary] valles: 'A man walks down the street in a hat like that, you know he's not afraid of -anything-.'
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: If the gamer demand for it is high, more can be added in expansions.
[The Legendary] valles: Sounds right.
[The Legendary] Foxboy: And hope mech assault does better than Auto Assault
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Heh.
[The Legendary] valles: ^_^
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Well, this mecha game would have the strategic and tactical elements going for it. That would establish it's value early in the mecha gaming community.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: That level of battlefield management would appeal to a LOT of gamers.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: It means that instead of everyone showing up in roughly equivalent mecha, you can have someone piloting the arty mech, or the sub mech, or the flying mecha. And one guy managest them intelligently even if they can't see each other.
[The Legendary] valles: The first released version would probably only have the core in-mission game and the persistent strategic map, but the possibilities would be there for later.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: The multiplayer component is probably a must in today's internet gaming age. It's a make or break point in modern video gaming.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: And the strat control would essentially establish our bona fides early, if it could be instituted with the first release.
[The Legendary] valles: *nodnod* But the first draft would be a relatively basic 'ground level' thing.
[The Legendary] valles: That'd have to depend on how difficult it turned out to be to do.
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Anyway, it's late and I've got a really early start tomorrow. I gotta go.
[The Legendary] valles: G'night!
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Cya later!
[The Legendary] valles: I'll copy this and post it to the boards, if no one objects?
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: All we need now is a name...
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Go for it!
[The Legendary] Silhouette.: Cya later!

---

===============================================
"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

I think your missing a few things. For instance, Solid state fuel swords... they either have to be mounted on a limb or the hand/manipulator has to be armored to take the heat. also the limb must be strong enough to counter the thrust of the weapon. You can't turn them off once ignighted and they only last so long. They are cheap though and the area effect heat could set off munitions... plus blocking it could do be hard and recoil the other weapon... however if it goes off from damage or is dropped its a whole new weapon.
I note a lack of mines, dropable timed explosive packs, or grenades... this is seems illogical... also depth charged and air dropped dumbfire bombs. With airborn mechs and large scale battles incidiary and explosive carpet bombing. Plus mechs or devices with jamming equipment to screw with people.
Also, as a merc there should be a job board available, and NPC battles going on. It adds realism and lets players watch as NPCs get credit for random missions that effect the plot. This way you can have the situation change regularrly plotwise (thus increasing replay) and offer experienced players a chance to be uber early on and alter the storyline when they as random merc #732 suddenly shows up in a junker and possible kill off major NPCs players or stop/lessen the negative/positive effects of a early battle.
Also, the option to interfer with battles they shouldn't be in shows up. Join in as side 3 or 4 and if the player is good/crazy enough let them screw with other peoples battles. Granted they won't be payed for it unless the help one side out enough to make a difference and they can get reputation points this way. You could also let them go GTA on the feild and do things like run around chucking grenades and using ECM to screw with everyone if they are bored. Unless they manage to get everyone else to bail on the battle in confusion or defeat. Attempting to steal salvage from someone elses battle is also an option I'd enjoy. Also this would let you save pilots from the losing side (they'd owe you) or capture pilots and hold them for ransom. Of course if they catch you or track you you have to defend yourself or bribe your way out of things.
Let me hire NPCs that aren't combatants. Guys that can buy sell legally and not. Salvage more or less effectively. Mechanics that can repair my stuff cheaper or scrap salavage to try and make better parts. A NPC mechanic that offers me alternate configurations of my mechs that are more towards my play style, making one that offers stupid (but improving) designs would be nice... a suggested customized mech design is good for people who don't wantt to micromanage. If you have sensor grades, a mech with powerful sensors could allow you to see what the other mech is made of (not that the player can use this in the feild that much), if the discipline of your crew it right, the moder NPC could start telling you to take out the mech a certan way so that you can salvage such and such a part. This offers a optional mission objective and if you do it will level that NPC faster and make it like you more.
If you make a two seater of a larger mech let me hire a NPC to manage the anti-missle, ECCM, ECM, and/or be the tail gunner. Alternately allow a multiplayer option that lets one guy drive /operate the forward guns and another shoot the other weapons. A transformed heavy mech in artilery mode could have the second operator use the defenseive weapons while the other guy aims.
Well that is the first wave of suggestions that come to mind for me.

sounds to me like someone wants to play megamek with minor improvements, or possibly the campaign version of it megamekNET.
for those interested:
megamek.sourceforge.net
www.mekwars.org/
granted Valkyries are not supported yet, but it's something I'm working on. so is a build system suitable to MekWars for customizing the meks. It's just slow going.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Speaking as someone who has worked combat system design, albeit just for a free amateur MU game...
One thing you have to consider from the beginning is game balance.
Yes, it sounds like that's something you only need to do once all the shinies have been established. To a degree, that's true. You'd want to get everything you want sorted out...before thinking of how you're gonna pit it against each other.
But balance isn't just about massaging the numbers, it's also a fairly important thing to consider from a system perspective, and problems of balance are going to affect your underlying game design.
More to the point here, you're talking about having massive customization. The question is, how much classification are you going to allow? You've already talked about dividing mecha into "Light, Medium, and Heavy" - so that's one limitation right there. Limitations are usually necessary, unfortunately...
Consider City of Heroes. In the original pre-Beta stage, the designers intended for it to be completely open-ended. You'd pick a character, and you'd pretty much be able to freely select powers from a hideously massive list. That didn't work, since it was too easy for a player to totally nerf themselves - or twink themselves out.
The Archetype system was imposed on the game, so characters were divided into more clearly defined roles - tanks and scrappers for melee, blasters for range damage, and so on. Then there's limits to what each AT can do. The designers have hinted that the Spines powerset for scrappers was a mistake, since at one point you could build a Spines scrapper that was more deadly at long-range combat than most blasters...while still benefiting from the defensive powers a scrapper gets. Scrappers aren't supposed to have solid defense and effective ranged attack.
In fact, the designers don't want anyone to have solid defense and solid ranged damage. That's why blaster defenses tend to suck, and why Kheldians have so many limitations placed on them.
So what you have there is a balance decision that affects what kind of character you can make in the system.
There's a certain point to this. MMO players should all be familiar with the concept of FoTM, Flavor of the Month. If someone works out something that works very well, eventually you're gonna see a bajillion people playing with it... customizability be damned, I just want my cookie cutter hyper-effective build so I can pwn people.
How do you discourage that? Do you deliberately set out to cripple certain combinations, or make them impossible? Should you discourage that?
Part of the point of a mecha game should be customization, and a bewildering array of different technologies and weapons. But you need to sort out what the pros and cons of said weaponry are ... and the underlying balance framework tying it all together. Maybe you'd like to establish what, despite all their wildly different weapons ... what every mecha would have in common.
Take a look at Battletech, for instance, where tonnage, heat, and critical slots are the shared limiting factors determining what you can install on a chassis. And in combat, heat's something that affects everything. It has been pointed out that heat in BT might not be the most realistic of mechanisms ... but it exists for a game design reason.
And amusingly, has been converted, from there, into a fairly important part of game lore. If Battlemechs run hot, then it gets really toasty inside a 'mech's cockpit, meaning that pilots need to wear cooling vests and suits ... and there's a real risk of heatstroke. What's part of the game balance, system-wise, has become essentially a roleplay and story element.
So balance - and balance mechanisms - are important.
I recommend checking out Sirlin.net for articles on game design, particularly this one.
-- Acyl

I hadn't thought about that explicitly, Acyl, but yes, you're quite right.
Hm. Start by refining the most complex option into something workable: What do real engineers have to cope with that we can model?
Cost
Weight
Weight distribution
Power supply and weight ratios
Shape of components
Volume
Heat buildup and dissipation
Structural integrity
Ammunition
Fuel
Crew survival
Electronics of all sorts
...and of course probably at least a few that I'm missing.
Figure out which ones can be practically included in the game, and how they should be simplified, and give-and-take between each other. Figure out how to write them in a neat block of just a few lines. Then code everything possible. Everything. Take a first pass before the engine is working to weed out the things that are obviously broken in any of the umpety dozen possible ways.
Then, once you have your engine showing duplo-mechs and supporting basic head-to-head multiplay, advertise on line. Open to all, come and try it (and help us trauma test our game vs. various systems). Datamine everything the volunteer players do, then look at what they're not doing and have your paid playtesters try that against them.
Then, after a while, once you've gotten a solid statistical base, send out a survey asking people for what they thought were the most interesting variations they'd seen. Add the list you get from that to the list of the things people used a lot, then dump the rest in a dusty file cabinet and release a new version with the truncated list. Repeat the process, with the addition of a box of 'things I miss or would like to see' on the survey sheet.
At the same time, start your art/modeling people on refining the mechanical design and send your code team (now that they know that everything in their baliwick either works properly with systems X, Y, and Z or isn't going to at any point in the foreseeable future) back to add the environmental effects.
...I've probably said something truly stupid somewhere, but this nonetheless feels like a good stopping point.

===============================================
"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

first: Paper prototype.
Use it to test out core game mechanics (custamizability of meks forinstance.) the paper prototype can be very limited in scale and it will still show you a lot about your game. and decent book about making a computer game will tell you this.
also keep in mind you can't use the word mech, it's trademarked by the Battletech people.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Further thinking:
What must and does every mech have in common? Probably you could find exceptions to every rule you want to try. Battletech's Stalker is unquestionably a mech, being basically a torso on legs; likewise, however, the wheelchair-like Guntank of original Gundam is equally indisputably a member of the giant robot category.
But, if we leave the option of truly bizzare frame types open, then we run the risk - the likelihood - of ending up with most players using things that really aren't very mech-like at all, being essentially airmobile tanks or whatever. While that ability would be useful in designing NPC opposition and in increasing modification potential, and could make a quite interesting and entertaining game in its own right, it's really not the sort of thing I, at least, want to define as our 'core play'.
So, in setting, a mech (whatever they end up being called in the final version, that's what they are) is a war machine that uses a humanlike plan and articulation to increase speed, ease, and intuitiveness of pilot control. It's easy and flexible to use because it's like a human, and thus can take advantage of all the skills and tactics that make us flexible and able - and some more besides.
So, the design window starts with a plain structural skeleton with a cockpit bubble about where its 'heart' should be. The 3D viewable 'space' it sits within is divided up into cubical grid coordinates of, say, maybe a foot or half a meter or something.
Along one side of the screen you have a list of available weapons and components. Beneath that is a quick thumbnail summary of your machine's current and estimated final stats and performance - though the latter should probably be toggleable to save on processor time; calculating exact abilities and center of gravity would probably be relatively heavy-duty math.
Along the other you have rotational controls and a series of autofunction toggles to do things like automatically add structural braces to handle weight, or upgrade joint drivers to maintain a certain amount of mobility, or skin a completed design over in armor using the minimum number of polygons and/or mass. Also located here are viewing tools that use shaded blobs over a wireframe view to indicate either weight distribution or heat dissipation patterns - where it's heavy, where it's hot.
Internal components are then added to the frame like a three-dimensional game of tetris, then weapons hardpoints, then the armor shell is defined (either by hand or a handy-dandy 'wrap this up' 3D graphic widget... there are such things, right?), and then you can add color schemes and actual weapons.
Balance? Heat, weight distribution, power-to-weight... these should all pay off directly in how the machine handles in combat and when, what, and how often its systems fail or are damaged. These would be linear lists of characteristics attached to an 'empty' visible model based on the final design - actual damage modeling and such would be, IMHO, something to save for the sequel if bothered with at all.

===============================================
"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

On the subject of heat as a balance mechanism, it was pointed out that BattleTech started out as a tabletop game where players had to keep track of the heat, and so it was simpler to have one heat value for the robot. It also dealt with firing rates for weapons without having to keep track of the weapons separately.
For a computer game, the computer should be perfectly capable of tracking heating, overheating, and firing rates separately for each weapon.
----------
No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

I've got a pair of games for the PS and PS2 called Front Mission (3 and 4 respectively). It's a turn based combat system.
The mechs in the game are called Wansers and are around 15 to 20 feet tall. in the games you can customise your wansers by switching out each arm (separately), the legs (together), the body and the optional backpack. you can also switch out and mix and match the weapon systems however you like, if you have the weight allowance.
each body has a certain amount of power/weight capacity available, as well a certain amount of armor/HPs. the arms have set HPs and a set modifier for attacks, the legs have HPs and a set speed. speaking of which, the legs can be treads or hover based. Naturally the available body parts and weapons get better as the game goes on.
Weapons are either shoulder mounted (missile, rocket or grenade launchers) or a wide variety of hand held weapons.
weapons are divided into 3 damage types, Pentrating, Impact or Flame, and you can make your armor more resistant to 1 of those types.
Weapons include:
Impact: Clubs, 'brass knuckles' type weapons, shotguns, bazookas
Penetrating: wanser sized SMGs, Rifles (long range, single shot), hydralic spikes (melee)
Flame: flamethrowers, missiles, rockets and grenades
there's also the occasional prototype beam weapon on a 'boss' enemy's wanser
In #3, there were only 2 kinds of backpacks. Powerpacks (enabling you to add more/better weapons) or cargo (for ammo reloads, repair items, ect). #4 added repair packs, jetpacks, sensor packs (lets friendly missile-armed mechs hit targets usually out of their range) and a radio pack (can call in airstrikes or resupply drops)__________________
"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." - Terry Pratchett
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

Quote:

---

calculating exact abilities and center of gravity would probably be relatively heavy-duty math.

---

If that counts as 'heavy duty' from a computational aspect, I want my money back towards a freaking Core 2 Quad.
To elucidate, Valles, I think you're underestimating the amazing amount of computational horsepower available to the common man today.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

I have a number of questions for consideration...
The first, question, of course, if whether you want this to be at all practical. It's almost certainly just a thought experiment anyway, so is it a thought experiment about What Would Be Really Cool For Me Personally, or is it a thought experiment on How To Make The World Better By Giving It The Perfect Mecha Game?
The second question is what sort of a community you want to have. Clearly, The Best Mecha Game Ever would *have* to have multiplayer. Preferably, it would have an option for large numbers, to allow for entire battlefields of mecha going after one another in realtime. Taking *that* to the Coolest Possible Level, in turn, would require some reasonably sophisticated tools of communication between allies, to let people who are good at strategy and cooperation and building complementary mecha to really shine. This all means that somewhere, somehow, you're *going* to sprout a community, if you're at all successful, and that, in turn, means that a large portion of the gaming experience is going to depend directly on who exactly is signing up over the internet to play with you, and what attitude they're bringing to the entire thing. Fundamentally, the community is shaped by the game, and the community shapes the game experience in turn. What sorts of gamers are you rgoing to encourage? What sorts of attitudes are you going to encourage? Who is this game *for*, really?
The third questions exactly how deep in the weeds you want to go. It was initially the second question, but you really need to answer the previous question first before you get here. How much numbercrunching do you want people to have to do to build/optimize their mecha? Do you want it to be the sort of thing that can be done simply over the course of five to ten minutes, the sort of thing that takes half an hour and a book/design program, or the sort of thing where "I design mecha in my head" is a potentially awe-inspiring boast? Computers *allow* for a great deal of complexity. Given that, do you want it? If you make it so that an endgame mecha takes five to ten minutes to put together, max, and winds up all chibi and cute with a couple of equally cute superpowers and your choice of a primary fire and an alt fire weapon, then you'll get a fair number of casual players, but most of the more serious players will lose interest pretty quick. (Not all of them. Everyone needs a break sometimes - but most of them.) If you make it the sort of thing that takes at least half an hour of serious thought and a reasonable head for numbers/strategy to make moderately competitive, then you will keep a lot more of the more serious players, and some of them will happily burn hours in front of your design software/books, logging in primarily to test and refine their designs. On the other hand, getting the casual players in at that point will require that you make the learning curve nice and gradual, particularly at the beginning, and most of them won't do well in competitive play even if they do make it through the single-player missions. If you make it the sort of thing that takes three or so hours of strenuous numbercrunching and an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules and available gear - well, you'll be losing a fair number of even the "serious" gamers, and your community will turn somewhat insular. The sorts of people who actually enjoy stuff like that over the long run tend to be moderately obsessive introverts with the feeling that achievement requires suffering, and the matching feeling that if something must be suffered for to be had, that's an indicator that it's worthwhile. They tend to make very specific sorts of social structures, and are almost fanatically loyal to the games they devote themselves to. Now, of course, it's not just one dimension. There are all sorts of tweaks - from optional extra complexity that people can open up (there's never any reason why you'd have to muck with the gear ratios on your tank treads, but there are some nifty tricks that you can run with if you *do* - particularly if you happen to know what sort of terrain you're likely to be fighting on in advance) to starting slow (everyone starts with the same chassis, and it's going to be a while before you can afford to swap out your body, legs, or generator. Look! your life just got simpler.)
Oh - and since you're building the cosmology from scratch, I'd suggest some excuse for fitting in a mecha-based AI/helper-person, with a moderate range of choices in voice. At its simplest, this would be a simple AI with a choice of six voices, and a set of swappable modules that have moderate in-game effects (you have three AI slots, slotting this module will improve your accuracy with missiles, etc.) At its most complex, this would involve a variety of different AI/copilot options, with different modifiers and effects, that developed over time as they gained experience alongside you (If you go with the structure of Living Crystal that you dug out of that crashed alien ship, you have to avoid vibration-based weapons, but your ECM and ECCM go way up. If you managed to save the Old Scientist's Niece, she'll tune up your engines and help with repairs, along with whatever else she does. Also, she's cute. And so on). This is partially because many of the people who would wind up playing this game are male and at least somewhat low on affection, and the option to have a friendly, identifiably female voice running around with them on the battlefield would noticeably improve the game for them (and give the choice to eject a lot more emotional impact - unless they'd paid for the appropriate extra modules). This is partially because almost everybody feels better and gets more emotionally engaged when they have someone rooting for them and helping them specifically. This is partially because just including a persistent, user-selectable voice gives all sorts of ways for people to feel cooler. The guy who chooses the Boris Karloff voice is going to have a noticeably different experience than the one who chooses the Blood For The Blood God voice, which, in turn, will have a noticeably different experience than the guy who picked the Sultry voice (and to be fair, if we're going to have the Sultry Woman voice, we should have a Sexy Man voice as well) but they're all going to have a *better* experience, because it'll help them get into the feel of the character that they want.
And while we're talking about cosmology... this one doesn't matter but so much, but... Normal, straight-up hardtech mecha? Mecha with a few bits of bizarre and poorly understood alien tech thrown in for spice? Mecha and magic? Biomecha?
For that matter, you want to consider what you want to encourage. Just like the dogfighting vs Age Of Sail discussions over in fenspace, the shape of the battlefield and the overall gaming experience will be hugely affected by What Works. If you can pick up a few levels and then start clearing the field of mecha twice your size and eight times your cost by blowing their heads off at extreme range, then the entire game turns rather quickly into an elaborate stealth/detect/sniper situation (shaped further by how much stealth is actually available). If The Things That Work are all within relatively short-range engagement envelopes, and melee weapons are particularly effective, then it turns into an oversized variant fo the beat-em-up with some interesting twists. Personally, my suggestion would be to try to make as many different techniques as possible effective but not overwhelming - because different techniques will naturally do better with different temperments and different sets of *player* skills, which will mean that players will tend to have to design for themselves rather than pulling The Design Of The Gods off of a strategy website, which in turn means that design skill will be moredirectly useful and important to the player. It also means that the battlefield will be full of people using wacky strategies against each other (It's that moment when the Ninja Knifer manages to pretend to be unaware *just* long enough to draw down the Mammoth From Above, slipping out of the way just in time - and look! he was standing on hi-test mines! He must have a Combat Engineer friend. The Mammoth gives a solemn Farewell to Legs.)

You might want to look at Exteel over at NCsoft. I don't know anything about it other than that it exists and involves at least somewhat customizable mecha, but it might be helpful. If nothing else, it'll stand as an example of what you don't want.

Exteel is more comparable to the Virtua On series than anything else. It's a PvP online game, focused on fast-paced twitch gaming and action.
Which is about all that's known about it, since the game is still in closed beta.
-- Acyl

...and that's another question, folded in. Which skillsets do you want to reward?
- simple twitch?
- complex twitch? (same thing, but involves mastering a strange/complex/unintuitive interface)
- on-the-fly tactics?
- Strategy?
- cooperation at the squad level?
- cooperation and organization at the larger unit level? (anything where the situation is large and complex enough to demand dedicated leadership/coordination people, to the point that their ability to organize the battle is more important than their ability to fight directly)
- Individual mech design? (but remember the internet)
- cooperative mech design?
- intelligence analysis, misdirection and mindgames?
Many of these are allied. (Simple twitch and on-the-fly tactics, for example, mesh with each other naturally to the point that they can be difficult to seperate.) Some are obligatory to a certain level for any self-respecting mecha game. Still... which of these do you want to reward people for having? Which of these do you want to penalize people for *not* having? (If you have a highly effective missile system that uses laser painting, that lets you take advantage of your high skills in stealth/misdirection and twitch. If it can be fired and painted by two different people, that lets you fold in some cooperation as well. If this laser painting thing is the *only* way to reliably get a missile on target, across all available missile systems, suddenly stealth/misdirect/twitch goes a little further into the "if you don't have this, that's going to cost you" column.) There are a ton of subtle tweaks to bring each of these skills to a greater or lesser degree of importance.

Part of that was answered in the area of skills that increase as you use them. Twitch is great in a rather fast mech... however if your carrying a heavy slow fire weapon its pointless to concentrate of being trigger happy if one dodge leaves your weapon useless for a while, and gets you nibbled to death. Then the twitch players (likely doing flybys or taking potshots as they zoom by in lighter mechs) are going to be happy unless they keep getting mauled by one shot bombardment kills from the less caffine driven skills of a heavier mech. The idea is to let players decide if they are twitch monkeys or slow methodical snipering/bombardment tanks.
The point is to make a game that reward all play styles and not just makes he who consumes the most caffine wins or make snipers the only way to go. Rewarding strategy is something that should be covered by the way it allows people to play the game.
The idea I've seen so far would be summed up as make a RTS with a command role that could be filled by a computer or human player. The combat units are mechs. This is simple enough, its a basic RTS. The Commander would give out both general orders and orders to specific units. Once the battle is won or lost the commanders' units are given parts, mechs, and land as prizes... plus any bounties on the mission itself. Units get exp in stats and prizes in cash or salvage, plus bounties.
So the first level is that of a RTS, under that is the level of the FPS with mechs as the units... and power armor as ejection systems and random vehicles. So an opition to eject out of or into the battlefield has to occure. The into the field ejection is labled as an extension pack.
The third section of the hame is the before/after the battle where the players get to upgrade/change mechs and at least at command level NPCs are running around the base getting more parts, salvaging stuff, doing Repair and Refit work, etc...
The idea of the game seems to be that of an Real Time Strategy that lets you use play as a mech game. The in mech fighting is the meat of the game, but it allows you to be command also. The command giving overlord section I'm pretty sure would be unquie in the first place.
So at some point you have to limit the amount of overlord positions involved. Probably by making army size smaller the more commanders you have involved.This probably means that basic combat units are 4-8 mecha players to one command unit. Units would then be in alliances of various sizes... the more connected units the bigger the army. Any unfilled slots of either command or mech units are filled by NPCs.
Once your at this level of complexity you can start with adding alternate mission objectives beyond Search and Destroy, Surrivial/Escape, and protect this unit.