Battletech

[Dotz]

yeah, lol. thats the one for OTA. File Universe used to have Spring stuff on it.

[bobthedinosaur]

well crap. um ask around because all of my stuff is packed(i just moved). but if you are patient ill dig it up later.

[hamsate]

I think I have what you guys are looking for.
http://rapidshare.com/files/270956245/TBTb111.sd7.html
I also have a newer version, but it doesn't even start. The one I uploaded starts, but it does have bugs that can crash it.

[SpikedHelmet]

/me casts level 15 Ressurection Spell.

WHAT HAPPEN?

[bobthedinosaur]

the 70s, man. all sorts of shit came down.

[SpikedHelmet]

Well I had an idea for this and I'm dying to splerg about it.

I'm not really a big MechWarrior fanboi; my only real experience with it are the MechWarrior games which were fun as shit, they're tactical, like a tank simulator except big giant mechs with lasers and plasma guns and gauss rifles and missiles stomping around dwarfing people and buildings and vehicles. Helllssss yeah.

So I've been splerging in my head lately because this is a cool idea. I like to splerg a lot. Every couple weeks I'll think if something and splerg for awhile.

The game I envision would discard pretty much all of the preconceptions of TA/C&C-style RTS gaming -- that is, base building, economy wars, mass producing swarms of units to throw against the enemy. Been playing a lot of the Men of War series lately -- those are some fun games. No bases, no building, no economy. You click the unit you want and it comes to you and you fight. Sometimes you fight for flags, other times for objectives, and you can do scenarios, too. That's how I'd like to see a Mechwarrior game.

So these are my splerg-thoughts about this game:

- Simplistic unit aquisition. No factories, barracks, construction yards; just a simple interface where you can select a unit and then deploy it to the battlefield.

- Aquired 'Mechs deploy via drop pod. This is a loud, obnoxious affair, so don't think you'll easily be able to sneak one by somewhere. And when it does land, with all that shaking and smashing about and being thrust into the atmosphere of a strange planet after being stuck in a cocoon for your atmospheric entry, you're going to be a bit rusty, so don't be trying to land right on that objective unless you want to get a face full of pain before you know what's up and down.

- You won't have a lot of 'Mechs to control all at once. A lance or two (platoons of 3-6) is it. It's all about tactically controlling each 'Mech to win, not spamming the best combinations of crap at the enemy until someone loses.

- Each 'Mech will have seperate compartmentalized sections that can be independantly targeted and damaged or destroyed; target the cockpit to try and take out the pilot quickly, or disarm him by shooting at a weapons pod, or try to damage the legs to slow him down. or of course you can just have your 'Mech target the body and blaze away of its own accord.

- Supply system. Many 'Mechs utilize weapons that require ammunition of some sort, such as bullets, shells or missiles. Others do not, being armed with lasers or PPCs; this needs to be factored in to your strategy as you decide whether to deploy 'Mechs that might require down-time during the fight to re-arm, or 'Mechs that can keep on firing to their last breath. Supplies will be dropped via Drop Pod and, like S44, will require your ammunition-deprived 'Mech to move into close proximity. I'm hoping to make it a little more interactive than that, for instance by having the 'Mech power down and some (AI controlled) support vehicles actually bring the ammunition to it.

- OmniMechs; most early 'Mechs are built with fixed weapons systems. Advanced OmniMechs however have the ability to swap out certain weapons systems for others, allowing you to customize them for certain roles. The way I'd hope to achieve this is by utilizing the "compartmentalization" feature to be able to select or highlight different parts of your 'Mech, and contextual menus which will allow you to pick a new weapon for that part (only when in proximity to a Support Pod thingy, though). These advanced Mechs would, of course, be more expensive, but very versatile.

- Different multiplayer game modes, ranging from "hold the flag" (several Flags placed randomly around the map that you and your opponent fight for control of, with a ticker controlled by flag control time determining game outcomes) to "Deathmatch" (just kill your opponent!) to multiplayer scenario games of various designs.

- Supplementary Abilities. Rather than solely being defined by its weapons, speed and armour, some Mechs will have certain useful abilities. Jump jets to allow it to move quickly over long distances, electronic countermeasures to disrupt guided missiles, or targeting systems to allow more accurate long-range weapons fire.

- And more!


Ahhhh, splerging done. That felt good. Big weight off my shoulders.

[Pxtl]

Sounds good - the big problem Battletech always faces is the conflict between customization and having named, branded mechs. The heavy emphasis on the named mech models means that they have familiar loadouts... but at the same time, the game had a quick and fast system for designing mechs from scratch, which ran totally opposite to this idea. The omnimechs brought this dichotomy into canon, since an omnimech basically defines tonnage and engine and nothing else - everything else is custom.

So there is always the question - how much customization do you give the player? If you give them complete control, you either sacrifice the familiarity of the Battletech mechs or make the models not accurately reflect their loadout. If you don't, then you restrict your players from a very fun part of the game.

[SpikedHelmet]

The idea is to keep customization to weapon loadouts only -- and even then, limiting the available choices for each hard-point (for instance, can't replace a shoulder-mounted missile pod with a PPC or whatever -- missile pods can only have different types of missiles). Anything more really isn't necessary, or would bog things down way too much and make it more of a hassle as you try to customize every little aspect. Rather, you select the Mech, zoom in, right-click on a weapon, and get a menu showing other weapons you can switch it out for.

Of course this then brings up the obvious question of how to properly balance each weapon. Why would anybody fit small lasers when they can go all heavy lasers and be a complete pwnmobile? Or PPCs? Perhaps some other method of balancing, such as using heat sinks in some way and having heavier, more powerful weapons overheat quicker, making them less than ideal, and/or a "tonnage" system where the Mech gets xxx number of "weapon points" to use with each weapon type having a set cost (so larger weapons cost more, and stop you being able to mount all large overpowering weapons).

[d-gun]

sounds cool, check out early versions of WarEvo, an old (dead) spring mod that probably doesnt work but is similar to what you've described.

[Pxtl]

@ SpikedHelmet

I played a lot of the tabletop Battletech, so I can fill you in on details.

In general, designing a mech was more of a numbers game than a modules-based one, but for a videogame you'd obviously want to go modules-based.

The boardgame was all about weight, even for Clan Omnimechs - an omnimech could basically carry any loadout you chose, with the condition that you stuck with the base weight and engine (speed). Weight was always the limiting factor in battletech - a mech had a set tonnage and you used all of it. Each body-part had a set number of slots, but that rarely was the limiting factor except that it forced you to spread your weapons around various body-parts.

The body-parts were limited as follows:
Center-torso, legs, and head were the best place to locate things you wanted safe, but too tiny to sport real hardware... mainly because critical damage to those locations would end your day anyways. Arms had wide firing-arcs, but were also prone to being blown off. Left and right torso slots were the reverse - smaller arc, but less prone to destruction.



That record sheet shows a pretty standard medium mech. Some laser weapons and an SRM4 stuffed in the torsos, and heat-sinks stashed in the head and legs. Arms aren't used for anything - the servos for manipulation (hands) don't cost weight. As you can see, on a small mech there is no shortage of slots.

Remember that in the original rules, damage is applied to a random body-part. Critical internal parts are only damaged per-impact that breaks through the outer armor. So if you want to smash through armor, you want a single massive hit. If you have blasted off some armor plating and want to shred internals, you use a weapon that hits with many small impacts.

A quick once-over of the weapons

1) Laser weapons are the best damage-to-weight ratio and have unlimited ammo, but generate heat. Large weapons are longer ranged but less weight-efficient. A mech can, by default, dissipate 10 heat per-turn. Anything above that is overheat, and you incur the penalties listed in the top-right panel of the page.

2) Autocannons are the reverse - they're bulky and require ammo, but they don't generate much heat. They're generally longer-ranged than lasers, but the larger autocannons are shorter ranged. The important autocannon is the AC-20, which deals a 20 damage in a single impact - twice as much as the largest energy-weapon.

3) Missiles come in 2 flavours - LRMs and SRMs. LRMs are about a cheap way to fire at long range - they hit in clusters of 5 missiles (1 damage each, so 5 damage). SRMs are for smashing up an un-armored foe - each SRM deals 2 damage and the impact is handled individually, and they cost about the same per-missile as an LRM. Obviously if you want to spend the rest of the game rolling dice to see where you hit a guy, you load up on SRMs.

LRMs and PPCs (the largest energy weapon) also suffer from aiming penalty at point-blank range.

Obviously as the game developed they added new weapons (like offmap artillery cannons, variations on the basic weapons, more powerful clan versions) but that list is the basics.

With the classic battletech mech design in mind, I'd go with a hybrid slots/weight system for a videogame - only 2 slot types - weapons and equipment... yeah, it might be tricky to model, but missile-vs-beam slots was a distinction the source never had, and would just complicate things when configuring a mech - that needs to be something quick. Just "gun here, here, and here" is better. Equipment slots are for heat-sinks, extra armor, extra ammo, jump jets, etc, and don't appear as visible parts of the mech.

I'd say a standard mech has 4 weapon slots - 2 shoulder, 2 arms, and a bunch of equipment slots. A mech has a total weigh limit for loadout, and each slot also has a weight limit - this gives you some control to prevent the player from making lopsided mechs.

Now, a big feature in Battletech was the use of medium lasers - a 1-ton weapon that dealt a lot of damage... often you'd put 2 or 3 in the same spot (look at the sample - 1 large laser and 1 medium in each side-torso). I'd make pods include clusters of weapons, like a 4-medium-laser-pod.

When designing the mech, the speed was controlled by the engine - engine rating / weight = walking speed (running speed was 1.5* walking round-up). Weight-cost went up exponentially with larger rated engines, such that a fast large-mech would lose much more of it's weight, as a percentage, to it's engine than a small one.

See the list below:

rating tonnage
10 0.5
15 0.5
20 0.5
25 0.5
30 1
35 1
40 1
45 1
50 1.5
55 1.5
60 1.5
65 2
70 2
75 2
80 2.5
85 2.5
90 3
95 3
100 3
105 3.5
110 3.5
115 4
120 4
125 4
130 4.5
135 4.5
140 5
145 5
150 5.5
155 5.5
160 6
165 6
170 6
175 7
180 7
185 7.5
190 7.5
195 8
200 8.5
205 8.5
210 9
215 9.5
220 10
225 10
230 10.5
235 11
240 11.5
245 12
250 12.5
255 13
260 13.5
265 14
270 14.5
275 15.5
280 16
285 16.5
290 17.5
295 18
300 19
305 19.5
310 20.5
315 21.5
320 22.5
325 23.5
330 24.5
335 25.5
340 27
345 28.5
350 29.5
355 31.5
360 33
365 34.5
370 36.5
375 38.5
380 41
385 43.5
390 46
395 49
400 52.5
405** 56.5
410** 61
415** 66.5
420** 72.5
425** 79.5
430** 87.5
435** 97
440** 107.5
445** 119.5
450** 133.5
455** 150
460** 168.5
465** 190
470** 214.5
475** 243
480** 275.5
485** 313
490** 356
495** 405.5
500** 462.5

At 100 tonnes (the upper limit) a walking speed of 4 hexes (and rotating a single hex-side costs a movement point) would cost much more - over half the weight of a mech, while a 20-tonne mech gets twice that speed while only using a quarter of its weight-limit. So the 100-tonne mech with a realistic engine (3 walking, 5 running) takes a whole turn to turn around unless the guy wants to run (running incurs an accuracy penalty when firing), meanwhile the 20-tonner can comfortably buy a top speed of twice that at only a quarter of its weight.

In later games, they added engine-options to further increase variety.

Jump jets move you 1 space per jet (rotation is free), and cost proprotional to your total weight (0.5t for small, 1 for medium, 2 for large iirc). Limit is your walking speed.

Now, that's the mechs. THere's also other units - mechs were the most versatile, but also expensive. The first and simplest expansion was the addition of quadrupeds, tanks, hovercraft, helis, and wheeled vehicles. Quadrupeds couldn't torso-twist (no turrets) but they could hull-down (porc mode) and move with a leg blown off.... kinda dull.

The remaining vehicles were allowed to be equipped with combustion engines. If you were balancing teams by tonnage, this didn't matter - CE cost double weight, and meant no energy weapons and no free heatsinks (you had to buy every heat-sink). But if you balanced units by price, the combustion engines were a huge cost-savings, so you could field a whole star of tanks for the cost of a similarly-armed mech. Also, obviously, they sucked at climbing hills or rough terrain.

I'd include combustion-based tanks, but as defenses - better firepower-per-cost, but they require constant fuel to move, no crushstrength, and terrible badslope... So you keep them near your dropship/resupply since all their gear costs supply to use.

Also, helis - 30 tonne limit. Fast as hell, and flying... but fragile as hell - the rotor was easy to hit and didn't have much armor, so you'd knock them down with scattergun-type weapons such as SRMs.

Hovers were the middleground - fast like a heli, but with a tank's movement limits, and a 50 tonne limit... and a fragile air-skirt that was easy to destroy and immobilize the hover.

Finally, there were boats - 300 tonne limit. Otherwise, same as tanks. Hydrofoils and subs had a 100 ton limit, iirc - hydros were fast, and subs were, well, subs. I don't remember much about those.

Realistically, vehicles were totally overpowered, so FASA gave them a weakness vs. incendiary weapons. Kind of a cop-out.

For a tactical RTS, I'd just come up with a few standard blank slates - just slots, weight, and speed are fixed - everything else can be bought (armor is assumed to be evenly distributed). Include 2 tank chassis, 1 hover chassis and 1 heli chassis, and a static-turret chassis that can be mounted on a dropship (can't fire until the dropship lands, leaving the ship vulnerable until landing) and a set of mechs - 1 small, 1 medium, 1 large, 1 assault. All vehicles would be combustion-based, making them cheap but require constant resupply from drop-ships... and refuelling is a lengthy process. So you can have a wing of choppers or hovercraft for raiding, but they have to return for resupply often.

[Guessmyname]

Incidentally, the Mech game I'm working on is meant to be Tactical. Feel like lending a hand? :D

I was planning to recreate Mech Commander 2 with an original IP, though the focus here would be a mix of squad tactics and stealth. Eventually, I'd like to have it so that one player can play 'Base' (pretty much standard RTS), sending out scouts and Hunter mechs etc to try and chase down the other player, controlling a group of Infiltrators trying to blow up or capture his HQ building.

It'd be less 'stomp around shooting everything to bits' (not that you can't do that) and more a game of moving fast and raiding - cat and mouse.

Oh, and you could knock mechs over to incapacitate most of them, mostly for capturing purposes or to set up an ambush. Or just to make them an easy target. (Yes, there is a mech class designed entirely around the idea of ramming the other guy to the ground and then hitting them with a Railgun)

[Mav]

I was planning to recreate Mech Commander 2 with an original IP, though the focus here would be a mix of squad tactics and stealth. Eventually, I'd like to have it so that one player can play 'Base' (pretty much standard RTS), sending out scouts and Hunter mechs etc to try and chase down the other player, controlling a group of Infiltrators trying to blow up or capture his HQ building.

I like this idea, but why not just incorporate this into a mod option? I'm thinking an attack/defense type game sounds freaking awesome, but I also want a bread-and-butter game of blow the other team to bits.

Example: starts sort of like a classic BA game, with start boxes. You know roughly where the enemy is (somewhere within the opposing box) and they know roughly where you are - much as current day military is. Tonnage can be set by team total (say max of 500 tons each) or by individual mech sizes (one player 35 tons, one 50, two 75, and one 100). It leaves for a lot of variation in how teams might set up their mechs.

Then it gets interesting. Assuming neither team knows what the other has (which I think would be pretty cool) gameplay can change quite a bit. I hate to use DSD as an example (grr....) but it's a map we all know so I will use it. If your team was to select light-to-medium mechs, fast, with jumpjets, you might try and assault on the other team from the north. The speed and jumpjets give you an advantage over the opposing force there. Or you might get a team with heavy mechs and long range weapons (PPC and LRMs) that might fare better on the south flats where their size and range give them the advantage.

Back to your "defend the base" type game: it sounds like you're planning on making it 1-on-1. Why not make it multiplayer, even if it means someone is controlling scout aircraft and artillary vehicles? I played TONS of MW growing up (about as much as I played OTA) and was able to play MW 1, 2, 3, 4, as well as a few multiplayer mods made for 4. My favorite type of mech to play in these games was a scout. I typically took a Shadowcat (lightweight, fast Mech) or a Raven (same principal) loaded up with enhanced sensors and stealth equipment, and served as a team scout. I rarely engaged the enemy directly - I mostly focused on staying alive and providing targeting data to my team with taking pot shots when possible. It was freaking awesome - I had so much fun distracting the enemy while letting my team beat them to pieces. Most players might not like a role like that, but I love it and there's enough out there like me that I think it would be a viable gameplay type. (As a spectator, I wish I could control a single spy unit in BA for a player - same concept!)

Anyways, I've rambled quite a bit but I really love MW/BT and always wished someone would make a mod for it - I never knew someone tried to. I might actually take up modeling to help this project out if someone can get it off the ground with basic working gameplay. I've seen enough failed projects though that I'm not going to contribute models (the only thing I can contribute) until I see something concrete. Good luck!

[SpikedHelmet]

That sounds like a good idea, setting overall tonnage as a sort of limit to the number/size of Mechs each player has. 500 seems a bit much, that's like 5 Atlas or even worse like 20 light mechs, too much. 250 sounds like a good start point, gives you room to play many different styles -- 2 heavies and a medium, 4 mediums and a scout, etc etc.

What really gets me going though is the fact (imho) the Spring engine is pretty ideal for this. There's lots of different varieties of terrain for playing on all different types of planets, LUA provides a powerful framework for advanced features, and I think it'd just fit well.

If I did start on something like this, I'd set my sights low to start off with -- a single game mode of taking and holding Flags, a relatively small variety of Mechs (with fixed armaments) and much of the LUA features implimented before expanding to broader horizons.

GMN, send me a GDD or long splergy PM about your game!

[JohannesH]

How would the UI work, when you have so many weapons and probably want them to be more tactical then just moving & shooting whatevers in range. Bind the slower loading weapons to keys or such?

And what kind of maps would you primarily make the balance for?

[Pxtl]

How would the UI work, when you have so many weapons and probably want them to be more tactical then just moving & shooting whatevers in range. Bind the slower loading weapons to keys or such?

And what kind of maps would you primarily make the balance for?

Well, with pod-based weapons it wouldn't be as bad as Mechwarrior 2 where each individual weapon was managed. I'd go with simple enable-disable flags. The real problem is that Spring doesn't support NetPanzer-style disconnected move/firing-target orders, which, imho, would be essential for tactical Battletech. Plus there's the whole "primary weapon" issue, since a unit with a variety of semi-coaxial weapons that have different ranges and velocities is going to be tricky.

[SpikedHelmet]

Most S44 tanks have lots of different ammo types and weapons, guns that fire different ammo depending on target, coaxial and copula-mounted guns, etc. Works out pretty well.

[Neddie]

GMN, I'm interested as well. In fact, I'm going to attach myself to Spiked in a manner of speaking, I very much wanted a BT/MW game and tried to organize new teams several times. Pressure_Line is missing from this discussion, but he was working with MW2 content/ideas as well.

[bobthedinosaur]

ned, i think you mean mech commander 2 content.

i have sent most of my cbt content to PL, but i might have made some more content since then for the TA mod: http://www.moddb.com/mods/total-battletech
I can definately help out with content, upgrading TA models to higher poly UV maped and textured. I would have to say my weak spot is texturing, and lack of a team that is a serious as I am when i get in full swing.

My suggestion to the team reorganizing a BT mod, start small, for the first few releases, and then expand. There is a ton of crap to use in the BT cannon. Also you are going to have to pick a theme because mech warrior =/= classic battletech. As the several year old poll suggests, most people are interested in a CBT tabletop game turned into an RTS, probably because there have been so many mech warrior games through out the years that have never really been consisitant with each other.

I mentioned a Year scale before, but I'll explain it again. Make the game in release parts by year, that way you can play later years with new factions, and new variants on old mechs/ vehicles that will be using the earlier content.

with all the older content already about, I would also suggest starting on the system of the game. the ammo and heat, and component targeting as you can test it on older/ replaceable content (to save you time) and once it is pretty well polished you can start adding the ton and tons of new content and/or modify the old stuff.

[Neddie]

Oh, and PL was/is working by year, we just can't track him down.

[SpikedHelmet]

The thing is, I really cba with Battletech "lore". I don't know it, I'm not very into it, and what I do know doesn't really tug at my loins all that much. What I do like about it though is the concept of giant walking supertanks armed to the teeth stomping about the battlefield in small numbers, able to devastate entire "conventional" armies because they're just so fucking awesome and because bipedal locomotion trumps wheeled or tracked vehicles. Which is why I like the more "militaristic" looking Mechs, not those stupid "Gundamy" ones (no offense Smoth) or Mechs that look like it's just a man in a boxy robot costume. That and I have fond memories of the "Battlemech Simulation" aspect of the MechWarrior games. And I don't really feel like diving into learning the Battletech Tabletop game in all its glory just so I can better understand how to make a computer RTS.

I just want big cool robots and gameplay that interests me.