Mechcommander 3, Just musing and ideas

[Mondos]

So having been unloading some idea's into a document on my work computer as to what I would like from a Mechcommander 3 title. Just wondering if people were keen to build on it or through their own idea's out there. Not that we can expect a game to come out of the woodwork, but if the primer becomes good enough with a bit of support who knows.

That and it gives me something to do at work lol.

[cmunsta]

I was talking with SeanLang about this very topic just yesterday.

A couple of ideas that were talked about (and a few I've been thinking about):

• Ability to have the MechWarriors enter/exit mechs.
  This would allow a greater range of things for your lances to do. Think a mission where you would have to infiltrate some area a Mech can't get into, or having to enter a MechBay to "steal" a Mech.
  
• Pilot view windows.
  Imagine having a small window (or a few windows) where you could see what a given pilot/mech sees.
  
• Better use of support vehicles etc
  In MechCommander 1, it was mostly non-existent. In MC2 they had some, but frankly it was weak. I'd like to see more/better options here.
  
• Ditch the Fog of War.
  This might be a little controversial, but yeah, I'd get rid of it. In MC1, it essentially limits how you play since you really can't see very far nor can you send artillery strikes into areas not yet revealed. I thought MC2 was a little better here. Having said this, it does require changes to how the map/world is displayed. Things you don't know about would simply not show up. Things detected via scanners would have an icon, while things actually seen would be shown properly. Note that this would work better when used with the Pilot view windows above.
  
Anyway, just a few simple ideas... Discuss!

[Mondos]

Well this is what I have put down,
Real-time strategy, select and deploy your lances, combined mech, vehicle and infantry assets. Larger maps with linked missions in one large operation, less focus on lots of salvage and more on unit prestige.

Mechs, units, deployments and mechlab.
Mechs will have will follow closely to some of the idea’s set out in MWO, so set models with area’s for ballistics or missiles. Modifying mechs will require you to be stationed at home and will take time, considering have things like endosteel/standard internals and engines as set unchangeable. Some customization for vehicles and Infantry, gearing towards specialized roles. HQ vehicles, Arty, Salvage rigs, right down to humble flatbeds, APC’s and pickups.
Standard IS unit structure, with 4 lance slots,  4 mechs to a lance, combined Mech/Vehicle lances. As an example, one main mech lance, one support lance of 2 mechs and 4 vehicles, mixed lance of vechicles and infantry and the command lance of HQ vehicle, salvage/supplies and a rear guard.
You would deploy to a planet and start an operation, once you select what units you are taking your locked in with those through two to four missions.

Salvage, Resources and Cbills. (The loot)
Cbills to pay for non-contracted ship flights, wages, market place. Earned via completing operations and special objectives. Would require management by the player outside of the operations. Different Units would have different requirements, so a House unit wouldn’t have to pay wages, but can’t just hire anyone, handled by high command and have limited access to a marketplace. Offset by House units receiving lower Cbills from completed operations.
Merc units would have more use for Cbills, better market place and higher income, but more costs.
Pirate units would get lower Cbills from operations, but have other ways of earning Cbills.
Clan Unit Cbill Use?
Resources would be your in-operation currency, Ammo, armour for repairs, food and fuel. It would be more of a 1% to 100% style system. When its high units have lots of ammo to use, everyone eats and vehicles all run at 100%. If you run lots of ammo hungry weapons and combustion engine vehicles (eg Pirate Units) this would require extra management. If it gets below say 50% you would start getting debuffs, “low ammo” “Hungry troops” “Fuel shortage” which would reduce your units abilities. Can be restored in mission by capturing storage/bases etc with your support units, can also purchase it with cbills depending on if the local planet will trade with you.

Salvage In mission.
Want to keep it limited, certainly don’t want to resurrect dead mechs like in MC2, but if you have the right support vehicles in mission with you, being able to pick up one or two downed mechs or vehicles to take home with you is important. Being able to strip a downed unit for resources is also a point. Also makes it important to be on the lookout for a mech that has the loadout you want, (endo, larger engine, extra missile slots). If you control the zone after a mission is complete, being able to pick up salvage at a cbill cost, depending on contract and other factors. There would also need to be some limit on storage and maybe a cost involved if you try to cart back lots of Salvage.  Some variation on this between House units/Merc units/clans etc.


Missions, Operations and Contracts.
So to start you would be given or accept a contract, go to X system and ferret out some pirates. Startship passage and use of a dropship in-system is covered by the employer. Drop ship is sets what you can take with you, so say a Lung Wang (4 mechs, 2 Fighters, 1 platoon). At this stage you have 2 mechs and some support vehicles so you can take everything. Jump to system and given one operation on planet “Begin hunt for Pirates”
From here you are fairly locked in, till you complete the operation or pull out. To complete the operation you need to achieve a number of objectives. In this case the first one would be to clear the landing zone, patrol around kill a couple basic scout vehicles. Once this is done your option to end mission is enable, you can keep hunting about for resources or enemies, just remember it eats up resources. Clicking end mission wouldn’t remove you from the map, just puts a break in for you start the next batch of objectives, quick repair/rearm (also would allow the game to maybe change parts of the map/units etc in the back ground).
“Maybe need someone with a bit more mission building experience to put some fluff in here”
Completing the next batch of objectives, opens the end mission button again, which would lead to a minor base assault and the end of the operation. Or if you complete/find enough objectives you can set up an ambush before the base assault (This wouldn’t change the base assault mission, just put a way point on the map and generate extra units and remove some from the base, which opens up more to salvage and some more cbill rewards etc). Once done the End Mission screen now gives you the option to finish the operation.
Once the operation is over, it returns you to the staging area/drop ship, depending on the contract.  You would get to keep your salvage or have to dump/sell excess. In this case you are limited to what fits on the dropship. From here depending on the contract settings you would have more options as to repairs (replace lost limbs etc), swap units around and pilots. Start another operation (if part of the contract)or end contract, which would return you to your home base. From your home base you can then work on modifying mechs and equipment, trading equipment and look for new contracts.

Mulitplayer, and value adding for the Producer.
So by having a choice between being a house unit, merc, pirate or clan each with strengths and weaknesses, we can take this further by adding factions, House Lio, Clan Seafox etc each with it’s own abilities and starting equipment. This adds content that the publisher can release at later dates with extra contracts for single players to find and Unit sets for people in multiplayer to go head to head with.
I think we can all agree some form of multiplayer would be needed, not only to get more people to play it, but also to give it extra life. The big thing I would like to see is a change from the old mech smash of before, simply pitting two teams against each other to death would make some units better than others. With the resource system from the single player mode gives us some options for the multiplayer aspect. So if we take a Pirate unit and put it against a Clan Unit, why would a pirate want to go head to head with a clan unit? Pirates want to loot and run, so if we give them bonus to resource collecting by stripping down units/factories/storage then create a win condition where if someone collects X% of available resources on a map then moves to a designated area a “flee” point they could win without firing a shot. Where for the clan unit, they could do the same thing, collect resources and flee, but it would be slower and of less value (less bonus’s). On the other hand if they catch the pirates and destroy all units they get a higher score and better chance of winning. The same idea can apply to a house unit, they would in theory get more bonus’s towards holding and controlling area/resources, so if a pirate does a smash and grab, along as the house unit can minimize the damage, and keep enough resources undamaged their score would be higher at the end of the match.

[[CW] CyclonerM]

I love these ideas.

For the gameplay, i would usesomething like Tom Clancy's End War, though it has few units working like rock-scissor-paper.

[Splina]

for a new MC you can combine all existing MC and MW games...each have something good + new ideas

In my opinion from MC1 (MCG) should be kept mechs structure and design (i think its the most realistic and simply wonderfull), MW3 have a similar structure but here you can custom mechs better and if you can put this in MC will be excelent.
Maps can be taken from MC2, this game is better in graphics but i dont like mechs.
From other games you can get mechs, weapons and pilots (Daishi, Anihilator, Fafnir, Hauptmann, Sunder, Supernova, Puma...Heavy GAuss, Machinegun, MRM..and more...all this changed after the MC1/MW3 structure. (that besides the already existing MC1)

All this with your new ideas i think will be...a great game!

[HeadClot]

So here goes a question - Are people here serious about making this happen?

I would love to help make MechCommander 3.

I have some experience with Unreal Engine 4, 3D Studio Max, and Photoshop. Currently I am making a greybox environment for a game that I have working on for a bit.

If people are serious about it - Maybe we can collaborate and Make a Mechcommander 3?

I just do not want to commit time and have it be wasted. If that makes any sense.

[tinman]

This one might raise a few pitchforks... I'd like to see very limited mech customizing.  In other words you have the stock mechs and that's that.  The thing to me that no Mechwarrior/Mechcommander game has ever really captured was what made the clan omnimechs special.  In both of the Mechcommander games everything was basically an omnimech.  You could just as freely reconfigure your hunchback as you could your timber wolf.  If you look at the lore of Battletech a mech that wasn't one of the standard variants, like Yen Lo Wang, was a rare thing to encounter on the battle field and required a great deal of effort to do.

[[CW] CyclonerM]

This one might raise a few pitchforks... I'd like to see very limited mech customizing.  In other words you have the stock mechs and that's that.  The thing to me that no Mechwarrior/Mechcommander game has ever really captured was what made the clan omnimechs special.  In both of the Mechcommander games everything was basically an omnimech.  You could just as freely reconfigure your hunchback as you could your timber wolf.  If you look at the lore of Battletech a mech that wasn't one of the standard variants, like Yen Lo Wang, was a rare thing to encounter on the battle field and required a great deal of effort to do.

I approve this!

[BobTheZombie]

Yes, stock 'Mechs are more common, but customizing is half the fun! I'd much rather see MW4-like slots which would help with balance and would still allow Mechs to keep their roles and omnimechs to be important.

[Mondos]

Yes, I wanted to keep the modifying a part of the idea, but make it tactic.
So for IS chassis, if you want to modify it it has to been done at home base and it locks that Mech out of being used for awhile. You would still be limited, if you salvaged a Hunchback 4G, it would stay a 4G, you couldn't load it full of SRMS.
So salvage would then become a important feature, if you only can drag one or two mechs off the field with you, chasing that one model you want because it has 6 laser hard points or it will round out your scout/spotter lance with it's advanced electronics.

With Clan omi's, almost want two levels.
First being a IS commander can have clan Salvage, but unless he has the resources/technicians with it he is stuck treating it like a IS mech.
Where as a Clan unit would have the Techs to hot swap pods, so when in deployment you could go from a Kitfox scout to a Kitfox LRM support between missions.
This could become available to IS units later on when recruiting/finding technicians/equipment.

[asshole monkey]

First off I think the most important aspects should be fixing the errors/glitches that were found in MCG
For Example, the shot accuracy..from random headshots to a single blow to a stock madcat causing it to lose ppc's and being pretty much useless from there on. Jump cheating and waypoints fixed, lag somewhat comes into play here. I agree with Cmunsta about the blackened fog, I feel that should be scrubbed out completely. I like the idea about stealing someones mech too. Personally I would like to see the terrain and weapons stay the same as it was in MCG but with different elements like there was in MC2, scout copter e.t.c.

Legend

Keeping the dream Alive for all my MCG Boyz!
mechcommander.co.uk

[wpmaura]

I think the new battletech game on Kickstarter is basically going to be MC3

[[CW] CyclonerM]

I think the new battletech game on Kickstarter is basically going to be MC3

Well, not so much, since Mech Commander is a RTS and the new BT game is turn-based. That is quite a fundamental difference.

[SeanLang]

I think the new battletech game on Kickstarter is basically going to be MC3

MC is real time, this is turn based, not even close. Think more like shadow run, or xcom...

[Deathshade]

What source are you guys using to build MC?

Microsoft's Version?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11457

I believe I got a copy of Wolfman-x's source code when he was releasing it. I can't remember it has been so long