Honestly, I don't *want* a mechlab.

[~SJ~ Tajin Nevversan]

Exactly. Oh and that "4LRM20 large mech" is a Vulture.

There is no realy point in not allowing custom builds. If someone wants to make an LRM-only mech... so be it. Hell fill out the artillery role nicely but will largely depend on his teammates for defense. *shrug*

Ok the lasers can be quite anoying, agreed. Since someone wanted to take BT lore in account...hey it is only natural that certain weapons gain an advantage depending on the environment. Lets see how you like that laserboat on a map like inferno...

[(TLL)CapperDeluxe]

In mechwarrior 4 one of the best things to do was to use the terrain and passive radar/ECM to get in close to the laser boats, and then LBX the heck out of them. Their reliance on weapons that generate that kind of heat means you'll be doing way more DPS.  Pack a flamer or two and then your LBX gunship becomes the scourge of energy boats.

[Bearcat]

I have been plying Mech in some form or other since the very beginning and im here to tell you there is no Boated up mech that doesn't have a weakness they all have something they are missing...  I remember from mech 4 taking a Madcat mark 2 with 4 or 5 Lt gauss it had basically no armor on it but heck at 1200 m who could hit you anyway.. except oh shit that loki with ECM that just snuck up on me...lol

look customization has to be a part of his game its what has made it great in the past and will take it over the top this time as well.

If someone is boating find their weakness and exploit it. its that simple. 

Side note..   you should not be able to access the mechlab from inside the game only your setup that you have saved should be able to be called up. the mechlab should be offline only...

this would take care of your slowing down the game play problem.

Bearcat out!

[Batwing]

We can talk and rationalize the concept of boating how much we want, but i didn t see anyone talking about boating as the favorite way to spoil an internet game.
Maybe someone is forgetting WHY boating came out on all of the other MW titles. It is a problem of connectivity and LAG. The only 2 weapons that somewhat take advantage on this scenario are LASERS AND MISSILES. Now, you can say whatever you want about heat, damage ratio etc. but if you look at the past, you will not easily find GAUSS Boats to really engage enemies at 800 mtrs. The reason is LAG. Every game suffers about it more or less. You use those big cannons only  at 300 mtrs to be sure to hit

Either you have 35 ping or you don t risk boating with CANNONS because you have to think about physics in ballistic (if implemented), leading your targets at long distances to try to hit and add to that the lag effect. Players just don t do it.
Instead Lasers do the job well done. Instant hit, simplified LAG handling, powerful shot when boated, heat management simplified by Coolant use.
Missiles are similar, no LAG issues or quality aiming, not good as Lasers but still pretty good. Great thing here in MWLL LRM are ineffective at short range, which involves some concern to really get a boat of ‘em.
Once you have this concept clear, you want to stay away from anything allowing abuse of these weapons. Mechlab always facilitated “abuse” of weaponry spoiling their own specs.

So the light mech equipped with 4MBL And 2 or 3 LPL or the 4LPL, 6LBL, 3PPC & LBL Awesomes along with many of the other 'stock' mechs aren't laser boats? How about the 4LRM20 large mech?

The laser and missile boats are already in the game. Customization would just allow them to be made on multiple chassis.

The Stock Boats are somewhat balanced. Being all lasers (different kind of them on same chassis) doesn t really represent a boat. When you pack an Awesome with low speed and low agility, you trade those for sort of Boating results. What you need to avoid is the Boating abuse, where you can pack unreal armament on medium or (agile) heavies, defeating the porpouse of firepower / chassis ratio.

The most classic example was the 7 lasers Madcat on MW3. That was an exploit on that game.

Just try to use common sense to understand the concept of boating and "abusing" the option, that s it.

[Crash_411]

We can talk and rationalize the concept of boating how much we want, but i didn t see anyone talking about boating as the favorite way to spoil an internet game.
Maybe someone is forgetting WHY boating came out on all of the other MW titles. It is a problem of connectivity and LAG. The only 2 weapons that somewhat take advantage on this scenario are LASERS AND MISSILES. Now, you can say whatever you want about heat, damage ratio etc. but if you look at the past, you will not easily find GAUSS Boats to really engage enemies at 800 mtrs. The reason is LAG. Every game suffers about it more or less. You use those big cannons only  at 300 mtrs to be sure to hit

Either you have 35 ping or you don t risk boating with CANNONS because you have to think about physics in ballistic (if implemented), leading your targets at long distances to try to hit and add to that the lag effect. Players just don t do it.
Instead Lasers do the job well done. Instant hit, simplified LAG handling, powerful shot when boated, heat management simplified by Coolant use.
Missiles are similar, no LAG issues or quality aiming, not good as Lasers but still pretty good. Great thing here in MWLL LRM are ineffective at short range, which involves some concern to really get a boat of ‘em.
Once you have this concept clear, you want to stay away from anything allowing abuse of these weapons. Mechlab always facilitated “abuse” of weaponry spoiling their own specs.

So the light mech equipped with 4MBL And 2 or 3 LPL or the 4LPL, 6LBL, 3PPC & LBL Awesomes along with many of the other 'stock' mechs aren't laser boats? How about the 4LRM20 large mech?

The laser and missile boats are already in the game. Customization would just allow them to be made on multiple chassis.

The Stock Boats are somewhat balanced. Being all lasers (different kind of them on same chassis) doesn t really represent a boat. When you pack an Awesome with low speed and low agility, you trade those for sort of Boating results. What you need to avoid is the Boating abuse, where you can pack unreal armament on medium or (agile) heavies, defeating the porpouse of firepower / chassis ratio.

The most classic example was the 7 lasers Madcat on MW3. That was an exploit on that game.

Just try to use common sense to understand the concept of boating and "abusing" the option, that s it.

I dont agree with your firepower/chassis ratio stuff. By your standards... a Puma wouldnt' pack dual PPC's.....

[(TLL)CapperDeluxe]

The most classic example was the 7 lasers Madcat on MW3. That was an exploit on that game.

recall the 70 ton nova cat that can use 7 lasers in MW4? ( or maybe it was 6) either way to get that loadout you had to really sacrifice on armor and rely on teammates to provide other roles so that the LBX brawlers don't get so close they can tear you up... or of course the missiles boats that outrange you.

[snooggums]

The Stock Boats are somewhat balanced. Being all lasers (different kind of them on same chassis) doesn t really represent a boat. When you pack an Awesome with low speed and low agility, you trade those for sort of Boating results. What you need to avoid is the Boating abuse, where you can pack unreal armament on medium or (agile) heavies, defeating the porpouse of firepower / chassis ratio.

The most classic example was the 7 lasers Madcat on MW3. That was an exploit on that game.

Just try to use common sense to understand the concept of boating and "abusing" the option, that s it.

Common sense says that the engine/armor/weapon/heatsink weights are what balances the mech. To have an agile medium or light mech you have to sacrifice weapon weight for engine and armor weight.

The only possible exploits are:
Massive amounts of extremely close range high damage to heat/weight ratio weapons usually used as secondary defense.
Massive amounts of long range weaponry on a slow, heavily armored mech.

Simply giving a light and agile mech close range weaponry and using it at that range is not abuse. As noted before, that mech is no longer useful at other ranges or uses. What is often called boating/abuse is just overspecialization, which will not work in MWLL like it did in earlier Mechwarrior games.

I'm trying to remember which one, but in one of the MW games I made a medium mech with 12+ machine guns and a crapload of ammo. What I did was close quickly with a heavy and just unload. No heat issues, short response time allowed me to blow a hole in the heaviest chest armor in seconds. That was abuse because machine guns are supposed to be anti infantry. Using anti armor weapons like small lasers in mass quantities instead of mixing and matching with other less effective weapons is the logical end to design, which is represented in several stock designs and they are considered balanced.

[Crash_411]

The Stock Boats are somewhat balanced. Being all lasers (different kind of them on same chassis) doesn t really represent a boat. When you pack an Awesome with low speed and low agility, you trade those for sort of Boating results. What you need to avoid is the Boating abuse, where you can pack unreal armament on medium or (agile) heavies, defeating the porpouse of firepower / chassis ratio.

The most classic example was the 7 lasers Madcat on MW3. That was an exploit on that game.

Just try to use common sense to understand the concept of boating and "abusing" the option, that s it.

Common sense says that the engine/armor/weapon/heatsink weights are what balances the mech. To have an agile medium or light mech you have to sacrifice weapon weight for engine and armor weight.

The only possible exploits are:
Massive amounts of extremely close range high damage to heat/weight ratio weapons usually used as secondary defense.
Massive amounts of long range weaponry on a slow, heavily armored mech.

Simply giving a light and agile mech close range weaponry and using it at that range is not abuse. As noted before, that mech is no longer useful at other ranges or uses. What is often called boating/abuse is just overspecialization, which will not work in MWLL like it did in earlier Mechwarrior games.

I'm trying to remember which one, but in one of the MW games I made a medium mech with 12+ machine guns and a crapload of ammo. What I did was close quickly with a heavy and just unload. No heat issues, short response time allowed me to blow a hole in the heaviest chest armor in seconds. That was abuse because machine guns are supposed to be anti infantry. Using anti armor weapons like small lasers in mass quantities instead of mixing and matching with other less effective weapons is the logical end to design, which is represented in several stock designs and they are considered balanced.

you would do this with a group of Hunchbacks in MW4 (with a mektek addon) and melt armor away. No recoil on the receiving mech also made it quite stealthy if you came in from an odd angle.
but you also have to remember, non of those games HAD infantry, so they had to make the weapon somewhat useful against what it was matched up against.

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

Massive amounts of extremely close range high damage to heat/weight ratio weapons usually used as secondary defense.
Massive amounts of long range weaponry on a slow, heavily armored mech.

1) Massive amounts of weapons won't be possible, unless you count 6 guns as "massive".
2) Madcat2 4LBX20 setup is  extremely close range high damage to heat/weight ratio weapons Mech
3) 4LRM Vulture, or Madcat2 with A4s setup is "long range weaponry on a slow, heavily armored mech"

Nothing new. Nothing bad.

[Askis]

Yesterday I used the 4 LPL Awesome to good effect until I got a little too close to a MadCat C.
So if you see a massive Laser-Boat once the Lab is out... Build yourself a ballistics mech with a few flamers, maybe with ECM too and go to town on him :>

[Iron Brain]

what about the people who boat their assault mechs with all extra armor and only equip an ac2?

never thought of that did ya?

Have you ever seen an Aero with nothing but melee weapons??

[xInVicTuSx]

However, I am on the fence at this point. My biggest concern is that the beta process itself might test my patience.

All mods tend to test patience while they are under development. In fact: I don't remember any mod I've played which had new releases before I got totally bored with previous Mostly mods require over month to release even simplest fix. Remember that people make MWLL in their free time - so for sure beta will test patience of everyone sooner or later.

What I meant by this is that the current beta is NOT testing my patience, a rare treat. I just hope the mech lab doesnt make it all exploity for months and months before the devs have time to balance it out.

The monopoly comment was a failjoke.
Many people complain that monopoly takes forever to play, that is mostly because they do not follow the rules. 

[pht]

Dear god... the original poster doesn't want a mechlab? 

Dude, go get your brain chemistry checked.  Or a straight jacket... or both... 






ye-GADS...

[KSerge83]

I'm not going to argue what's already been said, I'll just put it as understandably as possible.

1. "People are just going to min-max and build Laser/LRM/LBX boats" - Here's the thing, those boats already exist with many currently available variants, and they're easily killed by mechs of a different sort, or artillery, or aircraft, or sneak tactics. This is not MW4 where you get 2-8 guys in a small arena to slug it out and see who's standing last, this is TEAM deathmatch with VEHICLES and AIRCRAFT as well as mechs.

2. "There will be OP setups that break the game's balance" - umm, LPL huey anyone? It already exists, and by finding out it exists the dev team is going to do something about it. Again, this isn't any older MW game where the game developer just drops the product on you, ignoring any "multi-player balance" issues. This is a multi-player-only mod made by a dev team that cares. Obviously imbalanced mech designs will be addressed.

3. "People are going to spend more time building mechs and less time using them" - I can see this complaint coming from someone who's played FPS games online for most of their gaming life, but from a mechwarrior fan? The mechlab is a HUGE part of the fun that is to be had in mechwarrior, and is one of the core elements of the "great gameplay" that made mechwarrior such a hit. If you can't understand this, than you obviously HAVEN'T played enough classic mechwarrior.

I'm almost positive that the dev team will allow for a server flag that "enables" or "disables" mechlab on their servers, and I'm sure that the mechlab system will be intuitive enough to allow for optimizing weapon grouping. I'm sure it will be easy to use too, remember these guys have played every mechwarrior game that we've played. They know what worked and what didn't.

tl;dr this thread is dumb and you should feel bad for posting it uranium.