Battletech

FizWizz · Post by **FizWizz** » 28 Aug 2006, 19:09

copy-paste is your friend, but the different vehicles and mechs are wildly different from each other in their weapon loadout, which always means BIG changes in scripts concerning weapons.

bobthedinosaur · Post by **bobthedinosaur** » 29 Aug 2006, 03:42

dragon.. cool, see if you can get some good splash screenies for the start background?

bobthedinosaur · Post by **bobthedinosaur** » 06 Sep 2006, 01:39

beta 0.11

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=3795

fixed alot of stuff, i think i added a few units to even it out, now all units support their true ammunition limits from CBT technical readouts, but after 50 seconds (which is a long time in battle) they are reloaded and ready to go again, maybe in the future ill impliment a ammo truck or something.

there are no pretty s3o's in this one yet, but there are main in dev and with wolf in exile (lunx) working on them they should lok beautiful. i tweeked some of the weapons to be further fast more accurate so that sould smooth out some balance. still havent figured out to make a nice bluish mech explosion ala mw4 series but that could probably wait for the next release.

please try it out and report back findins, advice what not.

TY

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 06 Sep 2006, 05:54

Alright, so I played this version as well...

An error message about textures appears on occasion, as well as the "NOWEAPON" tag?

Now, the only issue I see with the mod are the unit costs. I can have 500 infantry and it costs me virtually nothing to produce from eight factories at once... but one mech will put a -30 or so drain per tick on my metal resources. I mean, I know you're trying to reproduce Battletech faithfully, but when 25 ton aircraft are cheaper to field than 20 ton mechs, there is a little issue.

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 06 Sep 2006, 06:48

Tried it out and I only have one beef...

The dropship. I can't conjure quite what to do with it.

Otherwize its amazingly cool looking mod. Love those air planes...the ones that strafe the enemies with lasers. Those are friggen cool. Now if they could fire bullets insted, with a cool "chug chug chug" and "Quaping POW! Band Zip POP!" noise.

bobthedinosaur · Post by **bobthedinosaur** » 06 Sep 2006, 06:58

yes found teh texture bug and no weapon tag, as for price, i think i need to tweek with the resources alot, maybe increase over all mex out put. as for cost per unit, it might be a typo or my mistake thorwing it together (like the locust bug) how ever all the units cost are base directly off Classic Battletech technical data, which they use a building system that calulates cost and battle value (efficency) of a unit. so yes some units that weight more can cost less than another unit that costs more because of its efficeincy, speed, armour, fire, range.
i noticed that many people might find it difficult to play comming form the mech warrior games and from TA itself where a mech such as a krogoth is the dominant unit on the battlefield that lays every thing to rest. this is not for battletech as heavy and assault mechs may ravage light mechs, they can still take a pounding from just a few medium. also i think mechwarrior gave the mech a huge false icon, because a mech altho it has more armor critics can be just as strgon or week as a similar aerotech or vehicle of a similar tonnage and configuration.
i might need to redo the resource system from scrath, maybe less of an ota aproach and more of a EE or CnC where energy is gather just by building powerplants. but i definately am tweeking the buildspeeds of factories units, and the overall rescource input seeing how the game is pretty slow and every one was hurting for resources.

mecha · Post by **mecha** » 06 Sep 2006, 10:06

Anybody make an AAI cfg file that works with this mod yet? Care to post? I keep on getting bluescreenofdeath with my attempts so far.

(for those of us on 56k connections and located in the remote regions of far off countries (like new zealand) who are limited to single player)

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 07 Sep 2006, 07:24

I think you might just have to reduce the costs of units across the board further. Having played the tabletop war game, I understand the economic issues.

As for the AAI .cfg, I had one, but my HD went through some rough stuff. It was for the last version, and like my Gundam AAI .cfg, not horribly efficent.

bobthedinosaur · Post by **bobthedinosaur** » 08 Sep 2006, 05:38

would increasing resource extraction help instead? because as off now all units are equal to eachother just not to the resource incomes, well thats what i plan on testing soon anyhow

Fanger · Post by **Fanger** » 08 Sep 2006, 23:29

I know also that your trying to be true to the table top version.. but when I did play aside from locating the intresting locust bug I found the unit descriptions need tweaking.. Unless your heavily steeped in battletech lore most people might not know what a uziel prime is good at.. ground, shrot range/long range.. anti air.. etc...

Andreask · Post by **Andreask** » 09 Sep 2006, 01:57

I suggest you play a lot more test games before raising the ressources.

While the game definately plays slower than AA, i doubt that this is neccesarily a bad thing.

There are units which are highly spamable with little ressosurces, like inf and light vechs. The only things that take really long to build are mechs and advanced aircraft. Even the hvy tanks are easy to get with a few metal patches, a bulldog hvy tank costs only 1k m and kills swarms of lighter units.

Just introduce a better APC, so it carrie more troops to make the initial inf gameplay more dynamic.

Also, the mod values metal way more than energy, perhaps this needs looking at.

Nevertheless, i am all for staying as close to the tabletop original as possible, just to prevent a mod that plays like AA or TA.

Do something original.

You cant beat the king on his own turf anyway.

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 09 Sep 2006, 19:40

I simply think the Mechs take too long. On a level one economy, you cannot effectively build level one mechs in most situations, especially if you hold say a fifth or fourth of the standard 16x16 map - if you go for mechs, not only do you need to run nearly all infantry for defense, but your structure expansion generally drops to a crawl.

A positive side effect from trying to keep this economy true to the original might just be the fact that Mechs are somewhat rare, and thus much cooler.

I personally believe it would be better if you could build them effectively on a moderate level one economy, but they remained the most expensive and difficult tier to jump into, and thus remained rather special.

As it is, this may be the slowest mod I've ever played, even slower than Optimus' FF and/or that Spawn v0.1 that still floats around on FileUniverse. It's still a damn good mod thus far, but you must remember that you've converted an Elite Turn-Based War Game into a Beautiful Real-Time Strategy on the Computer. However, this comes with a caveat; don't take any of our suggestions on balance without extensive tesing. Andreask has a great point with the APCs as well...

Andreask · Post by **Andreask** » 09 Sep 2006, 20:38

Btw, bob, before you do anything else, plz fix the LOCUST bug and make the game playable again. Release it quick too, i wanna play this.

bobthedinosaur · Post by **bobthedinosaur** » 09 Sep 2006, 21:49

rodger wilco
expect one tonight, i have to go to hooters and watch the game today

bobthedinosaur · Post by **bobthedinosaur** » 10 Sep 2006, 10:34

okay release a fixed version under the release of beta b0.111
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=3833

and i made some lame title thingy for some reason i dont honestly know...

btw any request for specific mechs, vehicles, aerotech, or concepts, things to add or change?

i plan on adding artillery defences, lv1 powerplants (mini fusions in principle), and defensive walls next release, as well as maybe a new mechs or vehicles, and maybe a new s3o infantry

Kemisti · Post by **Kemisti** » 10 Sep 2006, 13:26

btw any request for specific mechs, vehicles, aerotech, or concepts, things to add or change?

I'd like to see new building animation, if possible (replace the green spray with something else, at least change it's colour to blue or something, pretty please).

Change commander name to Mobile HQ or something.

And I think that you should balance the construction units prices. They are like 1/5 to 1/10 price of other units of their levels.

How about adding Commando (Firestarter, Jagermech and Awesome) for Inner Sphere.
For Clans I'd love to see Masakari/Warhawk (Puma/Adder, Hunchback IIC and Turkina).
Mechs inside captions are my secondary picks, but which I'd really love see too

.

bobthedinosaur · Post by **bobthedinosaur** » 10 Sep 2006, 14:55

well waiting for next release for other colors, already testing it out on the .73 dev release and grey or red might be good well that is if the frame changed color too.. mobile hq that seems reasonable, as well as the construction unit prices.

i like awesomes and warhawks, commandos are so ugly tho, maybe i can try to come up with something clever

Andreask · Post by **Andreask** » 10 Sep 2006, 15:02

I think it would be most awesome if you would focus completely on getting the s3o models done and UV-mapped, and then add feature one s3o model at a time.

The technical aspect of s3o is just sooo much more superior to the old standard.

The gameplay or unit adding/balancing is a process that only becomes relevant AFTEr the mod has a decent amount of players.

Which it wont without the new technology, because AA somewhat controls the old standard.

BTW: You HAVE to make infantry crushable! Its so annyoing that tanks and mechs cant crush them.

bobthedinosaur · Post by **bobthedinosaur** » 10 Sep 2006, 18:12

id love to put out out s3o's how ever uving and texturing is a tedious job. i dont see how they are technically superios, maybe visually, and tris are smoother for engines, thats about it. 3dos can look decent, its just most of the model in this mod date before spring existed and are pretty ugly in the first place. many mods have great 3do models EE, evota, ect..

any how infantry crushable? i thought they were? i remember playing a game where i piloted a mech fps over a huge squad of infantry men and they just were flattened.

oh yes one more thing, for request of mechs ect.. make sure you include the variant, because you might not like my choice since there are many variants out there

Andreask · Post by **Andreask** » 10 Sep 2006, 18:31

Well, i just thought that this MadCat a few pages before looked to awesome, so way better than the current mechs, i belive that was just because it was UV-mapped. Sure, its tedious, but maybe, just the mechs?

Hm, i could not crush the inf with a gedion tank of IS, neither their smallest scout mech, forgot the name. Maybe the units i used were to light ?

Spring RTS Engine

Battletech

What weapon stat system should we base it on?