Friday, September 20, 2013

Mechwarrior Online & Stuff

So I am a sucker for BattleTech stuff, and purchased the Legendary Founder's pack a long time ago for MechWarrior Online.  I played a few of the beta's, and it was terribly boring and horribly uncreative.  It didn't progress much, but I tried to do my part in the beta.  I purchased wacky configurations, went into games with no armor, and did all sorts of things to help them test the system.  11 months ago they sent an email saying no more resets.  It was still a very early Beta, but apparently I should have stopped beta-testing at that point.  I didn't, and blew all that cash I gave them on stupid shit to help their "beta".

End result, all the money I blew was for nothing, as they won't give it back, citing "technological" reasons for their immorality.

So, MechWarrior Online is dead to me.  Its a shitty game anyway.  The interface is bland, the game as uncreative as Angry Birds, the engine mediocre, and it is nothing like BattleTech anymore.  Heck, they even did the stupid crap some games do now, which basically rewards you against other players if you spend more time in the game.  If you jump into a MWO game now, against somebody who has blown 40 hours a week for a year (yes, people do that), you simply can't win against them.  They shoot faster, turn faster, cool down faster, and you have no hope.  Adding cool skins sure, maybe neato looking effects, hell I'd be ok if playing more got you a higher resolution tree mesh.  But making your Awesome better than your opponents Awesome because you spent 500 hours of your life in it, and they spent 5, is just idiotic.

And unfortunately, MechWarrior Tactics blows too.  Browser based games always do :(

Now, off my soapbox.  I've been doing a huge amount of work with Alpha Strike conversions, well, and many other things that don't apply to Alpha Strike.  Just about every unit will produce a card, though many still aren't right.  Today I fixed the HT ability, added support for the new CR/CRW/RFA/RCA abilities, fixed PPC capacitors (which *reduce* your damage in Alpha Strike, seriously!), fixed long range damage calculation to no longer look at only short range weapons (which is so barely even a change, as hardly any weapons shoot to only SR anyway), added the IF ability, fixed Hardened/Ferro-Lamellor armor, added MML to the LRM and SRM factors, oh heck, I just made a butt-load of changes.

I am randomly picking units, and fixing everything on them I see broken.  If you want to help out, go randomly pick stuff (or let me know if you want a random unit feature like the MUL has) and let me know what you see broken, or different than the canon MUL!

The following I *know* have issues:

  • Infantry that were NOT in the 3085 books.  I don't know the primary/secondary weapon types and counts.  Eventually I'll try to reverse engineer them.  Plus, I am not looking up the infantry armor type yet, so if it has special abilities and a damage divisor the stats will be wrong. I am also including field guns in the standard attack, like ALL other units.  Not sure if that is bad or not.
  • Buildings and Mobile Structures do not support multiple hexes yet.  Well, they do, but not on the record sheet.  So only a third of their boxes show up.
  • I need to re-input the items on most vehicles, large support vehicles, and structures.  Most are probably ok, but some may have items off.
  • I am not automatically calculating BV yet, so if there is no PV in the MUL or when the unit was published, it is probably 0.
  • I am not multiplying speeds by 2 yet.  Not sure why, maybe because its so easy :)
  • No coolant pod support yet, not a big deal.
  • Right now everything is as canon as possible.  I have added support in code so you'll eventually be able to say "use Bad_Syntax' optimizations" or not, but for now its just canon.
I am working on some new cards.  All dynamic so you can define stuff (including the colors, to save toner, or identify factions).  I don't think they look great, but I can fit everything *except* the larger warships on it:
Notice the text is more courier new, that is all text is the exact same size (so a W and I use the same screen real estate).  This makes it uglier, but makes various things work a bit better (movement, attacks, etc).  This supports 2 attack types, with up to 4 arcs.  So a large support vehicle with a sub-capital laser *OR* a sub-capital missile can fit on there, but add another weapon and it breaks it (types are standard, CAP, SCAP, and MSL, plus 4 arcs for large support vehicles, 6 arcs for space stations, and 8 arcs for warships)..  The heat area would go away for units that don't track heat.  Point value/Tech Rating would go on there somehwere, hopefully the year in service too, but I don't know where.  I was thinking of merging the AP/SP into a single row and just making the SP darker.  I'd like more on there but the card is already very crowded.  Optimally, I'd have 1 card for every unit type, but my artistic ability and excessive need to show everything cripples that idea :(

Anyway, things are coming along.  I've also started prototyping a new point value calculator on the Forums!

5 comments:

  1. I really can't see why the Powers that Be at Catalyst are trying to claim that BattleTech BV is in any way relevant to Alpha Strike. It ain't the same game! I trust you'll be deploying an AS-BV calculator at some point.

    I've never met a BattleTech computer game I liked -- not even the pods, though they had their moments. A lot of the appeal of the game for me is in the visualisation I do, rather than what I'm being shown on a screen. And when it comes to paying (or playing) for better units... nah, I'll stick with MegaMek, thanks.

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  2. Eric, Nice look to the new cards. great work. much appreciated.

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  3. I must say i like both, MWO and MWT even when i am disgracing myself here...:)
    And i like the new cards also!
    Fh

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  4. I agree, MWO and MWT blow. Tried both, gave up on both. MWO is just too much of an investment in time and with so many broken promises (something about all carrot, no stick) and I've had it. MWT would have been good except for some reason it isn't. Must be all the bugs that are so hard to overlook. I actually just reinstalled MW4 Mercs with the mektek upgrades today only to find out there are no working servers anymore... sux

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  5. Snicker Snicker!!!! Haaahaaa!

    You are a part time pilot of an airplane. You decide to get into a contest with a pilot who is doing the same thing day after day for years... Who do you put your money on? Of course people who do something longer are going to be more better at it. So they put that mechanic in a game and people complain...Love it!!! You just cant make this shit up HaaAAAAaaHHaaAAAaAAA!!!! Yes I necroed this just for the stupidty in the rant.

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