Mech-Gears

[Doctor Baron]

I was looking (and fapping) my way through the concept renders of the mechs and I was wondering if itd be possible to add mech speeds/gears.

I was thinking back to the old mechcommander 1 days when you'd set points for your mechs to go to and they'd walk/run there.
But if they found an enemy they'd lift their arms and move slower when they started firing.

It would be WAY too cool to see humanoid machines (of course, those who were able like the atlas and kodiak) walking/running around until the fighting started then ZANG! they raise their arms and start raining 12 kinds of savage hell onto the opposition. Maybe all the mechs could get like a 10% speed boost when they were out of combat and moving from X to Y in "speed mode." (going back to Crysis' multiple nanosuit modes)

It'd be a small thing to do and soooo cool...

[TuRbOlAg]

I don't know if it would be proper, but a cruise mode would be interesting.  Sort of like MASC I guess, boost your speed while sacrificing heat or weapons fire.  Say a mech tops out 50 kph in combat mode, but disengage the weapons and the engine can be pushed harder to top out at 70 kph.

Interesting idea.  Will it happen?  Doubtful, although I would be all for it.

[Valaska]

 Ummm that would be like.. Downgrading battle mechs to useless hunks of junk that walk super slow on the battlefield lol. Battlemechs are meant to have mobility, thats their main advantage, doin this, defeats that purpose.

 If you wanna go slower when yer shooting.. Just slow down! You don't have to run max speed at all times, get yourself a joystick with throttle, goin abit slower will give  you better aim but let the enemy hit you more too.

[Cujo]

or you could just use your throttle to walk or run

[BOTA:49]

Ummm that would be like.. Downgrading battle mechs to useless hunks of junk that walk super slow on the battlefield lol. Battlemechs are meant to have mobility, thats their main advantage, doin this, defeats that purpose.

 If you wanna go slower when yer shooting.. Just slow down! You don't have to run max speed at all times, get yourself a joystick with throttle, goin abit slower will give  you better aim but let the enemy hit you more too.

Mobility and speed are not the same thing.  It would be kind of nice if there was a penalty of sorts for shooting while running at full speed, but that's just personal opinion.

[Ghiest]

There is ... it's called heat build up.

[TuRbOlAg]

It's not about making the mechs go slower, it's about increasing their speed while sacrificing weapons usage.  At least that's the way I am seeing this.

[CHHš Sturmadler]

Who needs cruise control?  I always thought the throttle worked fine.

[Doctor Baron]

Mobility and speed are not the same thing.  It would be kind of nice if there was a penalty of sorts for shooting while running at full speed, but that's just personal opinion.

It's not about making the mechs go slower, it's about increasing their speed while sacrificing weapons usage.  At least that's the way I am seeing this.

These.

I mean, it'd mostly be aesthetic just as how it was in Mechcommander 1 but I thought a little bonus to movement speed would be a cool incentive to use this mode. I'm sure the maps are gonna be fairly huge so wouldnt it be nice if we got a little boost when going from base A to base B? It'd also serve as a handy escape in case things got too hot.

Illustrating my point:
Bob is piloting an atlas to the enemy base. He's lumbering along, arms swinging, looking all badass and manly. (http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/cpg/displayimage.php?album=18&pos=29)

But then he sees Joe! Bob shifts to "combat mode" or whatever and as a result he raises his arms.. Maybe this would increase his accuracy or something? I dunno. The point is: Joe sees Bob raise his arms and turns to flee- but then Bob physically tears a hole through Joe's Puma with his three arm-mounted PPCs. (http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/cpg/displayimage.php?album=18&pos=11)


Literally watching your opponent (a 100 ton humanoid-looking behemoth) physically raise its armaments at your 25 ton junior suit would be incredibly intimidating.

[TuRbOlAg]

I would seriously be completely for it if you could get a 25-25% speed boost by disengaging weapons, given that they only take a few seconds max to re-engage.  Could be a really interesting function.

I dunno if some of you have played Freelancer maybe?  Older space sim that had a cruise mode.  You could go 3X as fast as normal, but you could not use weapons.  That way if you were about to walk into a fight you thought you couldn't win you could have a chance at escaping.

[Valaska]

 Ugh.. Guys this isn't Free Space, dark orbit or Unreal, its Battletech.. The only penalty a battlemech, a sophisticated, and extremely advanced piece of hardware has when moving fast is the residual heat build up from moving, and then added onto its heat scale for firing..

 This cruise thingy makes no sense.. Its not intimidating to see an atlas raise its goofy arms and then go 500% slower or whatever, just looks like an easy target cause its arms are down, then when its arms come out.. Bam you out pace this bugger by what 550% now since yer mech was prolly faster in the first place?

 What about all the non humanoid mechs? Or the humanoid mechs that simply don't do this, the Summoner for instance, it can put its arms down sure but (actually in MW4 when running full tilt till you shot for some reason I remember the Hellbringer putting its arms downward till your fired none of this sillyness tho) its not going to! Neither would a puma, a Mad Dog, Timber Wolf etc, so what these mechs are just supposed to have some magical cruise mode that suddenly lets them go faster, or slows them down? lol.

 Remember these aren't tinker toys, they don't run on ICE engines (anymore lol), they are extremely sophisticated fighting machines and they have enough Gyroscope technology and FCS that yes they can move at full tilt and fire.. The balance you are talking about is pilot skill, there is no auto targeting in this game so if you are full pace in your battle mech, you need to be able to handle and fire it, so I offer this to you as others have.. Throttle control, slow down abit so you can aim if you aren't capable of full speed combat.

[=KoS=Zeus]

Well, translating from CBT, a mech moving at walking speed (~1-66% throttle) has only a +1 penalty to hit, while running speed (67-100% throttle) has a +2 penalty to hit.

I could see this implemented with a Walk and Run mode in that the mode does 2 things.

1.) It sets your maximum throttle
2.) It sets the default weapon sway for arm mounted weapons

Optionally, simply applying extra weapon sway when a mech passes 67% throttle would do the trick as well, making it harder to aim weapons at higher speeds than lower ones.

[Omega Angel]

Its not too bad of an idea-I mean you have a power core, lets say your want to sacrifice some of your speed to do a slight overcharge of your weapons(faster ROF, more damage, etc) vice versa-want to go faster? just power down your weapons and direct the the power to the legs.

Make those modes optional-
-Normal= No increase in any areas
-Travel= Speeds up the mech but builds up heat in engine core
-Assault= Increase weapon ROF/Energy Damage at the expense of possibly over heating your weapons

A delay between modes, also to cool down in "Normal" mode, it would take longer then say, shutting down your mech for a bit.


Adds a bit more of a strategy.  Instead of people going for bigger and bigger mechs all the time-you can have an incentive for people to use the smaller ones since they can get in and then out on raids/recon.


This is just my 2cents.  Been out of the Battletech series for 3years.

[Doctor Baron]

TL;DR

I agree with you, V. Alright- maybe it's a stupid aesthetic choice. I only say the humanoid ones because imagine a Summoner or a Timberwolf powerwalking their way across the map. Bah. That'd look ridiculous. Only the heaviest of the heavy, the humanoid looking machines, would change their animations. Clearly the torso-mounted weapons would be operational since they're just mounted weapons but would have to have reduced accuracy. The non-humanoid looking mechs could perhaps use their arm weapons (since they wouldnt be swinging) but still take the accuracy hit. I think this would make close-combat with mechs alot more intense since they'd be faster and in close range accuracy isn't the biggest issue. Hit and run would also become more viable, especially for something like capture the flag or assault the base where you're dealing with large stationary targets.

But I was thinking it would have be near instantaneous armament of the arm weapons- maybe literally half a second. Honestly, how long would it take to switch modes and raise one's arms? Like I said, with the Atlas and Kodiak it'd be aesthetic and 100% optional depending on the player. Don't wanna look like the man of the battlefield? Just walk around in (for lack of a better phrase) "weapons armed mode" all the time. Maybe 'cruising' could only be practical for like.. a minute or less (depending on the actual map sizes. Theres no point in having overkill in terms of speed) before you suffer significant heat penalties.

I'm also not trying to suggest that battlemechs are big fancy cars with nitro boosters. Not at all. I just see it more along the lines of the nanosuit. In a fluff sense, the mech's hardware and software would divert more processing/physical power from aiming to moving.

(EDIT)Perhaps we could even go so far as to add a bonus to jump jets and a mech's flying distance. I'll probably get lynched, but in all -sorts- of sci-fi shows you see all kinds of ships/assault vehicles shifting from speed, to accuracy, to power etc etc. The idea behind "divert all power to speed" is something of a cliche line, but in the future one must imagine it'd at least be a possibility in battlemechs.

Im actually really glad that a majority of you kinda support this idea and that I haven't been ripped to shreds  makes me feel all warm and fuzzy?

[TuRbOlAg]

I like that power shift idea.  Could be really nasty to have an overcharge on your energy weapons and flush some coolant for a massive assault.  Would come in really handy for those moments when you need to lay down as much firepower in a short time as possible.